First Step You Must Take to Write a Novel

What is the first step you must take to write a novel? It’s simple. You must read. As simple as it is, many aspiring novelists don’t realize how critical this step is.

Read What You Love

If you’ve decided you’re writing a political thriller, don’t limit yourself to just political thrillers. If you’re in the mood for a romcom, read that. All reading is helpful if you approach it with a teachable attitude. From the theology book, Mere Christianity, I learned how important it is to write precisely, especially when creating analogies. Reading the comic novels and short stories of P. G. Wodehouse showed me how crafting a humorous simile or metaphor can put fun in a story as well as reveals something about the character who came up with simile or metaphor. I have no plans to write a book on theology or a comic novel, but reading those books has had a profound impact on my writing because I approached them like a student.

Since middle school, I’ve loved to read about cryptids, like bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Sightings of mysterious animals always give me a thrill as I wonder “what if”. How does that affect my mystery novels? I was able to include Ohio’s connection to bigfoot and the people who look for the creature in my latest Rae Riley mystery, A Riddle in the Lonesome October.

You Have to Know Your Genre

Whatever genre you want to write in, you need to know what the rules are for that genre because readers expect you to follow those rules. A mystery in which the detective does not reveal the identity of the murderer will leave mystery fans confused and ticked off. Also, knowing the rules of the genre backwards and forwards allows you to know when and how to bend the rules.

Don’t Read Only Current Novels

As a first-time novelist, you may have just come up with a killer climax to your space opera. If you aren’t well read in your genre, you wouldn’t realize that a famous novelist came up with that same climax in a best-selling space opera ten years ago. When you submit your novel to a publisher, or even just let family read your work, they’ll think your story is either unimaginative or boring.

Knowing the history of the genre you want to write will show you where the genre has been, what’s considered fresh and what’s considered old hat. Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes still loom large over the mystery genre. A new writer is well-advised to read some of their most famous works to understand why an author who died in the 1970s and a fictional character over a hundred years old retain so much influence over the genre.

Also, reading older novels can inspire you to put a fresh twist on their concepts. Tough female PIs became popular in the 1980s. What if you wrote about a tough female PI during the 1940s when the male version dominated? How could write your main character to fit in that historical context?

What do you love to read? Here are some of my favorite stories and books. No matter the genre or topic, they are stories I’ve learned something from.

January 8, 2026 0

Crafting the Perfect Character Names for Your Short Story

A post on crafting the perfect character names for your short story has received a lot of views this year. So I’m revising it since it’s been seven years since I wrote the original post and I’ve learned a few things about writing in the intervening years.

Because of a short story’s limited word count, creating names for short story characters is more important than just hanging an identifying label on them. You can convey a lot about their personalities is a tiny space by picking the perfect name.

In my short story, “Bovine”, the main character is a snobby New York novelist up to no good. I wanted even his name to sound snobby, so I went with Harrison Sharpe. Harrison is not a common, it’s long, and sounds very formal, perfect for my elitist novelist. Sharpe actually reveals his acid-tongued personality and the “e” on the end looks pretentious, like the man.

His wife is a supermodel. So I created an unusual first name, one that was memorable enough that she could use it alone, like Beyonce or Cher, and people would recognize her. I went with Ariella. Her husband calls her Ari. Nicknames make a character seem more real and down to earth. Many of us have nicknames for our loved ones. Ari has no nickname for Harrison, which hints at how snobby he really is.

Speaking of nicknames–in a short story, they can be a quick way for a writer to reveal what one character thinks of another. When Harrison Sharpe thinks about Sheriff Malinowski, he refers to him as the Blond Ox. That not only describes the character but shows better than any lengthy internal monologue Harrison’s contempt for the man. For more on using nicknames in your writing, see my post “Lesson #1 from The Deer on a Bicycle.“

Here are more posts with tips for writing short stories.

If you’re a writer, how do you create the perfect names for your characters? Readers, what are some of your favorite literary names?

December 11, 2025 0

Creative Thanksgiving Writing Prompts for Short Stories

With the holiday upon us, I’ve made a list of six creative Thanksgiving writing prompts for short stories. The one thing I kept in mind while creating the list is that the idea has to be something a writer can explore in 1,000 to 10,000 words.

Thanksgiving road trip: This idea works for both drama and comedy, novel or short story. The key for a short story is to limit the scenes. For example, a comic novel about all the trouble a family gets into while driving a long distance for Thanksgiving dinner could cover a few days and a lot of humorous mishaps and catastrophes. For a short story, you should make the drive shorter and choose fewer comic conflicts but those conflicts can still be as outrageous or ridiculous as you want them to be.
Passing the torch: This short story can be a humorous or poignant or both as the younger generation takes over Thanksgiving preparations.
Family conflict: Again, this can work for both comedy or drama. For a short story, choose only one conflict. You don’t have room for subplots.
Kitchen disasters: The dinner that, somehow, goes horribly wrong.
The unexpected guest: The guest who was not invited or one that comes out of nowhere poses a lot of potential for a short story. You might even turn it into a Thanksgiving thriller (That sounds weird, but I may have just invented a new subgenre of crime fiction.)
Thanksgiving from a kid’s POV: Take a trip down memory lane to find inspiration in how you viewed Thanksgiving as a kid. My family had to eat two Thanksgiving dinners in one day. For lunch, we’d go to my mom’s parents. For supper, we’d go to my dad’s. Passing out from overeating was a real possibility.

Here are more ideas for using November in your stories.

What creative Thanksgiving writing prompts for short stories do you suggest?

November 24, 2025 2

Let This Photo Inspire a Short Story

Last week my writing prompt discussed how you can outline a short story from one picture. I don’t outline a lot when I write a novel, but I think outlining is more helpful with a short story because it is short. An outline keeps us writers on track, helping to prevent us from going off on tangents that just won’t fit in a short story. So I have an outline for how I let this photo inspire a short story.

Beginning: Grandpa is grumping along the lake at a local state park because his wife is helping their daughter with her newborn. He has no idea how to entertain kids. The only reason the group is at the marina is because grandson Liam wants to try his new fishing pole.

Middle: One mishap after another happens to Grandpa as he, Liam, and little sister Ava try one fishing spot after another. Ava accidentally drops the open tack box on Grandpa’s foot. Liam snags his line on an underwater branch and Grandpa has to wade in and get it. Ava wanders from the shore of the lake, and it takes Grandpa awhile to find her picking flowers. Then Liam hooks a catfish and Grandpa runs the barbels in his hand as he tried to unhook.

Ending: Grandpa has had it and tells Liam he can only have one more cast. Liam tries to argue, but Grandpa is adamant. Liam hooks a fish but slips and loses his rod. Tearing up, he lays in the mud on the bank. Grandpa flings himself into the water and grabs the pole just in time. When he comes back to the bank, muddy and soaked, Liam’s face is glowing with appreciation. Ava takes his hand and asks if he’s all right. When they get home, Liam and Ava talk over each other as they tell their mom how much fun Grandpa is. Grandpa listens, shocked and pleased, as he removes his drenched shoes.

Here are more prompts for writing short stories.

November 17, 2025 2

Is Your Story a Short Story or a Novel?

If you’re a new writer, or even a more seasoned one, and you have a new idea for a story, you may wonder: is your story a short story or novel? Like most things in art, there are few hard and fast rules in writing. But below are some questions to ask yourself if you’re unsure whether your narrative is better suited to the form of a short story or novel.

How big is your cast of characters?

A good rule of thumb is the more characters your story has, the more likely you need a novel to give them the space for readers to get to know them.

Does your story have a subplot?

The short story has one plot. In a mystery short story, it could be who shot Old Man Thompson. There are no subplots. Because of the short form, everything in the short story has to work at solving the mystery. If you want to develop subplots, you’ll have to write a novel.

How complicated is your story?

This is related to the question above but not the same. In a short story, my clues for solving the mystery of who shot Old Man Thompson will have to be fewer and possibly more simple. I’ll have fewer suspects. If I wrote this story in a novel, I would have room to add more clues, more suspects, maybe additional crimes, like a murderous assault or a theft.

How much time does your story cover?

A story covering a year or years probably needs a novel. But not always. You could write a short story covering that much time, but you would have to write telling scenes selected from those years. For example, you wrote a story about a father and son’s reconciliation and you use Christmas celebrations to chart the repair of that relationship. In a novel, you would have time to show what happens between each Christmas. In a short story, you would have to confine yourself to just the scenes at Christmas.

Do you find yourself padding?

If you’re adding characters or scenes just to meet a word count, then you probably have a short story or novella on your hands. My favorite mystery series is Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout. A fan of the series once wrote that Mr. Stout was a master of the novella but some of his novels weren’t quite as good. He often put in padding. Some of it is very entertaining and very funny padding. For example, in the novel Some Buried Caesar, Archie Goodwin, assistant to the great detective Nero Wolfe, is arrested and has to spend time in a jail. He and another prisoner decide to start a prisoners’ union in order to improve conditions. It’s fun but doesn’t have anything to do with the plot.

The most important thing to remember when deciding whether your idea is a better fit for a short story or novel is …

Which form best serves the story?

If you write fiction, you have to make story king. That means if a metaphor you love doesn’t serve the story, you cut it out. If your favorite quirky character is killing the pace, you remove him. If you find yourself inventing boring dialogue to fill a word count, you eliminate it.

One technique I’ve found helpful is to write a one to three sentence summary of what the story is about. For my first novel, A Shadow on the Snow, the summary is “Nineteen-year-old Rae Riley needs to discover who is sending her increasingly threatening anonymous notes.” As I wrote a section or edited one, I had to ask myself if it served the basic premise of the story. If it didn’t, I either needed to cut it or adapt it.

Have you read a short story that might have been better as a novel? Or a novel that should have been a short story?

Here are tips and prompts for writing short stories.

November 6, 2025 0

Tag: Mystery author JPC Allen