How to Write a Book Step by Step

For most people, the thought of sitting down and writing a book is pretty daunting. A writer may have many exciting ideas, but getting them down on paper in a way that is organized, cohesive, and easily understood by another person is a challenge. Another challenge is just figuring out how to make enough time in the day. These challenges can be overcome with the proper amount of planning, coupled with the discipline to stick with writing until the book is done.

Instructions

1

Establish a time and a place to comfortably collect your thoughts and write. If you hold down a full-time job and also manage a busy household, for example, you may need to get up an hour earlier each day or stay up an hour later in order to seize some quiet time for yourself. If this isn't possible, maybe you can go to a library or a park on your lunch hour. If you have a long commute by bus or train, you may want to use this time to jot down story ideas and character sketches in a notebook that you can transcribe later. Your work space at home should be out of the main traffic patterns of the house--such as in a back bedroom, a porch or a basement. If you're going to take your writing seriously, your family members or roommates need to take it seriously, too, and not bother you during the time slots you have designated as your writing time.

2

Decide what kind of book you want to write. The broadest category is fiction versus nonfiction. While many books incorporate elements of both, you need to think like a bookseller will think; specifically, what shelf is this going to go on? The next thing you need to decide is what genre your book will be. If it's fiction, for instance, will it be a romance, a mystery, a thriller, a fantasy or sci-fi? New writers usually feel the most comfortable writing the kinds of books that they like to read. This is useful because they will already be aware of the structure and nuances and types of elements that their chosen genre embraces.

3

Identify your target audience for the book you want to write. If it's going to be a book for young children, for example, you'll need to decide whether this is a book that will be read out loud to them or a book that they can read on their own. This, in turn, will influence the level of vocabulary you choose, the complexity of the plot and the use of illustrations.

4

Determine how long a book you want to write. The minimum word count of a novel for adults, for instance, is 40,000 words. Using this as your benchmark, let's say that you want each chapter to be 4,000 words long. This means that you'll have a total of 10 chapters. It's important to have consistency in chapter length because it makes for a smoother read. Nothing is more unsettling to a reader than to have a chapter that's three pages long followed by a chapter that's a cumbersome 87 pages. Knowing how many chapters your book is going to be will also help you to establish and maintain goals for yourself over the course of the writing. While it may seem impossible to comprehend writing 40,000 words in order to have a full book, the idea of writing one chapter a week and being finished in 10 weeks makes the goal achievable.

5

Decide whose point of view will prevail in your book. Even if you have multiple characters running in and out of the story, it still needs to have the anchor of one main character around whom the majority of the action revolves. This character is your protagonist and is also known as the hero or heroine of the story. At this point, you should also decide whether your book will be written in the the first person (i.e., "I did this, I did that") or the third person (i.e., "Ben decided it was time to confront the bullies at school").

6

Identify the core conflict that will drive the entire story. For example, perhaps your lead character is about to lose his family farm and is desperate to raise enough money to save it. His goal/objective/quest is, thus, saving the farm. Opposing his efforts is the antagonist or villain. Perhaps the villain is the evil manager of the bank that wants to foreclose. Maybe the villain is the hero's own brother who wants to sell the land to a major developer. Whatever you decide the conflict is, the level of danger and risk needs to escalate at every turn. Further, the hero and the villain need to be evenly matched. If a reader feels as if it's an unbalanced fight, he's going to lose interest in reading to see how it comes out.

7

Divide your book into Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3. Act 1 establishes the problem, Act 2 escalates the suspense, and Act 3 resolves it. If we return to the earlier premise that your book is going to be 40,000 words, simply divide 40,000 by 3 so that you will know where each of the acts fall.

8

Purchase a good dictionary and a thesaurus. Even if your computer comes with these tools, it's great fun to leaf through a hard copy and find new things. Further, you must never rely on a spell-checking program to catch everything for you. Recruit your friends to read for you. Friends can be especially helpful in reading dialog out loud. What often looks great in print sounds goofy when spoken.

9

Start writing! A good rule to practice is to decide how many words or pages you feel comfortable writing in one day. Think of it this way: If you write only one page a day for an entire year, you will have a 365-page manuscript when you're done. If you write five pages in a single day instead of just one, that's great. It doesn't mean, however, that you can goof off for the next couple of days. Come tomorrow, you still need to be back at the keyboard and commit to that one page a day as always.

10

Join a writers group in your community. Print out copies of your work and distribute them. Subscribe to free online magazines such as Absolute Write. Enter contests that allow you to get feedback on your work and on your style. Never give up!

11

Start your own clipping service of ideas for future books. Maybe it will be a newspaper story, a magazine article, a few notes you make about an interesting character, a line of dialogue or a potential title, or even an ad you see that ignites your curiosity. Set up several file folders to put these ideas into for future reference. Troll through these regularly for inspiration.