Sunday, May 1, 2011

Don't rely on some premade template!

Originally posted on Xomba. Click here to see it

I often get many questions regarding how long a chapter should be. Quite honestly, I find this question absurd and shallow. The worst thing a future author can do is conform to some template of another successful book just so they can make some dough. Don't write a novel because you want to make money - write it because you want to tell a story through textual means. If you write because you are trying to meet some quota or some format, your audience will see the shallowness of your pages.

Now, there is a difference between getting some help and trying to fill in the blanks on a template. We all have to build from somewhere, build our foundation from the education of others. But once you piece that information together, it is up to you to use your brain to make it your own.

Remember grade school essays with the general format that teachers tended to exhaust? It looked something like this:
  • Introduction Paragraph
  • Thesis
  • Body Paragraph 1
  • Body Paragraph 2
  • Body Paragraph 3
  • Conclusion
File:Crystal Clear app korganizer.png
No matter what you did, your essay HAD to be in that order or else it would be considered a failed essay. Hell, a lot of English Teachers base their grading on that format, and they refuse to flex their minds and be creative. Because of this, I am doomed to peer correct and read essays with this dull, repeated format that holds no creativity whatsoever. The writers are forced to fill in boxes and bullets points just so they can get that awesome grade. This is why I'm against rubrics of utter specificity.

What does this essentially mean for writing? It means the student has to conform to preset formats so they can pass the class. They have to base their opinion and create it in a way so that it comprises of three points. Some people want to have more points, or less points, but because of this restriction they are forced to create this BS essay just so they can meet the criteria of their teachers.

Don't make this mistake. Don't base your book on some templates just so it can look pretty. Don't tell yourself that each Chapter just has to be twenty pages, or ten pages, or five pages. Otherwise you'll find yourself trying to fill up the remaining space with useless crap that no one wants to read, or trimming stuff that is totally fine and essential to your book. There are hundreds of books out there that do not follow any typical formats. Hell, the book I'm currently reading right now, Beloved by Toni Morrison, is in no logical order whatsoever, but the format works for her book. With this book she won a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize. And why? Because she was creative, thoughtful, and all her content came from her heart. You should create your story in the same, rule-free way.

If you want to create a book, disregard any templates or premade formats. It's fine if you need them to get some organization going, but do NOT base your whole book solely on them or else your novel will just be another clone in the batch of preformatted books.

File:Crystal Clear mimetype templates.png

    No comments:

    Post a Comment