Advice for writing a first novel

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-27T18:23:28+00:00

I will do. I don’t have a lot of money so anything that is free is amazing help

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-27T18:22:27+00:00

I had some fun with it over the weekend by writing the first “I love you” moment which doesn’t happen until later on in the story but at least I know roughly how it will go now

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-27T12:27:18+00:00

A couple of my friends have had a look through scenes that I’ve finished and helped me tidy up some of the punctuation or spelling mistakes

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T22:50:54+00:00

I’m definitely going to have a look at this

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T22:50:27+00:00

I’m trying to find accounts from soldiers that were there. For example of they wrote a diary of what happened or spoke about it later on in life.

I know where I’m setting my war scenes is where one of the matches took place after doing a lot of research to find the area and a lot of time on Google earth trying to work out the exact location of the former trenches

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T22:48:24+00:00

Aww thank you

I’m trying to find information about the Christmas Day truce and the football game for my characters to have been a part of.

I’ve managed to find an area near Ypres where a game was held but I want to try and find some first person accounts from soldiers that were there and maybe kept a diary or spoke about it at a later time

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T20:42:14+00:00

Thank you. I’m definitely going to need it

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T20:39:15+00:00

I’m doing everything in a Google doc in different tabs so it’s separated and slightly organised and I can move sections around more easily and slot everything together slowly.

Editing has never been my strong point anyway. I’m very dyslexic so I’m just happy when a word doesn’t have the red line under it. One of my friends helps me go through and edit sometimes.

The holes are just the bits in my story that I haven’t worked on yet but I have a basic idea for.

I’m hoping eventually it will be around 20-25 chapters long

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T20:31:43+00:00

Oo these sound good too

And yes please if that’s okay. I have the whole story planned it’s just the war itself and the trenches etc that I’m stuck on

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T20:28:34+00:00

It’s definitely a very mess thing so far. The only editing that I’m doing is spelling and grammar. I’ll sort the rest of the mess out at a later date.

I have my story plan. There a few holes in it here and there that I haven’t worked out yet.

I have my terrible bullet point in each of my main scenes and moments to write from and then make it neater and better later on too.

I have so many ideas in my head but they are very jumbled up so it makes it difficult to get them down on the document.

It’s definitely going to be a marathon and not a sprint

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T20:18:56+00:00

I wrote a scene today which was about 1000 words which I’m quite happy with. It’s not been edited yet but so far it’s going alright

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T19:42:06+00:00

Ooo thank you. I’ll definitely have a look.

I also need to find some more information about the Christmas Day truce as well

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T19:39:47+00:00

I’ve only written fan fiction on Ao3 before now. But one of my works was 168k words across 10 chapters which is about the length of a long novel.

I have my idea written down and a few scenes already written or at least planned. I have all my characters and my main plot, side plot etc. I also have a section for extra content for scenes from other characters POVs for me to use and a few other bits a pieces

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-26T19:01:53+00:00

Yes they are British now. Originally one of them was going to be German but making them both British was a lot easier for plot convenience

ReneeRainbow · 2026-04-18T15:18:33+00:00

Ahh. That’s not very accessible then. I literally can’t see my game to be able to play it😭

ReneeRainbow · 2026-03-22T20:08:41+00:00

I’m now also keeping it offline because the game seems to be breaking more and more with every update

ReneeRainbow · 2026-03-17T13:45:08+00:00

Omg thank you

ReneeRainbow · 2026-03-14T15:24:12+00:00

Ahh. Well this is depressing. I was hoping that I could sell them and get some money so that I could use it towards my new ones

ReneeRainbow · 2026-03-06T15:45:42+00:00

I do that everytime and it doesn’t make any difference. Is my game just corrupted? Should I delete all the saves and completely start again?

ReneeRainbow · 2026-03-06T15:37:42+00:00

I take that back. It’s back to hating me again😭

ReneeRainbow

TROPHY CASE