Well, I finally got around to doing it. My Youtube channel isn’t new, but for the longest time, I’ve wanted to use my Youtube channel to actually start illustrating just how to write a novel.
Up until this time, my Youtube channel has been used for a number of purposes, including talking about politics, uploading videos of my video lectures for the college courses I teach, and for videos of content that usually involves me vlogging about something or other. But I decided I wanted to do something a little more substantive with the Youtube channel, and now I’ve started this new project.
What this project will be is an attempt to walk you through the process of writing a novel, not by doing what I’ve historically done (and every other Youtube person has done) and that’s talk about writing a novel. But instead, while I write my current novel, 1991, I’m going to show exactly how the process of writing it takes place.
So, we’re talking stuff like how to design characters, how to build your setting, how to do research, outlining, building dialogue, handling the day to day stress of having to write a novel (which can really wear you down, if you’ve never prepared for this process before), how to change the story midstream, how to settle on a main character and little nuances that most people tend to just take for granted, but you end up having to pick-up as you go along.
My main reason for doing this project (the Youtube project) is because I realized that had something like this been around when I first started writing, it might have made the process of writing a novel so much easier. I’ve written 16 novels since that first one, so I’ve picked up a few techniques along the way, but it wasn’t always a walk in the park. Sometimes, it was a brutal slug match with overwhelming odds.
This is an attempt to help anyone else deciding to do this himself or herself just how this process can be stream-lined, or at least made easier and better.
The first of these videos has been uploaded here: