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more you will find out about your characters, and about your story, and about how you should approach it. It may seem that I am throwing a lot of the decision making with regard to your story right back at you – and I am. My purpose is not to tell you how to write your novel – it’s to give you the tools to write it in a better way. By encouraging you to ask the right questions, I want you to make the right decisions based on how you, the writer, want to shape your story.

This guide is designed so that it can either be read in one sitting, from beginning to end, or be used as a resource that you can access as and when the need arises. If, for example, you have a subsidiary character that isn’t working as well as they might, then rereading the chapter on subsidiary characters may provide a way forward. Sometimes, however, elements of novel writing appear in more than one place. For example, it would have been impossible to write the chapter on the structuring of a novel without talking about the role of a central character in the narrative. It is equally the case that a separate chapter devoted to central characters and their other functions within the novel is essential. I’ve tried to minimise repetition, but there are inevitable overlaps.

Last, but not least, writing a novel, like any substantial creative endeavour, involves hard work and discipline but this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be an experience that gives you pleasure. In a sense, you are not only the writer of your novel, but also its first and most important reader, so remember to give yourself the pleasure of writing a novel that you really want to read.