Before finally sitting down and spending multiple years writing my soon-to-be-actually-officially-published book, I spent years writing 5000 words of a bunch of books that didn’t work out. This isn’t because they were bad ideas, instead it was because I didn’t have a plan, a real tangible idea or a drive to actually write a book. I always dreamed of creating this perfect thing that would be a literary work of art. But not every book is that. Despite its faults, I love the final product of my book (getting excited to read it yet?). In the end, done is better than perfect, and making it perfect is an editors job! If you’re ready to jump into the world of book writing, then let’s do this!
Decide You Actually Want To Write Your First Book
When you decide to write your first book, you need to commit to actually writing a book, because it is going to be hard work and a tough goal to reach. But it is all completely worth it!
Whether writing to you means you are going to write once a week for 10 years, or commit to 1000 words a day for 100 days, you just need to pick a goal and stick to you. Whatever option you choose, you need to commit to actually writing, and at an actual interval. There will be days, weeks and months that you will struggle to hit your word goals. But there will also be times when you smash those goals out of the park. No matter how much you write, just commit to actually finishing writing your book. You’ll feel so good when you finish!
Start To Plan Your Story
A book, whether it is a narrative, a biography, a love story, a mystery or any genre in between. It tells a story, that is the point of writing: to put words on a page that make people stop and think. They want to care about the characters, the story and most of all they want to push towards the end, taking in every single word. When you sit down to write a book, I suggest getting a real physical paper notebook. Take a pen, and start writing your ideas down. Write a brief beginning, middle and end.
Develop Your Main Character
You are going to write the wins and losses of your main character. You are going to put them through hell, heartbreak, trials and struggles, all in hopes they might someday get some happiness. If you don’t care about your main character, then you can’t expect anyone else to. You need to write about them like you know them, and you need to show your readers what they are all about.
Decide on Your Antagonists and Your Protagonists
In some types of books, you won’t have many characters. In some you will have more than your readers can keep track of. But in all books, there are more characters than your main character, and you will have at least one antagonist. You need to think of these characters and their relationship to your protagonist. This goes for any type of book, because you need to know how the characters are going to interact with each other.
Break Down Your Book into Sections
In my upcoming book, the story shifts through time in a series of flashbacks and forwards. This mean’t that I needed to create a cohesive timeline in the book, but also a cohesive timeline for the character. I worked hard with a 500 year timeline that made sense, and that took the crucial moments. From this I learn’t an essential lesson, you need to break down your book into sections. You need to know what is supposed to happen in each section and the things that you need to write to propel your story forward.
Pick Your Climax Carefully
When you think of a book, you know that most have climbing action leading to an intense event that determines the protagonists fate. This is totally true. You need to know how they are going to go through the event, and what is it. You need to carefully plan out everything that is going to happen.
Get Down to Business and Write Your First Book
Oh my gosh, this is the fun part. Open a word doc (or better yet a Google Doc #you’llneverloseyourwork) and start to write! Put as many words as you can on the page, and don’t stop. It might be tempting to edit and re-edit every single sentence you write, but from my experience it is better to write it out and fix it later. This might mean that you have to delete sections and whole chapters, but it also means that you can get everything on paper, then you can work out the details after.
Remember, your First Draft is Just That… The First.
Your first draft is not the last, in fact, in my experience it will probably take 5-10 drafts. It won’t be perfect the first time, and might not be perfect in the end. But it will be great one day! Your first draft or your first book is just the first step!
Now let’s get down to business and start writing!! Im excited to hear your thoughts and your process. If you’re starting to write your first book, ask me ANYTHING below!!
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