Your Book's Story

What's the difference between plot' and story'?

I'd prefer the word story to the word plot. Plot seems to me something imposed by the author upon his or her characters. Story is something that comes about organically from the characters that you've created. And story is another word for narrative, and narrative is a crucial part of fiction. Inventing story is the art of writing fiction and great novels tend to have great stories.

Do I need to know the ending before I begin?

I don't think a writer needs to know the ending of a book because even if you do think you know the end of a book, when you start writing the chances are it will change anyway because your characters change in the process of writing the book. So have an ending by all means, but don't anticipate it's going to stay the same.

Are there rules for structuring a novel?

There are no basic rules for structuring a novel. But structure is probably the hardest thing when you're writing a novel. It's the architecture. To have an enterprise that takes up, perhaps 12 months of time is very difficult to manage over the space of a novel. There's no easy answer to this. Only practice. But it is something you will spend most of the time wording about.

Should I think in chapters as I write?

I don't think you should think in terms of chapters when you write a novel. The other thing too, that you should be aware of is that what starts off as chapter one will not necessarily stay as chapter one. The chronology of a novel will change as you are writing the novel. Very often chapter seven becomes chapter three, chapter four becomes chapter one, and you shouldn't worry about that. You have to start a novel somewhere and by the end of the book you'll find that the organization of the chapters might change.