I’ve finished about half of Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days. I think I’ll do it. Even better: December has 31 days.
Baty suggests writing a Magna Carta of sorts to keep you focused on the things that interest you as a reader while you write. My list includes novels that are
- realistic
- heady
- poetic
- in motion (on a journey)
- mythic
or contain
- forbidden desire
- lies
- adult characters with maturity
- strangers
- undertow
- puzzles & Rosetta stones
- strange settings
- barren landscapes
- hallucinations & visions
- tension
- complex characters
Some of my favorite novels are listed here to give you a sense of what I enjoy as well as what I tend to write about when I write fiction and how:
- Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
- The Stranger, Albert Camus
- Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
- Frisk, Dennis Cooper
- Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
- Querelle of Brest, Jean Genet
- The Immoralist, André Gide
- Damage, Josephine Hart
- The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
- The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
- The Moon and Sixpence, W. Somerset Maugham
- Confessions of a Mask, Yukio Mishima
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- 1984, George Orwell
- Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev
I’ve written several short stories and poems since I was ten years old, but I’ve always wanted to write novels. I’m several thousand words into a handful of novels I’ve begun but haven’t yet completed. Baty’s “system” of pure exposition under deadline appeals to me; I’ve spent the majority of college and graduate school doing just that, delivering some of my best prose hot from the printer to under-appreciative professors. So, I’ll try this method with something I’m not very emotionally attached to and see what comes of it. One month. 50,000 words. Wish me luck.