Are You The Next JK Rowling?
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- August 1st, 2008 |
- Comments
Harry Potter. The name brings instant recognition from people all over the class. The books have oversubscribed over 350 million copies cosmopolitan. Only the bible has more translations. The movies have gone on to grace the lists of the Apical 10 grossing films of all time.
When Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Endocarp was published in 1997, Joanne Kathleen Rowling was a previously unpublished author. She had no publishing credits, no insider knowledge, no friends in the industry.
So how did she do it? How did she go on, in the area of ten abbreviated years, to become the first billionaire author on the planet?
The answer thereto question lies not in what she did in those ten years between the publication of the first book and the publication of the ordinal, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The answer actually lies in what she did in the VII years prior to the first book’s publication.
So if you’re an author who is yet to be published, you’re actually in the best possible position. Because it’s in this time, before your book hits the shelves, that you can have the greatest influence on its achiever.
Quite simply, JK Rowling followed a four-step writing process that you also can adopt to compose your real own list of bestsellers. The question is: do you have what it takes to be the next JK Rowling?
Planning
This is by far the most underrated of the stairs in the writing process. And in the final lave it is absolutely the most important.
It was 1990 and Jo Rowling was on a train between Manchester and London. Harry literally strolled fully formed into her mind piece she was gazing out the train pane at a field full of cows. She exhausted the next four hours (the train was delayed) imagining Harry, the class he inhabited, the friends and enemies he had thither and the dangers and joys he may encounter thither. She had nothing to compose on so had to be content to play this all out in her imagination. By the time she got off the train in London, the central cast of characters were already cemented in her mind.
But did she go home and immediately begin scribbling a account with these characters? No, she didn’t. She exhausted five years, yes that’s right FIVE YEARS creating and developing every last detail of the wizarding class, including government and education systems, how the wizarding class stood berm to berm with the muggle class, and she devised a highly blase group of magic that would eventually form the backbone of her own primary brand of writing magic. On apical of this she sculptured out the entire account, planning the details and events of all the VII books, before she put pen to paper to begin writing the first.
Would you attempt to build a house without plans? Would you attempt to drive across the country without a map? Or would you set sail on the seas without a compass? Writing a book without a detailed planning arrange is like attempting to build a house without plans. Miss this block and you are almost certainly destined to become lost in a forest of your own words.
Writing
When you are writing, you are just writing. You are not planning, you are not editing. You are writing. Once you have planned your account, it is time to sit and compose it.
JK Rowling planned the Harry Potter broadcast for five years before she put pen to paper on the first book She wrote the entire first book, and felt as tho’ she were “carving it out of this mass of notes”. All the planning was deserving it. She was able to devote herself to the actual chore of writing, knowing that all the account and character elements she needed were covered.
This is the best possible place for you to be in when you are writing a novel. Novels are long. Unremarkably over 100,000 words and sometimes as many as 200,000 words and more. That is a lot of words! So if you have planned and organic your account effectively, done your research (either real or in your imagination) and collated your notes, so the writing process is an absolute joy, where you can be real certain of your ability to produce the best possible novel.
Jo Rowling said she felt she “had to do right by the book”. She really believed in the account and so when it came to writing it, she made careful she had appropriated care of all the necessary preparation. Once that’s done, writing is almost easy!
Rewriting
Jo Rowling rewrote the opening chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Endocarp a come of 15 times. Her own mother died just 6 months after her first attempt at Chapter One of that book, and that conveyed her into a frenzy of rewriting, essentially changing everything. The Potter books are about death, thither is no doubt about that, and they are driven particularly by the death of Harry’s parents and his miraculous survival. When Jo Rowling experienced much a major corner in her own life, she rewrote the account to reflect and process her own pain.
Writing and rewriting are abstracted processes. Writing is scribing or sculpting out the drafts of the account. Rewriting is re-looking and re-seeing. Often the rewrite will surface where the account has gone off belt and where questions asked at the start haven’t been answered by the end. In JK Rowling’s case, she realised after writing the entire first book that she had given away the entire plot of the VII books. She rewrote it in this light, and held many things back.
Many booming authors have that you only compose to rewrite. DH Lawrence even said that he wrote his entire first draft, threw it away and so started again from incise.
Editing
Editing is the process of refining and polishing your manuscript. This part of the process may be done by you, or by an external editor. It is often knowing have an editor look over your activity before submitting it for publication as it is extremely difficult to get the distance you need from your own activity to accompany where it can be improved.
Not that you have to listen to what the editor says. In the end it is your name on the spine of that novel and you are entirely answerable for its contents. Having said that, a good and impalpable editor can lift your novel to heights that you may not be able to achieve on your own.
It is clear from the Harry Potter broadcast that JK Rowling was more tightly edited at the beginning (the first cardinal novels are barely more than 200 pages and by the time we get to number five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, we are faced with a weighty tome of over 700 pages) so it is generally advisable at the beginning of your career to bear the advice of your editor heavily in mind, especially if you are new to publishing. In every event, less is more, and a distilled and focussed book is more likely to captivate and intrigue a new audience than a meandering epic that constantly loses its artifact.
Writing a book is a process, never forget that. Each deputise the process is single but necessary. Don’t mix them, and certainly don’t attempt to bounce any stairs. Do that at your own peril.
JK Rowling has shown the class what is possible if you adhere to the basic processes of the art and craft of writing a good account. So before you attempt your next novel, address the four stairs in the writing process: planning, writing, rewriting and editing, and be careful you give each block its due.
And who knows? You could be the next JK Rowling.