The Consummate Guide for How to Write a Book

Deciding to write a novel is like deciding to run a marathon.

You might start your showtime race thinking it's going to be like shooting fish in a barrel – assertive your muscles are in good shape. But earlier long, y'all learn just how much more than preparation, dedication and perseverance are required to finish.

Over my career equally an academic and fiction writer, I have completed more than xxx romance novels – as well every bit four non-fiction books on linguistics. My experience has left me well acquainted with the struggles of creating a finished piece.

This page is for you, whether you're writing your get-go novel or you lot're a writing veteran. Here I have compiled all of my nigh useful tips that might assistance your writing procedure become less painful and more organized.

  1. Before you begin
  2. Coming Upward With An Idea
  3. Arrive Writing Shape: Read More!
  4. Recollect Virtually Your Vision
  5. Immerse Yourself in Enquiry
  6. Writing Process
  7. Observe Your Rhythm
  8. Become Organized
  9. Stay focused on the big pic
  10. Where to Brainstorm and End
  11. When Y'all're Stuck
  12. A Writer's Choices
  13. Choosing Your Seductive Character
  14. Choosing the Elements of Your Scene
  15. Creating Your Characters
  16. Creating Accurate Dialogue and Monologues
  17. How to create conceivable dialogue
  18. Writing potent interior monologues
  19. Editing and Refining
  20. How to improve your first typhoon
  21. Treatment Criticism
  22. Publishing and Promoting

Earlier Yous Begin

Coming Up With An Thought

Every novel has to begin by formulating a good story idea.

Really, though, when you're coming upwardly with story ideas, chances are you won't come upwardly with anything new. Ultimately, your claiming is coming upwards with your interpretation of the plot you have chosen from the finite puddle of story ideas that have existed for all time.

The signal is, you don't have to be discouraged because your story fits into one of the seven bones plots. Instead of trying to find a completely unique storyline, detect the plot construction that grabs you and figure out how to make it yours.

Become in Writing Shape: Read More than!

Demand to come up up with fresh story ideas? A surefire way is to make full your head with narrative construction. That means read, read, read. Want to better your writing manner and abilities? Well, how practice you ameliorate your tennis game? The respond is obvious. Y'all play with someone who challenges you with her serve, her return shots, her speed and her force.

I say it over and over: reading more helps up your writing game. In particular y'all need to read authors who are meliorate than you lot are. Reading for authors is similar eating for athletes. You can't run a marathon if you're on a no-or-low-calorie diet. It's not just most calories, though, that is, if I'1000 making an analogy betwixt reading words and eating food.

More importantly, reading widely gives you, the author, plenty of material to evaluate. By reading other people's work, you find what does and doesn't work for you in your work. Other authors' plot lines, characterizations, descriptive powers, imagery then forth give you food for thought.

Call up About Your Vision

Before you brainstorm writing, you lot should think well-nigh how long your story will go. You may have already decided that you're going to write a short story or a novel. However, categories like 'brusk stories', 'novellas', 'novels' and so along don't really mean anything and they aren't binding.

Think virtually your piece as a blank canvas. The size of your story idea should inform how big your canvas should exist. Focused topics demand small-scale canvases and big themes keep murals.

Immerse Yourself in Research

When I began writing romance novels, I fell in dear with the regency flow. This is the period where King George III's son, Prince Regent ruled in U.k. from 1811-1820. If you lot're similar me and you love to write nearly another time and place (such as the regency period), get prepare to inquiry. You will demand to do extensive inquiry, studying and observing to add authentic details to your scenes. Merely after all that research, you're merely going to use well-nigh 10% of information technology.

You may think, "If I'one thousand only using ten% of the research, why do I demand to practice all of this extra research?" Great question. You yet demand the experience of the time and the sense of what it was similar to live in a unlike world to evoke the time catamenia of your writing. [I say simply apply 10% considering the historical accuracies should only be sprinkled in. They should not be the bulk of the scene setting.] My strategy has e'er been to choose 3 areas of historical focus to present to the reader.

Let'southward say you lot want to set your story in early on 18th-century George Ii London. You lot tin become to boondocks, pun intended, with descriptions of the period wearable. Weave information technology into the fabric of your story. You lot could gear up a scene with plot significance between a gentleman and his tailor or a gentleman and his valet. And then terms similar breeches and clocked stockings would naturally come into play and assistance bring the era to life. And there are all sorts of things those guys blimp up their sleeves. Have fun with them and be certain to make them plot relevant!

Add 2 more areas of focus, weave those into your plot as well, and your reader will likely accept a satisfying historical experience. If you're writing a contemporary piece, visit the location in person so y'all can get a better feel of your setting. Treat your setting similar another graphic symbol in your story. You desire to give your readers enough description that they get the sense that they've seen these places.

Writing Process

Now that yous accept your story thought, plot structure, and your research figured out, y'all're finally fix to start writing. Where do you start?

One thing that volition help you write is knowing your biorhythm. This but ways figuring out what time of day you work all-time. For example, if you're an early bird, don't force yourself to fire the midnight oil. If you're a dark owl, don't force yourself to wake upwardly at seven a.m. and write.

Knowing your biorhythm will help you gear up a writing rhythm for yourself that allows you to be more productive over time and sustained attention.

Equally you lot begin writing, chances are it won't be linear. You volition probably go dorsum and add a scene somewhere or write a scene on its own and run into how it fits in later.

The demand to spring around in your story makes information technology hard to stay organized but staying organized while writing is extremely important.

Becoming a more organized writer volition aid you lot avoid plot holes, writing scenes that don't make sense and mischaracterizations.

Here are some tips to keep you organized:

1. Write a complimentary form outline. Write down whatever and all ideas regarding the story and attempt to interruption each thought into sections – for instance,  Plot, characters, scenes.

two. Open up several documents: Outline, Characters, Setting/Earth Details, Series Bible, Research Notes, Typhoon, Scene Listing. I like to utilize Word Doc, just some people like to use One Note. Use whichever is easiest for you and begin filling in these documents with the bare bone details.

3. Create a Scene List. Write downwards each scene and underneath it write a bullet pointed list detailing whose bespeak of view it'southward from, what happens in the scene, what day of the week it is and the scene description.

It'southward of import to stay focused on the large motion picture. Like any creative field, writers can go bogged down by negative thoughts. The other 24-hour interval one of the students commented, "Y'all guys, I'g non a very good writer."

My reply: "You're a beginning writer. Whether you lot're good or non you don't yet know, and that's non your problem anyway."

I like to take a page out of Julia Cameron'south The Creative person'due south Way and remind myself that it's not my job as the creative person to decide whether the work is good or non. My job is to create to the best of my ability. Don't compare yourself negatively to other writers or even your hereafter cocky. Practise the best that you tin can and be proud of your work.

Try to have a articulate thought of where your story beings and ends. When you lot outset to write your story, information technology can exist helpful to showtime equally shut to the terminate as possible. It's up to you to decide what is drawing you lot to telling your particular story. Is there some cardinal scene that compels you? Is it a dramatic event that changes the life/lives of the master graphic symbol/due south? You can't kickoff with that scene or event, but yous tin use it to think backwards to what must be the initial conditions that will eventually produce information technology.

Sure, you tin open up with a dramatic effect like a auto crash or an earthquake. But this initial event is not the equivalent of whatever yous want the main activity of your story to be. It only gets the ball rolling. I have read many a story where a Prologue is written to narrate the childhood event. And then Chapter One opens when he's forty.

I take an aversion to this narrative choice. The childhood upshot is relevant just now in terms of the present-mean solar day story and then should exist woven into it, non separated from it. One time once again: The beginning should be as close to the end as possible. If you lot determine to include a prologue, use it as an introduction, not a device for plot convenience.

Where yous end your story is determined by what kind of story you're writing.

If it's a story of overcoming the monster, the story ends when the monster is slain. If information technology'south a rags to riches story, and then the character(due south) ends up rich. If it's a story of a keen quest, so the story ends when the valuable object is in manus. If it'due south a story of voyage and return, and so the story ends when the graphic symbol(s) return domicile. If information technology's a story of rebirth, and then the story ends when the graphic symbol(due south) has/have a new life.

If your story is a romance novel, information technology's difficult to tell if the "Happily Ever After" should be the ending. I know of some romance writers who like to write a long-ish final scene where the couple is shown mail service-disharmonize in their 24-hour interval-to-day interactions. I'yard not ane of them, and and then sometimes I err on the side of leaving too much subsequently the "Happily Ever After" to the reader's imagination.

First of all, y'all should know that it's going to happen no matter what. Writer'due south block is most unavoidable, so don't become too discouraged when information technology happens to you.

ane. Be patient with yourself. It is frustrating when you feel like you lot need to be writing and y'all tin't, but it's office of the process of discovering your story.

2. Don't go bogged down. Don't retrieve that if yous're non writing, y'all're not a writer. Already having a story thought counts equally writing.

3. You don't have to write all twenty-four hour period. Writers typically don't spend 8 hours at their laptop writing. Carve out fifteen-minute increments to write without lark.

4. Concentrate on discovery, non subject field. Motivate yourself to write to find out what'southward going to happen next with your characters, non to put a cheque on your calendar that you lot wrote today.

5. Y'all don't have to start at the first. You can start writing your story anywhere, even if it's a scene you call up volition be in the center.

6. E'er accept a piece of paper and pencil. Yous never know when inspiration might strike, so go along a paper and pencil handy.

vii. Create sticks. These are methods that y'all use to become yourself to write when you're hitting that cake. Sometimes filling the blank page is a bitch, and y'all have to wrestle her to the ground.

8. Notice your why. Observe what yous like virtually about the writing process and maximize it.

nine. Don't judge yourself. Y'all demand to be free to make mistakes and errors without the fear of judgement. Write, but write. If it comes out ugly, you tin can always revise.

x. Take a walk to ground yourself. Sometimes yous need a suspension from staring at the cursor blinking on your page. Become up, walk outside and breathe some fresh air.

eleven. Write three morning pages. It will help you cascade out the drivel to get to the proficient stuff.

12. Go on an artist date. Take yourself on a engagement in one case a week for an hour and do something just for you lot.

13. Create a narrative timeline of your life. Divide your life into periods of five years and record diverse things you retrieve from each menses. It helps y'all dredge upwards the past then that you lot tin can plough the psychic soil over and found new stuff.

14. What holds for plot besides holds for character. When I become stuck on what a character should say or do side by side I e'er get back through earlier scenes to see what breadcrumbs I might take left behind: a character's stray thought, an off-hand action I hadn't thought was terribly of import just still needed to exist there or fifty-fifty something another grapheme does or says about the kickoff.

15. Consider creating chapters. Y'all don't demand to have chapters in your finished piece, but creating titles for your manuscript can help focus each chapter and figure out where to go next.

16. Inquire yourself "What am I working on?" This tin can assist give your story focus and find themes, ideas and plot twists.

A Writer's Choices

Every writer has to brand a fix of specific literary choices that defines the shape of his or her story. These are some of the most important choices I've noticed myself making over the years, and some suggestions on how to navigate the decision process.

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to brand written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The organization of type involves selecting typefaces, bespeak size, line length, line-spacing (leading), letter-spacing (tracking), and adjusting the space within messages pairs (kerning).

Choosing Your Seductive Graphic symbol

If you lot are writing a romance piece, you lot have ane very of import determination to brand: determining how to write the seductive character yous're going to create. Typically, there are ix dissimilar types of seductive characters:

This is ultimate male fantasy effigy because she offers a total release from the limitations of his life. Her presence quivers with sexuality.

The neat female person fantasy effigy. When he desires a adult female, brief though that desire may last, he will go to the ends of the earth for her.

This person fills the fantasies of people who find themselves disappointed by reality. He or she thrives on broken dreams and is an artist in creating and fulfilling the illusion y'all crave.

This seducer is fluid and cryptic and creates his or her ain persona. Dandies play with masculinity and femininity and seduce in large numbers.

They recreate the golden paradise of babyhood and is always playful.

They have the ability to filibuster satisfaction, which is the ultimate art of seduction, and while waiting, the victim is held in thrall.

The charmer seduces without sex. They cast their spells by aiming at people'south primary weaknesses: vanity and cocky-esteem.

They excite us. Radiating energy while remaining discrete, they can seduce on a grand scale.

He or she gives us escape from the harsh grind of daily life. Stars glitter and fascinate.

What makes an effective seducer? One who is not interested in himself but his victim.

The effective seducer succeeds start by fulfilling his victim's emotional and psychological needs so thoroughly the victim can think of nothing just him. The effective seducer is furthermore never suspected of seducing. Once you have called your seductive character, y'all must determine the seductive procedure and which analogue will be the perfect victim to the seducer.

Anti-Seducers are the contrary of seducer: insecure, self-captivated, and unable to grasp the psychology of another person. They literally repel. The Anti-Seducer comes in seven varieties: Brute, Suffocator, Moralizer, Tightwad, Windbag, Reactor, and Vulgarian. The names speak for themselves.

Choosing the Elements of Your Scene

To create a scene, you showtime need to recall virtually the purpose of it. Try to avoid creating a scene that only serves one purpose. Each scene you create should reveal something new. If you've stated your characters' motivation or backstory, you don't need to keep repeating information technology.

When writing, recall to include all the senses and not limit your descriptions to sight and sound. Equally yous're writing your story, if naught surprises y'all, your reader won't exist surprised either. Not everything should be determined beforehand.

Adjacent, yous'll need to choose the bespeak of view from which your scene is being told. There are a few options for POV:

This story only has ane narrator, who is more often than not the main character, and uses pronouns such as I, me, my, mine.

This story has multiple narrators who alternate telling the story from their perspective. As each grapheme tells their story, they employ pronouns such as I, me, my, mine.

This story has ane narrator, but the narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of all the characters.

Lastly, your scene should end on a high annotation. I don't hateful information technology should end where everyone is happy, simply it should end on a plot revealer or twist, a snappy improvement or an emotional dial. Avert ending scenes where your grapheme simply goes to bed.

As you think almost your characters' backstories, think about packing a suitcase. How each person would pack a suitcase is telling of their graphic symbol. Maybe they don't pack a lot of accessories considering they're a no-frills type of heroine. The fashion that their suitcase is packed can as well describe what is important to your characters. Maybe the hero always packs a scout that his wife left him when she passed away.

However, this last instance raises an of import signal. If your hero is a widower, when yous utilise personal details similar that, make certain information technology adds to the plot and it isn't just a quick way for the audience to become more sympathetic to the graphic symbol.

Naming characters can exist difficult. Some authors go through several dissimilar grapheme names before settling on the right ones. When y'all name your characters, don't requite major characters the same showtime initial. If your characters are Richard and Robert, alter ane to Ben.

Also, keep in mind that names should brand sense for the time and place of your novel. Y'all wouldn't take a Khaleesi in your 1814 Regency romance. Also, it's generally a adept rule of thumb to refrain from naming your character after someone you know unless you lot accept their permission.

Every story needs a villain. Every villain is either an outside forcefulness or an inside force. What type of villain will all-time adjust your story?

Every bit an outside forcefulness, your villain is not already within the hero/heroine/'s immediate sphere of influence who threatens the main characters' livelihood, condom or both. For example, in a historical romance it could exist a greedy landowner. In a contemporary romance it could be a CEO or lawyer in a hostile corporate takeover.

An inside strength, past contrast, is someone inside the main characters' sphere of influence such as a family member or close friend who intends to do harm.

As you develop your secondary characters, remember that each character thinks they are the primary grapheme in their own novel. They need to be fully formed individuals with characteristic thoughts, goals, and actions. Y'all need to know them in their three-dimensional individuality and non but equally they chronicle to your principal characters.

Every bit you being to write dialogue, make sure your characters sound unlike from each other and have different verbal fingerprints. Getting to know your characters volition help you determine each one's unique verbal fingerprint.

Creating also many characters tin misfile your audition, but you also want to take enough people to create a customs of friends and family for the lead characters. If yous take too many characters, the number can be whittled down by combining traits of several characters into one.

Each graphic symbol should be unique and there should be diversity in your characters. Unless your story takes place in a prison house or a religious order, brand sure you lot have both female and male characters. For secondary and supporting characters, avert the Greek chorus. A Greek chorus is a non-individualized group of performers who comment with a collective vox on the dramatic action. They aren't secondary characters. They're caricatures. And there'south simply ane adjective to describe their cosmos: lazy.

Once you have assembled your bandage of characters, you lot can brainstorm to develop their character arcs further.

When creating a graphic symbol arc, you tin can cull where to start. It can start at the beginning and you can innovate your grapheme in a "getting to know you" scene and have the conflict immediately present itself -- or it can start in the middle when she's already struggling and down on her luck.

Wherever your graphic symbol starts, she must terminate with her best cocky. If you're starting with a "getting to know you" scene, avoid using the mirror scene to introduce your graphic symbol. No i looks in the mirror and notices the color of their eyes or their hair color unless something is different virtually them.

As well, exist sure to avert point of view errors where your graphic symbol mentions i of their basic physical characteristics. Again, no one reaches for the car door and notices their skin color. To avoid the sagging eye, make certain that the characters and plot are developing and unfolding together. Think about your character constellations: a set of adjectives that describe and ascertain your graphic symbol tin help identify your individual characters.

Call back that you are creating a new universe for your readers and you lot must stay consequent. Everything your characters say and do must be in line with what the audience already knows about them. If you've established your heroine every bit a cool, at-home and collected lead, don't write interactions where she immediately freaks out or panics. If you can, try to walk a mile in your characters' shoes. Take upwardly an activeness or hobby that they would do to better understand how your characters feel their bodies.

Creating Authentic Dialogue and Monologues

How to create conceivable dialogue

Dialogue is a catchy beast, but it's of import in whatsoever novel. Skillful dialogue in a novel helps bring your story to life and demonstrates how characters relate to each other. Dialogue is also a nifty way to break up long descriptive scenes and speed up the action.

1. Know how your grapheme makes sense of the world. Then make sure the words they speak align with their heart and sense.

ii. You lot don't yet know your characters very well at the beginning of your writing. Their dialogic interactions are your opportunity to notice out who they are individually and as a couple.

3. Don't utilise the tongue-tied cop out. When your hero and heroine meet, don't make them so flustered because of their overwhelming attraction to the other character. There are other ways for them to limited their allure toward each other.

4. Use a car scene. The hero and heroine are lonely in a bars space and it'south the perfect opportunity to rev upward the relationship through dialogue.

v. Read your dialogue aloud. If information technology's inclement, unrealistic or not working in some other way, you should be able to hear it.

vi. Learn from others. Report the dialogues of your favorite authors. See what works virtually their writing and learn from them.

seven. Don't worry if the hero and heroine are trading words or phrases. We naturally prefer phrases and words from the people around united states of america. Just make certain at that place are other ways they distinguish themselves verbally.

8. Writing good dialogue is an art. You don't want to write existent dialogue because people constantly start, finish, backtrack and stutter in normal conversation. Yous merely desire your dialogue to sound authentic.

Writing strong interior monologues

Interior monologues accept identify in the middle of dialogue. Information technology gives your readers a await into your characters' thoughts and feelings during the interaction.

1. Don't use interior monologue in the midst of dialogue to reveal backstory. If you go off on also long of a tangent, your audience will forget the conversation betwixt your characters.

ii. Use interior monologue to control the stride of your story. Dialogue speeds up the action and interior monologue slows information technology down. If in that location's a large scene of dialogue between ii characters, try weaving in some interior monologue to slow down the stride.

3. There is no ideal ratio of dialogue to interior monologue. The ratio is ultimately up to you to decide. The proper remainder between the two exists in function of the particular characters.

Editing and Refining

Be happy! You lot have the first draft of a novel! Non everyone makes information technology this far. Know that it's okay that the offset draft isn't perfect, information technology isn't supposed to be.

1. Review your character arcs and make sure that there aren't any glaring mischaracterizations. Did y'all constitute challenges and opportunities for your graphic symbol to change and then that they can abound throughout the story?

2. Check your plot. And by the style what is your plot? Tin can yous identify the cardinal conflict? Have you paced it properly?

iii. Enlist the help of a trusted reader. No matter how experienced you lot are as a writer, you will ever need feedback from a trusted reader who is, ideally, your excellent professional editor.

Everyone that works in a creative field deals with criticism. The pull a fast one on is to not let it keep y'all from creating content that is true to y'all.

ane. Consider the source of the criticism. Reviews may not be the best source of criticism to mind to every bit they usually don't offer useful advice. Reviews are usually for readers, not for you lot.

2. Be open if it'southward sincere. You shouldn't mind to online reviews, but make certain that you take criticism from those who are sincere in helping y'all make the story better such every bit your editor, friends and family or other authors you respect.

3. Heed creatively to criticism. When y'all have a reliable reader that says a office of your story or character doesn't make sense, examine the story as a whole. Information technology might be that a section earlier in your writing that contradicts an action of your character.

4. Accept all reliable criticism equally a gift. Recollect that criticism of your story is not criticism of you lot.

In one case you accept taken the adept criticism and ignored the bad, apply it to help y'all grow as an author.

Pin it!

Here'southward a convenient infographic to apply equally you go through your journey of writing your novel. Refer to it, use it as motivation and make sure you're on track.