getting started - Should I write a novel if I haven't read many?

I have heard people telling that they have read so many books and have a mini library at their houses. I did not read many books (I am 17 and do not have much time as I balance school, special classes and software development. I am extremely interested in reading books, though I cannot right now), but I have read The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins, The Shiva Trilogy by Amish and all books (about 60-70) of Goosebumps by R.L. Stine. Though you may think that I have read many books in Goosebumps, people say that they are like short stories and cannot be considered a book.

I fantasize about writing a fantasy novel. I have an outline of it and have written the first chapter. But I am afraid I do not have enough knowledge about the book-reading community as to what pleases them. Do I continue writing the novel, or do I need more experience in reading books first?

Answer

Many will say what you're striving to do is impossible because you won't have seen enough tricks of the trade in use, but I'll do my best to suggest a way forward that doesn't boil down to, "read N books because that sounds like enough". I'll still end up telling you to do some reading (by which I mean "or use an audiobook if you prefer; I'm not your mother").

• What "tropes" is your fantasy likely to use? How have people played with them in the past? Is there anything "standard" that has become so stale you want to do something different? Start your reading here.


• Do some research by your preferred method on the most common problems with beginners' writing, so you have a rough idea for how you're supposed to write. At this stage, my hope is this will ensure your pacing is about right, because you'll need that for the bullet point below; but your writing will have to refine a lot before that.


• You need a word count estimate. (Write a very detailed chapter summary of your intended plot, and if necessary redraft Chapter 1 as closely to the "rules" you've learned as possible in terms of pacing.) Find another work of about the same scale (word counts are easy to Google) and read that, or if it's very long at least read about its structure, to see whether in doing so you learn anything about structuring a work of that size. People were right to warn you about Goosebumps, not out of word-count snobbishness but because what you intend to write will almost certainly be so much longer than those stories as to have very different structural requirements.


• Now you know what work yours may be most like at least in terms of structure, put aside writing it altogether for the moment, as you've still a lot to learn and what you wrote now may need to be extensively redrafted. (This is often necessary with Chapter 1, anyway; I only asked you to write it for a word count estimate.) Read How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read and try to apply its techniques to learning what other great books did right. It might just allow you to do that without reading them in their entirety. I have a number of reservations about the book's ideas myself, but if what you're hoping to achieve is possible this is your best chance. To quote Jorge Luis Borges's review of Ulysses, "I confess that I have not cleared a path through all 700 pages, I confess to having examined only bits and pieces, and yet I know what it is, with that bold and legitimate certainty with which we assert our knowledge of a city, without ever having been rewarded with the intimacy of all the many streets it includes."


• Now you know how long your work will likely be, how it is to be structured and what some do's and don'ts are, design a timetable for when you'll write the first draft, which will take ages. You may need to first plan some characters' personalities to ensure the plot that flows thereafter doesn't have them do anything they wouldn't, and you may need to write another chapter to see how quick you are; but I'll leave all that to you. If you can also timetable redrafting after that, so much better. But once all that work is behind you, be warned: even great writers usually have to write several novel-length stories before they're skilled enough for their work to be publishable by traditional routes. So if your heart is set on publishing this particular story, either practise with some others first or else be prepared for extensive redrafting one day.