How to Write Successful Novels

There’s one question I’m asked more often than any other: ‘How can I become a successful novelist?’ Now I know my limitations. I may be able to offer a few useful tips about writing non-fiction, but I have no personal experience whatsoever about crafting short stories and novels. That’s a totally different art. However, I can pass on a few hints I’ve just picked up from the private correspondence of a couple of professional writers. These letters highlight the difference between literary failure and success. The couple in question were Hindus, raised in Trinidad. The father, Seepersad Naipaul was a competent journalist who worked for the Trinidad Guardian. His lifetime ambition was to achieve international acclaim as a novelist. That dream he never achieved. And he didn’t live long enough to witness the success of his son, V.S. Naipaul, who was knighted in 1990 for his services to literature and awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2001.
The story of their differing fortunes is revealed in the touching letters they exchanged when V.S. left home to study literature at University College, Oxford. From this correspondence – which was published as Letters Between a Father and Son (Little, Brown and Company 1999) – I draw the following eight tips which I hope may be of help to aspiring novelists:-
1. Find a literary mentor. Writing can be a lonely and dispiriting business. To maintain your confidence and morale try to link up with someone who can offer you comfort and support, preferably someone with prior knowledge of the writing business, such as a literary agent or published author. If not, join a local writer’s circle. In their letters the Naipauls gave each other invaluable sympathy, encouragement, and practical advice.
2. Seize every available opportunity to put pen to paper Regular practice in the use of words is the best way to learn the art of literary composition. Write letters to your friends, submit articles to the local newspaper, launch a blog or volunteer to edit the parish newsletter. V.S. Naipaul cut his teeth writing for Isis ,the varsity magazine, sending articles to the Trinidad Guardian and later writing scripts for the BBC.
3. Read extensively Just as painters study the technique and style of great artists, so novelists need to absorb the work of the great story tellers and wordsmiths. ‘Good reading and good writing go together,’ Seepersand told his son, who promptly sat down and read and analysed the complete oeuvres of Spenser, Milton, Dickens, George Eliot, Thackeray, Meredith, Henry James, Kipling, and Thomas Hardy.
4. Be yourself and develop your own literary style Better to be an original than a poor carbon copy of someone else. As Naipul senior told his son in one of his early letters: ‘You must be yourself. You must be sincere. You must aim to say only what you have to say and to say it clearly – without showing off, with utter, brave sincerity – and you will have achieved style because you will have been yourself.’
5. Keep a commonplace book. Most eminent novelists carry a note book on which they record their passing ideas and impressions, snatches of conversation and character descriptions. V.S. acquired this practice from his father who told him: ‘It would be a God-send to you if you adopted this as a habit – of jotting down your impressions of people and things …. One cannot write well unless one can think well.’
6. Self discipline This was one the strengths of V.S. Naipaul, who often wrote into the small hours of the morning. His father didn’t reach his full potential because he feared failure more than longed for success, and found every possible reason to procrastinate. In one letter his son chided him: ‘Your experience is wide and if you write merely one page a day, you will shortly find that you have a novel on your hand ….You have enough material for a hundred stories. For heaven’s sake start writing them ….Stop making excuses. Once you start writing you will find ideas flooding upon you….. Don’t look for dramatic stories. Everything is dramatic.’
7..Write fluidly Some would-be novelists fail because they are so concerned with literary style than they lose sight of meaning, emotion and story line. This was one of Papa Naipaul’s shortcomings, so his son urged him: ‘Write a story as straight off as possible. In one day or two days. You will begin lamely but later you will catch your second wind…. if a story has to have a unity, this can be achieved as best as possible by writing it straight off …even without correcting your typescript.’.
8. Learn to cope with setbacks Naipul senior grew anxious and depressed when he failed to get his short stories published, whereas his son took rebuffs as a challenge to work harder. As he said in a letter to his sister: ‘My story about Rosie was rejected, just one of a number of rejections. Still this is my apprenticeship, and one expects rejections.’
Key words: V.S.Naipaul; Writers’ Circles; Common place book.