Write a Novel

Module Six
© Write a Novel: Module Six

The Write a Novel Course Outline

Module 1 – Your Novel: An Introduction

 Introduction
 What are you getting yourself into?
 Things I am often asked
 Getting started
 Battling ‘Writer’s Block’
 Getting into a routine
 Writing Exercise 1: Your expectations for this course
 Writing Exercise 2: A rough idea for your novel
 Writing Exercise 3: A warm-up creative writing exercise

Module 2 – The Basics

 What is genre?
 What is theme?
 Understanding point of view
 Voice
 Writing Exercise 1: Working with different genres
 Writing Exercise 2: Analysing theme, voice and point of view

Module 3 – Characterisation
 Character-driven writing
 Getting to know your characters
 What to show, what to hide
 Creating plot through character
 Assembling a cast of characters
 Dialogue
 Things to watch out for
 Writing Exercise 1: Creating a major and minor character
 Writing Exercise 2: Text instalment

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Module 4 – Plot
 The king died, the queen died
 Plot and genre
 Key elements of plot
 The classic story structure
 Character arcs
 Remember the premise
 Subplots
 Breaking the rules
 Practical tips
 Writing Exercise 1: Playing with plot
 Writing Exercise 2: Fine tuning the storyline
 Writing Exercise 3: Text instalment

Module 5 – Putting Scenes Together

 The concept of the scene
 Building pace and suspense
 The art of transition
 Avoiding tense tangles
 The art of constructing paragraphs
 Beginnings and endings
 Exceptions to the rule
 Writing Exercise 1: Write a beginning to a hypothetical novel
 Writing Exercise 2: Write a brief scene demonstrating transition
 Writing Exercise 3: Text instalment of 1 500 – 2 000 words towards
your novel

Module 6 – Writing Style

 What is style?
 Can good style be learnt?
 Show, don’t tell YOU ARE HERE
 Purple prose
 Rhythm and music
 Things that are flat-out wrong (most of the time)

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 Writing Exercise 1: Examine writing styles

 Writing Exercise 2: Text instalment

Module 7 – Dialogue
 Why is dialogue important?
 Writing strong dialogue
 Looking at speech tags
 Laying out dialogue
 Some examples
 Writing Exercise 1: Dialogue exercise
 Writing Exercise 2: Text instalment

Module 8 – Revising Your Work

 Why edit?
 The case of On the Road
 When’s the right time to start revising?
 Don’t proofreaders handle this?
 Does a lot of revision mean I’m a sloppy writer?
 Revision tips
 Writing Exercise 1: Revision exercise
 Writing Exercise 2: Text instalment

Module 9 – Selling Your Book

 A note of caution
 Shop around
 Sending it out
 The big wait
 Acceptance … and the contract
 Agent or no agent
 Writing Exercise 1: Writing a cover letter
 Writing Exercise 2: Text instalment

Module 10 – Book Production

 Editing

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 Page design
 Proofreading
 Cover design
 The blurb
 To print!
 Warehouse and distribution
 Marketing
 Making a buck
 Scheduling
 Writing Exercise 1: Writing the back-cover blurb for your book
 Writing Exercise 2: Text instalment

Module 11 – The Writing Life

 Talking it up
 The dreaded reviews
 After the party
 Ways to keep writing
 A few essentials
 Committing to the life
 Writing Exercise 1: Text instalment

Module 12 – The Way Forward

 Books of the future
 Self-publishing
 Writing in tough times
 The fickle, fickle public
 After module 12: Wrapping up the course
 Writing Exercise 1: Text instalment

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Module Six
Writing Style

Outcomes for this Module:

By the end of Module Six, you will have:

 Understood the elements of style
 Taken note of common style errors
 Considered your own personal style

Exercises for this Module:

Once you’ve read through the module, there are two exercises to complete:

Part 1: Examine writing styles

Part 2: Text instalment

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Introduction

Style and structure are the essence of a book; great

ideas are hogwash. – Vladimir Nabokov

So far, we’ve looked at broad aspects of a novel: character, theme, structure. But these are
not what most people mean when they say someone writes beautifully or badly; when they
say I just love the way she writes (or I can’t stand his writing!).

Usually, what they’re talking about is style: the way the writing has been constructed at the
level of words and sentences; the way it sounds. This is where we come to the real art of
the novel: the line-by-line crafting of a text. If it’s done well, style is what makes a piece of
writing sing.

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6.1. What is style?

Photo: Flickr.com: Paul Worthington

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When

there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims,
one turns as if it were instinctively to long words and
exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. –
George Orwell

A writer’s style is the way he or she uses language, and it involves many complex elements:
vocabulary, punctuation, sentence structure, rhythm, pace, tone and texture; humour, allusions,
figures of speech and colloquialisms. All these choices contribute to style. So do levels of
formality, energy, elegance, directness, playfulness, precision, lyricism – and a hundred other
variables. Style is closely linked to the writer’s voice and personality; but it can also be
manipulated by a skilled author to achieve particular effects.

What is good style? If the reader effortlessly sails through a book, feeling the highs and lows of
the story without noticing the author straining to get those effects – that’s good style. It takes a

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very skilled writer to use language so subtly that you hardly notice the technique, being so
engrossed in the story. But there are some (more rare) books one reads purely for the style –
when the author’s sheer technical brilliance can be enjoyed as an art in itself. And that’s good
style too, if it doesn’t get so distracting that the story is swamped by fancy effects.

Bad style is when reading feels like you’re wading through mud; or when you’re excruciatingly
aware of the author trying to manipulate your emotions; or when the language seems
pretentious, or simply ugly or clumsy. In some cases, the style chosen is just inappropriate for
the topic or the kind of book. For example, flowery, lyrical language used – without irony – to
describe gross cruelty.

But how important is style really? Are some stories not worthwhile on their own, whatever way
they get told? Well, yes – but then you might as well read an encyclopedia, which will be more
informative and probably more entertaining than a bad novel. Reading is a sensual as well as
an intellectual activity; it shouldn’t feel like a chore.

Good style can make almost any topic accessible to your reader. And if style is well matched to
subject matter, it can enhance the meaning of the writing.

Look at this passage from Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea, Scribner, 1952):

He was a very big Mako shark, built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in
the sea and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws. His back
was as blue as a sword fish's and his belly was silver and his hide was
smooth and handsome. He was built as a swordfish except for his huge
jaws. Which were tight shut now as he swam fast, just under the surface
with his high dorsal fin knifing through the water without wavering. Inside
the closed double lip of his jaws all of his eight rows of teeth were slanted
inwards.

Hemingway is famous for his sparse style; he uses simply constructed sentences, minimal
punctuation, strong concrete images and mostly short, forceful words. Notice how this style
complements and adds to the meaning of the text: a story of the endurance of a simple, strong
man battling the elements.

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In dramatic contrast, here’s an extract from The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
(Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, 1890):

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was

lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton
could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured
blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly
able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and
then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-
silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a
kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid
jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to
convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

The style is utterly different to Hemingway’s: ornate, sumptuous, perhaps even a little stiflingly
so, containing complex sentences full of exotic allusions. (In fact, the entire extract is one long
sentence!) It is perfectly matched to both the author’s personality and the subject matter of the
novel: the downfall of a beautiful, decadent young man. Neither extract is better than the other.
Both are examples of masters of the art using style to different ends.

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6.2. Can good style be learnt?

Photo: Flickr.com: Desi.Italy

The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But

style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by
looking and listening and reading and practice – by work. –
Donna Tartt

You will reach for gaudy similes and tinselled adjectives, as

if style were something you could buy at the style store and
drape onto your words in bright decorator colours ... there
is no style store; style is organic to the person doing the
writing, as much a part of him as his hair, or if he is bald,
his lack of it. Trying to add style is like adding a toupee. At

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first glance the formerly bald man looks young and even
handsome. But at second glance ... he doesn't look quite
right. – William Zinsser

An individual, unique style is something that no one can really teach you: it is intimately
connected with your personal voice. It can’t be forced. And to be a writer, one does need a
certain natural feeling for language, which probably can’t be learnt in adulthood – just like you
can’t be a concert violinist with a tin ear.

But even concert violinists need lessons when they start out. Everyone can learn basic style
principles that will strengthen their writing. And most of us have a couple of blind patches
about our writing, which we usually need a teacher or editor to point out to us. Certainly, all
writers’ style improves with practice, self-examination, experience – and reading, reading,
reading. Read the novelists you admire, and you’ll find that unconsciously you’ll soak up some
of their tricks of the trade. And by practising your craft, you’ll grow more confident in your own
style too.

What can definitely be learnt is how to avoid the most common style mistakes. The rest of this
module is, effectively, a list of What Not to Do: some tried and trusted principles that will
prevent you committing the worst style crimes. Once you become aware of errors in your own
work, and start to consciously weed them out, they will soon begin to jump out at you from the
page and you’ll automatically use them less.

You may not agree with all these recommendations, but at the very least you should know the
rules before your start bending them, and become aware of your own stylistic quirks and
strengths.

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6.3. Show, Don’t Tell

Photo: Creatingkoan

When I'm writing, I am concentrating almost wholly on

concrete detail: the colour a room is painted, the way a
drop of water rolls off a wet leaf after a rain.
– Donna Tartt

‘Show, don’t tell ...’ This piece of advice has been repeated a million times in creative writing
courses – and it works. Writing that shows you something is generally stronger than writing
that tries to explain. Inexperienced writers run into trouble because they try to tell readers
what’s happening, rather than bringing a situation to life through sensory detail, action and
dialogue.

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This kind of explanatory writing is sometimes called exposition. It’s a sign that the author
doesn’t trust the clarity of their own words – or the sensitivity of the reader. You’ll be surprised
by how much readers can pick up from subtle hints and suggestions: you don’t need to spell
things out.

 Feed them clues

It’s tempting to over-explain when your material is foreign to the reader. For example, if
your novel is set in medieval Japan, you might feel you should put in an explanatory
section about, say, samurai lore, to make sure the reader knows what’s going on. But
this will break the flow, pull your reader out of the subjective adventure of the story, and
probably feel quite clunky and incongruous. Let your reader rather see how characters
behave, and hear how they speak; let them see the sights and smell the odours of this
world – and naturally pick up the information they need in these less intrusive ways.

Find ways to integrate information into the story subtly, feeding out clues over the
course of the novel – and trust the reader to fill in the gaps. If they’re left to work out a
few things for themselves, it actually makes for a more satisfying reading experience.

 If you must explain ...

If you really need to give the reader a load of information (sometimes unkindly called
an ‘info dump’), keep it as brief as possible, and don’t let it get in the way of dramatic
plot moments. A little bit of exposition may sometimes be necessary, to whisk the
reader through something that is complicated but not very important – for example, a
period of time in which nothing significant to your narrative happens (‘Five years after
the war, Natalia returned to her home ...’). But keep it concise.

 Don’t teach, don’t preach

At all costs, avoid didactic writing – writing that sounds like it’s teaching or preaching.
It’ll just bore or patronise your readers. Find ways to get your thoughts across in a
narrative style.

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 Make them feel it

Also resist ‘telling’ your readers why your characters are behaving like they are ...

‘Hold me, George,’ whispered Milly, who was feeling insecure and afraid.

… Or instructing the reader how to feel:

It was all very frightening.

Almost always it is better to concentrate on strong, concrete imagery to get your

message across. Show us Milly cowering against George in fright; make us feel her
fear. Physical detail can be a lot more evocative than explanations of abstract thoughts
and feelings. Be precise, and avoid vague language. As Nabokov put it: ‘Caress the
detail, the divine detail.’

Info dumps and other cringeworthy errors are discussed in the ‘Turkey City Lexicon’ -
https://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/ . This
entertaining website is aimed primarily at sci-fi writers, but it’s very funny and well-
worth reading for good style advice that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

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6.4. Purple prose

Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the

cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when
there is a ten-center handy, ready and able. – The
Elements of Style (‘Strunk & White’)

When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean

utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be
valuable. They weaken when they are close together.
They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective
habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened
upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice. –
Mark Twain

Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy purple

patches; as when describing a sacred grove, or the altar
of Diana, or a stream meandering through fields, or the
river Rhine, or a rainbow; but this was not the place for
them. If you can realistically render a cypress tree, would
you include one when commissioned to paint a sailor in
the midst of a shipwreck? – Roman poet Horace (65–8
BCE), coining the term ‘purple’, in Ars Poetica.

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‘Purple prose’ means writing that is too ornate or flowery – especially when the subject matter
doesn’t call for it, and when the style distracts from the actual meaning of the text. Sentimental
or melodramatic writing can also be considered ‘purple’ and should be avoided. It only detracts
from those parts of the story that really should have emotional power. A related problem is
overwriting, where it feels like the writing has had so much effort put into it that it’s lost its
freshness and spontaneity. The trick is to work very hard at crafting your writing – but make that
work invisible!

One way to avoid purple prose is to be very disciplined about using too many adjectives and
adverbs. Adjectives should not pile up: the effect is of eating an overly rich meal containing too
many ingredients. Rather keep your sentences relatively spare, so that when there is a
descriptive adjective, it really has effect. One good adjective will have so much more power if its
effect is not diluted by many others. Look at this example:

The emaciated, gaunt man mounted his pale horse and rode off into the
bright, hazy morning, which was turning into a glorious day full of
brilliant, golden sunlight.

This would be more evocative if, in fact, all the adjectives were removed, although you might
keep one or two. General rule of thumb: if you have more than two adjectives in a sentence,
look at it again and see if you can lose one; and try not to string more than two in a row. Try to
choose nouns and verbs that are so strong and descriptive they don’t need adjectives.

Adverbs (the -ly words like beautifully, darkly, etc) have similar problems; and they, particularly,
seem to drive many authors and creative writing teachers into a froth: ‘The road to hell is paved
with adverbs’, Stephen King wrote. And Gabriel Garcia Marquez claims to have eliminated all
adverbs from his writing.

So what’s wrong with the adverb? The basic objection is that often you are using an adverb
because you haven’t chosen a strong or accurate enough verb. For example, in the sentence
‘He ran quickly down the road’, the adverb ‘quickly’ is unnecessary and the sentence would be
better without it – the word ‘run’ tells us he’s going fast. Even better would be a more descriptive
and specific verb: ‘He pounded down the road.’ (But note: don’t use a ‘fancy’ word just for the
sake of it. If you mean run, say run.)

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‘Suddenly’ is an adverb that is usually better avoided. It’s a lazy way to introduce a shift in the
pace of the writing. Your descriptions should be strong enough to show transitions without
having to use words like ‘suddenly’ or ‘at last’. (Similar points can be made about the
exclamation mark. Mostly, a sense of emphasis or alarm should be created by the writing, and
shouldn’t need to be signposted by punctuation. Also, too many exclamation marks are irritating
to read, and can give the writing a feel of unsophistication and overexcitement. Rather play it
cool, and let the writing create the excitement for itself.)

Very often, a piece of writing can be greatly improved by removing adverbs, and some creative
writing instructors feel strongly about this. However, I think one shouldn’t be dogmatic about it;
some adverbs do their job, and sometimes a judicious adverb can change or enhance the whole
meaning of the sentence. Consider:

‘But I do love you,’ she said coldly.

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6.5. Rhythm and music

Photo: Flickr.com: Baskyes

One very important aspect of style is how it affects the sound and rhythm of the language. All
writing has a natural metre to it – even if you don’t read it out loud. Usually, the reader sounds
out the words internally, and will be unconsciously aware of the rhythm of the writing. The
sound affects the meaning: an action sequence might be written in a way that feels jumpy and
exciting; a lyrical description of a landscape might be written in a more flowing style.

Ideally, a text can feel like a rich and lively conversation, with sentences following from and
answering each other in vibrant counterpoint, with rhythmic variety and contrasting textures of
rich and spare writing. Some writers have the ability to write phrases that flow together like
music. They might also occasionally introduce a deliberately jarring note or odd rhythm, for
effect.

But when a writer gets it wrong, they can inadvertently produce a text that feels arrhythmic,
clumsy or tedious. To prevent that happening, here are some things to avoid:

 Tongue-twisters and anything else that would really be hard to say out loud.

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 Really long elaborate sentences that go on and on, so that by the time you reach
the end you’ve forgotten where you started, and you’ve lost track of which bits of
the sentence belong together. Often it’s stronger and clearer to chop these
monsters up into smaller pieces. Don’t be afraid of the full stop!
 Monotonous strings of short sentences. Don’t hit the reader with a million staccato
fragments, unless you really want that effect. Generally speaking, avoid repetitive
sentences that all have the same pattern. Vary length and structure, using a good
combination of simple and more elaborate sentences. Try to vary the forms of the
verbs that you use.
 Excessive alliteration. (Strings of similar sounds seem somehow stupid ...)
 Inadvertent rhymes. Rhyming words can be unintentionally comical.
 Overuse of -ing words (present participles: hoping, running, smiling, etc). Too many
in a passage of writing can make the text sound over-elaborate and rhythmically
repetitive.
 Repetition of words and phrases, particularly when they’re close together in the
text. You may find a thesaurus a handy tool for avoiding ugly repetition. (BUT don’t
go overboard ... another style flaw is when a writer dredges up pretentious
synonyms, desperately avoiding using the same obvious word twice. The classic
example is ‘the elongated yellow fruit’, meaning banana.)
 Too much passive tense. If you want the writing to feel more dynamic, it often helps
to use the active voice: ‘He sent the letter’, rather than the passive: ‘The letter was
sent by him.’ This makes for simpler sentence structure too. (But the passive voice
can also be useful sometimes, especially if you don’t want to emphasise the person
doing the action.)
 Too many negatives: Something like ‘he was never not going to fail to do it’ could
be untangled and made much simpler.
 Don’t hesitate to use contractions (he’s, they’re, isn’t, etc) when they work
rhythmically. They are usually only inappropriate in formal writing.
 Keep your text concise. Cut extra words that are really just padding, use specific,
precise nouns and verbs, and avoid redundant information.

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For example:

The flightless seabird walked clumsily on its back flippers across the
white, slippery ice until it got to the edge, and then it dived down into the
water and swam towards the west just as the sun was going down.

could quite easily be:

The penguin waddled across the ice, dived off the edge and swam into
the sunset.

These little adjustments can do wonders for pace.

A good habit to get into is reading your work out loud to yourself. Does it sound monotonous,
repetitive, jumpy, ugly or clumsy? Is the pace right? Are the pauses coming in the right
places? Remember, one day you may have to read your work to an adoring public ...

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6.6. Things that are flat-out wrong (most of the time)

When I split an infinitive, god damn it, I split it so it stays

split. – Raymond Chandler

One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he

got into my pyjamas I don't know – Groucho Marx, Animal
Crackers

There are some style errors that are almost never excusable. (Although, as you can see from
the Chandler quotation above, nothing is non-negotiable …)

 Avoid clichés – those expressions and descriptions that have been used so many
times they have lost their impact. Find fresh ways of expressing things. Too many
tired phrases like ‘every fibre of his being’ or ‘understated elegance’ (to choose two
totally random examples) will lose the reader’s attention, as well as giving the text an
overall feel of flatness, insincerity and inauthenticity.

 Comma splices: this is when you jam together whole sentences, linking them with
nothing but a comma. For example: ‘She was walking down the road, she had on a
bright red dress.’ This is a very common error, which can be fixed by simply changing
the comma into a full stop or a semi-colon, or adding in a conjunction like ‘and’ or
‘but’.

 Mixed metaphors: This is when your figurative language gets mixed up, with
conflicting results. If you actually try to visualise something like ‘the player sailed
down the field, steamrollering his tacklers, and pounced ferociously on the try line’,

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you’ll get a confused picture, seeing as the sentence compares him to a boat, a
steamroller and a wild beast all at once.

Sometimes mixed metaphors are harder to spot: ‘Her words gushed out like a ton of
bricks.’ (Are her words being compared to water or bricks? Can bricks gush?) Often
this happens when you’re using clichéd phrases, like ‘a ton of bricks’ – it’s so over-
used, you don’t even picture the bricks; and so the silliness of the image is not
immediately apparent.

Stick to one metaphor at a time, and make sure that the images you use to describe
something are consistent and make sense.

 Misplaced modifiers: The Groucho Marx quote above is a classic example of this
mistake. This occurs when the part of the sentence that ‘modifies’ the main thought
gets attached to the wrong thing. In this example, ‘in my pyjamas’ is the modifier, and
it’s got wrongly attached to the elephant rather than to ‘I’. Usually a rearrangement of
the sentence will fix this problem: ‘One morning, in my pyjamas, I shot an elephant’.

A dangling modifier is when the modifying part of the sentence isn’t attached to
anything. For example: ‘Sitting down to work with a cup of tea, her computer
exploded.’ Here, the computer isn’t sitting down to work. ‘Sitting down to work’ is the
modifier, but the thing it’s modifying – she – hasn’t been properly put into the
sentence.

 Split infinitives: this is a classic rule of the language: you can’t split up the two parts
of an infinitive verb (‘to go’ ‘to talk’) etc. This is one of those rules than one can
occasionally break, though ... as demonstrated by the most famous split infinitive of
all, Star Trek’s ‘To boldly go where no man has gone before’.

 Ending a sentence on a preposition (on, in, under, with, etc.) For example, ‘This is
the spade he dug the road up with’ should strictly be, ‘This is the spade with which he
dug up the road’. This is a bit of an old-fashioned rule that is no longer strictly
observed, although it is still used in formal writing. As Winston Churchill was famously
said to have remarked to an interfering copy-editor who corrected his preposition
placement: ‘This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put!’ However,

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every now and then, if a sentence sounds a bit awkward, casual or unfinished, you
may find the problem is that it ends in a preposition.

All these style rules might seem a little overwhelming – and don’t expect to learn them
off by heart and transform your style overnight. As we’ve said, style only improves
with time and a lot of practice. It’s also very personal. But, together with your tutor,
you should be starting to pick up on specific style problems in your texts; the more
work you do, the more easily you’ll be able to spot the errors on the page. Eventually
you’ll have internalised your own set of ‘style rules’, and your writing will, almost
without conscious effort, have become stronger.

 For a well-known and entertaining spoof on purple prose, have a look at

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
 Another edifying site is the annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award:
http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsex.html
 And on http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonvingiano/elmore-leonards-ten-rules-for-
writing-fiction you can read the crime writer Elmore Leonard’s famous (and
funny) 10 Rules for Writers.

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Module Six Exercises

Part One:

Choose two of your favourite novels and read a page from each, out loud, to yourself. Take note
of the sounds and rhythms that are characteristic of this writer’s work. Do you notice any
particular techniques that the writer is using?

Now read out loud the first text instalment that you wrote for Module 3. Answer the following
questions about your own work:

a) Can you spot any problems with your piece? Are there parts where you think the style
could be improved? How?
b) Are there parts that you particularly like? Why do you think those bits work?
c) How would you describe your own style?
d) What writers can you think of whose style you admire? What do you like about it?
e) What writers’ style do you think is most similar to your own? Why?

Maximum word count: 400 words.

This exercise will be marked out of 10.

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© Write a Novel: Module Six

Part 2: Text Instalment

Write 2 000 – 2 500 words towards your novel.

E-mail your assignment, plus the text instalment, to your tutor for
assessment.

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn

as you go. If you do it right, you're coming up out of
yourself in a way that's not entirely governable by your
intellect. That's why the most important lesson I've
learned is that planning to write is not writing. Outlining a
book is not writing. Researching is not writing. Talking to
people about what you're doing, none of that is writing.
Writing is writing. – E. L. Doctorow

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© Write a Novel: Module Six

Module Six Checklist

In order to complete this module, have you completed, and

e-mailed:
- Answers to the questions on your own writing style, in not more than 400
words?
- TEXT INSTALMENT: 2 000 – 2 500 of your novel?

Total marks for Module Six: /10

Well done. You have completed Module Six.

ANY QUESTIONS? Please ask your tutor.

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