THE ICE PICK

The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing and the Marshall Plan Workbook, by Evan Marshall. Cincinnati, Writer’s Digest Books. $17.99; wkbk $19.99. Text includes: glossary, index, sample query & synopsis. Workbook includes: index, worksheets, charts, forms, templates, etc. ISBN: 0-89879-848-5; Wkbk 1-58297-059-9.

Are you thinking of writing a novel, but you don’t know where to start? Or are you halfway through writing one, but you’re stuck because something isn’t working or you don’t know what to do next? Or maybe you’ve completed a manuscript, but you feel you need more help than what your critiquers are able to give you in creating or handling subplots, multiple viewpoints, simultaneous events, or some other aspect of story-crafting.

Marshall’s plan is not as helpful in some ways as Crawford Kilian’s Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, which has a lot of information on symbolism, fantasy and sci fi worldbuilding, "getting the science and magic right," and other things that specifically address problems in our genres, but Kilian’s book is unfortunately out of print.

Those genre-specific things aside, The Marshall Plan may be exactly what you need. In "a sixteen-step program guaranteed to take you from idea to completed manuscript," Evan Marshall can help you organize your ideas and pick one that will work for a novel-length story. He shows how to create your characters so they will be rounded and will work in the story you want to write. Sections on plotting can help you set up your main storyline, develop it, and weave it together with your subplots.

Beginning with choosing your genre niche (and why "a novel written without a genre in mind can be difficult if not impossible to sell"), Marshall covers action scenes, description, viewpoint, dialogue, transitions, and the other narrative techniques you need to be able to handle.

For example, he shows how to punctuate a line of dialogue that has been interrupted. And how to know when a flashback is needed and ways to structure it. He even includes a worksheet in the workbook to help you block out times and places to write.

If you’re stuck on a half-completed novel, you can work through the plan, and use it to help you find what you did wrong that got you stuck. Or if you’ve already completed a manuscript, you can work through the book to help you revise your novel.

Even if you aren’t working on a novel, but simply want to improve your short stories, you can learn a lot from Marshall’s concise, clear explanations.

The plan is designed to be used in the step-by-step fashion that it is laid out, each section building on the previous one, but as Marshall says in his introduction to the workbook, "don’t let this book’s programmed format inhibit you. The Blueprint is a device to aid you in building your novel. If in places your creative instincts tell you to deviate from the Blueprint’s structure, by all means do so. . . . When all is said and done, a good story will win over agents, editors and readers every time."

But if you need a methodical, practical, simple way to plan your novel, Marshall has laid one out for you.

You can use the two books either together or separately, depending on your needs and skill level. But the workbook is designed to complement the text, and I think they work best together.

The text includes the discussions about characterization, dialogue, etc. The workbook gives a lot of explanation also, but is mainly useful for the many workforms, fact lists, and charts which you can fill in as you plan and work on your novel.

The workbook forms may be photocopied or typed up so you can use them again and again.

It may not work for everyone--nothing ever does--but if you follow it, the Marshall plan is "guaranteed" to help you get your novel written.

{Published in GPIC, the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers Newsletter, Aug.-Sept. 2000. Reprinted in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Apr. 2004.}