Novel Writing—Starting Elements

Before you start the Novel Writing Essential, it’s recommended you read Point of View and Tense from the Basic Writing Essentials. The concepts there combine with the starting elements here in powerful ways. After you finish, further reading includes The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White, Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card, and Writing the Novel by Lawrence Block. Ideas that can serve as the starting point of a novel fall into a few main groups. You can start with more than one of them—in fact, it’s better if you do—but a novel can be…