Some of you are staring at me with full drafts thinking, ‘Well, shit. This is a useless post for me.’ Far from it! Unless you plan on only writing one book in your entire career, this is info that can save you tons of rewrites and thousands of words.
Still not convinced you should keep reading? What if I told you that not only can you do these steps at any stage of the drafting process, but that you’ll probably have to do them eventually?
What’s that, you say? You haven’t started your novel yet, but you’re considering it? Perfect! Let’s jump right in 🙂
You have your idea. Now what?
So you want to write a book. You’ve got an awesome concept, or you have some characters in your head that are fighting to get onto the page. Hold your horses! They aren’t going to leave you, trust me.
First thing’s first. I want you to write your pitch and query letter and synopsis. Your agent submission materials. Sleep on them and get feedback from the writing community or reddit or other author friends.
That’s write. I mean, that’s right. I don’t care if you’re a panster or a plotter, pursuing traditional publishing or self-publishing. Everyone can benefit from this, and it won’t infringe upon your writing habits.
I’ll have another blog post soon about query letters and pitches and synopses, but for now stick with:
- a one-sentence pitch.
- 300 word maximum query (including comps and bio)
- one page single synopsis, single-spaced
Feel free to look up advice for these, it’s all over the internet. I posit that it is important, nay, critical to do this before you start your book – even if you’re a pantser. Here are my reasons:
- It forces you to think about what makes your book compelling
- It helps you develop character arcs and flesh out what you want these characters to achieve
- You’ll catch potential pitfalls before they even happen
- You’ll have to settle on a genre, a word count, and a target audience
Let’s go through these one by one. Why might it be good to think about what makes your book compelling? Well, if you’re going the traditional publishing route, agents will be looking for a tight, eye-catching, fresh idea that stands out from the slush pile. Or, you could have a good, marketable one that is well-executed.
Does this mean that originality or weird concepts are dead? No! But too often I met writers who couldn’t succinctly summarize what made their book interesting in a sentence or two (and one who looked back at me from the mirror). And that is not a good sign.
Can you write a book without knowing what it is about? Absolutely! You could break every rule and become a bestselling author. And I could win money at a poker table. But the old adage applies – learn the rules before you break them. My goal is not to dictate how to write your manuscript. I’m here to save you time and rewrites and thousands upon thousands of words.
So do it – tell me about why I should read your book. If you’re in YA fantasy, tell me why I should buy your book over N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season or Naomi Novik’s Uprooted. Compare yourself to the market. Hold yourself to that standard, because agents and editors and publishing houses will too – convince them that they should take a risk on you and your book over something that these authors push out.
If your current concept can’t meet that standard, then refine it! You’d be surprised how easily you can extend concepts to make them mind-blowingly interesting. Keep raising the bar.
Heh, I bet you’re enjoying my incredibly apt and on-topic images. Next!
Character arcs! Aside from certain ‘eternal’ archetypal characters like the Joker, most characters (especially the protagonist) grow throughout the book. They’re trying to do something. Actions have consequences for them, and the world stands in their way.
Can your characters grow in ways that you didn’t anticipate? For sure. But do you want to risk them not growing at all as you get distracted by making other characters and plot points work, only to have to come back and workshop it in later? No.
Next!
Pitfalls, pitfalls, pitfalls… I’m talking big ones. I’m talking ‘scrap half my book or half my characters’ kind of pitfalls. How can I guarantee that you’ll avoid them? I can’t. But I can say that if you go through the time to think through your pitch and write your query letter, you’ll dodge the biggest ones.
Some examples of this can include, but are not limited to;
- plots that are too entangled to even summarize
- characters whose motivations aren’t realistic or are too convoluted
- too many dependencies on side plots or characters, taking away from the main plot
Lastly!
Genre and word count. If you’re self-publishing, perhaps this matters less, but it’s still good to decide beforehand. If you can quantify your target audience and the market, this informs your writing voice and the plot points/characters you create.
Does that mean you can’t change your mind? No, it doesn’t. It does mean that when you change your mind, you’ll be doing it with intentionality. That’s the important part.
Decide on POV and Tenses… Carefully
Ah, point of view. My nemesis. I ended up changing POV in my first two novels… after I’d finished them. Yup. I wasted tons of time because I didn’t understand my book or how POV would be effective in them.
Don’t be like me. I could’ve written another novel with that time.
There are tons of resources out there on POV, so I’ll give you my distilled takes on the most popular ones and leave you to do more in-depth research on your own. The format below will be POV/Tense/Range, where range is limited or omniscient.
Third Person, Past Tense, Limited – vast majority of books are written in this format. It’s the ‘storyteller’ perspective, and the default for most readers as well. You can’t really go wrong with this since everyone expects it. Immersion comes from the worldbuilding and the events that occur. It’s easier in this format to shift perspectives from one character to another in a ‘limited’ way, i.e. we see through the eyes of specific characters. Would recommend since it’s a pretty safe format.
e.g. My character did this, and then this awesome thing happened.
Third Person, Past/Present Tense, Omniscient – this is where some all-powerful being sees the thoughts of every character and can comment on them, weaving a complete story of the plot. Can be fun to expose certain things or events and use them to create tension, but also is less forgiving since the reader expects you to have all the answers. I mean, come on, you’re omniscient. Very difficult to have plot twists because it would feel like the author omitted information on purpose. I’ve never tried this style because it’s always felt a little jarring for me.
e.g. The first character thought this, and said that. The second character thought it was rather rude.
First Person, Present Tense – this is the ‘this is happening to me now’ perspective where we follow a main character through their life. This is a popular one for YA, or so I hear, and the immersion comes from the voice of the character and the things they feel/see/think. If you go with this format, I recommend limiting it to two characters’ POVs (three is pushing it) and to establish an easy pattern early on (alternating every chapter, or something similar). Otherwise you’ll run into problems creating truly distinctive voices and jarring the reader with sudden POV shifts.
e.g. Right now, something is happening to me, the main character.
First Person, Past Tense – very similar to first person, present tense, except this is the storyteller perspective of certain characters. Most of the caveats of the above section apply. Allows you to maintain a distance from your characters, which can be helpful if some of them could be hard to relate to.
e.g. Back then, I was not the main character she knew me to be.
Second Person – this one… I’ll let you play with on your own. I don’t have plans to attempt this any time soon. It’s jarring. It’s divisive. Don’t do it for your debut. Essentially the writing is the author saying “you are doing x” or “you are feeling x”, which is a very preferential style of narration. Can be interesting if executed well, but there aren’t a ton of popular second-person books for a reason.
e.g. Right now, you are the main character. You do this, do that, and awesome things are happening to you.
Set Up Your Environment, Your Habits, Your Target
How many people have said, ‘writing is a marathon, not a sprint’? Too many! And I’m going to say it too, because it’s true. No matter how fast you write, you’re not done once you finish one book. There’s going to be plenty of editing and revisions and more books after that.
Let’s review some of the things you can do to set yourself up for success! Once your habits and patterns are established, writing won’t feel like active effort.
Timing. Experiment and figure out what time you write best. Is it first thing in the morning? Maybe you have a long work schedule and you’re exhausted at the end of the day. Or perhaps you need a bunch of coffee with your cramped morning schedule, and you hit peak form right after lunch. Maybe your brain revs up throughout the day and starts churning all your sparks in the few hours before sleep.
Find your groove and set aside those hours and make sure no one disturbs you. Sometimes that requires conversations. Have them! It will be worth it. Make sure that you have a decent chunk of time, your full focus, and a mental state where the words don’t feel forced.
Environment. This can be everything from location to light to noise to temperature. I have my desk in front of a window, but there isn’t a ton of direct sunlight. It’s nice and cool, and I like to listen to music when I write. Play around with your surroundings. Maybe you need it to be really quiet for those words to flow. Maybe you like writing in coffee shops, sipping on a latte. Who knows? Only you do!
Target. This isn’t directly related, but it’s useful. Figure out the number of words you want by gauging the typical count for your genre and estimating based on the size of the plot in your head. It doesn’t need to be precise. After that, watch your own word count for a few days, and set a daily goal.
You don’t need to be your own prison guard. If you don’t meet it because of work or family or friends or whatever, don’t punish yourself. It’s going to be okay. Use it as a measuring stick, a dream to strive for.
Even a hundred words a day is something.
Advice for Pantsers
Honestly, that’s about it. I know I’ve already given more form and substance than most of you would like, and pantsers tend to want to see how their characters and plots develop, so go you! You got this!
Advice for Plotters
Well, where do I even begin? Choose your writing software to support the amount of development you want to do. I didn’t include this for pantsers because… why would pantsers need extra tools for character boards and such? Microsoft word or even a simple text editing software will suffice.
But if you want some extra toys to organize your thoughts, your todo-list, your backstories and more, I’d recommend Scrivener. It’s powerful and has tons of features. Google it! (not sponsored, by the way… unless… scrivener? want to sponsor me?)
Set up your character profiles, create your outline, and figure out what you want to showcase in each chapter of your book. Add extra sections for character arcs, and work out where you want growth to happen and how to make it organic. Good luck!
Worldbuilding
This is the very last step before you can get started! Technically this could (and maybe should) happen before you even write your submission materials, but there’s a good argument for leaving all the nitty gritty details for last. You don’t want to get bogged down there without having a good grasp of the big picture.
There’s too much about worldbuilding to list here, so I’ll leave that for a future blog post. But don’t worry – there’s plenty of other resources on the web on this specific topic.
And yes, this is the first image that popped up on google images when I searched ‘worldbuilding’.
Conclusion
Well, we’ve covered a lot here! I highly recommend preparing your agent submission materials before beginning your book. Deciding on POV comes with experience and time, but think more on it early on and change it if you feel like it’s not working.
Don’t worry too much about getting it all right on the first try. These are just some pointers to keep in mind as you go through your process. I’m confident that if you set up a good schedule and keep at it, you’ll get there.
Here’s what’s coming up next
- Getting an Agent: Query and Synopsis Advice
- Writing Conferences – Worth the Money?
- Worldbuilding and the Iceberg Theory
- …and much more!
I believe in you 🙂 wishing you good words! See you next time~
