Keeping a Novel Notebook as Part of the Writing Process

While I have always written some bits of a novel in a notebook before adding it to the story, it's only recently that I have begun keeping novel notebooks for each of my WIPs. Giving each story its own notebook makes it a lot easier to keep track of where I am with a particular book, than it might if they were all lumped together One of the great things about this is that it allows me not just to chart the progress of a story, but to question why a character has acted in a certain way, how it influrncesand whether I should change that action. A novel notebook is also a great way of exploring a character's personality and motivations, so that I, and, hopefully, the reader will have a greater understanding of what someone is doing, and why.

A Fresh Look

Using a notebook in this way means that I gain a greater understanding, not just of the story, but of my own way of working. If these notebooks continue to be as useful by the end of the book, as they seem to be at the beginning and in the middle, then I might think about publishing them as novel writing handbooks. The notebook means that I take a fresh look at both character and setting, and how even the most mundane aspects of a setting can influence a character's actions, motivations, and feelings.

Setting and Character

It took me a while to understand how much of an influence a setting has on a particular story. For example, in the Victorian novel notebook, I've been researching the music hall and how much that changed people's lives, for both better and worse. While the music halls were cheap entertainment for both the masses and the moneyed classes who felt like slumming it, they also had a nasty underside. The music hall girls often supplemented their income with a bit of prostitution, which was their choice. Some of the younger girls, however, were sometimes picked up and forced to live in a brothel, which meant the end of the career they'd been hoping for.

Setting can influence character in both bad and good ways, even Chandler talked about the mean streets of LA, and how it was home to mean people, and a man who was neither mean, nor influenced by that meanness, other than to alleviate it. Sometimes a setting is as much a part of a character's personality and growth, as the people they meet, and the actions they undertake, and all these things can be explored in the novel notebook. Do you keep a novel notebook, and if so, how do you think it helps the process.