Yet, two-thirds of writers are self-employed freelancers and the information below

outlines example steps someone can take to become a writer.

1. EARN A HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE. ...
2. SELECT A PROFESSIONAL PATH. ...
3. GET A WRITING EDUCATION. ...
4. COMPLETE AN INTERNSHIP. ...
5. LAND A JOB AND BUILD A PORTOFLIO. ...
6. EARN AN MA/MFA (OPTIONAL)

Step 1: Find the story that feels most necessary to you

In an interview for the Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast, the celebrated author
Salman Rushdie gives excellent advice on how to become a novelist. For Rushdie,
telling the story that feels vital to you is crucial:

‘You know, it’s not just a choice of a job or a career. It really is in the old fashioned
sense of a calling– it’s a vocation. And writing speaks to something very deep inside the
person doing it.

And it’s necessary– it’s necessary to the writer. And I’ve always thought that the only
books worth writing are books of that sort. Books that are necessary to the writer.’

While thinking about the market for your novel is important if you want to sell books
(who doesn’t want to sell books?), finding stories that you can infuse with your own
passions or obsessions will help you connect with readers, regardless of their usual
genre or subject interests. This is essential for reaching any audience.

Step 2: Seek character-building experiences for writing

inspiration
Becoming a novelist requires learning how to ‘become’ other people. You have to get
inside the minds and lives of your characters. Having varied experiences helps,
according to bestselling author John Sandford:
You really need to stack up as much experience as you can if you’re going to be a
writer. Those experiences can be mined forever. I’ve been doing it for years. I was in
army and was a journalist. When I was in the army, the mixture of kids to whom I was
exposed was incredible. For a young writer, those experiences can be really valuable.

Immerse yourself in new experiences and keep a journal where you can note down your
experiences for later reflection and use.

Step 3: Become a better writer before you chase reward

Harper Lee was always a straight-talking author. Although she shied away from
publicity, she gave a radio interview in 1964, sharing the following advice on becoming
a novelist:
Hope for the best and expect nothing. Then you won’t be disappointed […] You must
come to terms with yourself about your writing. You must not write ‘for’ something; you
must not write with definite hopes of reward … People who write for reward by way of
recognition or monetary gain don’t know what they’re doing. They’re in the category of
those who write; they are not writers.
Follow Lee’s advice and make the pleasure and the growth of telling a complete story
your primary goal. Practice enough and your prospects of publication will grow, besides.

Step 4: Write a first draft and treat it as process work

Author Gillian Flynn’s mystery thriller novel Gone

Girl spent 8 weeks at the top of The New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list.
David Fincher later made a film adaptation (for which Flynn wrote the screenplay,
too). In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit, Flynn responded to a fan who asked for
advice on becoming an author:
‘I had to kind of sneak up on [my first novel] and not let it know it might be a novel. No
opening line, no title, nothing. Anne Lamott has an absolutely fantastic book about
writing called Bird by Bird. The title means to look at one piece of the novel at a time,
not the Whole Big Novel because that will feel too daunting. I agree: I take it page by
page. Don’t worry if you spend a whole day and read what you’ve written and realize it’s
absolute crap. That’s STILL work. Sometimes you have to get the crappy ideas and the
awful, cliched writing out of your system in order to get to the real stuff. My entire first
draft of a book is just me figuring out what the hell it is I’m actually interested in and
trying to get at: What the point of the book is.’
Don’t put so much pressure on your first draft that it stalls. Take time to outline, get to
know your characters and find what it is specifically you want to say, as well as how you
want to say it. That’s a fundamental step towards becoming a focused writer.

Step 5: Find a productive time to write

Nobel-winning author Toni Morrison shared her experience of writing while caring for
two young children with The Paris Review. What started out as writing in the early
morning out of necessity became a crucial writing habit:
Eventually I realized that I was clearer-headed, more confident and generally more
intelligent in the morning. The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the
children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very
inventive after the sun goes down.
Whether you’re a morning person or night owl, find a time that lets you write without
distraction. Sometimes you have to steal moments and half hours where you can. If
time is limited, think of other ways of getting a rough draft down, such as recording your
story orally with a voice recorder while otherwise occupied.

Step 6: Cultivate perseverance

One of the most important steps in how to become a novelist is mental rather than
practical. You have to convince yourself that writing a book is important and cultivate an
attitude of perseverance. Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train, makes this
her number one piece of advice to aspiring authors in an interview with Daniel Ford for
Writer’s Bone:
‘Perseverance is all, and whenever you’re feeling disheartened, read On Writing by
Stephen King. He knows of what he speaks, and he’s really funny, too.’
Step 7: Create a space where your imagination can work
freely
To become a productive novelist, you need to be able to have productive writing
sessions. Sometimes, if you feel stuck, a change of surrounds is all you need. The
Turkish author Orhan Pamuk describes how he needs a dedicated space for
imaginative work:
‘I have always thought that the place where you sleep or the place you share with your
partner should be separate from the place where you write. The domestic rituals and
details somehow kill the imagination. They kill the demon in me. The domestic, tame
daily routine makes the longing for the other world, which the imagination needs to
operate, fade away. So for years I always had an office or a little place outside the
house to work in.’
Of course, the idea of having separate space is a privileged one, especially if you share
a very small living space. In this case, you could spend time writing in a quiet public
space such as a public library.

Step 8: Don’t let your own or other people’s doubts get in

your way
Sometimes when you tell other people you want to become a novelist, you’ll meet
disuasion. But don’t let other people’s doubts (or your own) about writing or publishing
or any other aspect of being an author get in your way. When a young writer tweeted
J.K. Rowling saying that her parents said writing was ‘not a worthy profession’, here’s
what the successful author replied:

J.K. Rowling
Do what I did: pretend you want to do something else and write on the sly until you're
free to do whatever you
want! https://twitter.com/potterimortal/status/632580648864227328 …
7:55 PM - Aug 15, 2015


114114 Replies

1,9931,993 Retweets

4,9054,905 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Step 9: Start writing down everything you don’t want to

forget

To become a novelist it’s important to become open to

new ideas, experiences and information. Every new encounter, adventure or previously
unknown fact potentially holds a story. David Mitchell, whose novel Cloud Atlas was
adapted into a big budget Hollywood movie, offered this advice on becoming an author
in his own Reddit AMA:
‘Read, read and read, especially the masters – if something’s been in print for 80 years,
it’s going to have qualities you can learn from and use. Live as omnivorously as you can
without hurting anyone or breaking the law, and get your heart broken a few times. And
practice: just write things down that you don’t want to forget.’
Mitchell’s advice is important: Keep a journal, not only for recording day to day thoughts
but also for recording words, turns of phrase and impressions that strike you and are
worthy of remembering.

Step 10: Market yourself and your work consciously

Margaret Atwood, the distinguished Canadian author and cultural critic has won the
Booker Prize (amongst numerous others) for her vast body of work. With characteristic
sly humour, Atwood offers the following advice to aspiring writers:
‘It’s tough out there in Bookworld. Tread carefully. Don’t speak so softly that you can’t
be heard, nor so loudly that you’re deafening. Carry a medium-sized shtick.
And avoid wearing mini-skirts up on stage unless you have very good legs. Zip your
lower front apertures. What happens in Vegas no longer stays in Vegas. People have
cameras.’

Atwood touches on an important point: Your success as a writer depends on many

interlinked things. Not just the quality of your writing but also the connections you make
and the impressions you leave in the process of becoming novelist.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received in your path to becoming a novelist? Tell
us in the comments or on the Now Novel Facebook page.

Becoming a Writer: 7 Keys to Success

If you really want to know how to become a writer, I can tell exactly
you what to do in a single word: write!

Seriously…

As soon as you put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) with the aim of
creating fiction, you’re a writer. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
Now for the more practical advice…

If you are anything like 99% of first-time novelists, you’ll be tempted to skip
this information and get cracking on the meatier material: planning, writing,
revising and, eventually, publishing your own novel.

And that’s great. But don’t be in too much of a hurry.

Writing a novel is a long and not altogether straightforward process. To stand

the best chance of reaching the finishing line and not quitting along the way
(like 99% of people who dream of becoming a novel writer), you need to brace
yourself for the journey ahead.

A determination to see it through to the end is just one of my “7 Keys to

Success.” I hope the list gives you all the encouragement you need in your
quest to become a successful novel writer.

1. Becoming a Writer Takes Talent

Actually, make that a little talent… because you honestly don’t need as much
talent as you might think.

Most published writers have got where they have through some raw talent and
a lot of hard work and determination, not because they are geniuses living life
on a different level than the rest of us.

Novel writing is not some highbrow art reserved for the intellectual elite, but
something that any reasonably intelligent and creative person can succeed in.

Don’t believe me? Here is the novelist Stephen King on the subject…

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from
the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
And here’s another one from John Irving…

“I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s special. It strikes me that I have an

unusual kind of stamina.”
Hard work and stamina – those qualities are crucial. (I’ll be talking more about
them later.)
Of course, some raw talent is essential. But here is why I am convinced that
you do have what it takes to succeed…

1. You are interested in writing. In other words, writing a novel would

never have occurred to you in the first place without a love of language,
a love of reading, a healthy imagination, a natural curiosity about this
world we call home, and a desire to express yourself creatively. Instead,
you would have been drawn to cookery or medicine… or something for
which you did have a natural aptitude.
2. You have plenty to say. Because nobody has ever seen the world
through anybody else’s eyes before, everyone has something unique
and interesting and worthwhile to say. And, yes, that includes you!

Using language and telling stories is something that everybody does from an
early age. Taking this natural skill one step further by writing novels is simply
a logical extension of this. And that is why I have yet to come across a
beginner who is without sufficient talent.

So have faith in your natural writing abilities. And have faith that, with practice
and knowledge, your talent will lose its raw edge and allow you to write
professional, publishable prose.

2. Becoming a Writer Takes Self-Belief

Succeeding as a writer does not take luck.

A few years ago, back when publishers and literary agents were like gods,
luck probably didplay a part (in the sense that you ultimately relied on your
manuscript landing on the right desk on the right day).

But the Internet has changed all that…

Today, writers can self-publish and sell their books through online stores like
Amazon. Crucially, they can promote their work, too, largely through social
media.

Do these things right and you will succeed (there’s nothing to stop you
because you don’t need anyone to say “yes.”) And to top it off nicely…

You can also use this ability to promote yourself to help you land a traditional
publishing deal. Or publish independently then wait for publishers to contact
you. (If that happens, you’ll be in the great position of being able to say “yes”
to them… or perhaps, “no thanks, I’m doing just fine by myself!”)

For more on the rise and rise of the independent author, see the section
on how to publish a novel.

Where else does self-belief come from?

It comes from understanding that you do not need super-human levels of

talent to succeed as a writer (but we’ve already talked about that).

And it comes from understanding that you are a true original, and that what
you have to say therefore has value.

The only person who has ever seen the world through your eyes is you.
Nobody has ever thought the same thoughts, experienced the same events in
precisely the same way, and so on.

If you use a novel to provide readers with a vision of how the world looks
through your eyes, you can’t help but be original.

The most important word in that last sentence is “if.”

When you write about something – anything – it is easy to resort to the

commonplace, the clichéd, the accepted wisdom. In other words, you give the
reader a vision not of what the world looks like to you, but of how everyone
else sees it.

If you describe a tree blowing in the wind, for example, describe what this
particular tree looks like to you – or, to be more precise, what it looks like to
your character (who is a facet of yourself anyway). Do not describe what trees
blowing in the wind have looked like to a thousand writers before you.

Readers want original, interesting voices, not regurgitated blandness.

Have the courage to be yourself and you’ll do fine.

3. Becoming a Writer Takes Courage

Not only is having the courage to be true to yourself critical if you want to
stand out as an original voice. In this day and age, it’s also economically
smart.

I need to explain that…

Back before the advent of the Internet, when publishers ruled the literary
world, there needed to be a large enough market for your novel to get
published.

For novelists writing in one of the popular niches – crime, horror, and so on –
this wasn’t a problem. For writers occupying more obscure niches, it was a
career killer.

But today, with the World Wide Web at your fingertips, you’ll be able to find a
large-enough market for your work no matter how offbeat your subject matter
or your writing style.

In fact, deliberately targeting a very small market can be a positive advantage

(because the tighter the niche you try to occupy online, the less chance there
is of being drowned out by the competition).

How small is too small? This article suggests that creators can make a living
with just 1,000 “true” fans.
But enough of the economic case for being true to yourself. Here’s why you
should do it simply for yourself…

Holding back from speaking your mind can be a good quality in everyday life,
but when writing fiction it is usually fatal – at least if you want your fiction to
be alive.

Censoring ourselves to save the feelings of others (call it good manners if you
like) is crucial for oiling the machinery of society. But when writing novels?

Forget about it!

Becoming a writer is your one big chance to say exactly what you want to say,
so don’t blow it. If you write what you think you should write, or what other
people expect you to write, you are letting yourself down right from the start.
So be brave!
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter
and those who matter don’t mind.”
– Dr. Seuss

“If you have a skeleton in your closet, take it out and dance with it.”
– Carolyn Mackenzie

 Suppose you want to write romantic fiction. Trouble is, you’re male –
and real men don’t write “girly” romances, do they? Much better to write
something gritty, like a war novel, than risk people finding out you’re in
touch with your feminine side. Right?
 Or you want to write about unrequited love. You’ve experienced this
yourself and believe that writing a novel about it would be a great
cathartic experience. But it would mean standing naked, as it were, in
front of everyone who knows you (and everyone who doesn’t know
you). And you’re not sure if you have the courage to do that.
 Perhaps you have an idea for a horror novel. You love reading them,
at least when nobody else is looking. You want people to think you are
smart, so you mostly read literary novels with fancy-sounding titles.
Writing “trashy” horror fiction would make you look dumb. Right?
 Or maybe you censor yourself in smaller ways. You know that Aunt
Ethel is going to love your novel – all except for the shower scene and
the “colorful” language along the way. You believe that they are
important components of your novel, but you take them out to save your
blushes. Good decision, right?

Wrong!

Write what you want to write, in exactly the way you want to write it, and let
your family and friends, and the wider reading public, make of it what they will.

You never know, Aunt Ethel might secretly love it.

4. Becoming a Writer Takes Motivation

Simple question: Why do you want to write a novel?

What’s that you say? You’re doing it for the money.

There’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever. And it’s more do-able today than
ever. But it shouldn’t be your only motivation.
Why not? Because it’s actually a negative. In other words, what really
motivates you to write and sell fiction is the fear of NOT having money.

Having a positive motivation is important because it will keep you

going whenever times get tough (when you’re stuck in the middle of a difficult
scene, say, and can’t find the way ahead).

How do you know if you’re well-motivated? Remove money from the equation
entirely by asking yourself this: Would you still write if you knew that you
would never see a decent return on your efforts?

If the answer to that is “yes,” it means that you love writing for its own sake
(i.e., the love of doing it). And that is what will make you push harder when
you’re stuck in that tricky scene.

Here is what motivates me to write – well, when I can find the time… which is
virtually never

5. Becoming a Writer Takes Determination

Writing a novel to a publishable standard takes time, and it takes a willingness
to work at it.

It is one of those inconvenient truths that most newcomers to writing ignore

(which is why they never actually finish anything). But what these newbies
don’t realize is this…

 Writing a novel might be challenging but it really isn’t as difficult as

everyone thinks – not once you have learned the writing “rules.”
 Work that is challenging is also hugely rewarding – unlike “easy” work
which, when you think about it, is not rewarding in the least.
 Hard work can also be fun – especially if you manage to focus on
today’s work only and not get stressed out about how long it will take
you to reach the end.

That said…

You still need a determination to succeed – because a challenge, by its very

nature, is not going to happen all by itself.
So you need to promise yourself, right here and right now, to see this through,
no matter what it takes to get there. Or, if you feel that becoming a writer
really isn’t for you, go find another challenge in life.

But whatever you choose (writing or something else entirely), give it

everything you’ve got. There will be challenges along the way. But if you don’t
also enjoy yourself along the way, you’re doing something wrong.

6. Becoming a Writer Takes Knowledge

First, it takes knowledge of your subject matter (but there won’t be a problem
here so long as you write what you know about in the right way).

Second, it takes knowledge of your craft. Here’s the thing…

Kind of learning the rules of novel writing isn’t enough – you need to become
pretty darn good at your craft, just like every successful novelist has.

Having a vague knowledge of the theory of how to tell a story just isn’t going
to cut it, not least because you won’t be in a position to then break the rules –
and doing that is the key to truly mastering your craft.

I don’t mean that if you want to be a successful novelist, you must discard the
rules entirely. The theory of fiction works!
But if you always follow every single rule to the letter, your novel will end up
being – well, kind of mechanical, like it was written by a computer.

For example, here at Novel Writing Help, I tell you that dialogue should always
be in conflict. Now, that’s a good rule…

Without conflict of some kind, you don’t have dialogue so much as a “pleasant
conversation.” And those are guaranteed to send your readers straight to
sleep.

Sometimes, though, your instincts will tell you that a pleasant conversation is
exactly what is needed right now – a gentle moment of non-conflict that acts
as a contrast to the fights that have been before and the bigger fights to come.

So trust your gut and break the novel writing rules!

(But not until you’ve learned them first.)

Where were we? Oh, yes…

The reason that literary agents reject 99.5% of manuscripts (or so they tell
me) is always down to one of the fundamental fiction writing mistakes…

 Weak characterization
 A plot full of holes
 No sense of pace
 Clunky dialogue
 Inconsistent handling of point of view
 Lifeless writing
 And so on.

It isn’t that the rejected writers don’t have some knowledge of the art and craft
of novel writing, because I’m sure they do.

But their knowledge simply isn’t broad and deep enough to succeed. They
probably bought a basic guide to how to write a novel, skipped through it, and
believed they were suddenly masters of their craft.

But they weren’t. Not even close.

You don’t become a doctor or a lawyer or a master carpenter by reading a

bargain-bin book on the subject. So why should it be any different for
novelists?

The good news, of course, is that you can learn everything you need to learn
about writing from me!

The third type of knowledge? A knowledge of your niche.

In other words, you need to know about the type of novel that you plan to
write. Still a bit shaky in that department? There’s no time like now to put that
right!

Reading novels like the one you want to write yourself helps you learn three
things…

1. The craft of novel writing. Yes, you learn that right here. But seeing
the theory in action by reading published novels is invaluable in your
development as a writer.
 2. The art of novel writing. Most people are born with at least something
of an artistic streak, but most also need to nurture it. If you read good
novels, you’ll do that – you’ll simply “absorb” the art subconsciously.
3. The conventions of your genre. These are the elements that your
novel should or should not contain in order to satisfy the readers of that
category of fiction.

Now that you write novels, you need to read them a little differently…

The main reason people read novels is for entertainment and escape. In other
words, they want to be transported away from their everyday concerns and
lose themselves in a well-told story in the company of compelling fictional
characters.

Yes, they also want to enjoy the finely-crafted prose, and perhaps be made to
think about the ideas and issues running beneath the story’s surface. But
mainly they just want to get caught up in the storytelling.

The trouble is that getting “caught up in the storytelling” is no good for a writer.
And that’s why I recommend studying novels you have already read – and
preferably twice.

If you already know how a book ends, you can forget about “what happens
next” and concentrate instead on analyzing the writer’s technique.

7. Becoming a Writer Takes Artistry

Because novels are essentially the product of a writer’s imagination, a vivid
imagination is essential for success.

How do you know if you have a great imagination or not? Here are some of
the tell-tale signs…

 You often catch yourself daydreaming.

 You had imaginary friends as a child.
 You like to replay scenes in your mind, not as they actually happened
but as they couldor should have happened.
 You find it easy to look beyond the way things are and visualize how
they might be.

If some of these “symptoms” apply to you, you doubtless have a fine

imagination and will do well as a writer.

As well as being able to imagine, you also need a strong curiosity.

Novel writers are effectively students of life, meaning that everything that
happens to you and around you every single day of your life is potential
subject matter for a book.
 So you need to be observant, interested, curious. Better still, you need to
recapture that innocent curiosity you had as a child and learn to see things as
if looking at them for the very first time.

Do that and you won’t just improve your chances of becoming a successful
writer, you will improve your whole life.

(See this article for much more on discovering your inner artist.)

Final thought…

It’s the art in a novel that makes the novel remarkable. But craft gives the art
space to breathe.

Craft without art is mechanical and lifeless. Art without craft stays buried
beneath unconvincing characters and impenetrable plots.

Good novelists care deeply about craft, always. But through skill and sweat
and a soul alive to the terrors and wonders of this funny old world, they learn
to make art.

I hope this article inspires you to become a remarkable writer!

Part 1
Becoming Inspired
1.
1
Figure out what you want to write. The large field of creative writing splits into subcategories
(fiction, poetry, creative-nonfiction) and there are even specialized genres (sci-fi, mysteries,
experimental… the list goes on). Figure out what you want to write. Write what you would want
to read. Your best writing will spring forth from something that you, and maybe only you, are
passionate about. When your passion is injected into your writing, your readers will, in turn, be
interested. Your passion for your individual writing project is a powerful tool that will serve well
as a starting point.
 Remember that you don’t have to limit yourself to a single field. Many established writers spread
out and explore—perhaps they write creative essays while publishing their creative non-fiction
work. Maybe their short novels have poems inside of them.
2.

2
Set your own routine. Establish a particular time of day, location, and atmosphere for your
writing sessions. As you establish this routine, the creative side of your brain will become
accustomed to working in these familiar conditions. Things to consider are…
 Noise: some writers enjoy absolute quiet. Others will listen to music to jog their creative juices.
Others will want the company of friends to bounce ideas.
 Time: Some writers jot down thoughts just before they sleep. Early mornings hours work well for
others, as fewer people are awake to bother them. Other writers may enjoy being badgered,
and therefore write in between coffee break or other work sessions. Other writers will like long
periods of undisturbed writing time, and dedicate their weekends to writing.
 Location: establishing a particular building, room, or even chair can help the writing process.
This familiarity will train your brain to work creatively, or technically, to suit your goals.
3.

3
 Read and learn. Reread the things you have enjoyed and study them—figure out what makes
them effective, what makes them work. Try to understand the structure of your favorite poem, or
the evolution of the characters in your favorite novel. Find a sentence that you think is great,
and wonder—why did that author choose that phrase? This word?

 Do not limit yourself single genres or fields. To truly enrich your writing experience, you must
explore. You may not enjoy fantasy, but other people read and write fantasy for a reason. Read
with this motto in mind: “I read to write. I read to learn. I read to be inspired.”
4.

4
 Be an explorer. Notice things. Pay attention to the world around you. Look for mysteries and try
to solve them. If you have questions, pursue the answers with obsessive interest. Take special
note of the quirky and unusual. When writing, having noticed things will help give you something
to write about. Moreover, it can help make your writing more compelling, richer, and more
realistic. Here are some pointers that will help you explore the world around you:

 Nothing is ordinary or boring. There’s something odd or special about everyone and everything.
 There’s a mystery in front of you: a TV that won’t turn on, a bird that won’t fly. Figure out how
things work, don’t work, and why.
 Pay attention to detail. The leaves are not only green: they've got long, thin veins, rigid stems,
and are shaped like spades.
5.
 5
Keep a journal. Write down things that you notice or that inspire you. Take it everywhere you
go. Some famous writers even went as far as to sew extra pockets into their jackets in order to
carry more scraps of paper. Use this journal to produce ideas, take note of things you see, hear,
or read, and flesh out your writing material. When you get stuck on your project, you can revisit
it for inspiration. Understand that everything can go in your notebook, because everything is a
source of inspiration. Some useful things are:

 Dreams: a major source of the weird and unusual. Write it down before it disappears!
 Pictures: photographs and doodles
 Quotes: things people say, sentences that surprise you, short poems, the insides of a fortune
cookie
6.
 6
Start your project. This is the most important part, and it can be very hard. Many of us stare
blankly at the computer screen, with no words to write. Some call it “writers block.” To help, here
are some basic writing exercises that can help jog your creative juices and provide a material for
your project:

 Go somewhere busy, preferably a place with lots of people. Imagine that your vision of the
scene is a video camera, recording everything. Take out your notebook and write down exactly
what is happening. Include all the senses—sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch.
 Take a voice recorder, and spy on a conversation. Don’t let the speakers know! After you've
recorded for an adequate amount of time, transcribe the conversation on paper. Play with the
words—delete things, change things, add things. Create a new setting, or a new situation.
 Create a character. What do they want? Fear? What is their secret? Who are they related to,
and where do they live? What’s their last name…if they even have one?
7.

7
Commit to finishing your project. There are a billion half-novels in the world and a trillion half-
short stories. Setting a goal and sticking to it, however unpleasant the work gets, is essential to
 figuring out what you want to write. By the time you finish whatever you set out to write in the
first place, you’ll have three things:

 a good idea what you really want to write about

 some skill with which to write about it
 the tenacity to finish the job
8.

8
Be a part of a community. Sharing ideas and getting feedback is one of the best ways to
become inspired and to improve your work. This can be scary for beginner writers, for your work
 can be something incredibly personal, and you may be afraid of rejection. However, writing in
isolation means that not only is no one reading your work, but you can also run the risk of
compounding bad habits (being too wordy, redundant, or melodramatic, etc.). Instead of being
scared, think that every person you share your work with is a potential person to give you new
ideas and inspire you.
9.

9
Address financial issues. Being a writer is almost like being a superhero: awkward office job
by day… dragon-riding, super sleuth, knight in armor WRITER by night. Some creative writers
 do not have day jobs—but this is very rare. However, having a day job is not a bad thing. In fact,
a good day job can even be helpful to your goal in becoming a writer. When finding your dream
day job, here are some things to consider:

 Does it pay the bills? A good day job should ease your financial burdens so you can write
without worry. Stress is not conducive to your project.
 Does it leave you enough time and energy to write? A good day job should be easy enough on
your energy level so that you’re not exhausted afterwards.
 Does it provide a good “distraction”? Having a space away from your writing work can be
helpful. Spending too much time on a single project can be overly immersive. It is good to take a
step back.
 Does it have other creative people? A good day job should give you awesome coworkers.
Creative people are everywhere! They are not just writers or artists.
Part 2
Transforming Inspiration into Words
1.
 1
Arrest the reader. No, don’t literally put them in handcuffs! Immerse them in your work. Suck
them into the writing so that they will read and read and never want to escape, so that they will
want you to handcuff them to your next book. To do this, here are some techniques you can
use:

 The senses. We perceive and experience the world through our senses. An immersive and
convincing work will often have readers seeing, touching, tasting, hearing, and smelling.
 Concrete details. These types of details provide a specific sense of understanding of what is
going on in the writing. Rather than generalizing an image—“she was pretty”—get specific: “She
had long, golden braids, which were interwoven with daisies.”
2.

2
Write what you know more about. If you are more familiar with something, you can write
about it in more detail, realism, and depth. If you don’t know a detail that is important for your
project, do research. Google it. Ask someone who knows. The more information you know
about a situation, a person, or setting, the more you will be able to render it realistically on the
page.
3.

3
Consider structure. Sometimes, the best way to write a story is “Linear Structure”: Beginning,
Climax, and Resolution. However, there are many, many other ways to write a story. Consider
“In Media Res”—when the story begins in the thick of things. Or, a story interspersed by multiple
flashbacks. Choose your structure depending on your story’s progression.
4.
 4
Consider Point of View: In total, there are 9 different points of view. The 3 main categories are
1st, 2nd, and 3rd Person. When deciding point of view, think about what information you want
your readers to have access to.

 1st POV: uses "I"

 involved – narrator is an active player and teller of the story
 detached – narrator is not telling their own story specifically, but maybe the story of a central
character
 Plural (we) – a collective narrator, maybe a large group of people
 2nd POV: uses "You"
 inverted, the narrator is referring to him or herself as the writer, and perhaps dissociating
themselves from distasteful thoughts/traits/memories
 You = a character, distinct with their own unique qualities
 You = direct address to the reader
 You = reader is active character in the story
 3rd POV: uses a character name
 omniscient – narrator knows everything, has free reign in the story and complete authority, and
can hurl judgments
 limited – this POV is missing something. It is like a window of vision that gets smaller and
smaller as you become more limited
 single characters’ thoughts and feelings -- Harry Potter is limited to Harry's thoughts and
feelings
 direct observer -- a narrator's telling of situation, but cannot explicitly discern the emotions of the
characters
 fly on the wall--the narrator is spy, watching the situation from a distant perspective, but is not
privy to everything for information is limited by the narrator's location on the wall
Part 3
Nitty-Gritty Rules of Thumb
1.
 1
Start with simple words. Simple is the best way to start. While you will undoubtedly need a
well-stocked vocabulary (more on that later), too many big words will drive all but the most
dedicated readers away. Start small. Don't hold onto a grandiose word just because it sounds
fancy. Aim instead to allow everyone who reads your writing to comprehend exactly what you
wanted them to comprehend. Nothing more, and nothing less.
2.
 2
Stick with short sentences in the beginning. Short sentences are easy to digest and are very
readable. That's not to say that you can't, or shouldn't, write a long sentence every once in a
while. It's just that simple sentences deliver information without stopping the reader in his or her
tracks, stranding them on an island of befuddlement.

 Take a look at a notorious long, overwrought sentence. The following sentence won the
satirical Bad Writing Contest second-prize. It's no secret why it qualifies as "bad writing." The
sentence is caked in jargon, riddled with imprecise catchphrases, and is way too long:
 "If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of
guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and
classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a
discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality."[1]
3.

3
Let your verbs do the real work. Verbs are the great drivers of sentences. They carry
meaning from one thought to the next. On top of that, they help writers achieve dazzling
degrees of precision.
 Pay close attention to certain problem verbs. Verbs such as "did," "went," "saw," "felt," and
"had," while occasionally appropriate, don't really add any spice to your writing. Substitute a
more specific word for problem verbs when appropriate: "accomplished," "skipped," "gazed,"
"experienced," and "secure" all communicate more specific ideas.
 Use the active voice instead of the passive voice, as a rule of thumb.
 Active voice: "The cat found her master." Here, the cat is doing the work, so to speak. She is
actively finding her master.
 Passive voice: "The master is found by his cat." Here, the cat is more removed from the action.
The master is being found; the cat isn't finding.
4.
 4
Be careful not to overuse adjectives. The beginning writer will go crazy with adjectives.
There's nothing wrong with adjectives, except that they can sometimes be redundant and are
often more obscure — and therefore harder to understand — than other parts of speech. Don't
feel like you need to include an adjective before every noun in order to describe the noun.

 Sometimes, adjectives are redundant. Take the sentence "I watched as he lifted the last pawn
and set it down, checkmating the king, clinching his successful victory." What
victory isn't successful? Here, the adjective simply restates what we already know. It doesn't
add anything to to help the reader comprehend what's going on.
 Other times, the adjectives writers use can be pretty obscure. "He is a puissant adversary" is a
sentence that is neither accessible nor fitting. "Puissant" means powerful, and substituting
"powerful" for "puissant" would have made the sentence both understandable and bearable.
5.
 5
Be a student of vocabulary. Keep a dictionary and thesaurus by your side at all times.
Whenever you come across a word that you don't know, look it up. It's hard to call yourself a
writer if you're not at least marginally interested in etymology. At the same time, use your
vocabulary sparingly. Just because you know the words "defenestrate," "pyknic," and
"agnomen" doesn't mean you should be finding excuses to use them.

 Study roots of words. Word roots (especially Latin roots for the English language) will help you
decipher the meanings of unknown words without a dictionary. Knowing the roots mal-, ben-
, epi-, eu-, ag-, and con- is a good start.
6.

6
Say what you mean. It's tempting for people who use words for a living to use them a little
loosely. Often, when we're stuck and we don't know which word to use, we wing it and write
down a word that's "good enough." This strategy is useful and necessary in everyday
conversation, but problematic in writing.

 For one, there's no social context. The writer can't use his or her hands to gesture, and can't
rely on facial expressions to steer the conversation toward clarity. The reader is all alone, and
must rely solely on the words to gather meaning.
 Second, the reader takes what the writer says at face value. The reader doesn't expect to have
to ask the writer whether she meant what she wrote; the reader assumes that the writer meant
what she wrote. The writer doesn't clarify confusing words, which means that if you write down a
confusing word, the reader is left confused.
 For these reasons, take the time to say what you mean. Figure out what you want to say
before you say it. Be dogged about sniffing out the right word, even if it takes you time. A lot of
sub-par writing is the refusal to fit the right word with an idea, not issues with plot or stylistic
concerns.
7.

7
 Use figurative language for effect, not as a rule. Examples of figurative language are
metaphor and simile. It's best to use metaphor and simile when you want to dramatize or draw
the reader's attention to something specific. Like saying "I love you," figurative language loses
much of its power if used incessantly.
8.

8
Don't over- or under-use punctuation. Good punctuation is neither seen nor heard, but is
powerful nonetheless. Underuse punctuation and your readers won't be able to understand the
meaning of your sentences. "Let's eat, Mommy," and "Let's eat Mommy"have two very different
 meanings. Overuse punctuation and your readers will be distracted. No one wants to read a
sentence in which colons, semicolons, and dashes make more appearances that actual words.

 Exclamation points. Use exclamation points sparingly. People don't often exclaim things; nor do
sentences often merit exclamation. Elmore Leonard, the great crime writer, has this to say:
"Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per
100,000 words of prose."
 Semicolons. Semicolons act as hybrid periods, connecting two sentences that have logical
connection. Still, Kurt Vonnegut argues against them: "Do not use semicolons. They are
transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to
college."[2] Although Vonnegut's assessment might be a little harsh, it's probably only good to
use them from time to time.
9.
9
Once you've learned all the rules, break them. Don't be afraid to invert rules or play with
them to achieve the sort of writing you want. Some of the greatest writers have successfully
broken grammatical, stylistic, and semantic rules, making literature better by doing so.
Know why you're breaking the rule in the first place, and understand its likely effect. But if you're
not willing to take some risks, what are you doing calling yourself a writer?

The 10 Commandments of Fiction Writing

Most experts agree that when it comes to writing fiction, no rules are carved in stone. A writer is free to
bend, twist, smash or shred any of the golden platitudes of writing that have been handed down by the
well-paid, well-respected writers we all hope to become. Certain writing guidelines, however, are so self-
evident few writers would dispute them. When these guidelines are broken, you don’t need a burning bush
to tell you your writing will suffer.

1. Take yourself seriously

This is the most crucial commandment—and the most difficult to follow. Many beginning writers feel
guilty about working so hard at something for which they haven’t been paid a cent. Immediate family
members or friends may look on writing as a harmless little hobby, to be encouraged only when it doesn’t
interfere with their own lives. Because of the cavalier attitude of others, writers may fail to prioritize
writing as a necessary part of their lives, regardless of whether or not money exchanges hands.

You must emphatically demonstrate to yourself and to others that writing is a part of who you are, not just
an amusing pastime. The measure of being a writer is not how much money you make, but how important
writing is in your life.

2. Act like a professional

To be taken seriously as a writer, you must act like a professional writer. That means whenever you deal
with other professionals in the writing business, such as agents, editors and publishers, you should act
the same as you would for a job interview, and present a professional appearance. This is especially
important in cover letters and manuscript preparation.

First, proofread for grammar, punctuation and spelling errors. I have heard many editors admit they
sometimes reject a manuscript within the first few pages solely due to the number of grammar,
punctuation and spelling mistakes. After months or even years of hard work perfecting your story, novel
or screenplay, it would be a shame to have it rejected just because you didn’t bother to check your
spelling or fix a sentence fragment. And don’t rely solely on spell-checking and grammar-checking
computer programs—they make errors all the time. If grammar is your weakness, then find someone,
either a friend or professional, who can proof the pages for you.

Second, perfect the format. The place to be creative is in your writing style, not the manuscript format.
Avoid fancy fonts. They’re distracting and hard to read. Stick to standard margins. Narrow margins crowd
the page and slow the story’s pace; broad margins make it appear as though you don’t have a substantial
story. Don’t design your own cover. It smacks of desperation.

Third, polish the cover letter. Just tell the editors what they need to know. That includes: (a) a brief
summary of the work, one to three paragraphs, and (b) anything about yourself that might be relevant to
the work (if you’re submitting a police procedural novel and you’re a journalist who worked the crime
beat, that’s relevant). Avoid overhyping yourself or the work by making extravagant claims: “This will earn
millions of dollars!” or “The world has never seen a novel like this before!” Hyperbole makes agents and
editors less eager to work with you.

3. Write your passion

Some beginning writers try to write for whatever trend is popular. But by the time you finish your
manuscript, get an agent and send your work to a publisher, the trend will be on its way out. You’re more
likely to produce publishable material by writing what you’re passionate about. If you love romances, then
write one. If you love mysteries, then that’s the genre for you. You don’t have to write only that genre, but
as you first start out, if you write what you know, you’ll have a stronger feel for the proper conventions to
include as well as the cliches and stereotypes to avoid.

Ultimately, all that matters is that you care about the material and convey that passion to the reader.

4. Love the process

If you want to become a professional fiction writer, you’d better love the writing process. That doesn’t
mean you don’t have doubts, fears and an aversion to your computer. It means that despite those
hesitations, you still sit down and write. Even after you’ve sold your novel, finished your book-signing tour
and watched Brad Pitt star in the film version, you still have to spend most of your days at a computer.
That process must thrill and delight you, since all the rest of the celebrity trappings are only a small part
of what you do.

5. Read—a lot
While it’s a very good idea to know your genre, the best writers don’t limit their reading to that genre.
Artists need to experience other artists’ work, which can teach and inspire as well.

When I read a fascinating novel or watch an insightful movie, I can’t wait to get back to my own writing
and make it better. This also works when I read a boring novel or watch a cliched movie; then I can’t wait
to make sure I haven’t made similar mistakes in my work.

Reading nonfiction is also helpful to fiction writers. I’ve been so inspired by articles on scientific
discoveries, political events or historical facts that I’ve later made the ideas significant parts of my fiction
works. A 10-line filler in the newspaper about the auction of Napoleon Bonaparte’s penis inspired the
opening chapter of my novel Earth Angel.

6. Stick to a schedule
The main difference between successful writers and wannabe writers is not talent—it’s perseverance. They
finish what they start. Create a writing schedule that works for you and stick with it. Two types of
scheduling work best for most writers.

1. The Gridlock Method. Fill out a weekly grid with all your responsibilities that cannot be changed—work,
school, family, etc. Find two-hour blocks on at least three days of the week that you can claim for writing.
Announce to your family and friends that those are your writing hours, and you are not to be disturbed
during that time except for emergencies. (Be sure to define “emergencies.”)

2. The Spare-Change Method. This method is for those whose schedules are less predictable. On a
calendar, write the number of pages you intend to complete per day. Regardless of how busy you are that
day, commit to staying up until that number of pages is complete.

Whichever method you use, the result will be the same: You will end up with a completed manuscript.

7. Be critical of your work

Writers live with the hope that someday they will read what they’ve written and not want to tear it up. The
bad news is that the better you become as a writer, the more critical you are of your writing. The more you
know about writing, the less you can tolerate bad writing (your own or others’). The good news is this
critical ability will make you better. You will learn to reject the predictable and strive for invigorating style,
plotting and characterization. Stop worrying that you’ll never be a good enough writer, and embrace the
inner critic.
8. Develop thick skin
As a beginning writer I dreamed of the day when I would never have to face another rejection. Forty
published books and 12 sold screenplays later, not a day goes by when something I’ve written or
proposed to be written isn’t rejected by someone. Usually some publisher or producer buys what I’ve
written, but not always. I still have a few unsold novels stashed in my garage, rejected stories and poems
in my filing cabinet, script treatments on my desk.

Rejection still stings. But it doesn’t hurt as long as it used to because I have so many projects to pursue. I
no longer mope around and curse the short-sightedness of a universe that fails to recognize my genius. I
just work on the next project. And if the same manuscript keeps getting rejected for the same reason, I re-
evaluate the work and maybe rewrite it.

9. Trust your editors

First, I’m going to broadly define editors as not only professional editors at publishing houses but also
writing teachers and writing workshop members who read and offer editorial suggestions. Most editors
aren’t frustrated writers—some are accomplished writers publishing more than you. In general, they have
your best interests at heart. That doesn’t mean you won’t have disagreements with their suggestions. You
most certainly will. You may even be right sometimes. But you will miss out on some very helpful
suggestions if you refuse to listen.

The goal of most editors is to help you best realize the story you want to write. Because they come at it
with fresh perspectives, they may be able to see flaws that you can’t because you’re too close to the work.

My typical first reaction to editorial suggestions is this: “What an idiot! You understand nothing of what
I’m trying to say.” An hour later I think, “Maybe that’s not a completely stupid idea.” After I incorporate the
idea I think, “I’m a genius to have thought of this change.” Point is, I have learned to carefully consider
each suggestion. Sometimes I reject them, but many times those suggestions have significantly improved
my work.

10. There are no certainties

William Goldman said it about Hollywood in his excellent primer for screenwriters, Adventures in the
Screen Trade (Warner Books), but it applies equally to all writing. No one knows for sure what’s going to
sell and what isn’t. If an agent from a big agency or an editor from a major publisher rejects your book
saying that no one’s interested in that type of story anymore, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
Think of all the “knowledgeable” studio execs who rejected Star Wars or big-shot editors who turned
down The Godfather.

You must develop your own instincts about writing and have faith in them even when no one else does.
That doesn’t mean you will be inflexible to suggestions, it just means you will feel confident in whatever
decisions you make.

How To Become A Novelist In Your

Second Career
Writing a book is at the top of many boomers’ bucket lists. As a new author
myself (shameless plug: Second-Act Careers), I appreciate that. But I also know
that figuring out how to go from bucket list to the best-seller list can prove a
bigger challenge than you think.
That’s why I decided to spend some time at ThrillerFest last week in New York
City. Now in its eighth year, the conference is a one-of a-kind networking and
educational event for aspiring and seasoned thriller writers. At a speed-dating-
inspired session there, would-be authors pitched their projects to dozens of
literary agents.

First Published After 40

One of the things that intrigued me most about this conference was how many of
its featured authors didn’t get published until they were over 40, sometimes not
until their 50s.

Physician Michael Palmer, whose first novel came out when he was 40, told me:
"My initial writing dream, besides simply finishing, was to see my name on the
cover of a novel and maybe to give copies out to friends and family for Christmas.
When my agent phoned to say that the outline of the book had been bought by a
major publisher, she asked me to guess how much my advance was going to be.
My initial guess, with fingers crossed, was $5,000. In reality, it was 50 times that,
and suddenly a second career was a big reality."

Today, Palmer splits his time between working as a physician and a novelist. His
most recent medical thriller is Political Suicide.

(MORE: A Writer Finally Gets a Room of Her Own)

6 Tips for First-Time Authors

Here are six of my favorite take-away tips for anyone itching to publish a first
novel, thriller or otherwise, in midlife (plus, a bonus: a few thrillers and mysteries
you might enjoy reading this summer):

1. Leverage your life experience. Did you ever notice how many thriller
writers came out of careers in government, the military, law and medicine? That’s
no coincidence. They’re able to bring authenticity to their spy novels, medical
mysteries and courtroom dramas because they’ve walked the walk and talked the
talk.

(MORE: Turn Your Expertise Into a Second Career)

Plenty of other first careers can provide great material for second-career, first-
time novelists, too.

At ThrillerFest, I learned, for example, that Daniel Palmer(Michael Palmer's son)

is a former e-commerce pioneer who penned three novels about the dangers of
our technocentric world (his latest is Stolen) and Maria Hudgins is an ex-high
school science teacher and author of archaeological and travel mysteries (most
recently, Death of a Second Wife).

So think about ways you could weave your previous work and adventures into a
compelling story.

2. Wait to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Coming up with a

great tale is a bit like producing fine wine: You can’t rush the process.

“The more time you take thinking about the idea, the better chance you have of
developing the plot,” says Phillip Margolin, a former criminal defense attorney
and author of multiple New York Times best-selling thrillers, including Capitol
Murder, his latest.

How to Become a Novelist

Novelists are writing professionals who author manuscripts in one or more of the various book
genres. With the advent of self-publishing platforms via the internet, the industry has undergone
a major transformation. Although writers are still able to retain agents who will market their
projects to publishing companies, there is the alternative of doing it on one’s own. For those who
choose traditional channels once they’ve penned a portion of...
escapable to coming away with a finished (and sellable) product.

Novel creation is simply putting words to paper, or text on a computer screen. It is the process of
creating believable characters’ people want to meet, giving them compelling problems or
solutions, its making things happen that the reader can identify with that leaves them forever
changed.

Building your novel is taking the foundation of the story, adding the interest and intrigue of your
characters, dialog and plot, and creating a complete work of adventure, cliffhanger, drama,
tragedy, romance, or comedy. Writing a novel is divided into chapters and has a beginning,
middle, and end. It’s this classic three-act structure that unites the story.

03
BUILD A STRONG PORTFOLIO &
PERSONAL BRAND
The one thing about writing is that it’s an art not a science, and there are no indisputable steps to
becoming a great writer. That said, a strong portfolio (minus spelling and grammar mistakes)
will put a novelist in a good position to sell their book to an agent, publisher, or
commissioner. Most portfolios will include one piece of fiction, one personal selection, and one
personal narrative. Two of the writings should achieve one or more purposes: the analysis of a
person, place or thing, and writing that explains a story or process. A strong portfolio is worth
the time and effort it takes to create, and shouldn’t be rushed or done haphazardly.

Personal branding identifies who you are. It’s a reflection of the type of writer you are. When
you establish a personal brand, it separates you from the crowd by highlighting your
accomplishments and talents. It’s not just good enough to be good at what you do; you need to
have a connection with your readers, sometimes before they’ve even had the chance to read your
book. And, your brand continues to evolve with every story you write. It gives your readers an
unspoken promise that you will consistently deliver a good piece of work.

Social media, writers’ association meetings, networking while in school, professional

connections, videos, and blog posts all give your readers a picture of who you are and why they
should pick up your book. Professional networking connections can also be the first step in
getting published.

04
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR
NOVELIST
The Romantic Novelists’ Association
Romance Writers of America
The Historical Writers Association
Historical Novel Society
Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America
Canadian Authors Association
Historical Writers of America
18 Easy Steps to Becoming a Writer
By: Chuck Sambuchino | September 13, 2010
17

One thing many people ask me is: How? How do I become a writer? Well, I’m here to answer that question
once and for all. Keep in mind this applies equally well to deciding you’re going to write a short story or
deciding you’re going to write a novel. Heck, it even applies to scholarly or work-related writing.

Step One: Decide you’re going to write a story.

Step Two: Decide it’s going to be brilliant. Imagine the response of your [teacher, classmates, reading
group, agent] and how it will completely change the way they look at you.

Step Three: Open up Microsoft Word.

Step Four: Stare at the blank white screen stretching on into infinity until your eyes begin to burn and
your brain hurts from the sheer emptiness of it all.

Step Five: Check your e-mail. If writing a novel, research agents for a couple of hours.

Step Six: Stare at the blank Word document again.

Step Seven: Realize you need music. Spend the next hour finding the perfect “mood” music for what you
want to write.

Step Eight: Inspired by [insert perfect music here], click back over to Word document.

Step Nine: Change Facebook status to: [Your name here] is WRITING!!! Realize you aren’t on Twitter, and
that anyone who is anyone is networking/wasting time on Twitter. Sign up for an account and spend the
next two hours figuring out how it works and what the crap # means.

Step Ten: Stare at blank Word document. Decide you need a title. Brainstorm for the next hour.

Step Eleven: Come up with a GENIUS title. Proudly type “The Scent of Green Papayas” at the top of the
document, followed by your name. Happily consider how easily a story will come now that you have such
an amazing, literary title.

Step Twelve: Take a four-hour break for snacks and naptime.

Step Thirteen: Refreshed, sit down and toy around with pen names for a while.

Step Fourteen: Realize to your horror that your genius title is actually the name of a Vietnamese foreign
film you saw seven years ago.

Step Fifteen: Erase the title, pressing Backspace much harder than necessary.

Step Sixteen: Stare at the blank Word document until your eyes bleed.

Step Seventeen: Check Facebook. See that fourteen people have commented on your status, asking what
you are writing. Feel both guilty and annoyed.

Step Eighteen: Slam your laptop shut and go to the movies. Tomorrow’s a better day for writing, anyhow.

See? You never knew writing was so easy!

22 lessons from Stephen King
on how to be a great writer
Renowned author Stephen King has written over 50 books that have
captivated millions of people around the world.
In his memoir, "On Writing," King shares valuable insights into how to
be a better writer. And he doesn't sugarcoat it. He writes, "I can't lie and
say there are no bad writers. Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers."
Don't want to be one of them? Here are 22 great pieces of advice from
King's book on how to be an amazing writer.
This is an update of an article written by Maggie Zhang.

1. Stop watching television. Instead, read as much as

possible.
If you're just starting out as a writer, your television should be the first
thing to go. It's "poisonous to creativity," he says. Writers need to look
into themselves and turn toward the life of the imagination.
To do so, they should read as much as they can. King takes a book with
him everywhere he goes, and even reads during meals. "If you want to be
a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a
lot," he says. Read widely, and constantly work to refine and redefine
your own work as you do so.

2. Prepare for more failure and criticism than you

think you can deal with.
King compares writing fiction to crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a
bathtub, because in both, "there's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt."
Not only will you doubt yourself, but other people will doubt you, too. "If
you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will
try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all," writes King.
Oftentimes, you have to continue writing even when you don't feel like it.
"Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or
imaginatively, is a bad idea," he writes. And when you fail, King suggests
that you remain positive. "Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to
failure."

3. Don't waste time trying to please people.

According to King, rudeness should be the least of your concerns. "If you
intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite
society are numbered anyway," he writes. King used to be ashamed of
what he wrote, especially after receiving angry letters accusing him
of being bigoted, homophobic, murderous, and even psychopathic.
By the age of 40, he realized that every decent writer has been accused of
being a waste of talent. King has definitely come to terms with it. He
writes, "If you disapprove, I can only shrug my shoulders. It's what I
have." You can't please all of your readers all the time, so King advises
that you stop worrying.

4. Write primarily for yourself.

You should write because it brings you happiness and fulfillment. As
King says, "I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for
joy, you can do it forever."
Writer Kurt Vonnegut provides a similar insight: "Find a subject you care
about and which you in your heart feel others should care about," he
says. "It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will
be the most compelling and seductive element in your style."

5. Tackle the things that are hardest to write.

"The most important things are the hardest things to say," writes King.
"They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your
feelings." Most great pieces of writing are preceded with hours of
thought. In King's mind, "Writing is refined thinking."
When tackling difficult issues, make sure you dig deeply. King says,
"Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground ... Stories are relics,
part of an undiscovered pre-existing world." Writers should be like
archaeologists, excavating for as much of the story as they can find.
6. When writing, disconnect from the rest of the
world.
Writing should be a fully intimate activity. Put your desk in the corner of
the room, and eliminate all possible distractions, from phones to open
windows. King advises, "Write with the door closed; rewrite with the
door open."
You should maintain total privacy between you and your work. Writing a
first draft is "completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the
door shut — it's the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks
and undershorts."

7. Don't be pretentious.
"One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the
vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit
ashamed of your short ones," says King. He compares this mistake to
dressing up a household pet in evening clothes — both the pet and the
owner are embarrassed, because it's completely excessive.
As iconic businessman David Ogilvy writes in a memo to his employees,
"Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification,
attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass."
Furthermore, don't use symbols unless necessary. "Symbolism exists to
adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity," writes
King.

8. Avoid adverbs and long paragraphs.

As King emphasizes several times in his memoir, "the adverb is not your
friend." In fact, he believes that "the road to hell is paved with adverbs"
and compares them to dandelions that ruin your lawn. Adverbs are worst
after "he said" and "she said" — those phrases are best left unadorned.
You should also pay attention to your paragraphs, so that they flow with
the turns and rhythms of your story. "Paragraphs are almost always as
important for how they look as for what they say," says King.
9. Don't get overly caught up in grammar.
According to King, writing is primarily about seduction, not precision.
"Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes," writes
King. "The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the
reader welcome and then tell a story." You should strive to make the
reader forget that he or she is reading a story at all.

10. Master the art of description.

"Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the
reader's," writes King. The important part isn't writing enough, but
limiting how much you say. Visualize what you want your reader to
experience, and then translate what you see in your mind into words on
the page. You need to describe things "in a way that will cause your
reader to prickle with recognition," he says.
The key to good description is clarity, both in observation and in writing.
Use fresh images and simple vocabulary to avoid exhausting your reader.
"In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,'
the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of
description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball
rolling," notes King.

11. Don't give too much background information.

"What you need to remember is that there's a difference between
lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story," writes
King. "The latter is good. The former is not." Make sure you only include
details that move your story forward and that persuade your reader to
continue reading.
If you need to do research, make sure it doesn't overshadow the story.
Research belongs "as far in the background and the back story as you can
get it," says King. You may be entranced by what you're learning, but
your readers are going to care a lot more about your characters and your
story.
12. Tell stories about what people actually do.
"Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation;
bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about
what people actually do — to face the fact, let us say, that murderers
sometimes help old ladies cross the street," writes King. The people in
your stories are what readers care about the most, so make sure you
acknowledge all the dimensions your characters may have.

13. Take risks; don't play it safe.

First and foremost, stop using the passive voice. It's the biggest indicator
of fear. "I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing," King
says. Writers should throw back their shoulders, stick out their chins,
and put their writing in charge.
"Try any goddamn thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or
outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it," King says.

14. Realize that you don't need drugs to be a good

writer.
"The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are
entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time," says
King. In his eyes, substance-abusing writers are just substance-abusers.
"Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer
sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit."

15. Don't try to steal someone else's voice.

As King says, "You can't aim a book like a cruise missile." When you try
to mimic another writer's style for any reason other than practice, you'll
produce nothing but "pale imitations." This is because you can never try
to replicate the way someone feels and experiences truth, especially not
through a surface-level glance at vocabulary and plot.

16. Understand that writing is a form of telepathy.

"All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that
writing is the purest distillation," says King. An important element of
writing is transference. Your job isn't to write words on the page, but
rather to transfer the ideas inside your head into the heads of your
readers.
"Words are just the medium through which the transfer happens," says
King. In his advice on writing, Vonnegut also recommends that writers
"use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel
the time was wasted."

17. Take your writing seriously.

"You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement,
hopefulness, or despair," says King. "Come to it any way but lightly." If
you don't want to take your writing seriously, he suggests that you close
the book and do something else.
As writer Susan Sontag says, "The story must strike a nerve — in me. My
heart should start pounding when I hear the first line in my head. I start
trembling at the risk."

18. Write every single day.

"Once I start work on a project, I don't stop, and I don't slow down
unless I absolutely have to," says King. "If I don't write every day, the
characters begin to stale off in my mind ... I begin to lose my hold on the
story's plot and pace."
If you fail to write consistently, the excitement for your idea may begin to
fade. When the work starts to feel like work, King describes the moment
as "the smooch of death." His best advice is to just take it "one word at a
time."

19. Finish your first draft in three months.

King likes to write 10 pages a day. Over a three-month span, that
amounts to around 180,000 words. "The first draft of a book — even a
long one — should take no more than three months, the length of a
season," he says. If you spend too long on your piece, King believes the
story begins to take on an odd foreign feel.
20. When you're finished writing, take a long step
back.
King suggests six weeks of "recuperation time" after you're done writing,
so you can have a clear mind to spot any glaring holes in the plot or
character development. He asserts that a writer's original perception of a
character could be just as faulty as the reader's.
King compares the writing and revision process to nature. "When you
write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees,"
he writes. "When you're done, you have to step back and look at the
forest." When you do find your mistakes, he says that "you are forbidden
to feel depressed about them or to beat up on yourself. Screw-ups
happen to the best of us."

21. Have the guts to cut.

When revising, writers often have a difficult time letting go of words they
spent so much time writing. But, as King advises, "Kill your darlings, kill
your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart,
kill your darlings."
Although revision is one of the most difficult parts of writing, you need to
leave out the boring parts in order to move the story along. In his advice
on writing, Vonnegut suggests, "If a sentence, no matter how excellent,
does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it
out."

22. Stay married, be healthy, and live a good life.

King attributes his success to two things: his physical health and his
marriage. "The combination of a healthy body and a stable relationship
with a self-reliant woman who takes zero shit from me or anyone else has
made the continuity of my working life possible," he writes.
It's important to have a strong balance in your life, so writing doesn't
consume all of it. In writer and painter Henry Miller's 11 commandments
of writing, he advises, "Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you
feel like it."
1. DON’T Try to Become an
Author Until You’ve…
I get it. You’re antsy. You’re ready to pen your bestseller right now.
You’ve read or heard of writers who had never written a thing before and
yet scored with a million-seller on their first try.

Throttle back. Those stories become big news because they’re so rare.
Don’t bank on winning the lottery. If you want your book (and your
message) to go anywhere, make sure you’ve:

…Studied the Craft

There’s no need to write a compelling story by trial and error anymore.
Others have already done it for you—and written books about it. So your
best bet is to follow proven methods.

Great writers are great readers. So here’s a list of my favorite 11 books on

writing to get you started.

The competition has gotten so fierce, you’ll do yourself a favor if you

learn how successful authors write before you try to get a second look
from a publisher. Take the time to learn what you’re doing. You’ll thank
yourself later.

…Written Things Shorter Than a Book

A book shouldn’t be where you start any more than you should enroll in
grad school when you’re a kindergartner. A book is where you arrive.

Start small, learn the craft, hone your skills.

Do some journaling. Write a newsletter. Start a blog. Get articles

published in a couple of magazines, a newspaper, an ezine. Take a night
school or online course in journalism or creative writing.
 Publishers are looking for authors with platforms (in short: audiences,
tribes, followers, fans). So start building yours now. Any of the pieces
above will start building steam behind your writing, and boost name
recognition for you as a writer.

If you’re planning to start blogging, check out this post on creating

an author website.

Bottom line: Work a quarter-million clichés out of your system, learn

what it means to be edited, become an expert in something, build your
platform, and then start thinking about that book or novel.

…Plugged Yourself into a Community of Writers

Think you can do it alone?

Then you’re a better writer than I.

Almost every traditionally published author I know is surrounded by a

helpful community. How else would they deal with things like:

 Frustration
 Discouragement
 Procrastination
 Wanting to quit

I’ve written over 185 books, yet I often wonder whether I can finish the
next one.
At this stage for me, community means knowing I can be encouraged by
colleagues whenever I need it.

When you’re starting out, another pair of eyes on your work can prove to
be invaluable. Ten pairs of eyes are even better.

Join a writers’ group. Find a mentor. Stay open to criticism.

One caveat with writers’ groups: make sure at least one person,
preferably the leader, is widely published and understands the
publishing landscape. Otherwise you risk the blind leading the blind.

2. Writing Your Book

Surprisingly, most people never get this far. Whether it’s fear or
procrastination or something else, few writers ever make it to the first page.

To avoid becoming part of this sad group, you need a plan.

So regardless your personal writing method, be sure to cover these bases:

Create a Writing Schedule You Can Stick To

When you’re an author, writing becomes your job.

So treat it that way. Show up and do the work whether you feel like it or
not. Writer’s block is no excuse. In no other profession could you get
away with getting out of work by claiming you have worker’s block. Try
that and see what it gets you—likely a pink slip.

Find at least six hours a week to write. Well, find is the wrong word, of
course. You won’t find it, you’ll have to carve out the time. Lock these
hours into your calendar and keep them sacred.

If you can’t think of what to write, then edit. If you can’t edit, plan. You’ll
be astonished at your ability to get stuff done when you finally plant
yourself in your chair.

Challenge: Don’t move until you have scheduled at least six hours.
Research and Plan
To give your manuscript the best chance to succeed, skip this step at your
peril. Excellent preparation will make or break your book.

Two main ways you should be preparing:

1. Outline.
Regardless how you feel about outlining, you need an idea of where
you’re going before you start. If you’re writing a novel, you’re either an
outliner or a pantser—those who write by the seat of their pants. (If
you’re writing a nonfiction book, an outline is a given.)

On the fiction side, the definition of an outliner is obvious. You plan

everything beforehand. But pantsers write by process of discovery—or as
Stephen King puts it, they “put interesting characters in difficult situations
and write to find out what happens.”

Neither is better or worse. But most writers are one or the other (a few
are hybrids, largely one over the other but doing a little of both). But,
depending on which you are, you’ll approach the planning phase
completely differently.

If you’re a hardcore outliner (and a novelist), you’ll enjoy my friend and

colleague Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method. But if you’re a
pantser, check out this post for non-outliners. It’ll teach you how to work
within a structure while staying free enough to write on the fly.

2. Do the research.
All great stories are rooted in solid research. If your research stinks, your
story sinks.

If your character drives 10 miles east out of the Chicago Loop, he’d better
be in an amphibious vehicle, because he’ll be in Lake Michigan. (And you
thought I was joking about sinking.)
 To avoid such embarrassing errors, do your research. Immerse yourself
in the details of your setting. Make sure no characters are wearing ski
jackets when it’s 95 degrees outside.

Two online research tools that will help you avoid mistakes:

 The World Atlas

 A directory of some of the world’s top almanacs

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

I didn’t become a full-time freelance author until I had written and
published nearly 90 books. I had been advised by a veteran author that
my freelance income ought to be around three times what I made at my
job before I considered going solo.

I was stunned. Why so much more?

He started listing everything I would have to pay for on my own.

Insurance, retirement, all my benefits. I had always been careful to
separate my writing and my office work, but during my off hours on
business trips I might do some research.

No more. Any travel would be on me.

Your day job doesn’t have to keep you from writing your book. You might
not like this, but I recommend you keep it and spend your after-
hours time writing your book. Why? Two reasons:

1. You’ll have steady income—one less thing to worry about—while trying to

build your writing career.
2. The structure will force you to be more productive with fewer hours.

So, yes, you can have your cake and eat it too—without sacrificing time
with family. You lose three hours per night for what, TV? How big a
sacrifice is that for your writing dream? How badly do you want to
become an author?
 Become a Writer Ferocious About Self-Editing
This section is so important that it has the power to determine whether
your book makes a huge splash with readers and publishers—or slides
into the editor’s reject pile after the first page or two.

Get serious about self-editing.

Editors know from the first page whether your manuscript is publishable.
I know that doesn’t sound fair or even logical. You’re thinking, It took me
months, maybe years, to write hundreds of pages and you didn’t even get to the
good stuff!

How could they do that to you? Why did they?

First, the good stuff ought to be in the first two paragraphs. And if they
see 15 adjustments they need to make on the first two pages, they know
the cost of editing three or four hundred pages of the same would eat
whatever profits they could hope for before even printing the book.

To avoid the dreaded “Thank you, but this doesn’t meet a current need”
letter, your manuscript must be lean and mean, besides being a great
story and a great read.

Here are my 21 rules of ferocious self-editing:

1. Develop a thick skin.
2. Avoid throat-clearing.
3. Choose the normal word over the obtuse.
4. Omit needless words.
5. Avoid subtle redundancies, like: “She nodded her head in agreement.”
Those last four words could be deleted.
6. Avoid the words up and down—unless they’re really needed.
7. Usually delete the word that. Use it only for clarity.
8. Give the reader credit. Once you’ve established something, you don’t
need to repeat it.
9. Avoid telling what’s not happening.
10. Avoid being an adjectival maniac.
11. Avoid hedging verbs like smiled slightly, almost laughed, frowned a bit,
etc.
12. Avoid the term literally—when you mean figuratively.
13. Avoid too much stage direction.
14. Maintain a single point of view (POV) for every scene.
15.Avoid clichés, and not just words and phrases, but situations.
16. Resist the urge to explain (RUE).
17. Show, don’t tell.
18. People say things; they don’t wheeze, gasp, sigh, laugh, grunt, or
retort them.
19. Specifics add the ring of truth, even to fiction.
20. Avoid similar character names. In fact, avoid even the same first
initials.
21. Avoid mannerisms of punctuation, typestyles, and sizes.

3. Trying to Land a Publishing

Contract
Want to save this 5000-word guide to read
later? Click here to get a free PDF version
you can read anytime.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it—this isn’t easy. But if you have a solid plan
(and if you’ve followed the guide), you’ve got as good a chance as any.

This section will show you how to become an author by revealing the
options available. These best practices can vastly increase your likelihood
of getting published.

How to Get an Agent

Your first step in trying to land a traditional publishing deal should be to
land an agent—which can be just as difficult, as it should be.
 There will seem a dichotomy here, because you are likely writing for
altruistic reasons—you have a mission, a passion, a message, something
burning inside that you must share with the world. Yet agents or
publishers will appear to base their decisions solely on the bottom line.

If they see sales potential, they will accept it; if they don’t they won’t.

But don’t despair. That doesn’t mean they don’t share your passion. It
simply means they must make a profit to stay in business—even faith-
based publishers who are all about ministry.

Though it’s hard to find an agent, it is possible to get traditionally

published without one. Most will not consider unsolicited manuscripts,
though some will.

Check The Writer’s Market Guide and The Christian Writer’s Market Guidefor
publishers that don’t require agent-represented manuscript submissions.
Some will allow you to submit at writers conferences or through other
clients of theirs.

Be aware that it’s not unheard of to submit an unsolicited manuscript to

dozens of publishers without success.

An agent can make your life a lot easier.

A plethora of new doors open because of your agent’s connections.

Besides the instant credibility of an agent’s approval and the knowledge

that your writing has survived a vetting process, you also get valuable
input and coaching on how to fashion your query and proposal from
someone who understands the publishing industry, knows the players
and who’s looking for what, and has experience successfully pitching
publishers.

Obviously, there are good agents and bad agents. How do you know
whom you can trust? The credible agent welcomes scrutiny. So find
reviews. Check with other clients. Ask:

 How did their book turn out?

 Did they feel taken care of? Were they pleased with the results?

Feel free to ask agents:

 What kinds of books have they succeeded with?
 Have they succeeded in your genre?

Once you compile a list of agents who seem to be a good fit, follow their
submission guidelines. They’ll likely ask for a query letter, synopsis,
proposal, and perhaps a few chapters.

If any ask for any sort of reading fee or other payment up front, eliminate
them as candidates and do not respond.

Before you do anything else, check out these submission guidelines from
three agents I’m familiar with. I’m not necessarily evaluating or
endorsing them, except to say that I know them to be ethical and
trustworthy and find their guidelines helpful and sound.

Their pages will give you a good idea of what typical agents are looking
for.

Steve Laube’s guidelines

Hartline Literary’s guidelines

Books and Such’s guidelines

Two things you may be asked for—and which some writers struggle with:

1. A query letter
This is an easy way to reach out to an agent, but many prefer more—like
a full proposal, which we’ll get to.

Most agents prefer submissions of any kind to be electronically

submitted as an attachment, not as part of the body of your message.
Avoid snail mail.
Make your query letter crisp and short. The shorter (while saying what
you need to say) the better.

A query letter is just what its name implies—it queries the interest of the
agent in your book idea. So make it stimulating and intriguing.
Remember, you’re selling your book to the agent.

Four essential parts of an effective query letter:

a. Your elevator pitch

This is a summary of your book’s premise, told in the time it would take
for the editor to reach his floor if you happened to find yourself in the
same elevator car. So it has to be fast and convincing.

Here’s the elevator pitch for my very first novel:

“A judge tries a man for a murder the judge committed.”

It worked.

b. Your synopsis

In a paragraph, tell what your nonfiction book is about and what you
hope to accomplish with it. Or tell the basic premise of the plot of your
novel. The synopsis would naturally go beyond the elevator pitch and tell
what happens and how things turn out. (Note: Almost any plot, when
reduced to a one- or two-paragraph synopsis, sounds ridiculous.)

c. Your target audience and why they’ll enjoy your book

Agents need to believe they can sell it before they’ll ask you for more.
Help them envision how to pitch it to publishers, but be careful not to
oversell. They know the business better than you do and will not be
swayed by your assurance that “everyone will find this amazing.”

You can say that your audiences have been enthusiastic or that beta
readers have expressed excitement.

d. Your personal information

 Sell the agent on yourself. What qualifies you to write this book? What
else have you published? What kind of tribe have you built? Where can
they read your blog? Of course you’re including all your contact
information.

Other query letter tips:

 Keep it to one page, single-spaced, and 12 pt. sans serif type.
 Don’t sell too hard—let your premise speak for itself.
 Follow the agent’s submission guidelines to a T.
 Proof your letter before sending. Any typo on such a short document
makes you look like an amateur.

Here’s a great example of a query letter, with a breakdown of why it works,

by Brian Klems of Writer’s Digest.

2. A book proposal
You’ll find that for most agents, this is the most important document
they want to see. Some want only this. Succinctly and completely
describe the details of your idea and make them want to read your
manuscript in its entirety as soon as it’s ready. Leave nothing out. For
nonfiction, include every major issue you’ll cover and the basics of what
you’ll say about it. For fiction, rough out the entire plot in a few pages.

With a proposal, your query letter becomes a cover letter.

Resist the urge to write a long cover letter. Allow your proposal to do the
heavy lifting.

Three trusted colleagues have produced masterful works on how to write

book proposals, so check out what they have to offer:

Michael Hyatt: Writing a Winning Book Proposal

Jane Friedman: How to Write a Book Proposal

(Jane also has some great material on query letters, so search her site for
that, too.)
 Terry Whalin: Book Proposals That Sell

Proposals can contain any number of possible components, such as:

 Premise
 Elevator pitch
 Overview
 Target audience
 Chapter synopses
 Marketing ideas
 Endorsements
 Your analysis of competing books, and where yours fits
 Up to three sample chapters

More book proposal tips:

 Tell why you think your book can succeed.

 Every page in your proposal should make them want to flip to the next
page.
 Despite that a proposal is longer, keep it tight and terse, as short as you
can without cutting crucial information.

Every word should be designed to pique an agent’s interest, your goal

being to be asked to send your entire manuscript.

Which should I choose, query or proposal?

The competition is so fierce these days, I would lean toward a full
proposal almost every time. The only instances when I might fire off a
query would be if an incredible opportunity fell in my lap and I thought
an agent could help me jump on it before I had time to craft a proposal.

For instance, if a major celebrity wanted help with a book and chose you
to write it, a fast letter to an agent might get a quick response. Otherwise,
take the time to put together a professional proposal that shows an agent
you know how to work and can be thorough.

But know this: If you spark an agent’s interest, they will immediately ask
for more information. So you’ll need a proposal at some point. Keep that
in mind and be ready to get busy.
 Connecting with the Right Publisher

Regardless whether you secure an agent, there are five guidelines for
submitting your proposal and/or manuscript to publishers:

1. Follow their submission guidelines to a T.

2. Customize your cover letter to each.
3. Know what the publisher wants, and tell them why you believe your book
is right for them in light of that.
4. Let it show in your attitude and tone that you realize how few
manuscripts are chosen for publication each year, and by the fact that
you have done your homework and covered all the bases to ensure you’re
giving the publisher everything they need to make a decision on your
manuscript.
5. Avoid gushing and flattery, like adding the obvious sentiments, “I’ll do
anything you say, make any changes you want, meet any deadline…” Just
present your complete proposal and professionally express that you look
forward to hearing from them.

A rule of thumb for first-time authors:

If you’re writing fiction, while some publishers may ask you to send your
completed manuscript after reading your proposal, synopsis, and sample
chapters, it’s highly unlikely they will actually offer a contract before they
see that completed manuscript.

That’s because many people can come up with great ideas, and some can
produce promising starts to novels. But few can see their way through to
the end. So you’ll have to prove you can do it.
 If you’re writing nonfiction, you might be able to secure a publishing
contract before you have finished your entire manuscript, though that is
also rare.

Should it happen, the publisher is likely to offer a lot of guidance and

input for shaping the rest of the writing—and you’ll have a much better
chance of success if you work nicely with your editor.

Regardless your genre, publishers won’t take a second look at your

manuscript unless it’s presented professionally. Use these submission
guidelines:

 Use Times New Roman font (or at the very least avoid sans serif fonts).
 Use 12-point type.
 Left-justify your page. (This means your text should be aligned at the left
margin, but not the right. This is also called “flush left, ragged right.”)
 Double-space your page with no extra space between paragraphs.
 Each paragraph should be indented one-half inch.
 One space between sentences.
 Microsoft Word .doc or .docx file format.
 1” top, bottom, and side margins (or whatever is standard in your Word
program).

Editing Your Book Like Crazy (Again) with an Editor

By the time you get to this point, you’ve already spent hours editing your
own work. You’ve rearranged, improved, and cut things that hurt to cut.

Be ready to do more.

Once a publisher agrees to take your manuscript, you’ll be assigned an

editor to make your manuscript the best it can be.

This editor will suggest changes, maybe major ones—especially if it’s

your first book.

Don’t get touchy. Writing is not a solo. It’s a duet between the writer and
an editor.
Sometimes you’ll have to kill sentences that took hours to write. It’ll feel
like disowning your children.

Remember, the editor is on your side. Throw a private temper tantrum if

you must, but then cool down and listen. Let them to do their job. You
can push back respectfully if you feel strongly that they’ve missed your
point on something, but do this only when the sting of criticism has worn
off and you’re thinking rationally. Keep an open mind and be easy to
work with. They’ll remember.

4. Should You Self-Publish?

Want to save this 5000-word guide to read
later? Click here to get a free PDF version
you can read anytime.
If you can score with a traditional publisher, do it.

Exhaust your efforts to traditionally publish before resorting to self-

publishing. Even honest self-publishing executives will give you this
advice. Why? Because with traditional publishing, the publisher takes all
the risks, and you’re paid an advance against royalties and royalties
based on sales. So nothing comes out of your pocket.

With self-publishing, however, you pay for everything from design to

editing. Packages can cost upwards of $10,000.

Back when self-publishing was referred to as “vanity publishing,” you

could always tell a self-published book from a traditionally published
book due to the lack of quality.

Schlocky covers, boring titles, the word by before the author’s name on
the cover. Too much copy on the front and back covers. Poor typeface
and interior design. Lousy writing, editing, and proofreading—
sometimes clearly nonexistent.
But the game has changed.

Publishing your own book is vastly different than it used to be. Your end
product can now look much more professional, and your price per book
is much more reasonable.

Print-on-demand technology now allows for low-cost printing, so you

can order as few as two or three books at a time for the same cost per
book as you would pay if you were buying hundreds.

So, you no longer need to store countless copies in your garage or

basement. And self-published books look nicer these days too, because
writers have demanded it.

How to Set Your Self-Published Book Apart

If you resort to this route, realize that you are the publisher now. You
have to advertise, promote, and market your own book. But because
you’re earning the profits after expenses, not just a royalty, a successful
book will net you more money per copy than a traditionally published
one.

Admittedly, selling enough self-published copies to actually net you more

money than you would make selling more traditionally at a lower royalty
rate is rare, but it happens.

It’s also rare that a self-published book finds its way to bookstore shelves
outside the author’s own town.

(The hard truth is that it’s not easy for even traditionally published books
to place their books in bookstores. Experts say as few as one percent of
all published books can be accommodated by bookstores and that the
rest must be sold through other channels like the Internet, direct mail,
and by hand.)
 To give your self-published title the best chance to
succeed, you need to invest in:
 A great cover, which will involve purchasing a photo or artwork, type
design, and layout

 Inside layout, type design, and typesetting

 Editing (resist the urge to use a relative who majored in English or even
teaches English; book editing is a specific art)

 Proofreading (same caveat as above; friends and loved ones who are
meticulous spellers are not enough; there are myriad style matters to
deal with)

Each of these elements will dramatically increase the professional look of

your final product and, thus, your hope of selling more books. Do NOT
skimp on them.

If you’ve ever built a house without a contractor, you have an idea of how
complex this will be if you do it right.

So despite the fact that many self-published authors swear by it and

believe it’s fairer to the author than traditional publishing, I maintain
that traditional remains the ideal for authors—except for those unique
titles that are targeted to deserving but very limited audiences.

Choosing the Right Company to Self-Publish Your Book

More than 400,000 books are self-published every year in the United
States alone. So there are many companies to choose from. But sadly,
many are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

They’ll let you create a poor product and tell you it’s great.

They’ll “award” you a contract, telling you their publication board has
“evaluated” your manuscript and “found it worthy” to be published.

They’ll tell you that they’re “not a subsidy publisher” or “not a self-
publisher” or “not an independent publisher.”
 But they’ll use another euphemism to justify the fact that you’re paying
“only for promotion” or “only for [this many] copies,” or “only for…”
something else, when the fact is that the fee will cover all their costs and
will include their profit.

They’ll imply they can get your title before the eyes of every bookstore
owner and manager in the country. They might even give examples of a
few titles of theirs that have sold into some stores or even made some
bestseller list.

But they can’t guarantee your title will be sold into any store. Because
that list your title is on that is “available” to every store owner and
manager is merely a master list of all the books on some distributor’s
Internet site of every title in their catalogue. That means your book will
get no personal attention from a salesperson and no more emphasis than
any of the tens of thousands of other titles on the list.

Such companies are using you as little more than a content generator,
pretending to have “chosen” your book from among the many they have
to choose from, when the fact is they would publish anything you send
them in any form, provided your accompanying check clears the bank.

Be wary of any company that:

 Doesn’t take seriously the editing and proofreading of your book
 Lets you commit embarrassing typos such as spelling foreword as forward,
foreward, or forword
 Allows the word by before your name on the cover
 Over-promises what you should expect in the way of personal sales
representation, public relations, marketing, distribution, and advertising

That said, when you do need to self-publish, legitimate companies with

proven track records are ready to assist you. Do your homework and go
beyond an Internet search, which will likely turn up beautiful websites
for countless companies putting their best foot forward.

So find previous customers and ask about their experience. You want a
company who will answer every question straightforwardly and without
hesitation. If you feel hard-sold, run.
A litmus test question for the publisher: Ask if they would advise you to
exhaust your efforts to traditionally publish first. I asked this of the head
of WestBow Press™, a division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, and he
said he always advises customers that this is the ideal route.

That kind of refreshing honesty bodes well for a company.

The #1 Killer of Self-Published Books

When writers run out of money to invest in their book, too often the first
place that suffers is the content itself.

Writers may understand that they are not experts in cover design, layout
and typesetting, marketing and promotion, warehousing, distribution,
and sales. But they overrate their writing and editing and proofreading
abilities.

So, they invest in those other services and cut corners on editing and
proofreading.

What they wind up with is a handsome product that looks like a real
book but reads like the manuscript that made the rounds of the
traditional houses and was rejected.

You must determine what will set you apart in a noisy marketplace.

That certain something that will set you apart is what it has always been:

Writing quality.

Having been in the writing game for 50 years and the book business for
40, that is something I am able to tell you.

To use an ancient adage, cream rises. That may sound like something
scratched on a cave wall. But it simply means that readers recognize
quality.

You or your agent may be looking for a deal from a traditional publisher.
Or you may have chosen to self-publish online, in print, or both.
 Regardless, you want your manuscript to be of the highest editorial
quality you can make it.

What does that mean?

It means you must:

 Learn the craft and hone your skills. Rigorously study writing, do exercises,
write stories. It can all pay off. Just as with physical exercise, the more
the better, but anything is better than nothing.

 Recognize that writing well is much harder and more involved than you ever
dreamed. If you thought writing was merely a hobby, this realization
could crush you. So, to push through, remember why you wanted to
become a writer in the first place: You have a message, and people need
to hear it.

 Don’t trust friends’ and relatives’ flattery. Sure, they’re great for keeping you
from quitting. But when you need solid input on your writing, their
enthusiasm won’t translate to sales.

 Accept criticism and input from people who know what they’re talking
about. Find an experienced writer or editor who’ll offer honest feedback
on your work. Join a writers group. Attend writers conferences. Get
a mentor.

Free Download: Want your own copy of this guide? You can grab the full
PDF version by clicking here or on the image below:
If you really want to become an author, it can be done. You’ll know
you’re ready when you’re willing to carve the time from your schedule to
write.

So how badly do you want it? Tell me in the Comments below.

Related Posts:

How to Write a Book: Everything You Need to Know in 20 Steps

How to Write a Short Story That Captivates Your Reader

How to Write a Memoir: A 3-Step Guide

Do you dream of being published and growing a loyal and dedicated audience?
This takes time and perseverance, but here are 10 (open) secrets relating to how to
become a writer:
1: Successful writers draw on their lives and surroundings
Aspiring authors often have the impression that they need high concepts. There needs
to be the possibility of a big budget movie adaptation built into the story. While this
might be nice, readers respond best to writing that the author pours passion into.

The successful teen novel author Judy Blume (whose books have sold over 80 million
copies worldwide) says:
‘I don’t think I could set a book in a place without knowing it really well’.

Blume’s lived in New Jersey, New Mexico and Conneticut, and Key West, Florida. She
says that each different backdrop has helped her create a different book.

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter fantasy phenomenon, has been open about
many aspects of her series. Including the fact that the life-draining ‘dementors’ in Harry
Potter were fictional symbols for her own struggle with depression. Drawing on your life
– the good and the bad – is one of the best sources of inspiration and will make your
writing more authentic.
2: Many accomplished writers have demanding day jobs
Maybe you daydream of being able to make enough money off writing fiction full-time
that you can quit your day job. The hard truth is that countless writers have held day
jobs to support themselves, their families and their number one passions. The most
celebrated authors have held teaching positions at universities (including Zadie Smith,
Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and more).

There is a silver lining to having to do other work and fit your writing around other
responsibilities. You get to have more diverse experiences and acquire more knowledge
that will nourish your writing. Jeff Goins says, of his progress towards becoming a full-
time blogger, writer and public speaker:
‘I took my time, building a bridge between my day job and my dream job, finding ways
for the two to complement each other.’

3: Successful authors have a passion for reaching out and

moving others
Author Charlie Vázquez, director of the Bronx writers Center, shares in ‘Why I Became
a Writer’how his experience of difficult and painful situations has motivated him to
express himself and by doing so assist others to do the same. Author’s Promoter asked
over 100 published authors why they write, and as their pie chart below shows, ‘helping
others’ and ‘because I have to’ were two of the largest reasons.
 Response of 100 writers: Why do you write?

In addition to focusing on improving your language and craft, think about how you want
your book to affect others. Try writing to a specific person because it will help you
maintain a communicative, welcoming intimacy in your writing.
4: Published are willing to place faith in stepping stones
The brilliant Margaret Atwood offers wise words to writers seeking advice on how to
become a novelist:
‘Be aware of smaller publishers, should the bigger ones not see the glory of your ways.
They may want and need you. Go with the one who loves you, not the one with the
biggest gold buttons.’

The truth is that being published by a major publishing house is competitive. Often you
need a well-connected agent, or an ‘in’ by having studied in a prestigious writing
program. If you’re published by a small publishing house, this is a major achievement in
itself. What’s more, it could very well be a stepping stone to broader recognition
because you can use sales data or great reviews from credible sources as selling
points.

5: Even the best work with skilled editors

The DIY world of the modern writer and the self-publishing phenomenon means that
many authors attempt to self-edit. If publishing with a small press it might be possible to
get away with editing your novel yourself. Even so, if you’re serious about being
published, get your book into the best possible shape with the help of a professional
editor.

Even author’s who’ve worked as professional editors use editors themselves. Says
Margaret Atwood:
‘I used to be an editor, so I do a lot of self-editing. I rewrite a lot before I show things to
people. I like to have a manuscript in more or less its final shape before anyone sees it.
That doesn’t mean I can spell. There’s that, and the fiddley things like punctuation—
everyone has different ideas about that. So I work with an editor to improve that aspect
of the text, of course.’

What an editor gives you is an external perspective. Often you’re too close to the text to
notice the awkward constructions or narrative leaps that don’t quite make sense.
Publishers are experienced in reading manuscripts, and often can tell if your book
hasn’t had a good going over. Give them as few reasons as possible to turn down your
book.

6: Prolific authors are armoured

 At first, when your novel gets accepted for publication, there’s a warm glow and a
wonderful sense of accomplishment. But as M. Shannon Hernandez says, you also
need to steel yourself for haters. Writing is subjective to a point. There might be cultural
ideas of what ‘good writing’ involves versus ‘bad’. There will be some who find your first
book awful. If you’re publishing a second, there will be reviewers who compare it to the
first unfavourably.
If there is controversy around your book and its merits are hotly debated, that’s free
promotion. Even if you’re inclined to disagree with some of the more slanderous
criticisms, take them on board and improve on that aspect of your writing the next time
around. In the process you’ll learn how to stop writing criticism from wounding you.
Equip yourself with a thicker skin and you’ll deflect criticism and channel it into writing
better fiction.

7: Successful authors understand the importance of

commercial book knowledge
Jane Friedman teaches digital media and publishing at the University of Virginia and
has over 20 years of experience in the publishing industry.

Friedman suggests subscribing to a writers’ platform such as Publishers Marketplace

and keeping tabs on new publishing deals that are announced. This will give you an
idea of what kinds of novels medium to large publishing houses are most interested in
publishing.
Friedman also reminds that it’s less likely for your first attempt to be published than a
subsequent book. Try to see your first manuscript as a practice round and a process
towards becoming a professional writer. That’s not to say your first novel definitely won’t
be published because it all depends on the quality of your writing combined with its
commercial viability. The joy of self-publishing is that it’s still possible to reach a wide
audience provided that you invest some time in promotion. This can include:
 Creating a dedicated author website and social media accounts
 Doing blog tours with popular book blogs
 Arranging indie book store readings
 Attending any significant book events in your area and networking with others in the book and
publishing industry
8: How to become a writer: Never give up
 This might seem obvious and not a secret, but you’d be surprised perhaps to learn just
how much some authors have had to struggle for their work to see publication (via Lit
Rejections):
 Margaret Mitchell’s famous novel Gone with the Wind received 38 rejections from publishers
before it was accepted (30 million copies and counting have since been sold)
 Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife was rejected by 25 literary agents before it was
picked up by a small publisher in San Francisco – it’s since been translated into 33 languages
and sold 7 million copies
 J.K. Rowling herself was rejected by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury took an interest in
her Harry Potter manuscript: The first book of the series has sold over 100 million copies
In short, if at first you don’t succeed, try (and try, try, try some more) again.

9: Published authors view imitation as a means, not an

end
Culturally, there is a major emphasis on originality in the arts. Not being original is one
of the most common criticisms levelled at books because many accept ownership of
ideas. The truth is that most stories are variations on classic themes and can be distilled
down to classic story structures. Yet this is scaffolding and your style and writing ‘voice’
are what give your writing its particularly distinctive feel.

As Stephen King advises, don’t try to sound like anyone but yourself. The caveat to this
advice is that imitation is an important part of developing your creative ability. Singers
imitate other singers by learning their songs and vocal inflections. The baroque
composer Bach learned composition by copying out the scores of his contemporaries
carefully. Use imitation as a means to an end and you will assimilate other writers’
strengths into your own craft while developing your own voice.
10: Successful authors do what it takes to get their voices
heard
You might be uncomfortable with the promotion process because you’re an introvert or
because you’re modest. Whatever your feelings about promoting yourself, it’s essential
if you want to be discovered and heard becuse the more you put into spreading the
word about your book, the more visibility it will gain.

There is no single answer for how to become a writer. Published authors find different
paths to getting their stories out into the world. Provided that you are determined, are
dedicated to improving and are able to stay motivated to reach your writing and
publishing goals, you’ll become the writer you want to be.
How to Be a Writer: 201
Compelling Tips
Do you wonder how to be a writer?

The 201 tips below will help you find out how to be the writer you were born to become.

There are many barriers that can stop you from being a writer.

Maybe you haven’t yet got the right mindset, or you need to establish good writing
habits. Or maybe you need to focus on professional development, or on boosting your
creativity.

I have to admit that it took me a long time to think of myself as a writer. Even when I was
already a published author, I didn’t consider myself a REAL writer.
Then, one day, I found a simple saying that helped me realize that I was already a writer.
The saying goes:

A writer writes.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

When doubts about being a writer started creeping in, I would say to myself, “A writer
writes!”
 That brought me back on track.

Talking of track, the following collection of tips for writers by WTD readers are designed
to help you move forward on your journey as a writer. They will help you realize that you
are already a writer.

The tips are organized into different sections:

 How to create a successful mindset.

 How to develop your craft of writing.
 How to establish good writing habits.
 How to approach professional development.
 How to become a better writer.
 How to become more creative.
The first set of tips are about the mindset that can help you be a writer:

How to Develop a
Successful Mindset
1. Be open, curious, present, and engaged.
2. Accept all forms of criticism and learn to grow from it.
3. Live with passion.
4. Say to everyone: “I’m a writer.”
5. Recognize your fear and overcome it.
6. Rethink what is ‘normal’.
7. Check if your assumptions are right.
8. Accept no excuses.
9. Break out of your comfort zone.
10. Approach writing with gratitude, not just with a ‘must do this’ attitude.
11. Take risks – don’t be afraid to shock. You are not who you think you are.
12. Always think of your readers.
13. Learn to LOVE writing and reading.
14. Write like you’re on your first date.
15. Simply let things be what they are.
16. Expose yourself to as many new experiences in a short amount of time as possible.
17. Love your tools. As St. Bumpersticker says, “My fountain pen can write better than your
honor student!”
18. Embrace your shadow. Discover what traits and characteristics you don’t want to express.
19. Write to agitate the mind and the nerves.
20. Remember: if you’re not sure, you don’t know.
21. Know when to walk away – and when to come back.
22. Believe that you’re a writer.
23. Destroy something regularly. Picasso said “Every act of creation is first of all an action of
destruction.”
24. Never take a mundane experience for granted.
25. Keep fit. A fit body supports creativity.
26. Be Yourself. No need to get inspired by someone else.
27. Never Give up.

How to Develop the Craft

of Writing
We sometimes think of writing as an art, but it is more helpful to think of it as a craft.
Here are tips that can help you develop the craft of writing:

28. Use simple, declarative sentences.

29. Avoid passive voice.
30. Limit your use of adjectives and adverbs.
31. Keep it simple.
32. Cut the crap.
33. Don’t overwrite.
34. Go easy on descriptive narrative (settings, people, etc.).
35. Re-examine every word that’s three syllables or longer and see whether it could be
replaced by a simpler word.
36. If you have a sense of where you want your piece to wind up, start there instead and see
what happens.
37. Avoid these three weak words – unless absolutely necessary: Ifs, Buts, and Can’ts.
38. Never rescue your hero.
39. Practice monotasking. Set a timer for uninterrupted writing.
40. Work on brilliant headlines.
41. Start with metaphors and stories.
42. Write the opening sentence or headline last.
43. Write solely from the heart and shun copying others.
44. Think before you include an expletive.
45. Ask, “Can it be turned into a list?” Think of at least five things you can list about it.
46. Use the mini-skirt rule: Make it long enough to cover everything, but short enough to
keep it interesting.
47. Write in small paragraphs in order to get to the point immediately.
48. Visualize the person you are communicating with: What do their eyes reflect as they read
this? What will the first thing they might say in response?
49. Do what works for you.
50. Always call a spade a spade. It’s never a long-handled gardening implement!
51. Try writing without accuracy. Not worrying about errors (left brain) allows for easier
flow of thought (right brain).

How to Establish Good

Writing Habits
 If you wonder how to be a writer, a key piece is to develop habits that help you improve
as a writer.

52. Stretch or exercise in between writing.

53. Map out a writing schedule for your project and stick to it.
54. Make a note of ideas for further development before you leave a piece for tomorrow.
55. Steal time for writing wherever and whenever you can find it.
56. Keep a copy of ‘Strunk and White’ within arm’s reach.
57. Keep a journal specially for work, for analyzing your progress and doing writing practice.
58. Write on ugly paper because it tricks the brain to really believe that it doesn’t have to be
perfect.
59. Write when you’re tired.
60. Rewrite from memory a good story you’ve read and then compare the two. Evaluate and
learn from the differences.
61. Practice condensing. Write a synopsis and then condense that. Précis the condensed
synopsis. It helps to get to the bare bones of a story and reveal what it’s really about.
62. Make writing a priority in your life. If you say it’s important to you, then show it in how
you spend your time.
63. Write when you’re uninspired.
64. Trick yourself into starting – you only need to commit to writing 15 minutes a day.
65. Use a stack of 3×5 cards to start writing your book. Use on item or idea per card. Stack
the card in order and type them in to develop a first draft.
66. Force yourself to disconnect for a while each day – turn off cell phone, Blackberry, iPod,
music, email, Twitter, conversation with others.
67. Set a time limit on each writing session, along with a goal for what you will finish in that
time.
68. Don’t be afraid to bust out the thesaurus to find a word that fits better in a sentence than
the one currently there.
69. Buy a small notebook and pen to take with you.
70. Stop following links and write! Right now.
71. Set a timer and force yourself (even if it’s not your best work) to write a story within a
designated amount of time.
72. Read great writing.
73. Write at the crack of dawn.
74. Devour ‘Stein on Writing’.
75. Read Write to Done regularly.
76. Use a voice recorder (or iPhone) when the right words come to you – but not in the
shower.
77. Write with a plain text editor.
78. Engage strangers in conversation. Then write about it from memory, describing the
person, setting, and conversation.
79. Always ask the question…”What if…”
80. Dialogue with your characters.
81. Take up story challenges.
82. Write 15 minutes a day. Every day.
83. Drink water to avoid fatigue.
84. Use some opera as background music or any kind of music with a story.
85. Start your writing ahead of time – not hours before a deadline.
INSTANT DOWNLOAD: 10 PRO Tips to edit your writing to
perfection!

How to Develop
Professionally as a Writer
Professional development is important in whatever field you want to find success. The
following tips will show you how to think about professional development as a writer.

1. Become a blogger.
2. Write for publication, even if it’s only for the local newsletter or a small blog.
3. Study criteria-based writing.
4. Comment on your favorite blogs.
5. Read Zinsser’s “On Writing Well” at least once a year.
6. Read Stephen King’s “On Writing”
7. Take a writing course.
8. Join a writing group. If you can’t find one, form one.
9. Study story architecture.
10. Socialize with other writers.
11. Write for different media.
12. Enter writing competitions.
13. Check out Richard Lanham’s ‘Parademic Method’
14. Hire someone else to write for you.
15. Work with a mentor.

How to Become a Writer

Here is a selection of simple tips that will show you how to write better.
16. Use self-imposed word limits.
17. Outline. And then write to that outline.
18. Learn a new word a day.
19. Write collaboratively.
20. Read Dr. Frank Luntz’s “Words that Work”
21. Read Copyblogger.
22. Mean what you write, write what you mean.
23. Write about what someone else has written.
24. Get the pen and fingers moving.
25. Learn a foreign language to the point where you can think in that language.
26. Write your own life story.
27. Get enough sleep at night.
28. Take a15 minute nap when your mind gets fuzzy.
29. Harness the power of your emotions.
30. Write as if you will stand up and present the article to an audience of a thousand people.
Would they want to listen or go home?
31. Write in different genres: blog posts, poems, short stories, essays.
32. Read grammar books.
33. Give yourself permission to write a crappy first draft.
34. Try to eat properly. If you only eat junk your mental capacity diminishes and you can’t
write well.
35. Work your way through “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron.
36. If you can’t write a book, write a blog post.
37. If you can’t write a blog post, comment on a post.
38. Write without distractions.
39. Tell the truth- that way you don’t need to remember what you wrote.
40. Look closely at how successful writers make sentences.
41. Write about what you want to write, not what you know.
42. Watch movies. Can you write the story better?
43. Write in a crowded café.
44. Write on the toilet.
45. Write for 24 hours straight.
46. Write. And then write more.
47. Read, think, read, write, ponder, write – and read some more.
48. Listen to how people talk.
49. Read many books. The good and the shitty ones.
50. Listen to podcasts on writing tips.
51. Be inspired by other art forms – music, dance, sculpture, painting.
52. Read your old stuff and acknowledge how far you’ve come – and how far you have to go.
53. Make writing your priority in the morning.
54. Keep squeezing words out even if when you feel uninspired.
55. Read works from different cultures. It helps keep your writing from tasting stale in the
mouths of your readers.
56. Write during your most productive hours of the day.
57. Designate time to research.
58. Take up Nanowrimo.
59. Go to the supermarket, the ball game, the class room, the building site. Make notes of the
sensuous details, the atmosphere, the people.
60. Deconstruct and analyze books and articles you enjoy.
61. Read ‘Reading Like a Writer’ by Francine Prose.
62. Find your unique voice.
63. Write a For and Against article for the same issue. This helps to stretch your thinking.
64. Tell the story you most desperately want to read.
65. Read as much as humanly possible.
66. Be current – how do today’s headlines apply to your audience?
 How to Edit What You
Write
67. Read what you’ve written over and over, until I can’t find any more problems.
68. Never trust your spell checker.
69. Show what you write to a trusted friend for feedback.
70. Edit, and edit again.
71. Don’t edit your work to death.
72. There is a time for writing, and there is a time for editing. Don’t do both at once
otherwise you’ll become too critical about what you wrote.
73. When in doubt, cut it out.
74. Take a break between writing and editing.
75. Read your stuff aloud to anyone who can stand it – including the cat.
76. Go back and cut 10% from your word count.
77. When in doubt, cut it out.
78. Kill clunky sentences.
79. Let your articles rest and then return to them with fresh eyes.
80. Ask someone else to proofread.
81. Don’t be afraid to cut out a line that seemed brilliant when you wrote it but really doesn’t
add much.
82. Read your own writing out aloud.
83. Love your words when you write them, hold them in suspicion when you edit them.
84. Put on your reviewer hat and write a review of your own article or story.

How to Become More

Creative
 Nothing is more important than creativity when it comes to writing. The following
selection of tips will boost your creativity.

85. Make notes of your (fleeting) brilliant ideas.

86. Keep a journal to keep the writing juices flowing.
87. Use a journal to sort out your thoughts and feelings.
88. Watch people.
89. Write in 101 words.
90. Do a ’stream of consciousness’ piece and see where it leads you.
91. Allow your mind to wander.
92. Try scotch or weed if all else fails…
93. Meditate regularly to steady the mind.
94. Mow the lawn, take a walk, go for a run…anything that requires the conscious mind to
focus so the subconscious is free to create.
95. Bookmark this list and come back when you need to get those creative juices flowing.
96. Record random thoughts, story ideas, quotes on your phone when you’re out and about.
97. Use ‘clustering’ to free up inspiration.
98. Study nature for simile possibilities.
99. Keep the flow going. If it’s clicking for you, keep writing.
100. Write using a pencil instead of a laptop for more creativity.
101. Check out the Urban Dictionary for topical inspiration.
102. Get to know someone different from you and reflect on the experience.
103. Try new ideas or hobbies – the more variety you have in your life, the more likely
you are to keep on generating good ideas on the page.
104. Take time to muse.
105. Write at the scene. If you want to write about a beach, get a picnic rug and go
write by the sea.
106. Use mindmaps for inspiration.
107. Collect words.
108. Write everything down. Don’t trust your memory when you have a good idea,
especially at night.
109. Trying to convey a certain emotion but not sure how? Listen to music that conveys
a certain emotion in you while writing.
110. Cure for Writer’s Block: Read a great article from a favorite author or publication.
111. Write on paper with the opposite hand. The awkwardness and level of difficulty
create time for more thoughts to enter your head.
112. When you feel blocked, do something mindless, like ironing or going for a quiet
walk.
113. Write outside.
114. Write when it comes to you.
115. Don’t wait for ideas. Find them everywhere.
116. Read the comments on your blog, treasure the folk who take the time to leave
them and gather the seeds to make a great post.
If you find these tips helpful, please print them out and highlight the ones that speak to
you. I’d like to thank all WTD readers who have helped us collect these tips on how to
become a good writer.

I hope that some of these tips will spark something within that will help you to become
the writer you were born to be.

How to Write a Novel: 7 Tips Everyone Can Use

1. Write the story you’d most want to read. Don’t write a story just because you think it might be a
bestseller or that it would make Great Aunt Edna proud. Think about the books you love, the ones you
really lose yourself in. If those are mysteries, then don’t try to write an historical romance or a quiet
literary novel. It might not be anything genre-specific that you love, but a certain voice, or type of story, or
kinds of characters. Write what you love. Do me a favor — right now, today, start a list of all your crazy
obsessions, the things that get your heart pumping, that wake you up in the middle of the night. Put it
above your desk and use it to guide you, to jumpstart your writing each and every day.

GIVEAWAY: Jennifer is excited to give away a free copy of her latest novel to a random commenter.
Comment within 2 weeks; winners must live in Canada/US to receive the book by mail. You can win a blog
contest even if you’ve won before. (UPDATE: Karen Gough won.)
 Guest column by Jennifer McMahon, who grew up in suburban
Connecticut, and went to Goddard College. She is the bestselling
author of Promise Not to Tell, Island of Lost Girls, Dismantled, and
Don’t Breathe a Word. Her newest novel is The One I Left Behind
(Jan. 2013, William Morrow), which received starred reviews in
Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. She lives in Vermont with her family.
Visit her website or connect with her on Twitter.

2. Begin with character. Make her flawed and believable. Let her live and breathe and give her the
freedom to surprise you and take the story in unexpected directions. If she’s not surprising you, you can
bet she’ll seem flat to your readers. One exercise I always do when I’m getting to know a character is ask
her to tell me her secrets. Sit down with a pen and paper and start with, “I never told anybody…” and go
from there, writing in the voice of your character.

3. Give that character a compelling problem. Your character has to have something that’s going to
challenge her, torment her and propel her forward. At the heart of every story is conflict – whether
external or internal, make it a good one, and remember that this problem is going to shape your
character, leaving her forever changed.

(Pay it Forward — 11 Ways You Can Help a Friend Market Their New Book.)

4. Make things happen! You can have the greatest characters in the world, and write beautifully, but if
nothing’s happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly. In my books, I make sure something
important to the plot is happening in each scene. And if there’s a scene in there that isn’t helping to move
the story along in some vital way, I cut it, no matter how great it is. When I’m editing, I’ll go scene by
scene and write a single word sentence describing the action on an index card. Then I lay the cards out
and I’ve got the bare bones of my story. I can see if things are moving forward, if I’m throwing in enough
twists and turns, and if there are scenes that just aren’t pulling their weight.

5. Make it believable. Ah, you say, but you sometimes write stories with ghosts and fairies – how
believable is that? It works if you make it believable in the universe of the book. In Promise Not to Tell, I
came up with rules for the ghost – things she could and couldn’t do. I gave her a history and compelling
reason to return. Readers hate cheap tricks. Don’t pull the evil twin routine in the final hour. Don’t bring in
a new character at the end to solve the protagonist’s problem for her. She’s got to resolve things herself,
for better or worse.

6. Stick with it the project. You’ll be tempted to give up a thousand and one times. Don’t. Finish the
story. Then work twice as hard to revise it. Do your best to get it out in the world. When it’s rejected by
agents and publishers (which it will be) keep sending it out. In the meantime, write another. Then another.
Trust me, you get better every time. You’re not in this writing business because it’s easy. It took me four
books, two agents and seven years to get my first novel published. It was a long tough road, but so, so
worth it in the end!

(What are the BEST writers’ conferences to attend?)

7. And lastly: Ignore the rules. (Including mine.) Everyone’s got advice and theories; people want to
pigeonhole you, put you in a genre with its own rules and conventions. I think the work comes out better
when we leave all that behind; when the only thing to be true to is the writing.

Check Out These Great Upcoming Writers’ Conferences:

 Feb. 16–19, 2017: San Francisco Writers Conference (San Francisco, CA)
 March 25, 2017: Kansas City Writing Workshop (Kansas City, MO)
 April 8, 2017: Philadelphia Writing Workshop (Philadelphia, PA)
 May 20, 2017: Get Published in San Diego (San Diego, CA)
 June 24, 2017: The Writing Workshop of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
 July 15, 2017: All Write Now Conference (Southeast Missouri State, MO)
 Aug. 18–20, 2017: Writer’s Digest Conference (New York, NY)
 Agent Donald Maass, who is also an author
himself, is one of the top instructors nationwide
on crafting quality fiction. His recent guide,
The Fire in Fiction, shows how to compose
a novel that will get agents/editors to keep reading.

Other writing/publishing articles & links for you:

 Your Job is to WRITE, Not Worry.

 NEW Literary Agent Seeking Clients: Michelle Witte of Mansion Street Mgmt.
 The Advice I Need Most As a New Writer (But Never Got).
 5 Pieces of Advice I’m Glad I Didn’t Take.
 Sell More Books by Building Your Author Platform.
 Follow Chuck Sambuchino on Twitter or find him on Facebook. Learn all about his writing guides
on how to get published, how to find a literary agent, and how to write a query letter.

Want to build your visibility and sell more books?

Create Your Writer Platform shows you how to
promote yourself and your books through social
media, public speaking, article writing, branding,
and more. Order the book from WD at a discount.

The Snowflake Method For Designing A Novel

Writing a novel is easy. Writing a good novel is hard. That’s just life. If it were easy, we’d all
be writing best-selling, prize-winning fiction.
Frankly, there are a thousand different people out there who can tell you how to write a novel.
There are a thousand different methods. The best one for you is the one that works for you.

In this article, I’d like to share with you what works for me. I’ve published six novels and won
about a dozen awards for my writing. I teach the craft of writing fiction at writing conferences all
the time. One of my most popular lectures is this one: How to write a novel using what I call the
“Snowflake Method.”

This page is the most popular one on my web site, and gets over a thousand page views per
day. Over the years, this page has been viewed more than six million times. So you can guess
that a lot of people find it useful. But you may not, and that’s fine by me. Look it over, decide
what might work for you, and ignore the rest! If it makes you dizzy, I won’t be insulted.
Different writers are different. If my methods get you rolling, I’ll be happy. I’ll make the best
case I can for my way of organizing things, but you are the final judge of what works best for
you. Have fun and . . . write your novel!

The Importance of Design

Good fiction doesn’t just happen, it is designed. You can do the design work before or after
you write your novel. I’ve done it both ways and I strongly believe that doing it first is quicker
and leads to a better result. Design is hard work, so it’s important to find a guiding principle
early on. This article will give you a powerful metaphor to guide your design.

Our fundamental question is this: How do you design a novel?

For a number of years, I was a software architect designing large software projects. I write
novels the same way I write software, using the “snowflake metaphor”. OK, what’s the
snowflake metaphor? Before you go further, take a look at this cool web site.
 At the top of the page, you’ll see a cute pattern known
as a snowflake fractal. Don’t tell anyone, but this is an important mathematical object that’s been
widely studied. For our purposes, it’s just a cool sketch of a snowflake. If you scroll down that
same web page a little, you’ll see a box with a large triangle in it and arrows underneath. If you
press the right-arrow button repeatedly, you’ll see the steps used to create the snowflake. It
doesn’t look much like a snowflake at first, but after a few steps, it starts looking more and more
like one, until it’s done.

The first few steps look like this:

I claim that that’s how you design a novel — you start small, then build stuff up until it looks
like a story. Part of this is creative work, and I can’t teach you how to do that. Not here, anyway.
But part of the work is just managing your creativity — getting it organized into a well-
structured novel. That’s what I’d like to teach you here.

If you’re like most people, you spend a long time thinking about your novel before you ever
start writing. You may do some research. You daydream about how the story’s going to work.
You brainstorm. You start hearing the voices of different characters. You think about what the
book’s about — the Deep Theme. This is an essential part of every book which I call
“composting”. It’s an informal process and every writer does it differently. I’m going to assume
that you know how to compost your story ideas and that you have already got a novel well-
composted in your mind and that you’re ready to sit down and start writing that novel.

The Ten Steps of Design

But before you start writing, you need to get organized. You need to put all those wonderful
ideas down on paper in a form you can use. Why? Because your memory is fallible, and your
creativity has probably left a lot of holes in your story — holes you need to fill in before you
start writing your novel. You need a design document. And you need to produce it using a
process that doesn’t kill your desire to actually write the story. Here is my ten-step process for
writing a design document. I use this process for writing my novels, and I hope it will help you.

Step 1) Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. Something like this: “A
rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul.” (This is the summary for my first
novel, Transgression.) The sentence will serve you forever as a ten-second selling tool. This is
the big picture, the analog of that big starting triangle in the snowflake picture.

When you later write your book proposal, this sentence should appear very early in the proposal.
It’s the hook that will sell your book to your editor, to your committee, to the sales force, to
bookstore owners, and ultimately to readers. So make the best one you can!

Some hints on what makes a good sentence:

 Shorter is better. Try for fewer than 15 words.

 No character names, please! Better to say “a handicapped trapeze artist” than “Jane Doe”.
  Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose
in this story? Now tell me what he or she wants to win.

 Read the one-line blurbs on the New York Times Bestseller list to learn how to do this.
Writing a one-sentence description is an art form.

Step 2) Take another hour and expand that sentence to a full paragraph describing the story
setup, major disasters, and ending of the novel. This is the analog of the second stage of the
snowflake. I like to structure a story as “three disasters plus an ending”. Each of the disasters
takes a quarter of the book to develop and the ending takes the final quarter. I don’t know if this
is the ideal structure, it’s just my personal taste.

If you believe in the Three-Act structure, then the first disaster corresponds to the end of Act 1.
The second disaster is the mid-point of Act 2. The third disaster is the end of Act 2, and forces
Act 3 which wraps things up. It is OK to have the first disaster be caused by external
circumstances, but I think that the second and third disasters should be caused by the
protagonist’s attempts to “fix things”. Things just get worse and worse.

You can also use this paragraph in your proposal. Ideally, your paragraph will have about five
sentences. One sentence to give me the backdrop and story setup. Then one sentence each for
your three disasters. Then one more sentence to tell the ending. Don’t confuse this paragraph
with the back-cover copy for your book. This paragraph summarizes the whole story. Your back-
cover copy should summarize only about the first quarter of the story.

Step 3) The above gives you a high-level view of your novel. Now you need something similar
for the storylines of each of your characters. Characters are the most important part of any novel,
and the time you invest in designing them up front will pay off ten-fold when you start writing.
For each of your major characters, take an hour and write a one-page summary sheet that tells:

 The character’s name

 A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline

 The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)

 The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)

 The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)

 The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?

 A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline

An important point: You may find that you need to go back and revise your one-sentence
summary and/or your one-paragraph summary. Go ahead! This is good–it means your characters
are teaching you things about your story. It’s always okay at any stage of the design process to
go back and revise earlier stages. In fact, it’s not just okay–it’s inevitable. And it’s good. Any
revisions you make now are revisions you won’t need to make later on to a clunky 400 page
manuscript.

Another important point: It doesn’t have to be perfect. The purpose of each step in the design
process is to advance you to the next step. Keep your forward momentum! You can always come
back later and fix it when you understand the story better. You will do this too, unless you’re a
lot smarter than I am.

Step 4) By this stage, you should have a good idea of the large-scale structure of your novel, and
you have only spent a day or two. Well, truthfully, you may have spent as much as a week, but it
doesn’t matter. If the story is broken, you know it now, rather than after investing 500 hours in a
rambling first draft. So now just keep growing the story. Take several hours and expand each
sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph. All but the last paragraph should end
in a disaster. The final paragraph should tell how the book ends.

This is a lot of fun, and at the end of the exercise, you have a pretty decent one-page skeleton of
your novel. It’s okay if you can’t get it all onto one single-spaced page. What matters is that you
are growing the ideas that will go into your story. You are expanding the conflict. You should
now have a synopsis suitable for a proposal, although there is a better alternative for proposals . .
.

Step 5) Take a day or two and write up a one-page description of each major character and a
half-page description of the other important characters. These “character synopses” should tell
the story from the point of view of each character. As always, feel free to cycle back to the
earlier steps and make revisions as you learn cool stuff about your characters. I usually enjoy this
step the most and lately, I have been putting the resulting “character synopses” into my proposals
instead of a plot-based synopsis. Editors love character synopses, because editors love character-
based fiction.

Step 6) By now, you have a solid story and several story-threads, one for each character. Now
take a week and expand the one-page plot synopsis of the novel to a four-page synopsis.
Basically, you will again be expanding each paragraph from step (4) into a full page. This is a lot
of fun, because you are figuring out the high-level logic of the story and making strategic
decisions. Here, you will definitely want to cycle back and fix things in the earlier steps as you
gain insight into the story and new ideas whack you in the face.

Step 7) Take another week and expand your character descriptions into full-fledged character
charts detailing everything there is to know about each character. The standard stuff such as
birthdate, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. Most importantly, how will this character
change by the end of the novel? This is an expansion of your work in step (3), and it will teach
you a lot about your characters. You will probably go back and revise steps (1-6) as your
characters become “real” to you and begin making petulant demands on the story. This is good
— great fiction is character-driven. Take as much time as you need to do this, because you’re
just saving time downstream. When you have finished this process, (and it may take a full month
of solid effort to get here), you have most of what you need to write a proposal. If you are a
published novelist, then you can write a proposal now and sell your novel before you write it. If
you’re not yet published, then you’ll need to write your entire novel first before you can sell it.
No, that’s not fair, but life isn’t fair and the world of fiction writing is especially unfair.

Step 8) You may or may not take a hiatus here, waiting for the book to sell. At some point,
you’ve got to actually write the novel. Before you do that, there are a couple of things you can do
to make that traumatic first draft easier. The first thing to do is to take that four-page synopsis
and make a list of all the scenes that you’ll need to turn the story into a novel. And the easiest
way to make that list is . . . with a spreadsheet.

For some reason, this is scary to a lot of writers. Oh the horror. Deal with it. You learned to use a
word-processor. Spreadsheets are easier. You need to make a list of scenes, and spreadsheets
were invented for making lists. If you need some tutoring, buy a book. There are a thousand out
there, and one of them will work for you. It should take you less than a day to learn the itty bit
you need. It’ll be the most valuable day you ever spent. Do it.

Make a spreadsheet detailing the scenes that emerge from your four-page plot outline. Make just
one line for each scene. In one column, list the POV character. In another (wide) column, tell
what happens. If you want to get fancy, add more columns that tell you how many pages you
expect to write for the scene. A spreadsheet is ideal, because you can see the whole storyline at a
glance, and it’s easy to move scenes around to reorder things.
My spreadsheets usually wind up being over 100 lines long, one line for each scene of the novel.
As I develop the story, I make new versions of my story spreadsheet. This is incredibly valuable
for analyzing a story. It can take a week to make a good spreadsheet. When you are done, you
can add a new column for chapter numbers and assign a chapter to each scene.

Step 9) (Optional. I don’t do this step anymore.) Switch back to your word processor and begin
writing a narrative description of the story. Take each line of the spreadsheet and expand it to a
multi-paragraph description of the scene. Put in any cool lines of dialogue you think of, and
sketch out the essential conflict of that scene. If there’s no conflict, you’ll know it here and you
should either add conflict or scrub the scene.

I used to write either one or two pages per chapter, and I started each chapter on a new page.
Then I just printed it all out and put it in a loose-leaf notebook, so I could easily swap chapters
around later or revise chapters without messing up the others. This process usually took me a
week and the end result was a massive 50-page printed document that I would revise in red ink
as I wrote the first draft. All my good ideas when I woke up in the morning got hand-written in
the margins of this document. This, by the way, is a rather painless way of writing that dreaded
detailed synopsis that all writers seem to hate. But it’s actually fun to develop, if you have done
steps (1) through (8) first. When I did this step, I never showed this synopsis to anyone, least of
all to an editor — it was for me alone. I liked to think of it as the prototype first draft. Imagine
writing a first draft in a week! Yes, you can do it and it’s well worth the time. But I’ll be honest,
I don’t feel like I need this step anymore, so I don’t do it now.

Step 10) At this point, just sit down and start pounding out the real first draft of the novel. You
will be astounded at how fast the story flies out of your fingers at this stage. I have seen writers
triple their fiction writing speed overnight, while producing better quality first drafts than they
usually produce on a third draft.

You might think that all the creativity is chewed out of the story by this time. Well, no, not
unless you overdid your analysis when you wrote your Snowflake. This is supposed to be the fun
part, because there are many small-scale logic problems to work out here. How does Hero get out
of that tree surrounded by alligators and rescue Heroine who’s in the burning rowboat? This is
the time to figure it out! But it’s fun because you already know that the large-scale structure of
the novel works. So you only have to solve a limited set of problems, and so you can write
relatively fast.
This stage is incredibly fun and exciting. I have heard many fiction writers complain about how
hard the first draft is. Invariably, that’s because they have no clue what’s coming next. Good
grief! Life is too short to write like that! There is no reason to spend 500 hours writing a
wandering first draft of your novel when you can write a solid one in 150. Counting the 100
hours it takes to do the design documents, you come out way ahead in time.

About midway through a first draft, I usually take a breather and fix all the broken parts of my
design documents. Yes, the design documents are not perfect. That’s okay. The design
documents are not fixed in concrete, they are a living set of documents that grows as you develop
your novel. If you are doing your job right, at the end of the first draft you will laugh at what an
amateurish piece of junk your original design documents were. And you’ll be thrilled at how
deep your story has become.

Over the years, I’ve taught the Snowflake method to hundreds of writers at conferences. I’ve also
had this article posted here on my web site for a long time, and the page has now been viewed
over 2,400,000 times. I’ve heard from many, many writers. Some people love the Snowflake;
some don’t. My attitude is that if it works for you, then use it. If only parts of it work for you,
then use only those parts.I write my own novels using the Snowflake method. Make no mistake
— it’s a fair bit of work. For a long time, I did it the hard way, using Microsoft Word to write the
text and Microsoft Excel to manage the list of scenes. Unfortunately, neither of those tools
knows about the structure of fiction. Finally, I realized that it would be a whole lot easier to work
through the method if the tools were designed specially for fiction.

So one day I decided to create that software. I wanted something that would automate every step
that could be automated. The result was a commercial software package I call Snowflake Pro. It
makes my own Snowflaking incredibly easier, and it’s now doing the same for zillions of other
writers.
 Snowflake Pro makes the Snowflake method fast, easy,
and fun. It runs on Macs, Windows, and Linux. Currently, I’m running a special promotion that
gives a 50% discount on this cool and fun tool for anyone who owns a copy of my book How to
Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method.

Learn more about Snowflake Pro

Ways To Use The Snowflake

Are you struggling right now with a horrible first draft of your novel that just seems hopeless?
Take an hour and summarize your story in one sentence. Does that clarify things? You’ve just
completed step (1) of the Snowflake, and it only took an hour. Why not try the next few steps of
the Snowflake and see if your story doesn’t suddenly start coming to life? What have you got to
lose, except a horrible first draft that you already hate?

Are you a seat-of-the-pants writer who finally finished your novel, but now you’re staring at
an enormous pile of manuscript that desperately needs rewriting? Take heart! Your novel’s done,
isn’t it? You’ve done something many writers only dream about. Now imagine a big-shot editor
bumps into you in the elevator and asks what your novel’s about. In fifteen words or less, what
would you say? Take your time! This is a thought game. What would you say? If you can come
up with an answer in the next hour . . . you’ve just completed Step 1 of the Snowflake! Do you
think some of the other steps might help you put some order into that manuscript? Give it a shot.
What have you got to lose?
Have you just got a nightmarishly long letter from your editor detailing all the things that are
wrong with your novel? Are you wondering how you can possibly make all the changes before
your impossible deadline? It’s never too late to do the Snowflake. How about if you take a week
and drill through all the steps right now? It’ll clarify things wonderfully, and then you’ll have a
plan for executing all those revisions. I bet you’ll get it done in record time. And I bet the book
will come out better than you imagined.

If the Snowflake Method works for you, I’d like to hear from you. You can reach me through
the contact page on my web-site.

Acknowledgments: I thank my many friends on the Chi Libris list and especially Janelle
Schneider for a large number of discussions on the Snowflake and much else.

Best regards,

Randy Ingermanson, Ph.D.

Want to Know More About the Snowflake
Method?
Check out my latest best-selling book, How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method. This
book is a different kind of teaching tool. It uses a story to SHOW you how to write a novel,
rather than to TELL you how to write a novel. I used the Snowflake Method to help me write the
book, and at the end, you get to see the Snowflake document I created for the book, exactly the
way I wrote it.

If you learn best by seeing examples, you might like this book. It’s about a young woman who’s been
dreaming all her life about writing a novel. Her parents always told her that fiction writing was
“impractical,” and they made her get a practical college degree. But now that she’s married and has two
kids in school, she decides to do something just for herself, for once in her life. She’s going to write that
novel and nobody is going to stop her. The only thing blocking her is herself.
Available in paper, e-book, and audiobook.

Grab your copy here on Amazon. (e-book, paper, or audiobook)

Grab the audiobook version on Audible. (audiobook only)

Grab your copy here on B&N. (e-book or paper)

Grab your copy here on Apple’s iBookstore. (e-book only)

Grab the audiobook version on iTunes. (audiobook only)

Grab your copy here on Kobo. (e-book only)

Grab your copy here on Smashwords. (e-book)

About The Author

 Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author
of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the
free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, the largest electronic magazine in the world on
the craft of writing fiction, with over 16,000 readers.

How to Write a Novel

10 Steps from NYT Bestselling Author
Michelle Richmond
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T he first thing you need to know about writing a novel is that

there are no easy answers. The second thing you need to know is
that there’s no magic formula. Every novel demands its own
structure, its own pace, its own way of looking at the world.

Still with me? Good. Because, as it turns out, writing a novel isn’t
just a head-banging exercise in utter frustration and despair
(although, trust me, sometimes it is just that). It’s also a deep
swim into your own head space and a really fun adventure. It’s
your world; you get to make it, populate it, cultivate it, and bring
all of the pieces together.
If you’re ready to take on the challenge, here are 10 steps to get
your started.

1. Forget the outline.

Outlines are fine unless they derail you. I’ve seen it again and
again: writers who end up spinning their wheels for years,
beholden to a failed outline. The nice thing about an outline is that
it gives you a direction. The bad thing about an outline is that it
limits your novel’s possibilities and may cause you to get
hopelessly stuck. For the first fifty pages, at least, work
without an outline. See where the story is beginning to take
you. Need help with this? Try The Paperclip
Method (http://paperclipmethod.com).

2. Consider the setting.

Setting encompasses not only place, but also time. Where does
your novel happen, and when? Ian McEwan’s chilling novella, The
Comfort of Strangers, derives much of its tension from the setting
of Venice — the convoluted streets and hidden alleys are essential
to the feeling of disorientation that leads to the protagonist’s
undoing. When I began writing The Year of Fog, I knew that this
book could happen only one place: San Francisco. And I knew the
story of a child disappearing into the fog must begin on Ocean
Beach, where the summer fog is so dense, you can see only a few
feet in front of you.

When you consider the setting of your novel, be as specific as

possible. If it begins in a city, what part of the city? What street?
What building? Why does the story happen here?
3. Consider the point of view.
Who is telling the story, from what distance? Do you have a first-
person narrator who is at the center of the action, an omniscient
narrator who is able to go into the thoughts of any character at any
time, a limited third person narration that sticks closely to one
character? Mersault engages the reader’s empathy in The
Stranger, despite his seeming coldness, because the first-person
narration brings the reader straight into Mersault’s mind. We
understand his motivations from his own point of view, and, as a
result, actions that might otherwise seem reprehensible begin to
make sense to us.

4. Consider the protagonist.

There has to be someone at the center of the action. Generally, this
will be someone your reader ends up rooting for, no matter how
flawed the character may be. (And he or she must be flawed in
order to be realistic.) Emma Bovary is deeply flawed, but in the
end, we care what happens to her as she hurtles toward self-
destruction. Flaubert isn’t easy on Emma, but he portrays her in
all of her complexity — her ambition, her passion, her rapacious
desire for status and luxury. Every great novel is character-driven;
your protagonist must be a character worth caring about.
5. Embrace fragments.

Don’t be afraid to write a paragraph here, a page there. Not

everything has to be a full-fledged chapter in the early stages of
novel-writing. If you have a scene in your head that you know you
want to write, go for it. But if you sit down at your computer and
feel flustered and uncertain, allow yourself the freedom to think in
small bits. Tell yourself, “Today I’m going to write 1200 words
about where my character lives,” or “Today I’m going to write 500
words about what’s troubling the narrator,” or “Today I’m going to
write the last paragraph of the novel.” That last one is kind of
weird, right? But the point is, you don’t have to write in a linear
fashion. You can piece your novel together later. For now, get
some stuff on the page. Try a workbook like Novel Starter: 50 Days
of Exercises and Advice to Get Your Novel off the Ground, which I
created exactly for this purpose.

6. Consider the conflict.

No matter what kind of novel you’re writing, no matter the genre,
there is no novel without trouble. Every story begins with conflict.
What’s yours? In Gone Girl, a woman goes missing in the first
chapter, and her husband appears to be implicated in her
disappearance. In Here Is Where We Meet, a middle-aged man
meets his dead mother along an aqueduct in Lisbon, and must
come to terms not only with his own country’s past, but also with
the mysterious nature of the uncertain boundaries between life
and death. My latest novel, The Marriage Pact, opens with a
man alone on a small plane with a stranger, injured and starving,
unsure what day it is, where he’s going, or exactly how he got his
injuries. No matter where you start, remember: your novel must
begin with trouble.

While you don’t necessarily have to include conflict in the first

page of a novel, it doesn’t hurt. Make the reader understand,
somewhere within the first 10 pages, why this story is being told.

7. Consider the stakes.

What is at risk in the story? What does your protagonist stand to
lose or gain? What does he or she want, and why is it important?
The stakes must be clear if you want the reader to care. Often,
there will be more than one thing at stake, more than one big risk.
In my fourth novel, Golden State, the narrator is trying to get
across San Francisco to deliver her sister’s baby on the day that
California is voting on whether or not to secede from the nation. In
the midst of this action, there is a hostage crisis that threatens the
narrator’s safety and that of her sister and her co-workers. The
stakes are both personal and public. Remember, your characters
do not exist in a vacuum; their lives play out against a larger
backdrop. They are part of the wider world.

8. Write what you don’t know.

The old adage is, “Write what you know.” But you also need to be
willing to write what you don’t know. In the spirit of discovery,
allow one character to work in a field about which you know very
little, or allow some element of the plot, or a subplot, to delve into
something you find unusual. Then research it. Sure, you could
make your main character’s sister a struggling writer, something
you presumably know a thing or two about, but that’s a little
boring, isn’t it? Why not make her a welder instead? Then go
online and research welding. Take a welder out for beer. Write five
paragraphs that can be sprinkled throughout your novel that
embrace the lingo and physicality of welding. Voila–you’ve created
something interesting and textural, something that may just take
you in an unusual metaphorical direction you never would have
imagined if you were sticking to what you knew. (I call these
breathers, and I go into depth on the subject in The Paperclip
Method).
When I was writing my novel No One You Know, I had a
character who was a math prodigy. Math was always my worst
subject in school, and even in adult life, my limitations in
mathematics have been something of an albatross. But the book
required me to stretch myself, and I ended up writing in depth
about The Goldbach Conjecture, a mathematical mystery that has
remained unsolved for hundreds of years. I learned a great deal
not only about that one math problem, but about the world of
mathematics and the personalities that populate it. I also came
across one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read, A
Mathemetician’s Apology, by G. H. Hardy. If I’d chosen to skim
the math part, I would have had an easier time of it, but a much
less interesting journey.

9. Set a deadline, but be realistic and kind.

Not for the completion of the novel, but for the first fifty pages. Set
a second deadline, far enough in the future, for the completion of
the second fifty pages. It’s great to tell yourself you’re going to
write a novel in a month, but it can be very discouraging once you
get to the end of the month and realize you’ve produced only 35
pages. 35 pages is great, unless you’ve set yourself up for failure by
believing you would produce 300 in that amount of time. If you do
choose to write a novel in 30 days, keep in mind that you’re
 writing a first draft. Be kind to yourself and set yourself up for
success by setting realistic deadlines.

10: Find a trusted reader (but don’t show it to

everyone you know)
One of the biggest mistakes beginning writers make is showing
their early efforts to anyone who will look. I know, it’s tempting.
You’re writing a novel. You want feedback! You want support! You
want someone to tell you it’s awesome. But hold your horses. If
you let too many people see your novel too early, they’re going to
have all sorts of ideas about where it should go and what it should
be about, what you should include and what you should leave out.

Give yourself some time to get your own vision onto the page
before other visions interject. Many novels are written by
collaboration, but most are not written by committee. It’s your
story; spend some quality alone time with it. Then, when you’re
deep enough into the work to understand what you’re trying to do,
take a class (my Novel Writing Master Class might be just
what you need) or find a supportive writing group.

How to Write a Novel

Four Parts:Writing HelpCreating a Fictional WorldDrafting the NovelRevising the NovelCommunity Q&A
Gather inspiration from other novels or from media, past experiences, stories you've
heard, or things that fascinate you. Carry a small notebook with you at all times and
write down any words, sentences, or descriptions that come to mind. Have an idea of
what genre you'd like your novel to be. Envision where your story will take place, as well
as what the characters who will populate your novel will be like. Think of a central
conflict and branch out your story from that issue. Make an outline and conduct any
necessary research. Establish a writing routine that you can stick to on a regular basis,
and create your first draft. Self-edit, share your work with a few others, and revise your
draft until you feel satisfied with what you've created!
 Part 1
Creating a Fictional World
1.

1
Get inspired. Writing a novel is a creative process, and you never know when a good idea
might come to you. Carry a notebook and a pen so you can jot down ideas wherever you go.
You might feel inspired by something you hear on your morning commute, or while daydreaming
in a coffee shop. You never know when you'll be inspired, so you should keep your eyes and
ears open wherever you go.

 Don't wait for inspiration to come to you. Writing is kind of like digestion — there won't be output
if there's no input. For example, you know when you get an idea out of absolutely nowhere,
 while you're doing something totally irrelevant to your idea? That's when you observe
something, let it slip into your subconscious where it gets processed, and at some point, returns
back to your conscious. In some instances, these are some of the best resources for ideas —
the spontaneity of these ideas can really help to develop rich irony or exciting twists and turns in
your story.
 Being a writer, you need constant inspiration. Sometimes, writers find it difficult to have ideas
popping in their head. All writers face this problem, and the best medicine is inspiration.
 It doesn't necessarily have to be a book — it can be a TV show, a movie or even travelling to an
exhibition or art gallery. Inspiration comes in infinite forms!
 Use your notebook to write fragments, paragraphs, or even sentences, that will become part of
a more complete story.
 Think about all of the stories you've been told — stories passed down from your great-
grandmother, a story that fascinated you on the news, or even a ghost story from your childhood
that has stuck with you.
 Consider a moment from your childhood or past that stuck with you. It could be the mysterious
death of a woman in your town, your old neighbor's obsession with pet ferrets, or a the trip you
took to London that you can't stop thinking about. For example, the ice scene in One Hundred
Years Of Solitude was based on the author's own boyhood experience.
 People say that you should "write what you know." Others believe that you should "write about
what you don't know about what you know." Think of something from your own life that has
inspired, troubled, or intrigued you — how can you explore this topic more fully in a novel?
2.
2
Consider your genre. Not every novel fits neatly into a certain category, but it's helpful to think
about your intended genre and audience as you begin planning your work. Read all of the major
works that fall into your chosen genre to get a good understanding of how to construct a novel
according to the standards of your chosen genre. And if you haven't completely decided on one
genre or are working in more than one genre, then it's no problem — it's more important to be
aware of what tradition you're working in than to stick to one specific genre or category.
Consider the following options:
 Literary novels are intended to be works of art, complete with deep themes, symbolism, and
complex literary devices. Read classic works by the great novelists and refer to helpful lists
like The Guardian's "100 Greatest Novels of All Time".
 Commercial novels are intended to entertain audiences and sell a lot of copies. They are
divided into many genres, including science fiction, mysteries, thrillers, fantasies, romances, and
historical fiction, among others. Many novels in these genres follow predictable formulas and
are written in long series.
 There is plenty of crossover between literary and commercial novels. Many writers of science
fiction, fantasies, thrillers, and so on create novels just as complex and meaningful as writers of
novels that are classically "literary". Just because a novel sells well does not mean it isn't a work
of art (and vice versa).
 Whatever genre you like or choose to focus on, you should read as many novels as possible
within that genre if you haven't already. This will give you a better sense of the tradition you'll be
working in — and how you can add to or challenge that tradition.
 Part of doing research (see below for more on research) means reading other novels in your
genre or tradition. For example, if you're writing a novel set in World War II told from a French
perspective, read other novels about this topic. How will your novel be different from the rest?
3.
 3
Consider your setting. Once you've decided which genre (or genres) to write within, start
dreaming up a setting for your novel. This goes beyond the particular city where your characters
will dwell; you've got an entire universe to dream up. The setting you create will determine the
mood and tone of your novel, and will affect the problems your characters will face. Think about
these questions as you sketch out the parameters of the new world you're creating:

 Will it be loosely based on places that are familiar to you in real life?
 Will it be set in the present, or in some other time?
 Will it take place on Earth, or somewhere imaginary?
 Will it be centered in one city or neighborhood, or expanded to a range of locations?
 What kind of society does it take place in?
 What is the governmental and social structure?
 Will it take place over the course of a month, a year, or decades?
 Will the world be cast in shadows, or will it inspire optimism?
4.

4
Create your characters. The most important character of your novel will be your protagonist,
who should be fleshed out with recognizable personality traits and thought patterns.
Protagonists don't necessarily have to be likable, but they are usually relatable in some way so
that readers stay interested in the story. One of the joys of reading fiction is recognizing yourself
and living vicariously through your favorite characters.
 Your protagonist and other characters don't have to be likable, but do have to be interesting.
Like Lolita's Humbert Humbert, the character can be despicable — as long as he is fascinating.
 Your novel also doesn't have to have just one protagonist. You can have multiple characters
that engage the readers and engage each other harmoniously or through conflict, and you can
even play around with telling the story from multiple points of view.
 Your world should be populated with other characters too. Think about who will interact with
your protagonist, serving as either friends or foils.
 You don't have to know exactly who will populate your novel before you begin. As you write, you
may find that your real protagonist is actually one of the minor characters you created, or you
may find new characters creeping up where you didn't expect them to be.
 Many novelists describe thinking of their characters as real people, asking themselves what the
characters would do in a given situation and doing their best to stay "true" to the characters.
Your characters should be so well-developed in your mind that it feels natural to help them
navigate your fictional world.
5.
 5
Visualize the plot. This step could either make or break your novel. Many times do novels have
good characters, but not a good plot. If you do not do this right then it will drive your readers
away. A common theme in designing a plot is to create conflict. Most novels, regardless of
genre, have some sort of conflict. Tension builds until the problem comes to a climax, and then
it's resolved in some way. This doesn't mean novels always have happy endings; it's more
about providing motivations for the characters' actions and creating a vehicle for change and
meaning across the span of your novel.

 There is no set formula for the plot of a perfect novel. Though one traditional approach is to
have rising action (building the details and tension in the story), a conflict (the main crisis of the
novel), and a resolution (the final outcome of the crisis), this is not the only way to do it.
 You can start with a central conflict and work backwards to show why it matters. For example, a
girl can be returning home for her father's funeral, and the reader may not know why this is
going to lead to a major conflict momentarily.
 Your novel also doesn't have to neatly "resolve" the conflict. It's okay to leave some loose ends
undone — if your readers like your novel, they'll be more than happy to tie up those loose ends
themselves (speculation, fan fiction, discussion, and the like).
 Your novel also doesn't have to be linear. It can start in the present, jump back and forth
between the past and the present, or even start in the past and jump ahead twenty years — do
whatever works best for telling your story. For an example of a nonlinear novel,
see Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar.
 Read some of your favorite novels and follow the plot arc. See how the novel is put together.
This can be even more interesting if the novel isn't linear.
6.
 6
Decide on a point of view. Novels are typically written in the third or the first person, though
they can also be written in the second person, or in a combination of multiple perspectives. The
first person is the "I" voice that is told directly from the point of view of a character; the second
person, less commonly used, addresses the readers as "you" and tells the reader exactly what
he or she is doing, and the third person describes a character or set of characters from an
outside perspective.

 You don't have to decide on the point of view of the novel before you write the first sentence. In
fact, you may write the first chapter — or even the entire draft of the first novel — before you
have a better idea of whether the novel will sound better in the first person or the third.
 There's no hard and fast rule about what point of view will work better for what type of novel. But
if you're writing a panoramic novel with a wide variety of characters, the third person can help
you manage all of the characters that populate your novel.
7.

7
Consider starting from scratch. Though it's great to start with a genre, plot, characters, and a
setting in mind, if you want to write a novel, you shouldn't get too bogged down with all these
details first. You can get inspired by something simple — a historical moment, a snatch of a
conversation you hear in the grocery store, or a story your grandmother once told. This can be
enough to get you writing and to start creating something from what you already know.

 If you're too preoccupied about details even before your first draft, you may actually be stifling
your own creativity.
 Part 2
Drafting the Novel
1.

1
Consider making an outline. Every novelist has a different method for starting a new novel.
Creating an outline can be a good way to map out your ideas and give you small goals to
accomplish as you work toward the larger goal of writing an entire book. But if you write from the
hip and don't have all the details — or any of them — down yet, then you should just let yourself
 get inspired and write whatever feels right until you latch on to something that really appeals to
you.

 Your outline does not have to be linear. You could do a quick sketch of each character's arc,
or make a Venn diagram showing how different characters' stories will overlap.
 Your outline is a guide, not a contract. The point is simply to jump-start the writing process with
a visual representation of where the story might go. It will certainly change as you begin the
writing process.
 Sometimes an outline can actually be more helpful after you've completed a draft or two of your
novel. This can help you have a better sense of how your novel is structured and can help you
see what does or does not fit, or what should be expanded or compressed.
2.

2
 Find a writing routine that works for you. To complete your first draft, you'll need to find a
time and place that is conducive to your writing goals. You can write at the same time every
morning or evening, write in spurts throughout the day, or write in long bouts three days a week.
Whatever your routine may be, you can't just write when you're inspired — that's a myth. You'll
have to treat writing like real work and stick to a regular routine, whether you "feel" like writing
on a certain day or not.

 Create a writing space to help you get into a routine. Find a cozy place where you can relax and
there are no distractions. Invest in a chair that won't give you back pains after hours and hours
of sitting and writing. You don't write a book in an hour; it takes months, so protect your back.
 Your routine can also include what you need to eat or drink before or during your scheduled
writing time. Does coffee make you feel more alert and aware, or too jittery to be productive?
Does a big breakfast energize you, or leave you feeling sluggish?
3.
3
Do your research. The amount of research you need to do will depend on the novel you write.
Be sure to know, research, and learn as much as you can about your novel's setting (starting
with the character's culture, locale, and era). The research you'll need to do to write historical
fiction set during the Revolutionary War, for example, will be more copious than the research
you may need to write a Young Adult novel inspired by your own experiences in high school.
Still, whatever novel you're writing, you'll need to do enough research to make sure that the
events in your novel are accurate and believable.
 Make use of the library. You'll be able to find most of the information you need in your local
library, and libraries are also excellent places to do some writing.
 Interview people. If you're unsure whether a topic you're writing about rings true, find someone
with firsthand knowledge on the subject and ask a lot of questions.
 Researching can also influence the scope and content of your novel. As you read more about
the time period or topic you're writing about, you may find some new details that are completely
fascinating — and which change the entire direction of your novel.
4.

4
Write a first draft. When you feel ready, sit down and begin writing the first draft of your novel.
Don't worry about making the language perfect — no one will read this draft but you. Write
without judging yourself. The first draft of a novel does not have to be spectacular — it just has
 to be done. Don't hold back. The roughest parts of the novel may turn out to be the most
compelling in future drafts.

 Make the commitment and write every single day — or as often as you can. You do need to
understand what you're undertaking. Many wonderful writers go unnoticed and unread because
their drawers are filled with unfinished novels.
 Set small goals — finishing a chapter, a few pages, or a certain amount of words every few
days — to keep yourself motivated.
 You can also set long-term goals — let's say you're determined to finish the first draft of a novel
in one year, or even in six months. Pick an "end date" and stick to it.
Part 3
Revising the Novel
1.
 1
Write as many drafts of your novel as necessary. You may get lucky and only need to write
three drafts to get it right. Or you may write twenty drafts before your novel rings true. The
important part is slowing down and figuring out when your work feels done and ready to share
with others — if you share it too early, your creativity will be stifled. Once you've written enough
drafts of your novel and feel ready to move on, you can move on to the editing stage.

 When asked what was the hardest part of writing the ending for A Farewell to Arms(after
rewriting it thirty-nine times) Ernest Hemingway famously replied, "Getting the words right".
 After you've written your first draft, take a break from it for a few weeks, or even a few months,
and try to sit back and read it as if you were one of your readers. Which parts need more
explaining? Which parts are too long and boring?
 A good rule of thumb is that if you find yourself skipping over long chunks of your novel, your
readers will, too. How can you make the novel more appealing to them by cutting down or
revising these cumbersome parts?
 Each new draft, or new revision, can focus on addressing one or multiple aspects of the novel.
For example, you can write one entirely new draft focusing on making the narrator more
interesting to readers, another draft that hones in on developing the setting of the events, and a
third that fleshes out the central romance in the novel.
 Repeat this process over and over until you have a draft you'd be proud to show other people. It
may be months or years before your novel gets to this stage; be patient with yourself.
2.
 2
Practice self-editing. When you have reached the point where you have written a solid draft of
your novel, you can start editing your work. Now you can focus on cutting paragraphs or
sentences that aren't working, getting rid of any awkward or repetitive phrasing, or just
streamlining your prose. There's no need to edit every sentence you write after the first draft —
most of the words will change by the time you've completed a solid draft anyway.

 Print out your novel and read it aloud. Cut or revise anything that just doesn't sound right.
 Don't be too attached to your writing, for example a particular paragraph that just isn't moving
the story forward. Challenge yourself to make the right decision. You can always use the
paragraph in a different piece.
3.
 3
Show your work to other people. Begin by showing your writing to someone you completely
trust, so you can get used to the feeling of having others read your work. Since it isn't always
easy to get honest feedback from people who love you and want to spare your feelings,
consider getting outside opinions in one or more of the following ways:

 Join a writing workshop. Local colleges and writing centers are great places to find fiction
workshops. You'll review other people's writing and receive notes on yours as well.
 Start a writing group. If you know a few other people who are writing novels, arrange to meet
with them once a month to share progress and ask for tips.
 Take advice with a grain of salt. If someone tells you a chapter isn't working, get a second
opinion before you decide to cut it from your manuscript.
 If you're really committed to finishing a novel, you can consider applying to an M.A. or an M.F.A.
program in creative writing. These programs offer a supportive and inviting environment for
sharing your work with others. Additionally, they can help motivate you by setting deadlines for
completing your work.
4.

4
Consider trying to publish your novel. Many first-time novelists look at their novel as a
learning experience that can help them write stronger fiction in the future; however, if you feel
very confident about your novel and want to try to take it to a publisher, then there are a number
of routes you can take. You can choose a traditional book publishing house, an online e-
publisher, or self-publishing.
 If you're going the traditional route, it helps to find a literary agent to shop your book around to
publishers. Go to Writer's Market for a list of agents. You'll be asked to submit a query letter and
a synopsis of your manuscript.
 Self-publishing companies vary widely in quality. Before choosing a company, ask for a few
samples so you can see the quality of their paper and printing.
 And if you don't want to go the publishing route, that's not a problem. Congratulate yourself on a
job well done and move on to your next creative project.

Community Q&A
 How do I make a vivid description of something, someone, or a place?
wikiHow Contributor

Begin by focusing on small elements of it or the person. If you are describing a field, start with
the green grass, move onto the sky, and the background elements in the distance. Using
visually descriptive and evocative words will help.

Not Helpful 7 Helpful 97

 How can I give my character a good name?

wikiHow Contributor

Browse baby naming pages; you can find them online or in a baby naming book. They have
thousands of names and are very helpful, even if you're not pregnant. You can also make up an
original name if you want your character to be from a different world or just have an interesting
name.

Not Helpful 5 Helpful 70

 How do I come up with a good title for my novel?

wikiHow Contributor

One popular way to come up with a title for a novel is taking a key point in the story and using
that as an element in your title. For example, if your novel were about humans making contact
with aliens on another planet, you could title it based on that main event, such as Carl Sagan's
book Contact. Similarly, you can also use a title as a form of summary for your novel, for
example, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The title of the novel provides insight into
the actual focus of the book in that case. Finally, you could take an important word or moment in
the book, like Twilight, and make that your title.

Not Helpful 11 Helpful 119

 Can a child (like myself) write a novel? I've got a great idea!
wikiHow Contributor

Go for it! Lay out the plot in a graphic organizer, and write a rough draft (or three) before you
actually write the final draft.
 Not Helpful 16 Helpful 156

 What are some great first sentences?

wikiHow Contributor

Start short. Don't immediately say all the details of the story in the first sentence. Let the readers
figure it out. That way the readers will continue reading the novel/book. Start it something like: "I
was going to die tomorrow." But it's up to you on what mood you're going to give to the
audience. The example above give a thrilling mood which introduces the first part of the novel.

Not Helpful 8 Helpful 81

 How do I write an outline?

wikiHow Contributor

Write out the introduction, middle and ending expectations. Write the major points of events that
are going to happen in the novel. This will serve as a guide while you write, in case you forget.
You can fill in more details around the major points.

Not Helpful 8 Helpful 69

 Where I can publish my novel?

wikiHow Contributor

Research publishers online to find out what kind of books they are interested in. Keep in mind
that you only get one chance per publishing company. Also, it's very difficult to publish a novel
without a literary agent.

Not Helpful 4 Helpful 41

 Is this article is good for 15-year old Filipino beginners?

wikiHow Contributor

This article is good for just about everyone. It is the basics of writing. No matter how
inexperienced or even how experienced in writing you are, all of this probably applies for you.
you don't have to follow it word for word, just take it as a small guideline which you can loosely
follow.

Not Helpful 7 Helpful 58

 What if my novel is not liked by many people and it does not make it to the bookshops?
wikiHow Contributor

Don't give up! Most of the books you see now weren't famous from the start. As time passes,
more and more people read it and then it becomes famous. You could also read more books to
get more ideas and to adapt some techniques. I'm not saying to plagiarize, but you could
somehow tweak it a bit so that it works for you. Practice writing. Even if it isn't for your novel,
writing random stories of different varieties can help out a lot. You could write several more and
send out copies to your editor/publisher, your friends/families, or publish it as an eBook for
devices such as Kindles.
 Not Helpful 1 Helpful 17

 How do I convert it to other languages?

wikiHow Contributor

Get help from a person who can speak the language and English so he can help you translate
the novel, or use a reliable translator.

Not Helpful 4 Helpful 32

Show more answers

Unanswered Questions

 What if I am a science student who just loves reason and writing novels?

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Tips
 Read lots of books (especially ones similar in genre or relevant to yours in any way); before,
during, and after you've written your novel. That will help you in many ways.

 Remember to make characters that have similar and different personality traits (including
opinions) compared with each other's and your own.

 There are plenty of notepad applications (i.e. Google Keep, Astrid Tasks) for your
smartphone/iPod/tablet that can be incredibly useful for documenting those random ideas
wherever you are. Some devices even have office suites/word processors which can allow you
to write on the go.

 Invest some time (or a lot), whether writing or not, in music — specifically, songs that bring to
mind a particular emotion, sensation, or short story. Search within your current collection of
CD's/tapes/vinyls/MP3s, as well as explore other genres and moods. Compile a list of songs
that would fit your novel/story, kind of like the soundtrack to a movie. This can help give you
ideas on how to add emotion to parts of your draft that you find bland or lacking emotion. Or you
can try to write a scene or chapter based on what you feel from hearing a particular song.
 You'll know after a while if a story you're writing has really captivated your attention and
imagination. If you don't feel this right away, keep developing ideas and trying. Sometimes it
helps to listen to music in between moments when you're writing. The right songs can give you
ideas on different scenarios and chapters, and how characters might feel about these
adventures, themselves or even other characters around them.

 Start a diary or journal and read more, as this will improve your skills. Remember, if you want to
change something, change it. Your novel can evolve from a war in the Middle East to a simple
high school predicament. It happens, whether you're just starting your book or in the middle of it.
So make sure you really think about things before you write them.

 If you're stuck on how to move the story forward, imagine one of your characters standing
behind you and telling you what they'd do in that situation.

 Write about anything you desire. If you're a sci-fi nut, you probably won't have as much fun with
a historical fiction work.

 "It is better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self."
Write your story the way you want. There are markets for all genres, and there will always be a
slot for your story if it's well written and interesting.

 Write a page a day regardless of how creative you are feeling.

Show 9 more tips

How to write a bestselling novel

Everyone has a book in them, but how do you get it out? Here are some great
tips from the ‘book doctor’ Philippa Pride

 How to write a killer script

 How to write fan fiction
 Win a place on a creative writing weekend with Philippa Pride
 Share pictures of where you write
 Every time I tell people that I’m trying to write a thriller, I am reminded
of Peter Cook’s quip: “I met a man at a party and he said, ‘I’m writing a
novel.’ I said, ‘Really? Neither am I.’”
 I haven’t been trying to write a novel for more than a year now. I have a
synopsis, a few characters and, I think, a half-decent premise. I consume
thrillers – studying them for clues on how to write the perfect one – as
 well as many self-help books on writing in general, from Dorothea
Brande’s inspirational guide Becoming a Writer to Stephen King’s On
Writing via Louise Doughty’s A Novel in a Year. They are all diversions,
of course, from the vexed business of writing itself: simply putting one
word after another until chapters magically emerge.


 Sign up for the Bookmarks email


 Read more
 In my mind, I continually entertain myself with fragments of narrative,
dialogue and plot twists but as soon as I’m in front of a blank page, they
evaporate. I feel stuck. Sometimes I think I should give up, but I have
convinced myself that if I can find a way to write more freely and
suppress my inner critic, I could finally finish that first draft.
 Is it too much to hope for? Not according to the “book doctor” Philippa
Pride, who is a writing coach, King’s UK editor and something of an
expert on getting “into the flow”.
 Over the course of our session together, Philippa listens to my problems,
then suggests exercises and offers advice to help free me up. The great
news is that these are simple techniques anyone can try so give her tips
below a go.
 Make it a daily habit
 The only way to improve your writing – or get started at all – is to do it
daily. Brande recommends 15 minutes. Philippa says seven minutes,
because it’s very achievable but also enough to make progress. The real
test is whether you can commit to the routine. Usually, I find any excuse
not to sit down, even if it is only for seven minutes. But as Brande
declares, “If you fail repeatedly at this exercise, give up writing. Your
resistance is actually greater than your desire to write.” Realising this is
a great motivator to write.
 Silence your inner critic
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
  –– ADVERTISEMENT ––

 As well as committing a small amount of time to writing your story each

day, stream-of-consciousness writing is key to freeing up your creativity.
Philippa recommends writing whatever comes into your head in
longhand for at least three pages. Or try answering a question about a
desired outcome, as in “How can I make more time to write?”
 This isn’t about quality of thought or honing style, and certainly isn’t
meant to be read by anyone else. “It’s a way of unburdening yourself on
paper. It’s writing therapy, to help you suppress that inner censor,”
Philippa says. She makes me practise, and at first I panic about what I
am going to write. But gradually I feel myself relax and begin filling page
after page with random thoughts, expanding on ideas and writing
dialogue. It felt like I was letting go of my inhibition and, by the end, I
didn’t even feel self-conscious reading my mad ramblings aloud.
 Find an image to inspire you
 If you are stuck for ideas, paintings and photographs can help inspire a
story, says Philippa. Choose an image, ideally figurative, and ask
questions about what’s happening. “Imagine a scenario, decide where
the characters are and what they’re doing, their names and
relationships,” says Philippa, handing me a photocopy of Degas’ Les
Repasseuses. “You’ve got 15 minutes to write a story about this. Try to
include some dialogue – then read it out.”
 At first I stalled, wondering how on earth I could weave a compelling
story about two 19th century French women ironing. Then I began to
scrutinise their features, their expressions, gave them names, and a
scenario sprang to mind. I couldn’t wait to read it out.
 “If you’re writing a novel, think about finding some images related to
your story and putting them on a pinboard or desktop as inspiration,”
says Philippa.
 What if?
 A really useful technique for generating new ideas, or testing a more
developed storyline, is to use the “what if”. As King says: “The most
interesting situations can usually be expressed as a ‘what if’ question:
what if vampires invaded a small New England village? (Salem’s Lot).
What if a young mother and her son became trapped in their stalled car
 by a rabid dog? (Cujo).” Come up with three different “what ifs”,
suggests Philippa, then choose the one you feel has most potential and
start writing. Begin with a situation, then add the character and see
where the story leads you.
 Hone your narrative
 Now that you have devised a handful of “what ifs”, try to sum up your
storyline as though it were a blurb on the back of a book. “The cover
blurb is a conversation with a reader and is key to selling any book,”
Philippa tells me. “Writing it at the start of your book will help you to
clarify what it’s really about and what makes it compelling.” Go to your
bookshelf and pull out a selection of books in a similar genre to one
you’d like to write. Use them as a model for your blurb and see what you
come up with.
 Push on
 Most agents want to see a full story from a novice, so my goal is to finish
my first draft. Philippa also tells me to start thinking of an outline for a
second book, so any potential publishers see me as an investment.
 A few weeks after the course, I’m much more committed to writing. I
start each day with five minutes of free writing and spend 20 minutes on
the thriller. The aim is to finish three chapters by Christmas. I am
quietly confident. If nothing else, it’s certainly the most productive I’ve
been at not writing my novel so far.
 Win a place on a Guardian Masterclass with
Philippa Pride
 • Philippa Pride is hosting a Guardian Masterclass to help aspiring
novelists overcome writer’s block, find their voice and enjoy the writing
process. The course will be held on 27-28 September 2014, 10am-5pm.
For details, visit theguardian.com/masterclasses. Enter to win a place
on the course at theguardian.com/masterclasses-competition

 Contribute with guardian witness


 Since you’re here …

 … we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian
than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And
unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want
to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to
ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism
takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it
 because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be
your perspective, too.
 Unrivalled, in-depth journalism that has become essential to me.
Incredible coverage of my homeland news with an eye I hardly find in
the local media. Time has come for me to support.Roland P, France
 If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps fund it, our
future would be much more secure. For as little as £1, you can
support the Guardian – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.

20 Writing Tips from Fiction

Authors
Writing success boils down to hard work, imagination and passion—and then some more hard work.
iUniverse Publishing fires up your creative spirit with 20 writing tips from 12 bestselling fiction
authors.

Use these tips as an inspirational guide—or better yet, print a copy to put on your desk, home office,
refrigerator door, or somewhere else noticeable so you can be constantly reminded not to let your
story ideas wither away by putting off your writing.

Tip1: "My first rule was given to me by TH White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other
Arthurian fantasies and was: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people
who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres
and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt." — Michael Moorcock

Tip 2: "Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people
who are most important to you." — Zadie Smith

Tip 3: "Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel. If you are writing a
plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first
third, which you can call the introduction. Develop your themes and characters in your second third,
the development. Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution."
— Michael Moorcock

Tip 4: "In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go
before it." — Rose Tremain

Tip 5: "Always carry a note-book. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains
information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever." — Will
Self

Tip 6: "It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction."
— Jonathan Franzen

"Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet." — Zadie Smith

Tip 7: "Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting." — Jonathan Franzen

Tip 8: "Read it aloud to yourself because that's the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences
are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out—they can be got right only by
ear)." — Diana Athill

Tip 9: "Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." – Anton
Chekhov

Tip 10: "Listen to the criticisms and preferences of your trusted 'first readers.'" — Rose Tremain

Tip 11: "Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't
worth writing for anything but money." — Jonathan Franzen

Tip 12: "Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of
bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in
quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling
income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these,
however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the
problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long
walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails,
there's prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If
you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic
poetry, too." — Sarah Waters

Tip 13: "The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement – if you can't deal with this you
needn't apply." — Will Self

Tip 14: "Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!" — Joyce Carol Oates

Tip 15: "The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator." — Jonathan Franzen

Tip 16: "Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per
100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does,
you can throw them in by the handful." — Elmore Leonard

Tip 17: "Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are
almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are
almost always wrong." — Neil Gaiman

Tip 18: "You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look
upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never,
ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real
business of writing and should be cherished." — Will Self

Tip 19: "The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're
allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely
true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you
can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter." — Neil Gaiman
Tip 20: "The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying ‘Faire et se
taire’ (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as ‘Shut up and get on with it.’" — Helen Simpson

Even famous authors sometimes have a tough time with writing; they also go through periods of self-
doubt. Despite this, they always manage to come up with the goods. So take a lesson from them
and stop putting off your writing plans and get started on your publishing journey today.

There has never been a better time than now to realize your dream of becoming a published author.
Let your voice be heard and let your story be told. Never let your passion for writing wane. Let
iUniverse help you achieve your ambitions »

How to Write a Novel Step by Step

The toughest part of learning how to write a novel is knowing
where to start and how to keep on going to the end. This section of
Novel Writing Help is all about demystifying the writing process.

Figuring out how to write a novel can be confusing, probably because there
are so many steps to take…

You’ve got to create all the characters and write a watertight plot. You’ve got
to build an atmospheric setting and decide on a theme. So it’s little wonder
that the question I’m most often asked is, Where do I even begin?!

The answer is that you begin by studying a good map and familiarizing
yourself with the route. The step-by-step process outlined below is your map.

A word of warning before we start…

This article isn’t short. But it’s critical to your success as a novel writer.
Without a solid plan of action, it’s all too easy to find yourself in a hopeless
mess a few chapters in. So please…

Take your time!

Ask 100 writers how to write a novel and you’ll get 100 different answers. And
all of them will be right!
Pretty soon, it will be time to get to work on your novel. And you too will need
to discover a process that works for you. And guess what? Whatever process
you settle on, you’ll be right!

But first you need some guidance…

In Planners, Pantsters and the Middle Way, we’ll discuss the two broad
approaches to writing a novel…

 Planning (or outlining) everything in advance, so that you know what

happens in every chapter before you write a single word of your novel.
 Diving straight into chapter one, after the bare minimum of planning,
and working out what happens as you go (i.e. writing your novel by the
seat of your pants).

What are the pros and cons of each approach? And is one approach better
than the other?

We’ll cover all of that. And as the heading implies, we’ll also look at the
“middle way” – one that draws on the advantages (and hopefully none of the
disadvantages) of each approach.

Having decided how much of your time you’ll devote to planning and writing
respectively, the next step is to dig deeper into the process itself…

In Writing a Novel from the Inside Out, we’ll look at how the best way to
“grow” a novel is not in a straight line (i.e. from the first thing that happens to
the last) but more like an expanding ripple on water.

Finally, we’ll run through The Steps themselves and lay out everything you
need to do. Let’s go…

Planners, Pantsters and the Middle Way

You’ve probably heard of planners and pantsters (sometimes called plotters
and pantsters). I prefer “planner.” Plotting is just working out what happens –
the sequence of events. Planning is broader, including tasks like getting to
know your characters and researching the setting.

The basic idea?

  Some folks like to outline their novels in detail before writing a word.
These are the planners.
 Others like to dive straight in to the actual writing. Armed with little more
than an idea for a character and a situation to put them in, they start at
chapter one and write the novel by the seat of their pants.

There’s actually less difference between planners and pantsters than you
might think. At the most basic level, writing a solid draft of a novel involves just
three steps…

1. Planning. Sometimes called outlining. This is where you work

out what you want to say (in note form, or sometimes just in your head).
2. Writing. Here, you transform the plan into prose and dialogue.
3. Revising. This involves checking that everything makes sense (that
there are no plot holes or character inconsistencies, for example).

Now here’s the thing…

The planner puts a huge amount of effort into the first two steps. The final
step, revision, is little more than a quick run-through to correct any
inconsistencies that crept in during the actual writing.

The pantster, on the other hand, puts all her effort into the final two steps.
Outlining the novel takes very little time at all (she doesn’t do any!). The bulk
of the hours go into writing the first draft, and then making sense of it during
revision.

In other words, planning and revising are essentially the same thing. It’s just
that the planner does it in advance and the pantster does it after the event.

Which way is best?

The big advantage of writing a novel by the seat of your pants (assuming that
that’s the approach you are naturally drawn to) is that it’s enjoyable! You get a
kick out of sitting down in front of a blank sheet of paper and having no idea
where today’s work session will take you.

The last thing you want to hear is someone telling you that your way of
working is all wrong. So I won’t do that! But I do feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald
felt when he said this about Thomas Wolfe…

God, I wish he could discipline himself and really plan a novel.

What’s the disadvantage of being a pantster?

The likelihood is that writing a novel by the seat of your pants will result in a
mess (that’s if you finish the novel at all). And the time it takes to unravel that
mess, during the revision stage, may well be longer than if you’d actually done
some planning (ideally a lot of planning) in the first place.

Isn’t it possible to write by the seat of your pants and produce a story that isn’t
a mess?

Yes. But not when you’re learning your craft. When you’ve got a few novels
under your belt, you probably will have the ability to start writing with the
minimum of planning (or even none at all) and end up with a story that is bang
on the money in terms of character development, plot progression and all the
rest of it. For now, though, here’s my best advice…

Plan your novel in as much detail as you can stand.

But isn’t planning boring? Actually, it’s not – not if you see it as equally
creative as writing a first draft, which it is. Think about it…

The main difference between planning and writing is that one happens in note
form and the other takes the form of prose and dialogue. Apart from that, they
both involve inventing people and places and events in your imagination and
getting them down on paper – and if that’s not pure creativity at work, I don’t
know what is.

Sure, there are some aspects of planning that can be tedious (if you don’t
enjoy that sort of thing), such as writing extensive character profiles – where
they went to school and what their favorite movie is and so on.

But I don’t recommend that you do that kind of detailed planning – not if you
don’t find it useful.

Next, let’s focus in on planners…

If detailed planning in advance is my recommended approach to writing a

novel, does that mean there are no disadvantages to being a planner? Sorry,
but no…
A plan is a means to an end, not the end itself. It’s important insofar as it helps
you to write a better novel. But at the end of the day it’s the novel that people
will read, not the plan.

For some writers, however, planning becomes an end, not a means…

 They write 20-page biographies for each character and draw up

diagrams of their setting on squared paper.
 They plot their novels in such detail that they don’t only know what
happens in each scene, they know what clothes the characters are
wearing and what they all ate for breakfast that morning.

Now, if you love planning and you’re in no hurry to reach the end, there’s
nothing wrong with this. It may take you a decade or more to complete your
novel but, hey, if you’ve only got one novel in you and you’re in no rush to
reach the end, so what?

If, on the other hand, you have ambitions to write a string of novels and earn a
living from writing them, you simply can’t justify taking any longer than
necessary on the plan. So if you still spend a heap of time on the planning,
even though entrepreneur inside you understands that time is money, you
need to ask yourself why…

 Maybe you have a fear of writing first drafts – a fear of that dreaded
blank page that needs to be filled with prose and dialogue. It’s not
uncommon if you do. Planning may be creative, but there’s still no
pressure to turn your creative thoughts into prose and dialogue.
 Maybe you simply love the act of planning. You understand that you’re
probably doing far more than is necessary, but so what? You’re having
a ball doing it!
 Maybe you’re a perfectionist. It’s not that you’re afraid of a blank page
or that you particularly love planning for its own sake. You don’t want to
start the writing right now in case the story starts veering off in an
unplanned and potentially disastrous direction.

In each case, you need to remind yourself that a plan is just a means to an
end. A novel ultimately consists of 80,000 words (or whatever) of prose and
dialogue. Until you start cranking out the words, you’ll remain a long, long way
from the end.
Learn How to Write and Finish a Novel
According to Kurt Vonnegut, “The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or
badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow.” If this is true, then nothing makes for more
mature souls than writing a novel, a form that particularly requires perseverance and
patience. Though there are no hard and fast rules for how to get from the first draft to
bookstore shelf, these guideposts on how to write a novel will help you find your way.

1
Give Some Thought to Plot.
Writing a novel can be a messy undertaking. The editing process will go easier if you
devote time to plot in the beginning. For some writers, this means an outline; others work
with index cards, putting a different scene on each one. Still, others only have a conflict
and a general idea of where they plan to end up before diving in. If you've been writing
for a while, you already know how your brain works and what kind of structure it needs
in order to complete big projects. If you're just starting out, then this may be something
you'll learn about your writing process as you revise your first novel.

2
Get a First Draft Down.
Though it is a good idea to test your idea out on other writers, resist getting feedbackon
the writing itself at this stage. Focus on getting the complete story down on paper instead.
If you have trouble with writer's block or tend to let projects stall, NaNoWriMomight be
helpful. Other writers maintain a regular schedule and spread the writing out over a
longer period of time. Still, others enroll in novel classes, which provide weekly
deadlines and community.

3
Be Prepared to Revise.
At a reading for his first book a few years ago, novelist Dominic Smith commented that
the one thing he wasn't prepared for in writing a novel was the amount of work between
first draft and published book. In one way, this is heartening. However inspired you
might feel while writing it, the first draft will probably be bad. It will be clunky,
disorganized, and confusing. Entire chapters will drag. The dialogue will be
unconvincing and wooden. Rest assured that it's this way for everyone. And like writers
everywhere, you just have to roll up your sleeves and get to work rewriting it.

4
Solicit Feedback.
When you think it's time to start contacting agents, get feedback from writers you trust.
Don't be surprised if they send you back to your desk for another draft. Address any large
structural problems first, and then go through the book scene by scene. Anytime you have
a question about whether something is working, stop and see what you could do to make
it better. Don't just hope the reader won't notice. If you want your book to be good, revise
with your most intelligent, most thoughtful reader in mind.

5
Put It Aside.
If you find yourself banging up against the same problems with every draft, it may be
time to work on something else for awhile. Sixteen years elapsed between the first draft
of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and the published version, for instance. Katherine
Anne Porter likewise took years on some of her most famous stories. If you find yourself
losing your way, go back to the fun parts of writing. Create something new; read for fun.
With each new project you take on and each book you read, you'll learn new lessons.
When you come back to the novel — and you will come back — you'll see it with more
experienced eyes.

How to Write a Novel Step by

Step
The Roadmap is a complete step-by-step process for writing a novel.

It works by starting with a basic story idea and expanding and layering it until
you have a complete manuscript.

It uses a carefully structured approach to build all the critical elements in a

practical, relational way - allowing characters, plot, situation, opponents and
disaster to all influence each other and evolve together as the novel is
planned, drafted and edited.

Each step contains an achievable task which builds on the last, and includes
introductions and explanations of the common features of fiction writing that
sells, with examples for clarification.

Each article assumes minimum prior knowledge, so it’s perfect for beginners,
and if you’re already familiar with some or most of the principles of creative
writing, you can just skip ahead.

The Novel Factory software integrates the Roadmap, but if you wish you can
use the Novel Writing Roadmap completely separately – all the steps are
below.

So, without further ado...

How to write a novel in sixteen steps

Step One: The Premise

Step Two: The skeleton - aka. The Universal Storyline

Step Three: Character Introductions

Step Four: Short Synopsis

Step Five: Extended Synopsis

Step Six: Goal to Decision Cycle

Step Seven: Character Questionnaires

Step Eight: Locations

Step Nine: Advanced Plotting

Step Ten: Character Viewpoints

Step Eleven: Scene Blocking

Step Twelve: Draft One

Step Thirteen: Theme and Variations

Step Fourteen: Draft Two

Step Fifteen: Final Draft

Step Sixteen: Submissions

How to Write a Novel

Looking for advice on how to write a novel?

There's not a right or wrong approach to novel-writing, but here are some general steps to get you
started.

1) Set a writing schedule.

Writing a novel's a big project. If you leave the writing for when you happen to have a free moment,
it's not likely to get done.

You need a plan. For example, maybe you can make writing time by waking up half an hour earlier
every day. It's okay if you can only write for a short time each day; the key is to be consistent.

Imagine you write just half a page per day. If you do that every day, in one year, you can finish a
draft of your novel!

2) Come up with an idea.

Some people get stuck at this step. They're afraid that their ideas aren't brilliant enough or that
they're too much like novels that have already been written.

Remember, though, it's not the idea that will make your novel great or original -- it's what you do with
it.

If you don't have a story idea, you can start with an idea for a character. You might base this
character on someone you've met or seen in the street; you can browse Facebook or Flickr for
photos of strangers and imagine lives for them. The character could even be an alternate version of
yourself.

Once you have a character idea, think of a problem this character might have to deal with.

What is your character afraid of? You could force your character to face his/her fears.

What is your character's secret desire? You could give your character the chance to pursue it -- but
place a major obstacle in his/her path...

3) Develop your idea.

A classic story plot is built around a character's struggle to overcome a problem or to reach a goal.
This struggle gives your story a structure, and it gives readers a reason to keep reading -- they want
to find out if the character will succeed or fail.

Often story ideas begin like this:

- "I want to write about vampires."

- "I want to write a spy thriller about the Cold War."

There's nothing wrong with those ideas as starting points, but they aren't story plots -- yet.

Your next step would be to decide on a main character and a central problem or goal for the
character to struggle with in the story.

4) Outline - or not.
Many novelists like to start with an outline. This doesn't have to be as scary as it might sound.

Remember how we just talked about developing your idea so that your character's struggling with a
problem or trying to reach a goal?

Brainstorm a list of actions your character might take to try to overcome the problem and reach
his/her goal. What new problems or obstacles might arise? What might your character do then? All
of these are possible scene for your novel.

Make a list. Then play with your list, ordering the possible scenes, removing ones that don't seem to
fit and adding new ones to fill the gaps. Voilà -- you have a novel outline!

The outline doesn't have to be in any special format. It's just for you.

Other authors prefer to work without an outline and dive straight into the writing. That's fine too. As
I've said, there's no right or wrong approach.

Should you outline or not? It's not a life-or-death decision either way.

If you start without an outline and feel lost, you can stop and brainstorm some scene ideas to keep
you going. You can go back and outline at any point in the writing process.

On the other hand, if you begin with an outline, you're not stuck with it. When new ideas occur to
you, you can explore them. You can update the outline if you want or leave it behind.
5) Flesh out scenes.
A novel outline might begin like this:

- Karen argues with parents about going to Joan's party.

- Vampires attack Joan's family and take over her house.
- That night, Karen sneaks out of her bedroom and heads to party.

Here you have three scene ideas. Now you have to turn them into scenes with dialogue and action
and descriptive detail.

For example, take the scene where Karen argues with her parents. What does she say? What do
they say back? What is their body language? Where is all of this taking place? If the scene is from
Karen's perspective, what is she thinking?

Imagine the scene as vividly as possible from your main character's perspective. Then try to capture
it on the page.

You want the reader to feel as if s/he's watching the important events of the story in "real time", as if
s/he's actually there.

6) Finish a draft.
It's okay if your rough draft is a mess. It's okay if all the pieces don't fit together. It's okay if you get
bored with it partway through. All of that is normal.

Great novels often begin with messy first drafts. They become great with revision. So just keep
going.

At some point, writing a novel can turn into an endurance test. Don't give up. Don't get distracted by
doubts and by the fantastic, sure-to-be-a-bestseller new ideas that try to tempt you away from your
current project. Your job is to finish that draft, and then you'll have something to revise.

More on How to Write a Novel

Where to Get Creative Writing Ideas. Maybe you want to write a novel, but you're just not sure
about what? Here are some ideas for getting ideas.

Plot Structure. How do you develop your idea into a story plot? Learn the essentials of plot
structure and how to build your novel from start to finish.

Novel Outline. A simple way to lay out a plan for your novel to avoid false starts and dead ends.
Always know where you're headed.

How to Write a Great Beginning. The beginning of your novel is where readers (and agents and
editors) decide whether to keep going or to put your novel down. Learn how to grab readers' interest
right away.

How to Complicate Your Plot. Add plot complications and twists to keep your reader's interest and
prevent your story conflict from resolving itself too quickly.

How to Write a Satisfying Ending. The end of your novel forms the reader's final impression.
Here's some advice on how to write a novel ending will leave readers satisfied.

Frequently Asked Questions. What's the maximum number of characters you can use? How many
points of view can you include? Answers to common questions about how to write a novel.

Elements of a Novel. Need a 2-second review of terms like "narrator," "plot," and "narrative point of
view?"

Types of Novels. Thrillers, science fiction, romance, contemporary realism... there's a heaping
buffet table of options for your novel. Browse around and see which one's for you.

How to Write a Mystery. If you're a mystery buff, you'll have a great time writing a crime novel of
your own. Advice on planning a mystery, planting clues, and getting away with murder.

A Simple Suspense Writing Technique. Here's a simple way to provoke your readers' curiosity
and keep them turning pages.

Use Foreshadowing for Suspense. Learn how to create a suspenseful atmosphere by hinting at
what's going to happen.

How to Write a Thriller. How to write a novel that will get your readers' hearts pounding, their palms
sweating, and their families shouting to get their noses out of the book already and come help with
the dishes...

How to Write Science Fiction. Invent new worlds; explore the wildest possibilities of the universe.
Writing science fiction is a chance to push your intelligence and imagination to the limit.

How to Write Fantasy. If you love creating worlds and prefer magic to science, the fantasy genre's
for you. But even magic has rules. Before starting your novel, read these dos and don'ts.

How to Write Romance. What research should you do before you start writing a romance? How hot
can you make the bedroom scenes? Why are romance novels almost always written from the
perspective of women? Find answers here.

How to Write Historical Fiction. Find out how to write a novel that brings the past to life. Advice on
planning, researching, and writing your historical novel.

More on Writing Historical Fiction. Where and what to research before writing a historical novel,
and why the research really matters. Learn how to write a novel that transports readers to another
place and time.

How to Keep Your Reader Interested. Three important tips to strengthen your story and keep
readers turning pages.

How to Write a Novel - Developing Your Idea. "I've got an idea, so what now?" Ideas are great,
but at some point, you have to turn them into stories. Read about four kinds of writers and how they
take ideas to the next level.

Top Novel Writing Tips. Avoid typical writing mistakes and give your novel the best chance of
success with these top tips from experienced novelists.

Author Interview: Meredith Sue Willis on How to Write a Novel. Novelist Meredith Sue Willis
shares her Archipelago Method to novel-writing and offers advice on keeping up momentum during
the novel-writing process.

Author Interview: Nicole Peeler on Fantasy Writing. Nicole Peeler, author of the Jane True urban
fantasy series, discusses fantasy writing and the line between popular and literary fiction.

Author Interview: Skhye Moncrief on Writing Romance. Romance writer Skhye Moncrief talks
about writing romance novels, what it's like to work with druids, and her thing for kilts.

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