How to Write Activist Literature – Introduction
By Andy Heath
Many of you know that I worked for a long time writing Preston and trying to polish it into a salable format for publishers and agents. I have probably told you this before, but it bears repeating. The reason I wrote the book was that I wanted to explain to Christians why a gay man – or a gay teenage boy – would choose not to be a Christian in light of the treatment that we have received by the church.
Therefore, I consider Preston activist literature. I feel that if enough people were to read the book, it could make an impact on the way society integrates homosexuality and religion.
I also know that I might not be successful. Unfortunately, failure is a risk anytime you undertake a massive project like a novel or even a series of short stories. So I have decided that I would write out the process I go through to write literature and be as detailed as possible so that those of you that are interested in trying your hand at it might be more successful at it than I am. Ronald Reagan once said, “You can get a lot accomplished if you don’t care who gets the credit.” That’s why I don’t consider my process to be some kind of trade secret, and really that process is just a conglomeration of other processes that I have read that others use.
Rather than completely rehashing everything that has been written on the subject of writing novels, though, I will tailor this topic for those that want to write activist literature. The material you find here may not work as well for other kinds of literature such as mysteries, horror, or science fiction. While there is nothing wrong with writing these or any other kinds of fiction, there are plenty of resources on the Internet already that address these topics, so I’m going to focus on activist literature. One thing I want to note is that activist literature is not constricted to literature with gay themes and struggles, so this material should work very well if you want to write about African American Rights, women’s rights, animal rights, or any other theme of activism.
Just to give you some idea of the topics I intend to cover for you, I have listed them below. This blog will continue to be updated every two days, as always, but the topics for the next 20 days or so are as follows:
- Choose a theme
- Write a one line summary
- Make a list of things in the book you would like to see happen
- Write out the plot
- Fill in the gaps
- Make note cards with scenes
- Write the manuscript
- Revise the manuscript
- Query agents and publishers
- Work on your next book
I will put up the first of these ten posts two days from now. Please note that these posts assume that you are fluent in English and have a solid working knowledge of English grammar – or whatever language you plan to write in. They also assume that you have a little experience writing and that you have done some writing in the past – such as writing essays or short stories. They also assume that you are willing to so some weak novel writing at first until you improve your skill and that you’re okay with that. novel No one starts out being a great novelist – I’m not a great novelist yet either. But I will show you the ropes if you’re willing to heed some common sense advice.
Finally, they assume that you have done enough reading that you at least recognize a good, well written novel when you read one. Reading novels for a novelist is like going to medical school for a surgeon. If you have not been to medical school, don’t come and tell me you want to cut me open because I’m not convinced you’re going to know what you’ll find when you do so.
At the end of this series, I will make sure that you have access to all of these posts in an article format so that you can review them from time to time without having to sift through so many posts.
This is the first series of posts I have written, so I hope you enjoy it. Please send me any feedback you think would make these posts better, and I will be happy to review it.
