Writing a Christmas Novel

With Christmas just around the corner, the hype of Christmas novels is massive. Although this hype stops after New Year and doesn’t even begin until after Halloween, it is still something that many of us look forward to. 

But why is there such a big hype for reading Christmas novels? Christmas is seen as a time to be hopeful and be filled with happiness. And when books that are considered a Christmas novel come out, it is a chance for people to feel that festive spirit and fall back in love with the thought of hope and happiness. 

If you are like me, a writer and someone who enjoys Christmas, you might have thought about writing a Christmas novel, and wonder if you could do this:

• If you love love Christmas then you will fit great into writing one. You will be writing throughout seasons that Christmas no-longer seems important. You’d be editing throughout the heat that goes against the wintery weather. Therefore, you have to love Christmas to be able to deal with it throughout the whole year. Remember you will most likely have to be listening to Christmas songs throughout the year as well.

• You need to adore the idea of endings being happy. Yes, conflict is fine, in every novel conflict is needed to hook the reader and have them carry on reading your book. Yet, Christmas is, down to the core, about happiness, and thus your novel must end on a happy note. That everything works out fine even after all of the challenges. 

• On a nice note. Christmas novels are known to have a smaller word count. If you normally find it hard to lengthen your novels, then Christmas novels might be the perfect story for you to begin writing. On average they hold between 50,000 - 65,000 words.

During planning your Christmas novel, there are a few questions that I believe are important to think about, to make sure you capture that festive love of Christmas. 

• Why is your novel based around Christmas? What reason is it for that? In this case, think about your characters, they might hate Christmas as they always have to spend it with their large family and arguments always happen. This makes Christmas a perfect place to set the novel as it also adds the conflict and how the happy ending could be them all realising that they are a family and love one another. 

• What kind of happy ending does your novel have? Perhaps your two main characters finally end with each other. Or perhaps a person finally accepts the death of a family member and can move on.

• Where do your characters live, what kind of Christmas events do they have there? If they are from London, there might be more events happening throughout the Christmas season. Whereas in a smaller town, there still are some events but maybe not as many.

• And what are these events? Most places have the lights coming on. But maybe in your novel they might have an ice skating event, or who can build the best snowman… etc.

Remember, just write. I know I say this a lot in my other blogs, but as a writer you have to write. I haven’t written a Christmas novel, but I am planning to start in the new year. It’s a challenge for me as I’ve never written a Christmas novel before, but writing one is a way to learn. Perhaps in a year's time I will write another blog to explain what I have learnt when writing a Christmas novel.

If you are also planning to write a Christmas novel, good luck, have fun, and let me know in the comments below.