Bukkhead Creative Writing

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====== How to Write a Novel ======

First you're going to need a character and a setting. Frog on a log in a bog. Now, conflict. Alligator. Alligator tries to eat frog, frog runs away, alligator snaps and thrashes, frog sees tree, frog climbs tree. Alligator climbs tree. Alligator breaks a branch and falls down. Frog is safe. Frog is safe? Alligator decides to wait at bottom of tree.

Alligator falls asleep. Frog tries to sneak down tree. Alligator wakes up, frog scurries back up tree. Alligator snoozes again, frog tries again. No doing. Frog resigns himself to life on branch. Now time for a disaster. Branch breaks.

Frog lands on alligator! Alligator's eyes snap open! Frog desperately wraps arms around alligator and hangs on tight! It works! Alligators have powerful muscles for closing jaw, but not so much for opening jaws. It is the alligator's achilles heel. It is the source of his hubris. Frog is winning!

Alligator hurls frog off his snout with one mighty snap of his neck. Frog uses the momentum to run. Alligator gives chase. It is a long chase, or a short one depending on budget. Alligator finally has frog cornered. Alligator smirks. Frog decides to just accept his fate. Closes his eyes Alligator says "kiss your ass goodbye, dinner." 

Frog snaps his eyes open. Kiss! Of course! He leaps at alligator, and plants a wet-n-sticky one right on his mouth. Frog is transformed into prince! He towers above alligator!

Alligator lunges and rips prince's leg off. Prince tried to crawl away. Alligator chokes down leg, pursues prince. Prince is losing lots of blood. Alligator finds prince at end of blood trail. Suddenly, alligator dies. The leg he ate was poisonous, a cancer caused by the unnaturally rapid cell growth necessary to turn from about an ounce to over one hundred and eighty pounds.

Now for the denouement. Prince is his office. He is CEO of Boggy by Nature, a company that provides peat to whisky distilleries. He has a prosthetic limb. He wears alligator shoes.

That's draft one. Now let's do the second draft. Let's add details that make it look like everything fits together purposefully.

Why is the frog on a log in a bog in the first place. Surely a bog is a dangerous place to be, full of alligators and the occasional crocodile. Frog don't care. Frog smokes weed all day and plays x-box. Frog's mother died when he was just a tadpole and he was never close with his dad. 

Add in a theme of closeness and distance. The closeness frog never had with his dad, the distance he now has. Put in little things, like Frog is totes baked and watching Sesame street with some buds, and there's Grover, doing his "near… far" routine. Frog had a long-distance relationship, but they broke up when she moved to the bog. Add in something that's right in frog's face that he never really sees. If you can't figure that one out, don't worry-- something will bubble up in your brain by the end of this draft.

When Frog escapes to tree, he calls is his friends for help, but they don't take him seriously. The only one who takes frog seriously is a girl who has a crush on him, or a kid who looks up to him for some reason, or maybe even his landlord who always rides his ass about rent but actually is a good super and keeps the place in better shape than a lot of other logs in the bog. Needless to say, Alligator eats this girl/kid/landlord

There you go: the girl/kid/landlord can be the something that's right in frog's face that he never really sees for what it really is. I told you something would bubble up.

When frog is trying to sneak down tree past sleeping alligator, that's when frog gets all introspective and stuff. He's promising to become a better frog. No more weed, no more xbox, gonna call up his dad and sort their stuff out.

Just before branch breaks, sending frog right at alligator (from far to near, see?) develop frog's resignation about his situation, give him some agency, let him get mad. Frog doesn't deserve this shit. Neither did girl/kid/landlord. Frog's going to beat this alligator, and he's going to do it for girl/kid/landlord. 

In fact, find a way to connect girl/kid/landlord and dead mother. You don't have to overdo it. Like, they both really liked a certain brand of really stinky cigarettes. Connecting them like this let's people know that alligator is a symbol of frog's self-destructive nature. Frog has low self-esteem because of the tragedy that struck early in his life. But by refusing to live life to his fullest, he's justifying his mother's death in the grand scheme of things. He dishonors his mother memory. But by trying to survive the alligator, he's finally becoming the frog his mother would have wanted him to be. 

When alligator is chasing frog, he has his own moment of introspection. Is what he's doing just? Is it right? Is it good? Who the fuck cares. He's a fucking alligator, for christ's sake.

The theme of near/far will come to a head when frog realizes that a kiss will save him. Instead of running away from the alligator, he runs towards it. Why hadn't he done this before? Because there's always a price to pay, even for justice. Otherwise the world would have no balance.

Then when the alligator dies of poisonous leg, that's when the frog finally understands that although his own fate is out of his control, it is moral to always be purposeful. Be careful here you don't get too cute, trying to sneak in little Albert Camus easter eggs.

The denouement, then, shows how it's not the bog that's dangerous, it's idleness that's dangerous. Frog had to be taken apart and put back together to become his better self. This, by the way, will be compared to the Christian notion of being "born again," but don't worry; any sophomore who writes as much in an assignment paper will receive and big fat red D-  for his efforts and should consider changing majors from philosophy to, like, communications.

In the third draft, take a look at the language you're using to tell this story. Make sure it is consistent throughout the novel, and that it straddles the line between the theme and the action that moves the plot forward. Look for those sentences that really say what you're trying to say and work on those sentences until they become things of beauty all by themselves. Showcase them by making the sentences that lead up to them create a kind of subliminal tension that the beauty and elegance of your "power" sentence relieves. 

Here's an example: 

"Norman looked down at the alligator. So sure of himself, just lying there, asleep, waiting for nature to take its course. Well that's what Norman was doing before all of this started, wasn't it? Sparking the jay, shooting his friends in the face with digital AK-47s, waiting until it was his turn to die. He was no better than that goddamned frog-eater down there. 

"Reptile, amphibian, predator, prey... tens of millions of years of evolution but the game hadn't changed at all, not one bit. And you had to play, even if you didn't want to. Did his mom know she was playing the game, that day she went to the 7-11 for scratchers and got flattened by semi? Did old Mr. Graham know the rules when he tried to help, only to become an alligator's appetizer?

"Who knows. Who cares. At least they tried. And for what, so Norman could just wait for death to come along on 4 alligator feet and put him out of his misery?

"No. Fuck that. Time to frog-up, and start taking care of business.

"And then, for the second time that day, Norman heard the loud, sickening crack of a branch breaking. He had time to say 'Well, fuck,' before he started to drop."

This might take longer than any other draft so far. But don't worry, the next draft will be way easier. The fourth draft's just for proofreading and fixing typos and such. When you're finally done, self-publish it on Amazon, tell your friends and family. Maybe some of them will buy it. One of them might even read it.

Nice job, you novel writer.
Bukkhead Creative Writing

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