writing novels for beginners

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How to start writing a book as a beginner (10 easy steps).

Ready to write your first bestseller? See our expert tips on how to start writing a book. We also share 10 easy steps to follow and 5 must-have writing tools.

Published on Dec 11, 2022

By Austin Distel

It’s time. You’ve decided you’re finally going to start writing a book for the first time, and you’re excited, but also super nervous. We understand, and we’re here to help. 

We’ve scoured the top books and resources for the best writing tips, from outlining to taking your book to completion. You’ll also get access to writing resources and tools for both beginners and experienced writers.

10 steps to writing a book as a beginner

Figuring out how to start writing a book can seem even more daunting than the actual writing process itself. Here are 10 steps to follow while writing your first book — and hopefully a bestseller.

1. Make a plan

Writing requires time, dedication, and hard work, so you need a schedule if you want to write a book from start to finish. A book is at least 20,000 words long — for novellas. Novels are typically 50,000 words and up. You should know when and where you will write on a daily basis . If possible, plan to write in the same places to build a reliable habit.

2. What do you want to write about?

You may not know every single plot point, but don’t start writing if you have no idea what you’re writing about . You’ll waste your time. A helpful exercise is writing a 3-5 line synopsis of your book. Publisher’s Weekly’s Rights Roundups is a great place to find examples of these synopses. Here’s one.

Some things may change or get clearer as you write, but you need a starting premise to make your book idea work.

3. Make an outline

Once you’re clear on your book’s subject matter, it’s time to create an outline. There are different outline styles, but the goal is to get a clearer picture of most of what happens in your book — chapter by chapter . We’ll dive deeper into this later in this article.

4. Do the research

Sometimes writer’s block is just a sign of insufficient research. Good writing requires research. You need research to tell your story, explain a subject, or sell an idea. Use the internet, libraries, first-person accounts, or even take research trips where possible. 

5. The messy first draft

After the research comes real creative writing. For many writers, this is the hardest part. 

Our best tip here is to let your first draft be messy . Styles differ, but often the first draft is you figuring out the story for yourself, while the second draft is making it shine for readers. Let it be messy; focus on getting out the story, not making it pretty. Other tips for a successful first draft:

• Set daily word count goals. This keeps you accountable.
• Be consistent. Show up every day — preferably in a dedicated writing space — to write, even if you don’t meet your goals.
• Avoid distractions. Write without internet connectivity, go to a coffee shop, lock your office door, use noise-canceling headphones — whatever it takes. 
• Know your target audience. It’s easier and more effective to write when you can picture your specific audience.

6. Edit and revise

The first round of edits is usually the most grueling. Some writers realize that a story isn’t viable. Others find numerous plot holes to fill. And for some, their message becomes clearer and the book comes to life. Either way, don’t skip the editing process, and if you can get a professional editor to review the entire book, that will do wonders for your work.

7. The cleaner second draft

Your second draft is where you make any changes flagged by your editor (or you!) during the initial revision process. Fill plot holes, rewrite sections more persuasively, and cut any fluff that may have gotten through in the first draft. You’re now on your way to a great book.

8. Meet your first readers

Ideally, the first readers should be a sample of your target audience. Whether these are other authors you’d like to blurb your book or industry experts you hope will endorse it, send those digital copies to the first readers. Your first reader could also be a spouse or friend who can provide kind, but critical feedback. 

9. Final edits and proofreading

With comments from first readers and one more close look by a professional (hopefully!) proofreader, your book should be in its final state. Its message should be clear, back flap copy written, and cover design ready to meet more readers.

10. Time to publish

Self-publishing is becoming more popular as writers refuse to wait for publishing gatekeepers to validate their efforts. If this is your chosen route, you can now get your book formatted and ready to sell on Amazon or other platforms. But if you’d like to give traditional publishing a shot, now would be the time to find an agent and start querying!

How to outline a book without losing your mind

Outlining can be intimidating for new writers who aren’t sure where the story will take them. Perhaps you feel like you’d rather be spontaneous and not outline before writing. We’re big fans of outlining here. 

Outlining doesn’t mean things are set in stone . Rather, your outline is a guide that can be tweaked as you write. 

Having an outline also ensures that you wake up every day knowing what you’re going to write about. Unless you’d rather spend an hour of your writing time every day deciding what the heck will happen in this chapter.

Hopefully, we’ve sold you some valid benefits of outlining. Now, here’s how to do it:

1. Pick a style

There are several ways to outline your book. Some writers prefer a mind map method to help them visualize how things tie together. Others like to use post-its or index cards where they’ll write a key point or plot event in their book on each note. We recommend a basic summary outline , which is the chapter by chapter outline — and that’s what we’ll be walking you through.

2. Try a writing assistant

Writing assistants can take the work out of writing and make the process much faster. Our number one recommendation, Jasper, has a Blog Post Outline template that works beautifully for outlining book chapters. You can then break each section down even further to provide more information in your book. 

In our example below, we’re writing a book about succeeding as a freelancer. All Jasper needs to generate our outline is the book title and tone of writing. 

You could also try Jasper's AI story generation tools to help bring your story to life.

3. Get some structure 

Most non-fiction books provide a solution to readers’ problems, and you’re probably writing a book to do that too. Like Anne Lamott says in her book, Bird by Bird

“To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of the solution , to understand a little about life and to pass this on.”

With your outline, you’re working to give your book a structure that best tells the story to help your audience. 

Every outline should have an introduction, a middle, and a conclusion . Similarly, your outline should be structured — like any marketing copy —  to lay out the problem, your history with it, and your method of solving it. The meat of the book would then be strategies to help readers tackle that same problem or similar problems. 

4. Write chapter overviews and subheadings

When you write your outline, include notes for yourself about what each chapter tackles . If you can leave yourself questions to answer about each section, even better! 

For example, in the introduction, the goal is to hook the readers on the first page by sharing an anecdote or your experience with the specific problem they’re dealing with. Tell readers about your unique value proposition aka why they should read this book and not the others on this subject matter. The Jasper Unique Proposition Template can help you craft yours. Here’s an example from Jasper based on our input on the left.

Questions to answer in your introduction: 

• What problem are you solving? 
• How can readers who aren’t self-aware recognize this issue?
• Who is this book for? 
• Why should readers trust you to help them?

Do this exercise for every potential chapter and your outline should be shaping up in your mind.

Outline in hand, it’s time to get the work done . Go back to our step-by-step guide for writing your own book and move through the remaining steps after outlining. We’re rooting for you, future bestselling author.

5 helpful resources for writing a book for the first time

Before we wrap up, we’ll share five of the best resources and writing tools for beginners figuring out how to start writing a book.

AI writing assistant Jasper has written so many books in part or full and has proven to be brilliant at it. This software can get you through outlining, writing a powerful introduction, sharing your unique value proposition, and crafting a powerful conclusion. But it doesn’t stop there.

All you have to do is type a sentence or two and Jasper will keep it going. Other templates such as the Blog Post Intro Paragraph and Blog Post Conclusion Paragraph come in handy for every chapter.

Pricing: Plans start at $39/month

2. Scrivener

Scrivener is a favorite for many writers because of its word processing and outlining capabilities. Available for Mac, iOS, and Windows, it allows you to outline, keep fragmented notes and write within the same application! That way, you can keep track of chapters and headings easily.

Pricing: Licenses start at $19.99 for iOS

3. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott’s book is a warm guide for new and old writers. If you need some encouragement from a long-distance writing buddy and are open to inspiring stories about writing and life, this is a good one to read.

4. On Writing Well by William Zinsser

Another classic for new writers, Zinsser’s book is perfect for non-fiction writers figuring out the nuts and bolts of the craft. He delves into writing about sports, business writing, memoir writing, self-help, and more. This one has helped many already successful writers become better writers.

5. Focus Writer 

One last tool to keep distractions at bay: Focus Writer keeps writers on track with daily goals and word counts while providing an immersive writing environment. It also has spellcheck, timers to keep on your Pomodoro grind, and optional typewriter sound effects, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Start writing your book with Jasper

Figuring out how to start writing a book as a beginner can be scary, but it is far from impossible, and we know that you have what it takes. Take a step-by-step approach, or bird by bird as Lamott says. Set clear goals, have a message to share and get to work.

Jasper can help you tackle outlining, writing creative introductions, and crafting the messy middle one word at a time. Ready to give it a shot? Write your first book with Jasper. Sign up for a free account.

Meet The Author:

Austin Distel

Austin Distel is the Sr. Director of Marketing at Jasper , your AI marketing co-pilot. When not working, Austin is also an Airbnb superhost in Austin, Texas.

Enjoy this post? Join over 4 million people who are learning to master AI in 2024.

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How to Write a Book: The Ultimate Guide (with Free Book Idea Worksheet!)

by Joe Bunting | 0 comments

You want to write a book. Maybe you have a great story idea. Maybe you have a big idea you want to share with the world. Maybe people have told you, “Your life should be made into a book!” But first, you have to learn how to write a book.

The problem for the first-time author is figuring out how to get started. What are the writing habits you need to finish the actual writing for an entire book? And what comes next for your writing goals: traditional publishing? Self-publishing? Becoming a New York Times bestselling book? A long and illustrious writing career?

Because after coaching thousands of writers to write and finish their books, and also writing fifteen books of my own, I know exactly how much hard work it takes to finish a book.

It's not enough to want to write, you need to know how to write a book.

You need to have the right process. The write process, you might say (sorry, I had to!).

In this guide, we're going to learn everything about how to write a nonfiction book, from how to defeat procrastination and find writing time, all the way to revising and the editing process—and even to the publishing process.

If you've ever wanted to write a book, whether a memoir, a big idea book, or a self help book, you're in the right place.

If, on the other hand, you're a fiction writer and have a main character who you know is going to take the world by storm, we have a complete guide on novel writing here . For you nonfiction writers, though, read on for all our best writing tips.

And that free book idea worksheet ? Here's your FREE download: Book Idea Worksheet

Quick Tip: The Best Tool to Write a Book

Before we get started, here's a quick tip for writing a book, Microsoft Word just doesn't cut it.

My favorite writing tool is Scrivener, a book writing software used by the most successful writers. Scrivener helps you stay organized, set word count goals, and keep better track of your writing sessions. Check out our full review of Scrivener here.

How to Fail Writing a Book

In 2011, I had one of the best years of my life. That year, I wrote my first book, became a full-time writer, got my first book published , became a bestselling author, and had 80,000 people read my writing.

But it didn't happen overnight. I had dreamed about and had been working toward those goals for eight years before that: eight years of failure, of trying to write books and not being able to finish them, eight years of wanting to be a writer but not knowing how to actually do it .

Since then, I've written fifteen books, including one book that recently hit the Wall Street Journal bestsellers list.

You might be thinking, “That's cool, Joe. But you're clearly a talented writer. Writing is hard work for me.”

To be honest, it doesn't come easy to me. In fact, if I told my high school English teachers I'm a writer, they would probably be shocked.

The difference is that I found the right process. It's a step-by-step process that works every time, and it will work for you too.

In this guide, I'm going to share the process that I've used to write fifteen books, become a professional writer, and hit the bestsellers list.

But it's not just me. I've also trained thousands of people in our 100 Day Book program to finish books using this process, too.

It works, and it will work for you, if you follow it.

That being said, if you're still not sure you can actually do this alone, or if you just want some extra help along the way, check out 100 Day Book . In this program, we've helped thousands of aspiring writers turned authors to accomplish their dream of writing a book, and we'd love to help you, too. Click to learn more about 100 Day Book here.

How to Write a Book: 12 Steps to Writing a Book

Here's the process I finally learned after that decade of trying to learn how to write a book and failing, the same twelve steps that have helped me write fifteen books.

1. Come Up With a Great Book Idea

If you're here, you probably have a book idea already. Maybe you have several ideas.

And if that's true, great! Pat yourself on the back. You've made it to step one.

Here's what to do next: forget any sense accomplishment you have.

Yes, I'm serious.

Here's what George R.R. Martin said:

“Ideas are useless. Execution is everything.”

Because the thing is, an idea alone, even a great idea, is just the small step to write your book.

There are a lot more steps, and all of them are more difficult than coming up with your initial idea. (I'm sorry if that's discouraging!)

You have an idea. Great! Next, it's time to learn how to execute the way successful authors do. Let's get started with step 2.

(Don't have an idea yet? Check out this article: How to Write When You Don't Have Ideas .)

2. Write Your Book Idea In the Form of a 1-Sentence Premise

The next step to taking your idea and turning it into a book is to summarize your idea into a single-sentence premise.

But wait, what's a premise ?

A premise distills your entire book idea down to a single sentence. This sentence becomes the foundation of all your writing efforts and will be helpful even into publishing process.

Your premise is also the most important part of a book proposal, so a good premise can actually help you get published.

Here’s an example of a nonfiction premise from my book The Write Structure , which got half a dozen responses from agents.

The Write Structure utilizes The Write Practice’s (thewritepractice.com) award-winning methodology to show creative writers how to write their best novels, memoirs, short stories, or screenplays by following story structure principles used and taught by writers for hundreds of years.

Each nonfiction book premise should contain the following three elements:

• A problem . The problem the book aims to solve (in this case, how to write a good novel, memoir, short story, or screenplay)
• A person . Who is the person sharing the solution to that problem, e.g. you
• A solution . What is your unique process to solve that problem

By simplifying your book down to a single sentence, you create a strong, achievable foundation to your entire book. Not only will this simple step help you during the writing process, it will also help you throughout the publishing process, too, which we'll talk about more in a bit.

Ready to write your premise? To make it easier we have a free worksheet template that will guide you through writing a publishable premise: Download the worksheet here.

Or get a copy of our Write Plan Planner , and have a physical tool to guide you through the writing process. Check out the planner here.

3. Choose Your Publishing Path

When you're writing nonfiction, you have to choose your publishing path earlier than creative writers because most nonfiction books are picked up by publishers before they're written.

In fact, it's a red flag in the eyes of traditional publishers and literary agents if you've finished your book before you pitch them. They want to see a book proposal first, and have a hand in the shaping of the book.

That means, if you're writing nonfiction, and you want to get traditionally published, before you go write your own book, you must write a book proposal.

However, if you're writing a memoir, you may need to finish writing the book before you seek publishing. Memoir exists in something of a gray area in the publishing world, with more self-help focused memoirs requiring a proposal, and more creative memoirs acting more like a novel, where the writer would finish them first.

Which publishing path is right for you? Here are the two main requirements for traditional publishing for nonfiction books:

• Platform . Do you have authority within this topic? Do you have a following, via social media, speaking, podcast, YouTube, an email list, or some other platform of at least 10,000 people?
• A tested idea with mass market appeal . Does your idea line up with your platform? Does it have mass market appeal?

If you can't answer “yes” to both of these questions, then you might consider self-publishing, working with a small press, or hybrid press after you complete your book. Or taking a break from your book to build your platform and target audience, perhaps by building an author website and starting a blog. (For more on this, check out this guide on how to build a platform via a blog .)

You might be wondering, at this point too, how do you write a book proposal?

Book proposals vary across writers and publishers, but here are some of the major components:

• 1-Sentence Premise (see above)
• 2-4 paragraph synopsis
• Outline (Table of Contents)
• Tone and Writing Style
• Platform Description and Marketing Info
• 2-3 Sample Chapters

For more on this, check out Jane Friedman's excellent guide on how to write a book proposal .

Now, once you've chosen your publishing path and you're ready to begin writing a whole book, how do you actually finish it? The next steps will all but guarantee you reach The End of your book.

4. Outline Your Book

Even you if you don't decide to traditionally publish, I still recommend working through most of the elements of a book proposal listed above, especially the book outline because it will make the writing process so much easier.

Your book's outline will vary widely depending on your genre, your writing style, your book's topic, and your method.

However, there are some tried and true structures that exist in nonfiction books. Here are some suggested structures you can use:

Introduction . Most nonfiction books include a short (2,000 to 3,000 words) introduction. They usually outline the main problem you will be focusing on in the book. They may also introduce you as the author and your authority, and outline the unique solution you will be guiding readers through in your book.

8-10 Chapters . Nonfiction book chapters dive deeper into the problem and give principles or steps to solve that problem. Chapters can have a variety of different structures, but here is my personal favorite, used frequently by Malcolm Gladwell:

• Opening story
• Analysis of the story
• Universal principle
• Closing story (may be the conclusion of the opening story)

Conclusion . Conclusions usually restate the problem and show how you solved that problem, often ending with a concluding story and a call to action to encourage the reader to go out and put the ideas you've shared to use.

Easy right? Not exactly, but creating this outline will make the rest of the writing process so much easier. Even if it changes, you'll have a resource to help you get unstuck when the writing gets hard.

If you want a template for your outline, as well as a step-by-step guide through the book writing process, get a copy of our Write Plan Planner . This is the exact process that I have used to write fifteen books, and that thousands of other authors in our community have used to finish their book all in a beautiful, daily planner . Check out the planner here.

5. Set a Deadline

This one might surprise you. Because most people think that once you've got your idea ready to go, you should just start writing and not worry about the period of time it takes.

Nope. Not even close.

The next step is to set a deadline for when you're going to finish the first rough draft of your book. But you might be wondering, how long does it take to write a book in the first place?

How long should you set your deadline for?

Some people use NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, to set their deadline for them, writing 50,000 words of book in the thirty days of November. That being said, it's very challenging for most people to finish a book in thirty days.

Stephen King, on the other hand, said the first draft of a book should take no more than a season, so three months. With all due respect to Stephen King, I think that's a little fast for most people.

We give people 100 days , which seems to be just long enough to write a first draft without getting distracted by everything else the world wants you to focus on (looking at you, social media).

So for you, give yourself a week or two to prepare, then set your deadline for about 100 days after that.

There you go! You now have a deadline to finish your book!

6. Break Your Deadline Into Weekly and Daily Word Counts

You can't pull an all-nighter and finish writing a book. Trust me, I've tried!

Instead, you have to break up your deadline into smaller, weekly, and daily deadlines so you can make measured progress over your writing period. This step breaks the work into manageable pieces.

This step also requires a bit of math. Here's how to do it so you can actually stay on track:

• Figure out your book's ideal target word count goal (check out our word count guide )
• Figure out how many weeks until your deadline (e.g. 100 days = 14.5 weeks)
• Divide your book's total word count by the number of weeks (e.g. 45,000 ÷ 14.5 = 3,103 words per week)
• Next, figure out how many days per week you're going to write (e.g. 5 days a week)
• Finally, divide your weekly word count goal by the number of days you'll write to get your daily word count goal (e.g. 3,103 ÷ 5. = 621 words per day)

If you can hit all of your weekly and daily deadlines, you know you’ll make your final deadline at the end.

P.S. You're much more likely to actually meet your deadlines if you take a stand and set a consequence, which I”ll talk about next.

7. Take a Stand

Deadlines are nice, but it can be too easy to follow Douglas Adams' advice:

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.

There are two tricks that will help you actually meet your deadline, and it's essential to do these before you start writing or you'll never finish your book.

The first one is a little scary, but will make a huge difference.

Once you've set your deadline, go tell everyone you know. Post your deadline on social media, saying something like this:

Here. We'll even make it easy for you. Just click the share button below to tweet this and fill in the blank with your deadline:

Don't have social media? That's okay. Just email five friends. These friends will become your accountability partners to ensure you finish your book.

Important: I don't recommend talking about your book idea. Talking about the idea can actually remove some of the motivation to actually work on your book.

But I highly recommend talking about your book's deadline because humans naturally avoid letting each other down. When you make a public promise to do something, you're much more likely to do it!

So go ahead. Share your deadline. You can do this right now. Don't worry, we'll be here when you get back.

Then, move on to the next trick to keep your deadline.

8. Set a Consequence

You might think, “Setting a deadline is fine, but how do I actually hit my deadline?”

The answer is you need to create a consequence. A consequence is a bad thing that happens if you don't hit your deadline.

Maybe you write a check to a charity you hate, like the society for the euthanasia of puppies, you give it to a friend, and you say, “You have to send this check if I don't hit my deadline.”

Or maybe you say you're going to give up a guilty pleasure if you don't hit your deadline, like ice cream or wine or TV or your favorite phone game.

Set a really tough consequence for your final deadline, and then set a couple of less severe consequences for your weekly deadlines.

Whatever you choose, make it really hard to not hit your deadline.

Why? Because writing is hard! If you want to write a book, you need to make not writing harder than writing.

By creating a consequence, you make not writing harder than the actual writing, and this simple trick will make you much more likely to finish.

9. Set an Intention

This is the last step before you start writing, but secretly one of the most helpful.

Set an intention.

Studies have shown that when you have a goal, like working out more or writing a book, and you imagine where , when , and how much you're going to do something, you're much more likely to actually do it.

So do this with me:

• Close your eyes, and imagine your ideal writing space , the place you're going to spend your writing time. Maybe it's a coffee shop or your home office or a chair beside your favorite window.
• Next, imagine what time it is . Is it the morning? Afternoon? Late at night after everyone's gone to bed?
• Finally, picture yourself writing, and watch yourself reach your daily word count goal . Imagine how it feels to accomplish your goal. Great? A relief?
• Then, write all of that down, locking your intention in place . Now that you have a set writing schedule, follow it!

Notice that this is the tenth step.

Most people start here, but without the groundwork you've laid in the previous nine steps, you're setting yourself up for failure.

Don't skip the first nine steps!

Once you do begin writing, keep this in mind:

First drafts are universally bad .

Don't try to write perfect sentences. Don't go back and edit endlessly.

No, instead write as fast as you're able. Get to “the end” as quickly as you can. Use writing sprints .

Try to write as imperfectly as you can, not because you want to write a bad book, but because this is how writing always is: you write a bad first draft and then revise it into a better second draft—and finally, three or five drafts later, you've written a good book.

The difference between aspiring writers and published authors is that published authors know you can't do good writing until you write a bad draft first. Get through it as quickly as you can!

If you're not a natural writer , consider dictating your book into a recorder, and transcribing it afterward. There's no reason you have to physically type out your book. Transcribing it is a perfectly viable way to create a good first draft.

11. Revise, Rewrite, and Edit

After you finish your first draft comes the real hard part.

I know what you're thinking. The first ten steps weren't hard enough?

Yes, of course they were hard. But for some reason, second drafts can be just as hard, if not harder, than first drafts. I've had some of my biggest mental and emotional breakdowns in my life while working on the second draft of a book. There's just something about second drafts that are much more mentally challenging than first drafts.

Here, it's a good idea to get an editor who can give you feedback. (Need an editor recommendation? We have a team of editors we work with here at The Write Practice. Check out our process and get a quote here .)

Once you've finished your second draft, I also recommend getting beta readers, people who can read your book and give you feedback. For more on this, check out our guide on how to find beta readers and use their feedback effectively here .

Depending on your topic, you might also consider recruiting some sensitivity readers to read your book, too.

After you've done all of this, I have one last writing tip for you to ensure you actually finish writing your book—and it might be the most important of all.

12. Don't Stop

Most people want to write a book. I hear from people all the time that think they have a book in them, who believe that they have a story that needs to be shared.

I very rarely talk to people who have finished a book.

Writing a book is hard.

It's SO easy to quit. You get a new idea. Or you read your writing and think, “This is terrible.” Or you decide, “I'd rather be catching up on Netflix, not spending my nights writing.”

Because of this, you quit.

Here's the thing though: the only way to fail at writing a book is to quit .

If you don't quit, if you just keep writing, keep following this process we've outlined above, you will finish a book.

It might not be a good book (yet). But that's what editing is for.

It will be a first draft, and a finished draft at that . You can't write a second draft and start to make your book actually good, actually publishable, until you write the first draft.

So write. Don't stop. Don't quit. If you follow these steps and don't stop, you'll finish.

We'll be here supporting you along the way.

More Resources on How to Write a Book

Still feeling stuck? Have more questions about how to write a book? We've put together a library of book-writing resources. Take a look at the articles below.

Book Writing Tools and Programs

• 100 Day Book . Get a mentor, 100+ writing lessons, deadlines, and accountability and write your book in a program that works. Thousands of authors have finished their books in 100 Day Book, and we'd love to help you too. Click to sign up for 100 Day Book here.
• The Write Plan Planner. Containing everything we've learned about how to write a book over the last 10+ years, this step-by-step guide will walk you through our proven book writing process. Click to get your daily book writing planner.
• Best Book Writing Software . A variety of the best tools for writing, publishing, formatting, and marketing your book.

How to Write a Book Fast Articles

I shared above why I believe that first drafts should be written quickly, in just a few weeks. Still not sure? In the articles below, dozens of other writers share how they wrote fast first drafts, plus you'll get all the tips and strategies they learned along the way.

• How to Write a Book in 100 Days: 10 Steps
• How to Write a Book FAST
• How to Write a Book in 100 Days
• How to Write a Novel in 6 Months
• The First 10 Steps to Write Your Book in 2020
• How to Right a Book in Nine (Not So) Easy Steps
• How to Finish a Novel With a Swim Buddy
• How to Write a Book Using Microsoft Word

How to Write a Book by Genre

Every genre comes with specific expectations that must be fulfilled. Here's how to craft an amazing story in your genre.

• How to Write a Novel
• How to Write a Memoir
• How to Write a Mystery Novel
• How to Write a Suspense Novel
• How to Write a Thriller Novel
• How to Write a Romance Novel
• How to Write an Adventure Book
• How to Write a Coming of Age Novel
• How to Write a Young Adult Novel
• How to Write a Self-Help Book
• How to Write a Book That's Based on a True Story
• How to Write a Book Like Stephen King
• 20 Sci-Fi Creative Writing Prompts and Story Ideas

Okay, no, Stephen King isn't a genre. But he's well worth learning from!

How to Write a Book When Writing Is Hard

Let's face it: writing is hard . Every single writer struggles at some point in their book. The important thing is not to quit . In the following articles, writers share how they persevered through the hard parts, and how you can too.

• How to Write a Book While Working Full Time
• How to Write a Book When You Don't Have Ideas
• How to Write a Book When You’ve Got Writer’s Block
• I Never Thought I Would Write a Book. Here's How I Did It Anyway
• How to Write a Book: The Everest Method
• 10 Obstacles to Writing a Book and How to Conquer Them

How to Write a Book With a Specific Style

Your book comes with its own unique quirks and challenges, especially if the story you're telling is a series, or is told from multiple perspectives. Here's how other writers have navigated these choices.

• How to Write a Book from Multiple Perspectives
• How to Write a Book Series Without Messing Things Up
• How to Write a Novel That Readers Can't Put Down

How to Write a Book and Publish It

Writing is meant to be shared! In these articles, writers break down the publishing process so you can finish your book and share it with the world.

• How to Write and Publish a Book for Free
• How to Write a Book Description That Will Captivate Readers (And Sell Books!)

Publishing Resources

Once you've finished writing a book, how do you get it published. Here are some resources to help.

• Amazon KDP. Self-publish your book on Kindle to the world's biggest book marketplace.
• Book Cover Design . Find a book cover designer among our favorite designers.

Commit to the Book Writing Process, Not Your Feelings

Are you ready to commit to finishing your book?

I don't want you to commit to a book idea. Ideas are seductive, but then you get a fresh idea and the idea you've been working on becomes much less interesting.

You probably have had inspiring moments of writing, when everything feels like it's flowing. But I don't want you to commit to a feeling. Feelings are fickle. They change by the hour.

No, instead commit to the process.

If you follow these steps, you will finish a book. It won't be easy. It will still be a challenge. But you'll do it.

Can you imagine how great it will feel to write “The End” on your own book? Think about the people you will touch because you finished that book. Let's get to it together.

Are you going to commit to writing a book? Let me know in the comments !

The first part of Step Three is to create a 1-sentence premise of your book.

Spend fifteen minutes today to rewrite your book idea into a single-sentence premise. Then, share your premise in the Pro Practice Workshop here.  (and if you’re not a member yet, you can join here ).

Finally, after you share, make sure to give feedback to three other writers.

Happy writing!

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

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How to write a first novel: 10 Do’s and Don’ts

When you’re starting out, nobody shows you how to write a first novel. Writing a novel requires focus, planning, motivation and discipline. Here are 10 do’s and don’ts for writing your first book:

• Post author By Jordan
• 31 Comments on How to write a first novel: 10 Do’s and Don’ts

When you write your first novel, do:

Plan and structure your book and your time.

Writing a book is a mid- to long-term project (unless you are one of those rare authors who can churn a book out in a week or two).

If you don’t want writing your novel to drag on, planning is essential. Planning also makes sense because an underlying plan will help to avert writer’s block.

To start writing a novel , set a deadline for completing your first draft. From here you can work out how many words you need to write per day on average. If, for example, you give yourself a year to finish, your necessary word count per day will be (length of your novel)/365. If you want to write a standard length novel (80 000 to 100 000 words), your word count will be 220 to 280 words per day approximately. When you look at it this way, it’s entirely possible to write your book in a year (or a much shorter period if you have more time to write).

If possible structure each writing session in advance so that you have a clear plan of what you will be working on and where it fits into the larger picture. If you already have a story outline, build which parts of the story arc you will work on during each session into your plan. In a week or month planner, write, for example, ‘Write first scene (protagonist receives word of an approaching army, forms party to defend the village)’. If you are not sure how to outline, try one of these 7 outlining methods .

Keep any research you need in an organized, accessible place

Some books demand more background research than others. If you are writing about an unfamiliar location, take a tour on Google Street View and note down landmarks and what the architecture or natural environment is like.

One way to organize your research is to keep a master document that is like an alphabetized dictionary of your story-in-progress. Under each letter, add any relevant information. For example, under ‘L’ you could have ‘Locations’. Write down each of the locations of your novel as you write your story and create new ones (or use real places). Note any important features next to each entry, for example:

‘Cape Town, South Africa: Seaside city. Center of tourism. Wine-growing region. Ethnically and culturally diverse. Wide wealth gap.’

Having an overview of the individual places, themes, characters and other elements of your novel that you can refer back to will keep you focused on the details that bring your fictional world to life.

Write every day, without fail

As author Steven Raichlen says in his post on how to write a first novel for Writer’s Digest :

‘The secret to writing a novel — or any book — is writing. You won’t turn out elegant prose every day. But it’s important to keep cranking it out. Bad writing eventually leads to good writing and paragraphs eventually add up to pages, chapters, and a finished novel.’

Write every day, even when you least feel like it. When you don’t feel in the mood to write, your writing might feel stale, forced and not worth keeping. Persist and keep the ‘bad’ writing for now: You may find later that it is not that bad or simply needs a revision with fresh eyes to be transformed.

‘I don’t have time to write’ is one of the most common reasons for not writing that we hear from Now Novel members. If this is a challenge while you write your first novel, divide your writing sessions into smaller units. It’s much easier to squeeze in 15 minutes than a full hour. If you write every day, even if for only a short while, your writing can only improve.

Stay accountable and finish

Stay accountable by swapping crits with other writers for free, plus get pro feedback when you upgrade.

Put excuses for not writing and put them to one side

As writers we find endless reasons why we  can’t  write: “I don’t have the time” and “my writing sucks” are two common ones. Yet as author Susan K. Perry says of writing your first novel :

‘Distractions are powerful. Writers are famous for coming up with buckets of rationalizations for not writing, including the suddenly-urgent need to thin out who you follow on Twitter, decluttering old files you had forgotten existed, or dusting the back of your printer. If you must, build in an allowable pre-writing period of miscellaneous tasks, but make it short.’

If you’re writing your first novel (or your second, third or fourth), it’s helpful to journal about the process itself. Write down doubts, surprises, insights, self-discoveries – anything that is worth keeping in mind. Sometimes simply writing down the doubts makes it easier to put them to one side and focus on the most important task: Finishing your book.

Write out helpful questions to ask yourself as you go

If you’re detail-oriented by nature, you might get lost in describing the particulars of a scene and lose sight of how your novel will read as a whole. On the other hand, if you’re focused on the whole plot arc and not individual characters, motivations and scenes, your novel might meander. Neither is a catastrophe, but you can keep a balanced perspective by keeping a list of useful questions to ask yourself as you write:

How to write a first novel: Questions to ask as you go

• Are my characters’ distinct from each other: Does each have an identifiable voice and set of goals and motivations?
• Am I including enough sense detail – can the reader see, smell, touch my fictional world in her mind’s eye?
• Am I being original enough? (No ‘dead as a doornail’ and other clichés). As Joanna Penn says, ‘Keep in mind that fans of sci-fi read a lot of sci-fi, fans of chick lit read a lot of chick lit, and so on. They’ve seen many variations of the same story. You don’t need to recreate the wheel, but a fresh voice or a new approach to a tried and true formula will delight the reader.’
• Is it clear to my reader who’s talking, where the scene is set, why x event is occurring?

Make sure that your story events show cause and effect (x leads to y) and that your characters are interesting. Create enough intrigue and detail to draw readers in. Show as much as you can without telling in a way that blocks the reader’s imagination.

When you’re working on your first book, don’t:

Continuously change your mind about your story idea and start over.

If you are just working out how to write a first novel, committing to one story idea can feel daunting. Resist the urge to continuously abandon your novel for a ‘better’ story idea. It could simply be that the better idea appeared superior because it promised an escape from writing challenges you are currently facing. Instead, get help from a writing group or writing coach to find a way forward with your existing idea.

The risk of starting your novel over perpetually is that you’ll end up with twenty-something story starts and no finished book manuscript. Each time a great new story idea occurs to you, write it down and store it away. Be disciplined and start on it once you’ve finished your current project.

Underestimate what it takes to write a novel

Some aspiring writers have visions of publishing success and acclaim from the start, but it will take hard work and perseverance to get to the submitting and publishing stage. Writing your first novel means having to find strategies for maintaining the following things:

• Confidence in your story

These are all essential aspects of writing a book a fiction writing coach can help you with . Read our best posts on how to maintain your motivation to write a book, as well as how to improve and increase confidence in your writing.

Focus on building your world to the exclusion of compelling relationships

This important advice on writing a first novel is courtesy of author Robert Twigger. Twigger cautions against focusing so much on descriptive detail that you neglect to create vivid relationships between your characters:

‘Nabokov informed us, convincingly, that a novel is a world. Reading this, a new writer of fiction hares off and starts describing this world in intricate detail, inventing all manner of places and events. But think of your own world – it isn’t about detail, it’s about relationships.’

While your fictional world stimulates the reader’s senses, the relationships in your book will anchor the reader’s feelings, letting them invest something in your characters’ lives and choices.

Make everything fit your preconceived plot

Sometimes writers learning how to write a first novel follow commonplace advice to put plot interest first. Yet if every event in your novel is made to fit a template, it can feel forced and over-cautious. Instead, come up with the main events of your novel and describe each separately – you don’t even have to write them in sequence, necessarily. Combine them at a later stage when you have a clearer sense of how they will all fit together. This will make sure that no unnecessary scenes are included.

Tell the reader everything about your character at first introduction

When you first meet someone new, they are a mystery to you. Over time you discover details – their backstory, their core beliefs, values, likes, dislikes and details such as their favourite sayings and expressions. The same should go for characters in a novel. If you begin a character description with details of the character’s face, feelings, wants, fears and beliefs, this can be overwhelming. It also is less likely to leave the reader tantalized – the reader has less reason to want to get to know your character better.

Keep the above do’s and don’ts of writing a first book in mind and the writing process will flow smoother.

Start and finish writing a book with the help of the Now Novel process now .

Related Posts:

• Why write a book? 10 global authors give reasons to write
• 'Can I write a book?' Yes: 7 resolutions that will help
• Structure of a novel: How to write a chapter
• Tags writing process , writing your first novel

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

31 replies on “How to write a first novel: 10 Do’s and Don’ts”

wow! I love your blog.

Thanks so much, Kassie. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

I can’t thank you enough for thorough posts; this one was especially helpful! The tip about world building and character relationships is great.

Thank you so much, J. I’m glad you found that tip helpful. All speed in your writing.

There are some nice tips, but I disagree about writing every day, “without fail”. Some of my best story ideas as well as solutions to story problems have come when I stepped away from the computer. Sometimes for extended periods. If you have to force yourself to write, rather than feel excited at the opportunity to do so, you shouldn’t be writing. How and when a writer writes is as individual a decision as writers themselves. This is why I don’t believe in generalized word-count goals. The schedule that works for me might not work for others. Additionally, writing doesn’t improve simply by continuing to do it. A writer must receive constructive criticism, both from within and from others if he or she expects to improve. Should you self-edit to perfection as you go? No, but you learn through the editing and proof-reading processes. Writing is the creation and assembly of ideas into words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books which others will find engaging upon reading them. It’s supposed to be fun.

That’s fair comment, B.L. Thank you for adding your perspective. As I’ve said elsewhere, taking time out when you need to is important too. Just not so long that you lose momentum altogether. However, it’s true that every writer has to find the set of practices that work best for their creative process.

Having the discipline to write every day is so hard, especially with a very active family, but I can see why it is so critical. Thanks for this post. I needed it.

It’s a pleasure! It truly is a challenge, Erin, and I can relate on that count with two toddlers. I find waking up earlier while everyone is still asleep affords some valuable distraction-free time.

Thank you for the the 10 Do’s and Don’ts. I have definitely fell into the trap of starting and restarting a story. I just had these unrealistic need or idea of my first novel being a hit,but realize this is stunning my growth. In addition, I want this to be a fun journey for me. As a mom, nurse, and graduate student I am extremely busy. However, in order for my novel to start I need to just put words to paper.

Question: Do you reccomend typing novel or writing it in a book? Thank you in advance!

Saya senang sekali menemukan tips ini. Terimakasih.

An amazing post with great tips as always. Anyone will find your post useful. Keep up the good work.

Telling stories and sharing your knowledge with the world is one of the most amazing feelings there is.

I hope you can take the time to read my post as well Effective Steps on Writing Your First Novel .

Really great tips, thank you!

It’s a pleasure, Kathryn! Thank you for reading our blog.

Thank you so much for these Awesome tips, I’am 22 YO, I want to start writing my first novel and this is too helpful!

Hi Omaima, that’s great! Good luck with your first novel, have fun writing it.

Great words of advice for one about writing his or her first novel, I am 17 am working on writing my first novel and this blog is all I ever wanted for a go. Thanks and shine on

Thank you, Meshack! Good luck with your first novel, enjoy the process.

Thanks this was help ful

It’s a pleasure, Shillah. Thank you for reading our blog.

So helpful. It motivated me further. Cut and dry instructions. Very positive.

Thank you, Richard, I’m glad to hear this motivated you. Happy New Year, here’s to further motivation and inspiration throughout the year ahead.

This was a great inspiration for me Thank you so much

Hi Diamona, I’m so glad to hear that. It’s a pleasure, thank you for reading and sharing your feedback on our blog.

Thank you, This was great information, I really like how everything was broken down. This is what I needed to continue the novel I’m working now.

Hi Nikki, I’m glad to hear that. Thanks for sharing your feedback and good luck with your novel-in-progress.

This blog was very helpful and encouraging. Thank you for taking the time to put this together for those seeking to put their vision to paper. Cheers.

Hi Joseph, I’m so glad to hear that you found this helpful, thank you for reading our blog and sharing your feedback. Good luck with your story!

have you ever written a book or novel before, also this was really helpful and I cant wait to start my novel the dream walker!!!

Hi Serenity, thank you for your feedback. Start it! I love the title. I haven’t, though I have written workbooks and have had poetry published. My primary experience I draw on as an editor and for the blog is the past eight years I’ve spent helping and editing writers on Now Novel and before that my undergrad and postgrad in English Literature (there was a lot of deep analysis of novels from all eras during that which helped me develop my understanding of storytelling and story craft a lot).

I’ll write a book one day, I’m still banking up the life experience to decide what I want my debut to be :). In the meantime helping other writers is just as rewarding.

Thank you very much

Thanks so much for reading the blog, and glad you found it useful!

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How to start writing a novel: a step by step guide for beginners

Latest posts.

Do you want to write a novel but aren’t sure how to get started? We’ve put together our top ten novel writing tips to help you get off to the best possible start.

What is the premise/scenario/idea.

What is the idea that is making you want to write this novel? Can you see a character in a setting? Has something provoked a flash of inspiration about a story that you need to write? All novels start somewhere, and you can expand your basic premise (‘I want to write about how Millie the millworker became a spy under the cover of being a successful concert pianist’) into a full-length novel. To start with, you need the germ of an idea (Millie’s progress from millworker to spy), or a scenario (Millie sitting at a grand piano in a concert hall with a Mauser strapped to her leg under her gown) or a suggestion of the wider issues the book is going to tackle.

A novel is a long piece of work so be sure the premise is something that you want to expand upon and spend a substantial amount of time working on. If your premise has you, the writer, in its grip then you’re off to a good start. The most important thing at this stage is to keep hold of your basic idea/premise/scenario and use it to fire your imagination as you put together the ideas that will form the basis of your novel.

If you don't yet have a firm idea for your story, why not try one of our inspirational coffee break exercises . 

Who will be the main character in your novel?

Who is the lead character that is going to be the focus of your novel? And what’s their problem? You will need to give them a problem or a ‘want’ at the beginning of the novel that will set them on the narrative journey that you intend to write.

Whether your novel is going to be character-led (ie, the plot arises from issues relating to the character itself) or plot-driven (where the main thrust of the novel is to do with unfolding events), your novel will need a lead character. Readers will ‘see’ the events of the novel unfolding through the experiences of this character, and the success of your novel will depend on you creating a central character that readers want to spend time with. Remember that your character does not always have to be likeable, but they do have to engage a reader’s interest.

As you begin your novel, you won’t know everything about your character – you’ll discover that you learn things about them as you go along that will surprise you. It will help you, at this stage, to have a good idea of who your character is and what it is about them that will be explored in the novel.

At this point, with your lead character in place, jot down notes about the secondary characters and their role in the novel.

Read advice on creating compelling characters from award-winning novelist Ross Raisin.

What genre is your novel?

The problem that you have given your character, and how you are going to resolve it, will relate to the genre you’ll be writing your novel in. If you’re writing a crime or thriller novel, the problem will involve solving a crime or an investigation with a high level of risk. If you’re writing contemporary fiction, the problem will either be internal, ie something personal to the character that stems from their background and particular circumstances, or it might be about the way they respond to an issue in society. If the problem involves relationships, you might be writing contemporary fiction again, or romance. If your character’s problems happen in the distant past then you’ll be writing historical fiction, and if there’s something terrifying in the cellar then you’re probably writing horror. If, on the other hand, you’ve projected a contemporary issue to its extreme conclusion in the future, you’re writing speculative fiction.

It’s a good idea to know the genre you’ll be writing as you set off, and not only because each genre has its conventions and you will write better in that genre if you are aware of them. Publishers like to have clear ideas of where a book will fit in sales categories, and although that’s a long way off at this stage it’s worth having an idea of what you hope to achieve and which published titles your book might fit in with.

Which are the most popular book genres? Read our analysis and, for a bit of fun , try our quiz to find out which genre you should be writing

What is your novel's setting or world?

What is the setting for your novel – and what effect does it have on your character and their problem? Just as plot develops as a result of character, characters are influenced by their setting – we are all a product of the particular version of the world we live in, and characters in novels are no exception. Your setting might be a real place in a real time period, or it might be somewhere you have invented, but knowing its landscape will enable you to give your story a sense of time and place. It doesn’t matter if your setting is real or imaginary – knowing the world your characters live in will give it a sense of veracity. Just as you need to know the colour of your character’s hair and eyes and what kind of shoes they are wearing, it will help you to map out their town, street, and the inside of their office/living room/spaceship/castle.

World and setting are especially important in fantasy and sci-fi novels. Author Gareth Powell explains some guidelines for SF worldbuilding .

What is the theme of the novel?

What is the underlying theme of your novel? Underlying the ‘plot’ or storyline of a book, the titles that have most impact involve at least one underlying idea or theme. It might be ‘the importance of friends’, or ‘love conquers all’ or ‘second chances’ or whatever else is important to you and your characters, but it should be possible for the reader of your novel to identity its theme. The theme isn’t the same as the subject; ie your ‘subject’ in a crime novel about the abduction of a teenager might be ‘internet grooming’, and the ‘theme’ how social media has created an environment where teenagers are increasingly judged on appearance.

Recommended read: What is the difference between plot and story?

Give your story a suitable ending

Have you decided how to wrap up this storyline? All stories need beginnings and endings. It’s easy to begin a novel: you take your initial surge of inspiration to your laptop and bash out 3,000 words – usually the beginning. But can you think of the way the key problem in your novel, the one that is central to the plot, is going to be resolved? Even though the end of your manuscript is approximately 90,000 words away, having an end destination in sight will help you plot your journey. If you have the beginning and end of your novel, you will be in a good position to plan the dramatic arc that your story will need. You might not yet know how you are going to get your characters to the end point, but you will be on your way.

Learn the basics of story structure: how to get your story from beginning, through middle, to end . 

Sketch our your plot points/outline

Now you have a premise, a theme, characters and a beginning and an end, you’re in a good place to start sketching in a plot and creating a novel outline. You don’t need to know everything at this point, but making a note of key plot points will help you to create a dramatic arc. Depending on how plot-heavy you want your novel to be (and if you like to work this way), it might be worth creating a timeline/flow chart/spreadsheet so you can keep track of what needs to happen and the scenes you need to write. If you prefer a less-organised approach, it’s still a good idea to make notes of the key incidents that need to occur. You can shuffle them around and change the order in which they appear, but bear in mind that novels are complex, and having even a simple outline or structure will help you to chart your way through the long, complicated slog of writing one. Make notes about the landing stages as your plot progresses, and remember that you will need to work out how to bridge them.

Do you want to include a plot twist? Here's how to keep readers guessing!

Establish your key scenes

Scenes are not quite the same as plot points, though they can overlap. Your plot point might be the discovery of a dead body; the scene might be the description of the wet, wintry day when a couple in the middle of a relationship crisis stumble across a corpse while they’re out walking and arguing. The inciting incident in your novel will definitely be a key scene, and there will be other set pieces that you will want to get your teeth into. Make a note of them, and by all means write them too – it’s not essential to write your book in chapter order, and if you have created yourself a plan or structure you will be able to see how they will fit into the rest of the text.

One genre we can all learn from in creating impactful scenes is horror. Find out how to scare your readers !

Establish your point of view/narrative perspectiv e

Just as it’s important to know who is in your novel and what is going to happen to them, you need to know how you are going to tell it. Whose eyes are readers going to see this novel through? Who is telling this story? Will you have a first-person narrator, or a third person? Will you be writing it in present tense, which gives a sense of immediacy, or in past tense, which is the more traditional way of telling a story? Will your story have a single narrative viewpoint or will there be more than one, and if so, how are readers going to be able to tell who is who? It’s worth spending some time working this out before you really get stuck in – it’s might save you writing 20,000 words in first person, present tense only to decide that your story would work better in third person, past tense. It’s not, by the way, the end of the world if this happens. It’s always worth experimenting and trying things out, and it might strengthen your manuscript if you become aware that taking a different approach would let you tell your story in a better way.

Exploring narrative perspective can be used to powerful effect, especially with unreliable narrators, as in this prizewinning short story .

What is the voice/tone/mood

Another thing that you will need to be aware of at the beginning is that your novel will require a voice, tone and a mood. The voice will be unique to you, and will relate to the language that you use, the vocabulary you deploy, the way you construct your sentences and the overall effect of your writing. Each writer has a voice, and more than anything else it’s what makes a novel unique. The best advice on finding your writing voice is to write as you, rather than trying to copy any other writer. But it’s trial and error, and sometimes a writer will only find their true voice when they discover the story or subject that really inspires them to write. Tone and mood are easier to pin down: tone will relate to the way you tell your story – will it be it dry, deadpan, funny, lyrical, poetic, chatty, journalistic, allusive? It will be related to genre, so decide what the overall effect of this book will be – if it’s a thriller you’re more likely to use a reportage style of writing than if it’s a romcom, where the tone will be lighter and the language fizzier.  Think about mood, too – not just the overall atmosphere of the book, but for various scenes and narrative shifts – and how you are going to achieve this. Might there be certain motifs that appear throughout the book, signalling mood to the reader, ie. gloomy 1980s pop songs that coincidentally turn up on playlists when bad things are about to happen?

A strong voice is one of our essential skills for writers

Bonus question – are you writing the book you really want to read?

Before you launch yourself into a new document inspired by all the novel writing tips, ask yourself the most important question of all: is this the book you really want to write? The book that is missing from your bookshelves; the book that you need to write because it’s the book you would most like to read and it doesn’t exist? Because that it is the book you ought to be writing!

We really hope these tips on how to write a novel will help you get started, and keep going. Good luck!  

If you would benefit from more individual guidance, why not take a look at our creative writing courses or, if you manage to get a novel completed, get expert feedback with our manuscript critique service .

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How to Write a Novel: 15 Steps from Brainstorm to Bestseller

POSTED ON Apr 8, 2024

Written by Scott Allan

Learning how to write a novel is a dream for many people. But only a handful of could-be-published authors succeed in writing, publishing, and selling a book. The compulsion to write is powerful, and for most serious authors, they must get those stories out and into the hands of readers who need them.

This is where you come in. The world needs your novel. 

Learning how to write a book is hard work, and it takes more than a dream to make it happen. You must be willing to put in work every day to turn that dream into a reality.

In this post, we'll teach you how to write a novel from first idea to finished product in 15 simple steps.

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This Guide to How to Write a Novel Will Cover:

How to write a novel in 15 simple steps.

Here are the steps all new authors should take when learning how to write a novel:

1. Start with a novel idea 

Of course, every novel starts with a book idea . You can't learn how to write a novel if you don't have an idea for the book in the first place.

So, what’s the big picture of your novel? Try to write your novel idea in one sentence. 

It can be something broad, like: Tragic teen love affair that ends in suicide. 

Or, it can be something a bit more specific, almost like a writing prompt : Two teens, from rival families, fall in love and in a shocking twist of events, choose to die together rather than live apart. 

Tips for picking your best book idea

• It must interest you. You’re writing 60k+ words of this novel so if you lose interest, you’ll stop writing. 
• You have knowledge of this kind of book and the subject matter in it. If you write sci-fi, you must have read sci-fi a lot. Romance? You’re reading love stories every waking moment. Your passion for the book idea comes out of your passion for learning about telling this kind of story.
• Test your idea. Talk about it and tell people. 
• Define the conflict . Can you identify the main conflict?

2. Set up a productive writing space

When learning how to write a novel, you should ask yourself if your environment is the best place for writing.

Is it clean or cluttered?

Can you focus or is your room filled with distractions?

Are you alone or do you have friends, roommates, and family members surrounding you?

Is your space creative or chaotic? In my experience, if you live in chaos (ex: noise, distractions, beeps, a loud TV) you’re setting yourself up for failure. You won’t get far with writing before you’re doing something else.

Here are a few ideas to boost author productivity and make your writer’s space something you can actually get writing done in.

• Display your favorite author photos. Find at least twenty photos of authors you want to emulate. Print these out if you can and place them around your room. There is nothing like writing and having your favorite author looking back at you as if to say, “Come on, you’ve got this!”
• Hang up a yearly calendar. Your book will get written faster if you writing goals for each day and week. The best way to manage this is by scheduling your time on a calendar. Schedule every hour that you commit to your author’s business. What gets scheduled, gets done .
• Get a writing surface and chair. There are two types of desks and you should consider setting up your writing area with access to both. The first is the standing desk, which helps you avoid the unhealthy practice of sitting down for long periods. For sitting, you want a chair that is comfortable but not too comfortable. You can balance your online time between sitting and standing. For example, when I have a three-hour writing session, I do 50/50.
• Create a clutter-free environment. If there is any factor that will slow you down or kill your motivation, it is a room full of clutter. A great book I recommend for this is the 10-Minute Declutter: The Stress-Free Habit for Simplifying Your Home by S.J. Scott and Barrie Davenport. 

3. Mindmap your novel

You have the idea for your book, but the next step in learning how to write a novel is researching.  For instance, I’m writing a story where the protagonists become involved in an international scandal that takes them from the U.S. to Europe, from London to Paris to Athens. They are pursued by assassins with a lot of sophisticated weapons. At the end of the book, the protagonists escape via a submarine from Russia, only to be pursued by another submarine that ends in a big battle 3,000 meters underneath the ocean.

But wait a minute… I’ve never been to Europe. And I’ve never handled “sophisticated weapons” that shoot real bullets.

Submarines? I’ve read about them in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October . How do I write a book that requires so much know-how? Research is a necessary part of your book when you learn how to write a novel. It must be believable. This is true regardless if it is a reverse harem story, sci-fi space epic, or underwater action-adventure.

The details must be right.

First, start by writing down all the ideas you have. Set a timer and start writing – don't worry about fact or accuracy. This is your time to mindmap.

To mindmap a book , I like to use the “bubble method. I start with a central topic or theme in the book and surround it with smaller bubbles of secondary topics or ideas. These ideas, as they get fleshed out, will become the basis of my book chapters.

Write down every thought you have about the book and information you get from researching and keep branching off from whichever bubbles the thoughts relate to. You will eventually end up with an extensive mindmap that will help you to outline your book.

Tips for your novel research process 

• Visit your local library
• Conduct interviews with real people
• Gather data and info from “reliable resources” on the Internet
• Watch YouTube videos
• Read books in your genre (mentioned previously)
• Refer to Atlases and World Almanacs to confirm geography and cultural facts

4. Create your characters

Your characters help tell your story, and play a huge role in guiding readers through your storyline. 

When learning how to write a novel, you need to create a character profile for each character. Knowing how to build life-like characters is a huge step in knowing how to write a novel successfully.

Initial questions to consider when you create a character are:

• What motivates them?
• What is their character name ?
• What are their flaws?
• What is their purpose?
• What do they look like?
• What’s their personality type?

Create a protagonist/main character

Every story needs a hero or heroine. But your main character doesn’t always start out as a hero. One day, he or she may be an ordinary citizen and suddenly forced into a situation where they must take action or suffer the consequences.

Your protagonist must be…

• Challenged throughout the novel. There will be a series of scenes described as incidents or pivot scenes when everything is changed when the hero will be challenged to act in a way that pushes them out of their comfort zone.
• Realistic and believable. They have a weakness and character flaws that make them vulnerable.
• In pursuit of a goal. By the end of the novel, this goal must be achieved.
• Changed for the better. By the end, your main character will become a better person after winning against impossible odds.

Create an antagonist

Writing the villain , the bad guy, the character who is out to stop your hero/protagonist is a tough job. Both characters have similar goals—to overcome the other in hopes of winning the big game, whatever that may be.

The antagonist is motivated by something they absolutely must have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it. This goal is revealed right away in the novel and becomes the driving force behind the novel’s pacing.

As with the protagonist, your villain’s motivation has to be so strong, they are willing to do anything, go to any distance, to achieve it.

This results in a massive, edge-of-your-seat climax. 

The essence of your novel can best be described as your protagonist's world clashing with the antagonist. Both characters try to bring balance to this world by overthrowing the other. If you learn how to write a novel with this goal in mind, you will be on track to write a gripping novel with scene after scene built on conflict.

Sketch out your minor characters

These are the characters that drop in and out of a novel, or they appear for a brief moment to deliver a message, play a part in the protagonist’s journey, but their appearance is brief. Learning how to write a novel requires making a list of your minor characters that will appear throughout the book. You don’t have to go into any lengthy descriptions. Keep details brief and remember: If your character isn’t engaged in the story, they shouldn’t be there.

5. Outline your novel

You have your characters mapped out. But now you need scenes for them to carry out the story. The next step in how to write a novel is to use novel writing software to get all your ideas organized into a book outline.

In fiction, most novels follow the “Five Key Milestones Approach.” There could be dozens of scenes in your book, but the critical scenes are the events that turn everything around.

The Five Key Milestones are: 

• The Opening Scene/Setup

The Inciting Incident

• The Pivotal Complication
• The 2nd Pivotal Complication

The majority of novels, TV shows, and movies (depending on genre) follow this formula. Your readers are trained to expect this kind of pattern. So, we must deliver to satisfy their expectations. Let's explain each milestone a bit further:

Opening Scene/Setup

The opening scene is telling readers the kind of story to expect. You must connect your reader to your character. You can show off a strength, reveal a weakness, or share an in-character insight. Each of these gives the reader a hook into the character, helping them to understand why they should follow along.

Here are the steps to create an opening scene:

• Step One: Create a compelling first paragraph
• Step Two : Introduce your main character
• Step Three : Foreshadow the conflict
• Step Four : Elicit emotion
• Step Five : Leave the chapter on a cliffhanger (to keep them reading)

You also need to acclimate the reader to the setting. What is the setting of a story? Simply put, it is the climate and environment in which your characters are living.

In Fantasy and Sci-fi, you're building entire worlds and new social constructs. In historical fiction, you're taking the reader back into the moments of World War II, the Roman Empire, or whatever time period.

Ideally, you do this on the cover, with the book description, and the categories and keywords you choose. But, you'll also need to make sure that the first couple of chapters give the reader a clear picture of where this story takes place. Remember to show and not tell .

The inciting incident is the moment in your story when your hero’s life changes forever. It is the ‘no-going back’ moment, where nothing that happens afterward will return your hero’s world back to normal.

When this happens, it is full speed ahead and stays that way until the climax. The inciting incident is the doorway they walk through and can never return until things return to normal. That doesn’t happen until the end of the novel after the climax. But by then, your hero has changed and might decide she never wants to return back to the way things were.

Pivotal Complication: The First Slap

The first slap is the moment in our story when everything that our hero has gained is lost in one swift action. Your hero is brought down to nothing. All gains are lost, and your hero’s situation has never been bleaker. Readers need to squirm during this scene. Make your readers uncomfortable, and you will be distilling the storytelling down to perfect science.

Pivotal Complication: The Second Slap

If the first slap wasn’t enough, the second slap has to be worse. Just when your readers think your hero has a chance, you take most of that hope away, save for a sliver. In the second slap, we are setting up for the climax, which means that the hero needs to have an escape route. There should be some hope remaining. It is the “last chance”, the “only chance” for survival. If it fails, all is lost…

The Climactic Scene: “All Hell Breaks Loose”

No scene in your novel is as important as your climax. Everything that has happened up to now has been building towards this climactic chaos. The reader must be so engaged with the climax that by the time they put down the book (or turn off the eReader) they are sweating bullets…and already searching for your next book on Amazon.

6. Establish a writing schedule

Once you have your outline laid out, the next step of learning how to write a novel is to actually write! But in order to do that, you need to have an established writing schedule. Otherwise, it's too easy to put off writing, and you will never end up with a finished book! There isn’t any magic or secret formula. You learn how to write a novel by writing every day no matter what the day throws at you.

The single biggest reason people don’t get a book written is lack of commitment to the writing process, and not the book itself. A book writing coach can inspire accountability during this process and help you stick to a routine. But how do you establish a writing routine , you ask? Well, some writers would say:

• Show up at your desk like any other job. 
• Take five minutes to review your story notes.
• Be clear on what you’re writing.
• Type the first word.
• Type the second word.
• Continue typing for 30-45 minutes.

When I get asked the best way to write, whether you're learning how to write a novel or a nonfiction book, these are the steps I teach writers.

Of course, different authors have different writing routines:

• Haruki Murakami wakes up at 4 a.m. and works for five to six hours
• W.H. Auden would rise at 6 a.m. and work hard from 7:00 to 11:30 when his mind was sharpest.
• Stephen King sits down to write every morning from 8:00 to 8:30.

Whatever routine you decide to follow, remember that the focus is on preparing to write. The routine you implement will be your method for building a successful career as an author .

7. Write your rough draft

Now that you have all the groundwork prepared for learning how to write a novel, it’s time to actually start writing your rough draft .

All the prepping you’ve done until this point means you are set up for success! You know what your novel is about, you’ve researched the idea, and you have your characters, plot, and overall storyline mapped out. 

It’s time to start writing the story that lives inside you! You can ask yourself the questions below to make sure you have everything prepped up to this point and you can also use a book template to speed up the process. But this is ultimately about you taking time each day to write.

• I have determined my writing schedule.
• My writing space is optimized and free of clutter or distractions.
• I have selected a few books in my genre to use as inspiration for my writing.
• I know what genre and subgenre I'm writing for and what type of fiction author I am.
• I researched the heavy details of my book.
• I have sketched out my protagonist and antagonist profiles.
• I am clear on the Earth-shattering climax.
• I am committed to writing now and editing later!

8. Self-edit your novel 

Once your rough draft or manuscript is written, it’s time for the editing process. There are multiple different types of editing we recommend when learning how to write a novel. But you will start with a solid self-edit of your book before sending it to a professional editor. 

Self-editing will take your book to the next level. It will also challenge you as a writer. The material you have spent the past three months [or three years?] working on is ready to be brutally shredded.

Steps for self-editing any novel

• Verbally read through to find any glaring errors. 
• Find areas where depth can be added to the story. 
• Identify any missing details or inconsistencies.
• Catch any repetition.
• Watch for showing vs. telling. 
• Avoid passive voice.
• Do a spell check and grammar check. 
• Don’t over edit.
• Make sure there is a logical flow and order. 
• Eliminate any fluff or unnecessary words. 

For some of these steps, you can use AI to help you edit your book . It's an excellent tool to catch typos and syntax errors that you may overlook!

9. Find a professional editor

Once you’ve done a thorough self-edit, it’s time to hand your book off to a professional editor to really trim away the fat and get your novel publish-ready!

During the editing stage, you may realize you still need to work through your fears and doubts as an author. You may second-guess some scenes or worry about omitting too much. This is why it's important to work with a very skilled editor and book coach during this phase. These people will be your support system and will keep your readers' – and your book's – best interests in mind.

If you aren't sure how to find a book editor , you can find one on Upwork , Fiverr , Facebook groups, or even through the selfpublishing.com team.

10. Revise your novel

Real writing is about rewriting. The rewrite (or revision) is the stage when your book really starts to take shape. Learning how to write a novel is just as much revising as it is actually writing.

Now that your rough draft is written and has undergone a series of edits, it is time to rewrite your book using the feedback you’ve received.

So what do you do if you get your manuscript back and it has more red marks on it than white space?

Simple. You take it as constructive feedback and get to work. Maybe that isn’t the answer you wanted to hear, but there are two choices. You can question the corrections your editor has made, and in some cases, challenge them.

Or, you can work through your manuscript line by line, accepting the corrections as you move through the book, making additions here and there.

Remember: Your editor isn't out to get you. They are there to help you learn how to write a novel better. Catching errors or story inconsistencies now is better than having readers catch them after they have paid for your book.

When it comes time to work through your editing, stick with your editor’s suggestions. Run through the book page-by-page, paragraph-by-paragraph, and line-by-line. Read it as if you are reading it for the first time.

You may also want to get alpha and beta readers to read your novel at this point in the journey. These people will read through your current manuscript through the lense of your ideal reader. And their initial feedback could be invaluable when making touch editing decisions!

11. Decide on your book title

You may have thought the book title would come first, but in my experience with learning how to write a novel, it's actually best to name your book after all is said and done.

At this point, your novel has been written and revised and you know exactly what it is about. Now you can craft a title that will launch your book to bestseller status.

12. Craft the perfect book cover design

After you put the finishing touches on your book, the next step in learning how to write a novel is to create a book cover. While you can try to do this yourself, chances are, you aren't a graphic designer.

If you want a book cover that is truly eye-catching and speaks to your target audience, I recommend hiring a book cover designer to ensure your novel is successful. Your designer will work back and forth with you to understand what you are hoping for, but also provide insight on what will be best from a marketing standpoint.

13. Ensure your book is properly formatted

Book formatting is a step that is often overlooked when learning how to write a novel – but it shouldn't be ignored! The formatting of a book and greatly impact the reader experience, and you wouldn't want to choose a font that hurts your readers' eyes or have words in two different sizes on your page.

There is plenty of book formatting software you can use to get your novel in proper form, but you can also hire a professional formatter to ensure your book is ready for publishing.

14. Start book marketing

Marketing shouldn't happen right before your book launch. It takes months of careful planning to successfully launch your book, and marketing ahead of time is a big part of that.

Once your book is ready for publishing, it's time to start marketing. When learning how to write a novel, there are so many book marketing ideas you can try, from promoting it on social media, to utilizing your email list , to creating a book trailer for your author website .

I highly recommend putting together a launch team of around 100 people who will receive advanced reader copies (ARCs) of your book for free in return for honest reviews. This can help you rack up a bunch of reviews as soon as you launch your book on Amazon KDP .

15. Launch your book!

Last on my list of how to write a novel is preparing your book for publishing. If you are self-publishing your first novel, this stage can be a bit overwhelming, and you will likely want to reach out to experts for help.

Because learning how to write a novel is pointless if you can't actually get your book out into the world!

A successful book launch can require a lot of components you might not think of, such as:

• Learning how to get an ISBN number
• Creating a book launch website
• Hosting a book launch party
• Email/social media marketing
• Determining the correct Amazon KDP tags

Luckily for you, helping authors self-publish their books is what we do around here.

If you've read this guide on how to write a novel and think you'd rather embark on this journey with some support, our team is here to help. Just reach out to one of our talented book writing specialists to talk about your novel idea today! We can walk you through every step of how to write a novel from mindmap to book launch.

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5 tips for mastering your rough draft.

Whether you’ve been struck with a moment of inspiration or you’ve carried a story inside you for years, you’re here because you want to start writing fiction. From developing flesh-and-bone characters to worlds as real as our own, good fiction is hard to write, and getting the first words onto the blank page can be daunting.

Daunting, but not impossible. Although writing good fiction takes time, with a few fiction writing tips and your first sentences written, you’ll find that it’s much easier to get your words on the page.

Let’s break down fiction to its essential elements. We’ll investigate the individual components of fiction writing—and how, when they sit down to write, writers turn words into worlds. Then, we’ll turn to instructor Jack Smith and his thoughts on combining these elements into great works of fiction. But first, what are the elements of fiction writing?

Introduction to Fiction Writing: The Six Elements of Fiction

Before we delve into any writing tips, let’s review the essentials of creative writing in fiction. Whether you’re writing flash fiction , short stories, or epic trilogies, most fiction stories require these six components:

• Plot: the “what happens” of your story.
• Characters:  whose lives are we watching?
• Setting: the world that the story is set in.
• Point of View: from whose eyes do we see the story unfold?
• Theme: the “deeper meaning” of the story, or what the story represents.
• Style: how you use words to tell the story.

It’s important to recognize that all of these elements are intertwined. You can’t build the setting without writing it through a certain point of view; you can’t develop important themes with arbitrary characters, etc. We’ll get into the relationship between these elements later, but for now, let’s explore how to use each element to write fiction.

1. Fiction Writing Tip: Developing Fictional Plots

Plot is the series of causes and effects that produce the story as a whole. Because A, then B, then C—ultimately leading to the story’s  climax , the result of all the story’s events and character’s decisions.

If you don’t know where to start your story, but you have a few story ideas, then start with the conflict . Some novels take their time to introduce characters or explain the world of the piece, but if the conflict that drives the story doesn’t show up within the first 15 pages, then the story loses direction quickly.

That’s not to say you have to be explicit about the conflict. In Harry Potter, Voldemort isn’t introduced as the main antagonist until later in the first book; the series’ conflict begins with the Dursley family hiding Harry from his magical talents. Let the conflict unfold naturally in the story, but start with the story’s impetus, then go from there.

2. Fiction Writing Tip: Creating Characters

Think far back to 9th grade English, and you might remember the basic types of story conflicts: man vs. nature, man vs. man, and man vs. self. The conflicts that occur within stories happen to its characters—there can be no story without its people. Sometimes, your story needs to start there: in the middle of a conversation, a disrupted routine, or simply with what makes your characters special.

There are many ways to craft characters with depth and complexity. These include writing backstory, giving characters goals and fatal flaws, and making your characters contend with complicated themes and ideas. This guide on character development will help you sort out the traits your characters need, and how to interweave those traits into the story.

3. Fiction Writing Tip: Give Life to Living Worlds

Whether your story is set on Earth or a land far, far away, your setting lives in the same way your characters do. In the same way that we read to get inside the heads of other people, we also read to escape to a world outside of our own. Consider starting the story with what makes your world live: a pulsing city, the whispered susurrus of orchards, hills that roil with unsolved mysteries, etc. Tell us where the conflict is happening, and the story will follow.

4. Fiction Writing Tip: Play With Narrative Point of View

Point of view refers to the “cameraman” of the story—the vantage point we are viewing the story through. Maybe you’re stuck starting your story because you’re trying to write it in the wrong person. There are four POVs that authors work with:

• First person—the story is told from the “I” perspective, and that “I” is the protagonist.
• First person peripheral—the story is told from the “I” perspective, but the “I” is not the protagonist, but someone adjacent to the protagonist. (Think: Nick Carraway, narrator of  The Great Gatsby. )
• Second person—the story is told from the “you” perspective. This point of view is rare, but when done effectively, it can create a sense of eeriness or a personalized piece.
• Third person limited—the story is told from the “he/she/they” perspective. The narrator is not directly involved in the lives of the characters; additionally, the narrator usually writes from the perspective of one or two characters.
• Third person omniscient—the story is told from the “he/she/they” perspective. The narrator is not directly involved in the lives of the characters; additionally, the narrator knows what is happening in each character’s heads and in the world at large.

If you can’t find the right words to begin your piece, consider switching up the pronouns you use and the perspective you write from. You might find that the story flows onto the page from a different point of view.

5. Fiction Writing Tip: Use the Story to Investigate Themes

Generally, the themes of the story aren’t explored until after the aforementioned elements are established, and writers don’t always know the themes of their own work until after the work is written. Still, it might help to consider the broader implications of the story you want to write. How does the conflict or story extend into a bigger picture?

Let’s revisit Harry Potter’s opening scenes. When we revisit the Dursleys preventing Harry from knowing about his true nature, several themes are established: the meaning of family, the importance of identity, and the idea of fate can all be explored here. Themes often develop organically, but it doesn’t hurt to consider the message of your story from the start.

6. Fiction Writing Tip: Experiment With Words

Style is the last of the six fiction elements, but certainly as important as the others. The words you use to tell your story, the way you structure your sentences, how you alternate between characters, and the sounds of the words you use all contribute to the mood of the work itself.

If you’re struggling to get past the first sentence, try rewriting it. Write it in 10 words or write it in 200 words; write a single word sentence; experiment with metaphors, alliteration, or onomatopoeia . Then, once you’ve found the right words, build from there, and let your first sentence guide the style and mood of the narrative.

Now, let’s take a deeper look at the craft of fiction writing. The above elements are great starting points, but to learn how to start writing fiction, we need to examine the craft of combining these elements.

Primer on the Elements of Fiction Writing

First, before we get into the craft of fiction writing, it’s important to understand the elements of fiction. You don’t need to understand everything about the craft of fiction before you start keying in ideas or planning your novel. But this primer will be something you can consult if you need clarification on any term (e.g., point of view) as you learn how to start writing fiction.

The Elements of Fiction Writing

A standard novel runs between 80,000 to 100,000 words. A short novel, going by the National Novel Writing Month , is at least 50,000. To begin with, don’t think about length—think about development. Length will come. It is true that some works lend themselves more to novellas, but if that’s the case, you don’t want to pad them to make a longer work. If you write a plot summary—that’s one option on getting started writing fiction—you will be able to get a fairly good idea about your project as to whether it lends itself to a full-blown novel.

For now, let’s think about the various elements of fiction—the building blocks.

Writing Fiction: Your Protagonist

Readers want an interesting protagonist , or main character. One that seems real, that deals with the various things in life we all deal with. If the writer makes life too simple, and doesn’t reflect the kinds of problems we all face, most readers are going to lose interest.

Don’t cheat it. Make the work honest. Do as much as you can to develop a character who is fully developed, fully real—many-sided. Complex. In Aspects of the Novel , E.M Forster called this character a “round” characte r. This character is capable of surprising us. Don’t be afraid to make your protagonist, or any of your characters, a bit contradictory. Most of us are somewhat contradictory at one time or another. The deeper you see into your protagonist, the more complex, the more believable they will be.

If a character has no depth, is merely “flat,” as Forster terms it, then we can sum this character up in a sentence: “George hates his ex-wife.” This is much too limited. Find out why. What is it that causes George to hate his ex-wife? Is it because of something she did or didn’t do? Is it because of a basic personality clash? Is it because George can’t stand a certain type of person, and he didn’t realize, until too late, that his ex-wife was really that kind of person? Imagine some moments of illumination, and you will have a much richer character than one who just hates his ex-wife.

And so… to sum up: think about fleshing out your protagonist as much as you can. Consider personality, character (or moral makeup), inclinations, proclivities, likes, dislikes, etc. What makes this character happy? What makes this character sad or frustrated? What motivates your character? Readers don’t want to know only what —they want to know why .

Usually, readers want a sympathetic character, one they can root for. Or if not that, one that is interesting in different ways. You might not find the protagonist of The Girl on the Train totally sympathetic, but she’s interesting! She’s compelling.

Here’s an article I wrote on what makes a good protagonist.

Also on clichéd characters.

Now, we’re ready for a key question: what is your protagonist’s main goal in this story? And secondly, who or what will stand in the way of your character achieving this goal?

There are two kinds of conflicts: internal and external. In some cases, characters may not be opposing an external antagonist, but be self-conflicted. Once you decide on your character’s goal, you can more easily determine the nature of the obstacles that your protagonist must overcome. There must be conflict, of course, and stories must involve movement. Things go from Phase A to Phase B to Phase C, and so on. Overall, the protagonist begins here and ends there. She isn’t the same at the end of the story as she was in the beginning. There is a character arc.

I spoke of character arc. Now let’s move on to plot, the mechanism governing the overall logic of the story. What causes the protagonist to change? What key events lead up to the final resolution?

But before we go there, let’s stop a moment and think about point of view, the lens through which the story is told.

Writing Fiction: Point of View as Lens

Is this the right protagonist for this story? Is this character the one who has the most at stake? Does this character have real potential for change? Remember, you must have change or movement—in terms of character growth—in your story. Your character should not be quite the same at the end as in the beginning. Otherwise, it’s more of a sketch.

Such a story used to be called “slice of life.” For example, what if a man thinks his job can’t get any worse—and it doesn’t? He started with a great dislike for the job, for the people he works with, just for the pay. His hate factor is 9 on a scale of 10. He doesn’t learn anything about himself either. He just realizes he’s got to get out of there. The reader knew that from page 1.

Choose a character who has a chance of undergoing change of some kind. The more complex the change, the better. Characters that change are dynamic characters , according to E. M. Forster. Characters that remain the same are  static  characters. Be sure your protagonist is dynamic.

Okay, an exception: Let’s say your character resists change—that can involve some sort of movement—the resisting of change.

Here’s another thing to look at on protagonists—a blog I wrote: https://elizabethspanncraig.com/writing-tips-2/creating-strong-characters-typical-challenges/

Writing Fiction: Point of View and Person

Usually when we think of point of view, we have in mind the choice of person: first, second, and third. First person provides intimacy. As readers we’re allowed into the I-narrator’s mind and heart. A story told from the first person can sometimes be highly confessional, frank, bold. Think of some of the great first-person narrators like Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield. With first person we can also create narrators that are not completely reliable, leading to dramatic irony : we as readers believe one thing while the narrator believes another. This creates some interesting tension, but be careful to make your protagonist likable, sympathetic. Or at least empathetic, someone we can relate to.

What if a novel is told in first person from the point of view of a mob hit man? As author of such a tale, you probably wouldn’t want your reader to root for this character, but you could at least make the character human and believable. With first person, your reader would be constantly in the mind of this character, so you’d need to find a way to deal with this sympathy question. First person is a good choice for many works of fiction, as long as one doesn’t confuse the I-narrator with themselves. It may be a temptation, especially in the case of fiction based on one’s own life—not that it wouldn’t be in third person narrations. But perhaps even more with a first person story: that character is me . But it’s not—it’s a fictional character.

Check out my article on writing autobiographical fiction, which appeared in  The   Writer  magazine. https://www.writermag.com/2018/07/31/filtering-fact-through-fiction/

Third person provides more distance. With third person, you have a choice between three forms: omniscient, limited omniscient, and objective or dramatic. If you get outside of your protagonist’s mind and enter other characters’ minds, you are being omniscient or godlike. If you limit your access to your protagonist’s mind only, this is limited omniscience. Let’s consider these two forms of third-person narrators before moving on to the objective or dramatic POV.

The omniscient form is rather risky, but it is certainly used, and it can certainly serve a worthwhile function. With this form, the author knows everything that has occurred, is occurring, or will occur in a given place, or in given places, for all the characters in the story. The author can provide historical background, look into the future, and even speculate on characters and make judgments. This point of view, writers tend to feel today, is more the method of nineteenth-century fiction, and not for today. It seems like too heavy an authorial footprint. Not handled well—and it is difficult to handle well—the characters seem to be pawns of an all-knowing author.

Today’s omniscience tends to take the form of multiple points of view, sometimes alternating, sometimes in sections. An author is behind it all, but the author is effaced, not making an appearance. BUT there are notable examples of well-handled authorial omniscience–read Nobel-prize winning Jose Saramago’s Blindness  as a good example.

For more help, here’s an article I wrote on the omniscient point of view for  The Writer : https://www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/fiction/omniscient-pov/

The limited omniscient form is typical of much of today’s fiction. You stick to your protagonist’s mind. You see others from the outside. Even so, you do have to be careful that you don’t get out of this point of view from time to time, and bring in things the character can’t see or observe—unless you want to stand outside this character, and therein lies the omniscience, however limited it is.

But anyway, note the difference between: “George’s smiles were very welcoming” and “George felt like his smiles were very welcoming”—see the difference? In the case of the first, we’re seeing George from the outside; in the case of the second, from the inside. It’s safer to stay within your protagonist’s perspective as much as possible and not describe them from the outside. Doing so comes off like a point-of-view shift. Yet it’s true that in some stories, the narrator will describe what the character is wearing, tell us what his hopes and dreams are, mention things he doesn’t know right now but will later—and perhaps, in rather quirky stories, the narrator will even say something like “Our hero…” This can work, and has, if you create an interesting narrative voice. But it’s certainly a risk.

The dramatic or objective point of view is one you’ll probably use from time to time, but not throughout your whole novel. Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants” is handled with this point of view. Mostly, with maybe one exception, all we know is what the characters say and do, as in a play. Using this point of view from time to time in a longer work can certainly create interest. You can intensify a scene sometimes with this point of view. An interesting back and forth can be accomplished, especially if the dialogue is clipped.

I’ve saved the second-person point of view for the last. I would advise you not to use this point of view for an entire work. In his short novel Bright Lights, Big City , Jay McInerney famously uses this point of view, and with some force, but it’s hard to pull off. In lesser hands, it can get old. You also cause the reader to become the character. Does the reader want to become this character? One problem with this point of view is it may seem overly arty, an attempt at sophistication. I think it’s best to choose either first or third.

Here’s an article I wrote on use of second person for  The Writer magazine. Check it out if you’re interested. https://www.writermag.com/2016/11/02/second-person-pov/

Writing Fiction: Protagonist and Plot and Structure

We come now to plot, keeping in mind character. You might consider the traditional five-stage structure : exposition, rising action, crisis and climax, falling action, and resolution. Not every plot works this way, but it’s a tried-and-true structure. Certainly a number of pieces of literature you read will begin in media re s—that is, in the middle of things. Instead of beginning with standard exposition, or explanation of the condition of the protagonist’s life at the story’s starting point, the author will begin with a scene. But even so, as in Jerzy Kosiński’s famous novella Being There , which begins with a scene, we’ll still pick up the present state of the character’s life before we see something that complicates it or changes the existing equilibrium. This so-called complication can be something apparently good—like winning the lottery—or something decidedly bad—like losing a huge amount of money at the gaming tables. One thing is true in both cases: whatever has happened will cause the character to change. And so now you have to fill in the events that bring this about.

How do you do that? One way is to write a chapter outline to prevent false starts. But some writers don’t like plotting in this fashion, but want to discover as they write. If you do plot your novel in advance, do realize that as you write, you will discover a lot of things about your character that you didn’t have in mind when you first set pen to paper. Or fingers to keyboard. And so, while it’s a good idea to do some planning, do keep your options open.

Let’s think some more about plot. To have a workable plot, you need a sequence of actions or events that give the story an overall movement. This includes two elements which we’ll take up later: foreshadowing and echoing (things that prepare us for something in the future and things that remind us of what has already happened). These two elements knit a story together.

Think carefully about character motivations. Some things may happen to your character; some things your character may decide to do, however wisely or unwisely. In the revision stage, if not earlier, ask yourself: What motivates my character to act in one way or another? And ask yourself: What is the overall logic of this story? What caused my character to change? What were the various forces, whether inner or outer, that caused this change? Can I describe my character’s overall arc, from A to Z?  Try to do that. Write a short paragraph. Then try to write down your summary in one sentence, called a log line in film script writing, but also a useful technique in fiction writing as well. If you write by the discovery method, you probably won’t want to do this in the midst of the drafting, but at least in the revision stage, you should consider doing so.

With a novel you may have a subplot or two. Assuming you will, you’ll need to decide how the plot and the subplot relate. Are they related enough to make one story? If you think the subplot is crucial for the telling of your tale, try to say why—in a paragraph, then in a sentence.

Here’s an article I wrote on structure for  The Writer : https://www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/revision-grammar/find-novels-structure/

Writing Fiction: Setting

Let’s move on to setting . Your novel has to take place somewhere. Where is it? Is it someplace that is particularly striking and calls for a lot of solid description? If it’s a wilderness area where your character is lost, give your reader a strong sense for the place. If it’s a factory job, and much of the story takes place at the worksite, again readers will want to feel they’re there with your character, putting in the hours. If it’s an apartment and the apartment itself isn’t related to the problems your character is having, then there’s no need to provide that much detail. Exception: If your protagonist concentrates on certain things in the apartment and begins to associate certain things about the apartment with their misery, now there’s reason to get concrete. Take a look, when you have a chance, at the short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” It’s not an apartment—it’s a house—but clearly the setting itself becomes important when it becomes important to the character. She reads the wallpaper as a statement about her own condition.

Here’s the URL for ”The Yellow Wall-Paper”: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/theliteratureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/digitalDocs/The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf

Sometimes setting is pretty important; sometimes it’s much less important. When it doesn’t serve a purpose to describe it, don’t, other than to give the reader a sense for where the story takes place. If you provide very many details, even in a longer work like a novel, the reader will think that these details have some significance in terms of character, plot, or theme—or all three. And if they don’t, why are they there? If setting details are important, be selective. Provide a dominant impression. More on description below.

If you’re interested, here’s a blog on setting I wrote for Writers.com: https://writers.com/what-is-the-setting-of-a-story

Writing Fiction: Theme and Idea

Most literary works have a theme or idea. It’s possible to decide on this theme before you write, as you plan out your novel. But be careful here. If the theme seems imposed on the work, the novel will lose a lot of force. It will seem—and it may well be—engineered by the author much like a nonfiction piece, and lose the felt experience of the characters.

Theme must emerge from the work naturally, or at least appear to do so. Once you have a draft, you can certainly build ideas that are apparent in the work, and you can even do this while you’re generating your first draft. But watch out for overdoing it. Let the characters (what they do, what they say) and the plot (the whole storyline with its logical connections) contribute on their own to the theme. Also you can depend on metaphors, similes, and analogies to point to the theme—as long as these are not heavy-handed. Avoid authorial intrusion, authorial impositions of any kind. If you do end up creating a simile, metaphor, or analogy through rational thinking, make sure it sounds  natural. That’s not easy, of course.

Writing Fiction: Handling Scenes

Keep a few things in mind about writing scenes. Not every event deserves a whole scene, maybe only a half-scene, a short interaction between characters. Scenes need to do two things: reveal character and advance plot. If a scene seems to stall out and lack interest, in the revision mode you might try using narrative summary instead (see below).

Good fiction is strongly dramatic, calling for scenes, many of them scenes with dialogue and action. Scenes need to involve conflict of some kind. If everyone is happy, that’s probably going to be a dull scene. Some scenes will be narrative, without dialogue. You need some interesting action to make these work.

Let’s consider scenes with dialogue.

The best dialogue is speech that sounds natural, and yet isn’t. Everything about fiction is an artifice, including speech. But try to make it sound real. The best way to do this is to “hear” the voices in your head and transcribe them. Take dictation. If you can do this, whole conversations will seem very real, believable. If you force what each character has to say, and plan it out too much, it will certainly sound planned out, and not real at all. Not that in the revision mode you can’t doctor up the speech here and there, but still, make sure it comes off as natural sounding.

Some things to think about when writing dialogue: people usually speak in fragments, interrupt each other, engage in pauses, follow up a question with a comment that takes the conversation off course (non sequiturs). Note these aspects of dialogue in the fiction you read.

Also, note how writers intersperse action with dialogue, setting details, and character thoughts. As far as the latter goes, though, if you’ll recall, I spoke of the dramatic point of view, which doesn’t get into a character’s mind but depends instead on what characters do and say, as in a play. You may try this point of view out in some scenes to make them really move.

One technique is to use indirect dialogue, or summary of what a character said, not in the character’s own words. For instance: Bill made it clear that he wasn’t going to the city after all. If anybody thought that, they were wrong .

Now and then you’ll come upon dialogue that doesn’t use the standard double quotes, but perhaps a single quote (this is British), or dashes, or no punctuation at all. The latter two methods create some distance from the speech. If you want to give your work a surreal quality, this certainly adds to it. It also makes it seem more interior.

One way to kill good dialogue is to make characters too obviously expository devices—that is, functioning to provide background or explanations of certain important story facts. Certainly characters can serve as expository devices, but don’t be too heavy-handed about this. Don’t force it like the following:

“We always used to go to the beach, you recall? You recall how first we would have breakfast, then take a long walk on the beach, and then we would change into our swimsuits, and spend an hour in the water. And you recall how we usually followed that with a picnic lunch, maybe an hour later.”

This sounds like the character is saying all this to fill the reader in on backstory. You’d need a motive for the utterance of all of these details—maybe sharing a memory?

But the above sounds stilted, doesn’t it?

One final word about dialogue. Watch out for dialogue tags that tell but don’t show . Here’s an example:

“Do you think that’s the case,” said Ted, hoping to hear some good news. “Not necessarily,” responded Laura, in a barky voice. “I just wish life wasn’t so difficult,” replied Ted.

If you’re going to use a tag at all—and many times you don’t need to—use “said.” Dialogue tags like the above examples can really kill the dialogue.

Writing Fiction: Writing Solid Prose

Narrative summary :  As I’ve stated above, not everything will be a scene. You’ll need to write narrative summary now and then. Narrative summary telescopes time, covering a day, a week, a month, a year, or even longer. Often it will be followed up by a scene, whether a narrative scene   or one with dialogue. Narrative summary can also relate how things generally went over a given period. You can write strong narrative summary if you make it specific and concrete—and dramatic. Also, if we hear the voice of the writer, it can be interesting—if the voice is compelling enough.

Exposition : It’s the first stage of the 5-stage plot structure, where things are set up prior to some sort of complication, but more generally, it’s a prose form which tells or informs. You use exposition when you get inside your character, dealing with his or her thoughts and emotions, memories, plans, dreams. This can be difficult to do well because it can come off too much like authorial “telling” instead of “showing,” and readers want to feel like they’re experiencing the world of the protagonist, not being told about this world. Still, it’s important to get inside characters, and exposition is often the right tool, along with narrative summary, if the character is remembering a sequence of events from the past.

Description :  Description is a word picture, providing specific and concrete details to allow the reader to see, not just be told. Concreteness is putting the reader in the world of the five senses, what we call imagery . Some writers provide a lot of details, some only a few—just enough that the reader can imagine the rest. Consider choosing details that create a dominant impression—whether it’s a character or a place. Similes, metaphors, and analogies help readers see people and places and can make thoughts and ideas (the reflections of your character or characters) more interesting. Not that you should always make your reader see. To do so might cause an overload of images.

Check out these two articles: https://www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/fiction/the-definitive-guide-to-show-dont-tell/ https://www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/fiction/figurative-language-in-fiction/

Writing Fiction: Research

Some novels require research. Obviously historical novels do, but others do, too, like Sci Fi novels. Almost any novel can call for a little research. Here’s a short article I wrote for The Writer magazine on handling research materials. It’s in no way an in-depth commentary on research–but it will serve as an introduction. https://www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/fiction/research-in-fiction/

For a blog on novel writing, check this link at Writers.com: https://writers.com/novel-writing-tips

For more articles I’ve published in  The Writer , go here: https://www.writermag.com/author/jack-smith/

How to Start Writing Fiction: Take a Writing Class!

To write a story or even write a book, fiction writers need these tools first and foremost. Although there’s no comprehensive guide on how to write fiction for beginners, working with these elements of fiction will help your story bloom.

All six elements synergize to make a work of fiction, and like most works of art, the sum of these elements is greater than the individual parts. Still, you might find that you struggle with one of these elements, like maybe you’re great at writing characters but not very good with exploring setting. If this is the case, then use your strengths: use characters to explore the setting, or use style to explore themes, etc.

Getting the first draft written is the hardest part, but it deserves to be written. Once you’ve got a working draft of a story or novel and you need an extra set of eyes, the Writers.com community is here to give feedback: take a look at our upcoming courses on fiction writing, and check out our talented writing community .

Good luck, and happy writing!

I have had a story in my mind for over 15 years. I just haven’t had an idea how to start , putting it down on print just seems too confusing. After reading this article I’m even more confused but also more determined to give it a try. It has given me answers to some of my questions. Thank you !

You’ve got this, Earl!

Just reading this as I have decided to attempt a fiction work. I am terrible at writing outside of research papers and such. I have about 50 single spaced pages “written” and an entire outline. These tips are great because where I struggle it seems is drawing the reader in. My private proof reader tells me it is to much like an explanation and not enough of a story, but working on it.

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How to Start Writing a Book: 9 Steps for Writers

Alex Simmonds

So, you’ve finally decided to write a book . But how on earth do you get started?

This article makes a couple of assumptions. First, that this is your first attempt at writing a book , and second, that you have a bit of creative writing experience already.

Yet, even with creative writing experience, beginning to write a book isn’t easy, and the actual writing process is a commitment. You’ll need to have regular writing sessions for a significant period of time.

But you can do it! These nine steps cover every aspect of the writing process. Follow them, and you’ll reach your goal.

What If You’re a Beginner at Writing Books?

9-step guide on how to start writing a book, final thoughts.

You’re not alone. Everyone starts out as a beginner, even the best and most successful authors.

As an aspiring writer of books, you should spend most of your spare time reading them.

Stephen King, the massively successful, prolific writer emphasizes this.

He also says writers should read every genre and style.

Read the classics, but read junk books and bad books too. This varied experience will show you the kind of writing you don’t want to produce, and writing that just doesn’t work.

Read widely, across genres, but also specifically. Immerse yourself in the genre you wish to write. Stephen King meant it when he said writers need to read “a lot.”

Your efforts will inform your writing style and choices. Every novel that you read will teach you what to do or what not to do with plot development, characterization, point of view, and style.

Almost all good writers imitate other authors, often without realizing it, as they begin writing. Many will have gone through phases of reading Hemingway and writing in stripped down, barebone sentences. Others have worked their way through a James Joyce novel and imitated his modernist, stream-of-consciousness language.

The more voices you read, and then imitate, the closer you will get to finding your individual writing voice and style.

Author Neil Gaiman shared this on how he generates ideas for books:

Once you have read a variety of books within each genre, it is time to start writing your book .

Here are our nine no-fuss steps for beginner writers.

1. Decide What Your Book Will Be About

The first thing you need to do is decide what your novel will be about. The idea doesn’t have to be thoroughly fleshed out; think of it as a seed from which your story will grow.

J.R.R. Tolkien got the idea for The Hobbit after absentmindedly writing on a piece of paper “in a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.” J.K. Rowling knew she wanted to write about a boy wizard with black hair and spectacles. And George R.R. Martin wrote A Game of Thrones after picturing dire wolves in the snow.

Clearly, one way of getting an idea is being mindful of your scribbles, or doodles, or visions. Tolkien could have just thrown his odd, scribbled sentence away. Rowling could have ignored the image of the boy in spectacles, and Martin could have forgotten about his dire wolves. Instead, they chose to focus and explore their ideas.

If that doesn’t work, start with your genre.

It’s important to write in a genre you enjoy. You’ll be spending a lot of time with your developing novel, so choose a world you’ll be happy to explore.

Consider the basic characteristics of your genre, then add a twist.

When Lee Child created the Jack Reacher thriller series, he knew he needed a compelling hero or protagonist, a powerful villain, high stakes, and fast-paced action.

Then he added a twist.

In an article about the author, Bob Cornwell quotes Child’s claim that he created Reacher “‘as an antidote to all the depressed and miserable alcoholics that increasingly peopled the genre.’”

Child made Reacher a tough guy, like most thriller protagonists, but a friendly, decent, uncomplicated one.

Consider the components you need for your genre. Perhaps you’ll twist the setting or give your character an unusual ability. That twist might be the very idea that inspires your book!

2. Research and Outline Your Book

Writing fiction requires ideas, imagination, and research. Your story may be made up, but it needs to ring true to the reader.

Factual research provides you with the scientific,technical, or historical details you will need to make the plot work.

Getting the logic of the story correct from the beginning—whether that be the historical accuracy of the events, or specific details of an ancient religion’s rites—will allow everything else to fall into place later.

One reason Andy Weir’s The Martian was so successful was that the entire story was science-driven, and all the math and science were correct.

John Grisham’s experience as a lawyer gave his legal thrillers a sense of legitimacy. His knowledge of the court system and legal process were integral to the success of his writing.

You also need to research your genre . This is essential for two reasons.

First, you want to ensure your killer idea is truly original before you start your actual writing.

Let’s say you come up with an idea for a PR guru who moves from London to the country and ends up solving cozy mysteries. Your genre research will lead you to Agatha Raisin rather quickly! You might be disappointed at first, but you’ll have saved yourself countless hours of wasted writing sessions.

Second, you’ll get a sense of the length and other common characteristics of your chosen genre. You’ll see a pattern of fan-favorite tropes and can figure out which you want to lean into and which you want to twist.

3. Structure Your Novel

Before you begin writing, create an outline of your plot. A plot outline will give you a framework. You can explore ideas within the framework and make adjustments as you go, but that initial structure will help you keep your ideas organized.

A classic plot structure for a first novel is the three-act structure, which is the format used for some of the most successful novels ever written, such as Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.

The three-act structure works like this:

In Act One, you “set the stage” for your story.

• Establish the setting: describe where and when the story occurs.
• Introduce the characters: show the reader who the players are and who the story is about.
• Give background on the conflict: establish what problem is driving the story and who is involved in that conflict.
• Set the conflict in motion: present the inciting incident—the event that sends the conflict and characters into action.

In Act Two, you take the main characters through their journey.

• Develop the rising action: this is the longest part of your story. It’s where characters encounter problems and must find new methods of dealing with those problems.
• Add points of interest: include plot twists, turns, and complications.
• Develop characters: continue revealing and enriching elements of the characters so your readers invest in their journeys.

In Act Three, you resolve the conflict.

• End the conflict: resolve the problem driving the story. Remember, resolutions don’t have to be happy; they just need to be satisfying.
• Explore characters: show how your characters have changed because of the journey.

This tried-and-true formula is so useful for first-time novelists because it breaks the novel into chunks, pacing it so each act ends on a pivotal moment in the plot. When executed correctly, there are waves of narrative that leave the reader wanting more.

4. Use First- or Third-Person Point of View

Point of view (POV) is the viewpoint used to tell a story. There are three main POV options:

First-Person POV tells the story from a character’s (usually the main character’s) point of view. That character uses “I” and “me” as well as “we” and “us” in their narration. The reader only gets the narrator’s perspective on the story’s events. First-Person narration is popular in fiction writing.

Second-Person POV narrators directly address the reader as “you,” as if the reader is the protagonist. This POV is less common in fiction writing.

Third-Person POV narrators are “invisible voices” telling the story of the characters and referencing them as “he,” “she,” or “they.” Third-person narrators are omniscient. They know everything about all the characters and give an unbiased telling of the story.

So which POV should you use?

Unless you are writing a choose-your-own-adventure book in which the reader is the protagonist, there’s really no need to consider second-person POV.

First-person POV allows the reader to get close to the character, usually the protagonist, who is telling the story. The reader experiences the story through that character’s eyes and learns what that character is thinking. That close connection creates empathy in the reader for the character.

A classic example of first person POV is Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye .

First-person narrators, just like people, aren’t necessarily reliable. They tell their side of the story. Maybe they are liars, or insane or obvious exaggerators or terribly naïve.

Patrick Bateman, the main character in American Psycho , narrates his killing spree from a first-person point of view, declaring himself a serial killer. Near the end of the novel, we learn that one of his supposed victims is alive—so can we believe Bateman’s horrific story?

Third-person POV is the most popular narration in novels these days, specifically third-person limited .

In many classics, writers told their stories from the third-person omniscient POV. This type of invisible narrative knows and sees all, and could focus its attention on different characters throughout the story. This type of third-person narration is not used as often in current fiction writing.

In the more popular third-person limited POV, the narrator remains unbiased and still refers to character as “he,” “she,” and “they,” but focuses the storytelling from a specific character’s perspective.

Third-person POV allows you to reveal things as a character sees them, and also hide things yet unknown by the character from the reader.

You can also control how much of the character’s inner emotion you reveal, and vary the protagonist from chapter to chapter, moving into different characters’ POV. (However, you should not do this within a scene as it’s disorienting and known as head-hopping.)

For a first novel, third-person limited POV or first-person POV is the best place to start.

5. Create a Memorable Main Character

Main characters are often what readers connect with and remember most about a story. Developing an engaging main character is as important as the story itself.

Your protagonist needs a full backstory and characteristics that make them relatable to the reader. The protagonist is who you want the reader to root for. That doesn’t mean the character has to be a “perfect” person. Perfect isn’t relatable to imperfect readers, complexity is.

Consider how you can give your character layers of experience and personality to add that complexity. Think about how you can take your character through an arc of development. How can they grow and change—even transform—throughout the story?

You’ll need to back up your main characters with the supporting cast. These characters should also be memorable and well developed.

If you’re unsure about how to create memorable characters , these two ideas will help you.

First, think about the character’s inner life. To connect with a character, readers have to feel like they know them, so show the readers how the character feels, thinks, or remembers. What haunts them or triggers them?

Conveying those inner emotions requires description. Instead of saying “she was upset,” you could write:

The sight of that padlock on the door made her stomach tighten and she felt her face go red. Suddenly she remembered the last time she’d been here …

This description allows the reader to empathize with the character as her memories come flooding back.

The second technique is to differentiate the character from the average person. Those distinctions lend an air of intrigue, piquing readers’ interest in, and response to, the character.

Sherlock Holmes is an ingenious detective, which is impressive. But unlike many other detectives, he is a cold, dispassionate, violin-playing drug addict.

Lisbeth Salander, star of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , is a troubled, neurodiverse, genius hacker.

Anyone who has read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will forever remember Marvin the Paranoid Android!

Even though a trait may be undesirable in real life, in your novel it could be the unique element that makes your character memorable.

6. Choose a Cozy Space to Write Your Book

Just as with real estate, location matters when you are beginning to write your book.

When you’re comfortable in your space, you can focus on the task at hand and have productive writing sessions.

Most people look for writing spaces that are quiet, clean, and removed from others, with no distractions and plenty of room to manage the research or other materials you’ve gathered for the project.

But everyone is different! Others might find their ideas flow best when they’re typing on a laptop, sitting on a seat in a coffee shop with headphones on.

If you have options, test them out. Take notice of both how and where you work best and how and where you are most distracted.

The point is to choose a space that works for you and becomes part of your writing routine.

7. Create and Follow a Good Writing Routine

When you’re just starting your writing career, you’ve probably still got your day job and limited time to work on your book. Finding the best time to write is as important as finding the best writing space.

Take inventory of how you spend your time. You may literally want to document how you spend your time for a few days to see where writing can fit your schedule, or how you can adjust your schedule to fit in writing time.

Test out different times if that flexibility is available to you. If you find you work better at night, perhaps you swap out some TV time for writing. If you’re an early riser, set your alarm one hour earlier and set aside the quiet of the morning for writing.

Whatever your preference, you must ultimately set aside time for regular writing periods. You’ll probably have to sacrifice some non-essential activities from your schedule.

Hold these sessions daily. That’s the best way to develop a strong habit.

Then set yourself a daily or weekly word count as part of your routine. The number itself doesn’t matter, but it should be one that makes sense with your time constraints and your writing goals. Whether you set your goal at 500 or 3,000 words, sticking to that commitment is what’s important.

8. Use Editing Software Like ProWritingAid

Next, think about the tools of the trade that suit you best. For most people, the choice is between putting a pen to paper or fingers to a keyboard.

Writers who use pen and paper for their first drafts often say the method helps them avoid the distractions that come with computers. There is no internet or social media on a blank piece of paper.

Some find a stronger sense of connection to their words when using pen and paper, or find satisfaction in physically filling a page with writing.

Of course, even pen and paper loyalists will have to use a computer at a later point in the editing process.

Neil Gaiman uses pen and paper for his first draft.

Nowadays, most writers prefer the speed and efficiency of computers to help them write their first draft, last draft, and every draft in between.

Computers also bring convenience to the editing process. Microsoft Word, the software writers often have to use to submit their manuscripts, has helpful formatting abilities and provides surface-level grammar and spelling checks.

Scrivener is software designed specifically for writers. It allows you to organize your writing with a user-friendly drag-and-drop system. You can set up individual scenes, chapters, and acts, and organize research and character studies in different sections.

It also works well with ProWritingAid’s Desktop App . You can edit your Scrivener documents with ProWritingAid and save the changes back to the original.

If you need help minimizing distractions but don’t want to use a pen and paper, several apps can help.

The Freedom app allows you to turn off all distractions, while FocusWriter allows you to write on a full screen with no pop-ups or tabs in the background.

When you’ve drafted a segment or chapter and want to refine your work, use ProWritingAid’s grammar checker .

This editing tool is extremely thorough and does far more than catch grammar and spelling errors. It provides a detailed evaluation of every aspect of your writing style, including sentence structure, sensory details, dialogue tags , and more.

It’s also a personal writing coach, offering writing advice and tips as you move through your writing journey.

Sign up for a free ProWritingAid account to start editing smarter today.

9. Write the First Chapter of Your Novel

There are two schools of thought regarding the opening line and opening chapter of your novel.

The first says you shouldn’t get hung up on writing the perfect opening. Instead, you should just keep writing, rather than spending too much time stressing over that first chapter.

The second says that the first line and chapter are worth the extra time. Many of the greatest novels of all time have opening lines and chapters that grab their readers’ attention right from the start.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”— 1984 , George Orwell     “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”— The Bell Jar , Sylvia Plath

An impressive first line has the power to pull a reader into your book immediately. You might only have a few moments to convince bookshop browsers to buy. Give your opening line and first page the power to persuade!

Literary agents will most likely only read the first chapter of a manuscript when deciding whether it’s worth a full read or should be tossed aside.

Your first chapter will help set the tone and direction of the book in your own mind. We mentioned earlier that George R.R. Martin formed Game of Thrones from the scene where the Starks find the direwolf pups:

“One day, the first chapter of ‘Game of Thrones’ came to me... I mean, that single sentence: They found the direwolf pups in the summer snows. I knew they were the summer snows, so this was a place where it snowed even in summer. So, what could result in that?”

The first chapter is important because it allows you to settle into your world and build your ideas. In the end, it’s probably worth spending extra time working on the first chapter and getting it right so you know where you are going with the rest of the book.

However, if you’re completely stuck, consider a third option, which combines those two schools of thought. Don’t spend too much time on that first chapter if you feel you’re just not getting it right and aren’t making progress with your work. Move on with the story.

When you’ve written some or all of the story, go back to that first chapter and put in the time you need to get it right.

How can you start writing a novel? Start writing, keep reading, and use all the writing tips in this post to guide you!

Did I mention you need to start writing? That’s the most important first step and there’s no other way around it. Once you get going, keep going!

If you think you still need a little more help getting started, check out the How to Write a Novel tag on our blog, and download your free copy of The Novel-Writing Training Plan below for everything you need to know.

(updated by Allison Bressmer)

Are you prepared to write your novel? Download this free book now:

The Novel-Writing Training Plan

So you are ready to write your novel. excellent. but are you prepared the last thing you want when you sit down to write your first draft is to lose momentum., this guide helps you work out your narrative arc, plan out your key plot points, flesh out your characters, and begin to build your world..

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Alex Simmonds is a freelance copywriter based in the UK and has been using words to help people sell things for over 20 years. He has an MA in English Lit and has been struggling to write a novel for most of the last decade. He can be found at alexsimmonds.co.uk.

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How to Write a Book From Start to Finish: A Proven Guide

So you want to write a book. Becoming an author can change your life—not to mention give you the ability to impact thousands, even millions, of people.

But writing a book isn’t easy. As a 21-time New York Times bestselling author, I can tell you: It’s far easier to quit than to finish.

You’re going to be tempted to give up writing your book when you run out of ideas, when your own message bores you, when you get distracted, or when you become overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the task.

But what if you knew exactly:

• Where to start…
• What each step entails…
• How to overcome fear, procrastination, a nd writer’s block …
• And how to keep from feeling overwhelmed?

You can write a book—and more quickly than you might think, because these days you have access to more writing tools than ever. 

The key is to follow a proven, straightforward, step-by-step plan .

My goal here is to offer you that book-writing plan.

I’ve used the techniques I outline below to write more than 200 books (including the Left Behind series) over the past 50 years. Yes, I realize writing over four books per year on average is more than you may have thought humanly possible. 

But trust me—with a reliable blueprint, you can get unstuck and finally write your book .

This is my personal approach on how to write a book. I’m confident you’ll find something here that can change the game for you. So, let’s jump in.

• How to Write a Book From Start to Finish

Part 1: Before You Begin Writing Your Book

• Establish your writing space.
• Assemble your writing tools.

Part 2: How to Start Writing a Book

• Break the project into small pieces.
• Settle on your BIG idea.
• Construct your outline.
• Set a firm writing schedule.
• Establish a sacred deadline.
• Embrace procrastination (really!).
• Eliminate distractions.
• Conduct your research.
• Start calling yourself a writer.

Part 3: The Book-Writing Itself

• Think reader-first.
• Find your writing voice.
• Write a compelling opener.
• Fill your story with conflict and tension.
• Turn off your internal editor while writing the first draft.
• Persevere through The Marathon of the Middle.
• Write a resounding ending.

Part 4: Editing Your Book

• Become a ferocious self-editor.
• Find a mentor.
• Part 5: Publishing Your Book
• Decide on your publishing avenue.
• Properly format your manuscript.
• Set up and grow your author platform.
• Pursue a Literary Agent
• Writing Your Query Letter
• Part One: Before You Begin Writing Your Book

You’ll never regret—in fact, you’ll thank yourself later—for investing the time necessary to prepare for such a monumental task.

You wouldn’t set out to cut down a huge grove of trees with just an axe. You’d need a chain saw, perhaps more than one. Something to keep them sharp. Enough fuel to keep them running.

You get the picture. Don’t shortcut this foundational part of the process.

Step 1. Establish your writing space.

To write your book, you don’t need a sanctuary. In fact, I started my career o n my couch facing a typewriter perched on a plank of wood suspended by two kitchen chairs.

What were you saying about your setup again? We do what we have to do.

And those early days on that sagging couch were among the most productive of my career.

Naturally, the nicer and more comfortable and private you can make your writing lair (I call mine my cave), the better.

Real writers can write anywhere .

Some authors write their books in restaurants and coffee shops. My first full time job was at a newspaper where 40 of us clacked away on manual typewriters in one big room—no cubicles, no partitions, conversations hollered over the din, most of my colleagues smoking, teletype machines clattering.

Cut your writing teeth in an environment like that, and anywhere else seems glorious.

Step 2. Assemble your writing tools.

In the newspaper business, there was no time to hand write our stuff and then type it for the layout guys. So I have always written at a keyboard and still write my books that way.

Most authors do, though some hand write their first drafts and then keyboard them onto a computer or pay someone to do that.

No publisher I know would even consider a typewritten manuscript, let alone one submitted in handwriting.

The publishing industry runs on Microsoft Word, so you’ll need to submit Word document files. Whether you prefer a Mac or a PC, both will produce the kinds of files you need.

And if you’re looking for a musclebound electronic organizing system, you can’t do better than Scrivener . It works well on both PCs and Macs, and it nicely interacts with Word files.

Just remember, Scrivener has a steep learning curve, so familiarize yourself with it before you start writing.

Scrivener users know that taking the time to learn the basics is well worth it.

Tons of other book-writing tools exist to help you. I’ve included some of the most well-known in my blog po st on book writing software and my writing tools page fo r your reference.

So, what else do you need?

If you are one who handwrites your first drafts, don’t scrimp on paper, pencils, or erasers.

Don’t shortchange yourself on a computer either. Even if someone else is keyboarding for you, you’ll need a computer for research and for communicating with potential agents , edi tors, publishers.

Get the best computer you can afford, the latest, the one with the most capacity and speed.

Try to imagine everything you’re going to need in addition to your desk or table, so you can equip yourself in advance and don’t have to keep interrupting your work to find things like:

• Paper clips
• Pencil holders
• Pencil sharpeners
• Printing paper
• Paperweight
• Tape dispensers
• Cork or bulletin boards
• Reference works
• Space heaters
• Beverage mugs
• You name it
• Last, but most crucial, get the best, most ergonomic chair you can afford.

If I were to start my career again with that typewriter on a plank, I would not sit on that couch. I’d grab another straight-backed kitchen chair or something similar and be proactive about my posture and maintaining a healthy spine.

There’s nothing worse than trying to be creative and immerse yourself in writing while you’re in agony . The chair I work in today cost more than my first car!

If you’ve never used some of the items I listed above and can’t imagine needing them, fine. But make a list of everything you know you’ll need so when the actual writing begins, you’re already equipped.

As you grow as a writer and actually start making money at it, you can keep upgrading your writing space.

Where I work now is light years from where I started. But the point is, I didn’t wait to start writing until I could have a great spot in which to do it.

• Part Two: How to Start Writing a Book

Step 1. Break your book into small pieces.

Writing a book feels like a colossal project, because it is! Bu t your manuscript w ill be made up of many small parts.

An old adage says that the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time .

Try to get your mind off your book as a 400-or-so-page monstrosity.

It can’t be written all at once any more than that proverbial elephant could be eaten in a single sitting.

See your book for what it is: a manuscript made up of sentences, paragraphs, pages. Those pages will begin to add up, and though after a week you may have barely accumulated double digits, a few months down the road you’ll be into your second hundred pages.

So keep it simple.

Start by distilling you r big book idea from a page or so to a single sentence—your premise. The more specific that one-sentence premise, the more it will keep you focused while you’re writing.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before you can turn your big idea into one sentence, which can then b e expanded to an outline , you have to settle on exactly what that big idea is.

Step 2. Settle on your BIG idea.

To be book-worthy, your idea has to be killer.

You need to write something about which you’re passionate , something that gets you up in the morning, draws you to the keyboard, and keeps you there. It should excite not only you, but also anyone you tell about it.

I can’t overstate the importance of this.

If you’ve tried and failed to finish your book before—maybe more than once—it could be that the basic premise was flawed. Maybe it was worth a blog post or an article but couldn’t carry an entire book.

Think The Hunger Games , Harry Potter , or How to Win Friends and Influence People . The market is crowded, the competition fierce. There’s no more room for run-of-the-mill ideas. Your premise alone should make readers salivate.

Go for the big concept book.

How do you know you’ve got a winner? Does it have legs? In other words, does it stay in your mind, growing and developing every time you think of it?

Run it past loved ones and others you trust.

Does it raise eyebrows? Elicit Wows? Or does it result in awkward silences?

The right concept simply works, and you’ll know it when you land on it. Most importantly, your idea must capture you in such a way that you’re compelled to write it . Otherwise you will lose interest halfway through and never finish.

Step 3. Construct your outline.

Writing your book without a clear vision of where you’re going usually ends in disaster.

Even if you ’re writing a fiction book an d consider yourself a Pantser* as opposed to an Outliner, you need at least a basic structure .

[*Those of us who write by the seat of our pants and, as Stephen King advises, pu t interesting characters i n difficult situations and write to find out what happens]

You don’t have to call it an outline if that offends your sensibilities. But fashion some sort of a directional document that provides structure for your book and also serves as a safety net.

If you get out on that Pantser highwire and lose your balance, you’ll thank me for advising you to have this in place.

Now if you’re writing a nonfiction book, there’s no substitute for an outline .

Potential agents or publishers require this in your proposal . T hey want to know where you’re going, and they want to know that you know. What do you want your reader to learn from your book, and how will you ensure they learn it?

Fiction or nonfiction, if you commonly lose interest in your book somewhere in what I call the Marathon of the Middle, you likely didn’t start with enough exciting ideas .

That’s why and outline (or a basic framework) is essential. Don’t even start writing until you’re confident your structure will hold up through the end.

You may recognize this novel structure illustration.

Did you know it holds up—with only slight adaptations—for nonfiction books too? It’s self-explanatory for novelists; they list their plot twists and developments and arrange them in an order that best serves to increase tension .

What separates great nonfiction from mediocre? The same structure!

Arrange your points and evidence in the same way so you’re setting your reader up for a huge payoff, and then make sure you deliver.

If your nonfiction book is a memoir , an autobiography , or a biography, structure it like a novel and you can’t go wrong.

But even if it’s a straightforward how-to book, stay as close to this structure as possible, and you’ll see your manuscript come alive.

Make promises early, triggering your reader to anticipate fresh ideas, secrets, inside information, something major that will make him thrilled with the finished product.

While a nonfiction book may not have as much action or dialogue or character development as a novel, you can inject tension by showing where people have failed before and how your reader can succeed.

You can even make the how-to project look impossible until you pay off that setup with your unique solution.

Keep your outline to a single page for now. But make sure every major point is represented, so you’ll always know where you’re going.

And don’t worry if you’ve forgotten the basics of classic outlining or have never felt comfortable with the concept.

Your outline must serve you. If that means Roman numerals and capital and lowercase letters and then Arabic numerals, you can certainly fashion it that way. But if you just want a list of sentences that synopsize your idea, that’s fine too.

Simply start with your working title, then your premise, then—for fiction, list all the major scenes that fit into the rough structure above.

For nonfiction, try to come up with chapter titles and a sentence or two of what each chapter will cover.

Once you have your one-page outline, remember it is a fluid document meant to serve you and your book. Expand it, change it, play with it as you see fit—even during the writing process .

Step 4. Set a firm writing schedule.

Ideally, you want to schedule at least six hours per week to write your book.

That may consist of three sessions of two hours each, two sessions of three hours, or six one-hour sessions—whatever works for you.

I recommend a regular pattern (same times, same days) that can most easily become a habit. But if that’s impossible, just make sure you carve out at least six hours so you can see real progress.

Having trouble finding the time to write a book? News flash—you won’t find the time. You have to make it.

I used the phrase carve out above for a reason. That’s what it takes.

Something in your calendar will likely have to be sacrificed in the interest of writing time . 

Make sure it’s not your family—they should always be your top priority. Never sacrifice your family on the altar of your writing career.

But beyond that, the truth is that we all find time for what we really want to do.

Many writers insist they have no time to write, but they always seem to catch the latest Netflix original series, or go to the next big Hollywood feature. They enjoy concerts, parties, ball games, whatever.

How important is it to you to finally write your book? What will you cut from your calendar each week to ensure you give it the time it deserves?

• A favorite TV show?
• An hour of sleep per night? (Be careful with this one; rest is crucial to a writer.)

Successful writers make time to write.

When writing becomes a habit, you’ll be on your way.

Step 5. Establish a sacred deadline.

Without deadlines, I rarely get anything done. I need that motivation.

Admittedly, my deadlines are now established in my contracts from publishers.

If you’re writing your first book, you probably don’t have a contract yet. To ensure you finish your book, set your own deadline—then consider it sacred .

Tell your spouse or loved one or trusted friend. Ask that they hold you accountable.

Now determine—and enter in your calendar—the number of pages you need to produce per writing session to meet your deadline. If it proves unrealistic, change the deadline now.

If you have no idea how many pages or words you typically produce per session, you may have to experiment before you finalize those figures.

Say you want to finish a 400-page manuscript by this time next year.

Divide 400 by 50 weeks (accounting for two off-weeks), and you get eight pages per week. 

Divide that by your typical number of writing sessions per week and you’ll know how many pages you should finish per session.

Now is the time to adjust these numbers, while setting your deadline and determining your pages per session.

Maybe you’d rather schedule four off weeks over the next year. Or you know your book will be unusually long.

Change the numbers to make it realistic and doable, and then lock it in. Remember, your deadline is sacred.

Step 6. Embrace procrastination (really!).

You read that right. Don’t fight it; embrace it.

You wouldn’t guess it from my 200+ published books, but I’m the king of procrastinators .

Don’t be. So many authors are procrastinators that I’ve come to wonder if it’s a prerequisite.

The secret is to accept it and, in fact, schedule it.

I quit fretting and losing sleep over procrastinating when I realized it was inevitable and predictable, and also that it was productive.

Sound like rationalization?

Maybe it was at first. But I learned that while I’m putting off the writing, my subconscious is working on my book. It’s a part of the process. When you do start writing again, you’ll enjoy the surprises your subconscious reveals to you.

So, knowing procrastination is coming, book it on your calendar .

Take it into account when you’re determining your page quotas. If you have to go back in and increase the number of pages you need to produce per session, do that (I still do it all the time).

But—and here’s the key—you must never let things get to where that number of pages per day exceeds your capacity.

It’s one thing to ratchet up your output from two pages per session to three. But if you let it get out of hand, you’ve violated the sacredness of your deadline.

How can I procrastinate and still meet more than 190 deadlines?

Because I keep the deadlines sacred.

Step 7. Eliminate distractions to stay focused.

Are you as easily distracted as I am?

Have you found yourself writing a sentence and then checking your email? Writing another and checking Facebook? Getting caught up in the pictures of 10 Sea Monsters You Wouldn’t Believe Actually Exist?

Then you just have to check out that precious video from a talk show where the dad surprises the family by returning from the war.

That leads to more and more of the same. Once I’m in, my writing is forgotten, and all of a sudden the day has gotten away from me.

The answer to these insidious timewasters?

Look into these apps that allow you to block your email, social media, browsers, game apps, whatever you wish during the hours you want to write. Some carry a modest fee, others are free.

• Freedom app
• FocusWriter

Step 8. Conduct your research.

Yes, research is a vital part of the process, whether you’re writing fiction or nonfict i on .

Fiction means more than just making up a story .

Your details and logic and technical and historical details must be right for your novel to be believable.

And for nonfiction, even if you’re writing about a subject in which you’re an expert—as I’m doing here—getting all the facts right will polish your finished product.

In fact, you’d be surprised at how many times I’ve researched a fact or two while writing this blog post alone.

The last thing you want is even a small mistake due to your lack of proper research .

Regardless the detail, trust me, you’ll hear from readers about it.

Your credibility as an author and an expert hinges on creating trust with your reader. That dissolves in a hurry if you commit an error.

My favorite research resources:

• World Almanacs : These alone list almost everything you need for accurate prose: facts, data, government information, and more. For my novels, I often use these to come up with ethnically accurate character names .
• The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus : The online version is great, because it’s lightning fast. You couldn’t turn the pages of a hard copy as quickly as you can get where you want to onscreen. One caution: Never let it be obvious you’ve consulted a thesaurus. You’re not looking for the exotic word that jumps off the page. You’re looking for that common word that’s on the tip of your tongue.
• WorldAtlas.com : Here you’ll find nearly limitless information about any continent, country, region, city, town, or village. Names, monetary units, weather patterns, tourism info, and even facts you wouldn’t have thought to search for. I get ideas when I’m digging here, for both my novels and my nonfiction books.

Step 9. Start calling yourself a writer.

Your inner voice may tell you, “You’re no writer and you never will be. Who do you think you are, trying to write a book?”

That may be why you’ve stalled at writing your book in the past .

But if you’re working at writing, studying writing, practicing writing, that makes you a writer. Don’t wait till you reach some artificial level of accomplishment before calling yourself a writer.

A cop in uniform and on duty is a cop whether he’s actively enforced the law yet or not. A carpenter is a carpenter whether he’s ever built a house.

Self-identify as a writer now and you’ll silence that inner critic —who, of course, is really you. 

Talk back to yourself if you must. It may sound silly, but acknowledging yourself as a writer can give you the confidence to keep going and finish your book.

Are you a writer? Say so.

• Part Three: The Book-Writing Itself

Step 1. Think reader-first.

This is so important that that you should write it on a sticky note and affix it to your monitor so you’re reminded of it every time you write.

Every decision you make about your manuscript must be run through this filter.

Not you-first, not book-first, not editor-, agent-, or publisher-first. Certainly not your inner circle- or critics-first.

Reader-first, last, and always .

If every decision is based on the idea of reader-first, all those others benefit anyway.

When fans tell me they were moved by one of my books, I think back to this adage and am grateful I maintained that posture during the writing.

Does a scene bore you? If you’re thinking reader-first, it gets overhauled or deleted.

Where to go, what to say, what to write next? Decide based on the reader as your priority.

Whatever your gut tells you your reader would prefer, that’s your answer.

Whatever will intrigue him, move him, keep him reading, those are your marching orders.

So, naturally, you need to know your reader. Rough age? General interests? Loves? Hates? Attention span?

When in doubt, look in the mirror . 

The surest way to please your reader is to please yourself. Write what you would want to read and trust there is a broad readership out there that agrees.

Step 2. Find your writing voice.

Discovering your voice is nowhere near as complicated as some make it out to be.

You can find yours by answering these quick questions :

• What’s the coolest thing that ever happened to you?
• Who’s the most important person you told about it?
• What did you sound like when you did?
• That’s your writing voice. It should read the way you sound at your most engaged.

That’s all there is to it.

If you write fiction and the narrator of your book isn’t you, go through the three-question exercise on the narrator’s behalf—and you’ll quickly master the voice.

Here’s a blog I posted that’ll walk you through the process .

Step 3. Write a compelling opener.

If you’re stuck because of the pressure of crafting the perfect opening line for your book, you’re not alone.

And neither is your angst misplaced.

This is not something you should put off and come back to once you’ve started on the rest of the first chapter.

Oh, it can still change if the story dictates that . But settling on a good one will really get you off and running.

It’s unlikely you’ll write a more important sentence than your first one , whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction. Make sure you’re thrilled with it and then watch how your confidence—and momentum—soars.

Most great first lines fall into one of these categories:

1. Surprising

Fiction : “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nonfiction : “By the time Eustace Conway was seven years old, he could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man

2. Dramatic Statement

Fiction : “They shoot the white girl first.” —Toni Morrison, Paradise

Nonfiction : “I was five years old the first time I ever set foot in prison.” —Jimmy Santiago Baca, A Place to Stand

3. Philosophical

Fiction : “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Nonfiction : “It’s not about you.” —Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life

Fiction : “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. —James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

Nonfiction : “The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’” —Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

Great opening lines from other classics may give you ideas for yours. Here’s a list of famous openers .

Step 4. Fill your story with conflict and tension.

Your reader craves conflict, and yes, this applies to nonfiction readers as well.

In a novel, if everything is going well and everyone is agreeing, your reader will soon lose interest and find something else to do.

Are two of your characters talking at the dinner table? Have one say something that makes the other storm out.

Some deep-seeded rift in their relationship has surfaced—just a misunderstanding, or an injustice?

Thrust people into conflict with each other . 

That’ll keep your reader’s attention.

Certain nonfiction genres won’t lend themselves to that kind of conflict, of course, but you can still inject tension by setting up your reader for a payoff in later chapters. Check out some of the current bestselling nonfiction works to see how writers accomplish this.

Somehow they keep you turning those pages, even in a simple how-to title.

Tension is the secret sauce that will propel your reader through to the end . 

And sometimes that’s as simple as implying something to come.

Step 5. Turn off your internal editor while writing the first draft.

Many of us perfectionists find it hard to write a first draft—fiction or nonfiction—without feeling compelled to make every sentence exactly the way we want it.

That voice in your head that questions every word, every phrase, every sentence, and makes you worry you’re being redundant or have allowed cliches to creep in—well, that’s just your editor alter ego.

He or she needs to be told to shut up .

This is not easy.

Deep as I am into a long career, I still have to remind myself of this every writing day. I cannot be both creator and editor at the same time. That slows me to a crawl, and my first draft of even one brief chapter could take days.

Our job when writing that first draft is to get down the story or the message or the teaching—depending on your genre.

It helps me to view that rough draft as a slab of meat I will carve tomorrow .

I can’t both produce that hunk and trim it at the same time.

A cliche, a redundancy, a hackneyed phrase comes tumbling out of my keyboard, and I start wondering whether I’ve forgotten to engage the reader’s senses or aimed for his emotions.

That’s when I have to chastise myself and say, “No! Don’t worry about that now! First thing tomorrow you get to tear this thing up and put it back together again to your heart’s content!”

Imagine yourself wearing different hats for different tasks , if that helps—whatever works to keep you rolling on that rough draft. You don’t need to show it to your worst enemy or even your dearest love. This chore is about creating. Don’t let anything slow you down.

Some like to write their entire first draft before attacking the revision. As I say, whatever works.

Doing it that way would make me worry I’ve missed something major early that will cause a complete rewrite when I discover it months later. I alternate creating and revising.

The first thing I do every morning is a heavy edit and rewrite of whatever I wrote the day before. If that’s ten pages, so be it. I put my perfectionist hat on and grab my paring knife and trim that slab of meat until I’m happy with every word.

Then I switch hats, tell Perfectionist Me to take the rest of the day off, and I start producing rough pages again.

So, for me, when I’ve finished the entire first draft, it’s actually a second draft because I have already revised and polished it in chunks every day.

THEN I go back through the entire manuscript one more time, scouring it for anything I missed or omitted, being sure to engage the reader’s senses and heart, and making sure the whole thing holds together.

I do not submit anything I’m not entirely thrilled with .

I know there’s still an editing process it will go through at the publisher, but my goal is to make my manuscript the absolute best I can before they see it.

Compartmentalize your writing vs. your revising and you’ll find that frees you to create much more quickly.

Step 6. Persevere through The Marathon of the Middle.

Most who fail at writing a book tell me they give up somewhere in what I like to call The Marathon of the Middle.

That’s a particularly rough stretch for novelists who have a great concept, a stunning opener, and they can’t wait to get to the dramatic ending. But they bail when they realize they don’t have enough cool stuff to fill the middle.

They start padding, trying to add scenes just for the sake of bulk, but they’re soon bored and know readers will be too.

This actually happens to nonfiction writers too.

The solution there is in the outlining stage , being sure your middle points and chapters are every bit as valuable and magnetic as the first and last.

If you strategize the progression of your points or steps in a process—depending on nonfiction genre—you should be able to eliminate the strain in the middle chapters.

For novelists, know that every book becomes a challenge a few chapters in. The shine wears off, keeping the pace and tension gets harder, and it’s easy to run out of steam.

But that’s not the time to quit. Force yourself back to your structure, come up with a subplot if necessary, but do whatever you need to so your reader stays engaged.

Fiction writer or nonfiction author, The Marathon of the Middle is when you must remember why you started this journey in the first place.

It isn’t just that you want to be an author. You have something to say. You want to reach the masses with your message.

Yes, it’s hard. It still is for me—every time. But don’t panic or do anything rash, like surrendering. Embrace the challenge of the middle as part of the process. If it were easy, anyone could do it.

Step 7. Write a resounding ending.

This is just as important for your nonfiction book as your novel. It may not be as dramatic or emotional, but it could be—especially if you’re writing a memoir.

But even a how-to or self-help book needs to close with a resounding thud, the way a Broadway theater curtain meets the floor .

How do you ensure your ending doesn’t fizzle ?

• Don’t rush it . Give readers the payoff they’ve been promised. They’ve invested in you and your book the whole way. Take the time to make it satisfying.
• Never settle for close enough just because you’re eager to be finished. Wait till you’re thrilled with every word, and keep revising until you are.
• If it’s unpredictable, it had better be fair and logical so your reader doesn’t feel cheated. You want him to be delighted with the surprise, not tricked.
• If you have multiple ideas for how your book should end, go for the heart rather than the head, even in nonfiction. Readers most remember what moves them.
• Part Four: Rewriting Your Book

Step 1. Become a ferocious self-editor.

Agents and editors can tell within the first two pages whether your manuscript is worthy of consideration. That sounds unfair, and maybe it is. But it’s also reality, so we writers need to face it.

How can they often decide that quickly on something you’ve devoted months, maybe years, to?

Because they can almost immediately envision how much editing would be required to make those first couple of pages publishable. If they decide the investment wouldn’t make economic sense for a 300-400-page manuscript, end of story.

Your best bet to keep an agent or editor reading your manuscript?

You must become a ferocious self-editor. That means:

• Omit needless words
• Choose the simple word over one that requires a dictionary
• Avoid subtle redundancies , like “He thought in his mind…” (Where else would someone think?)
• Avoid hedging verbs like almost frowned, sort of jumped, etc.
• Generally remove the word that —use it only when absolutely necessary for clarity
• Give the reader credit and resist the urge to explain , as in, “She walked through the open door.” (Did we need to be told it was open?)
• Avoid too much stage direction (what every character is doing with every limb and digit)
• Avoid excessive adjectives
• Show, don’t tell
• And many more

For my full list and how to use them, click here . (It’s free.)

When do you know you’re finished revising? When you’ve gone from making your writing better to merely making it different. That’s not always easy to determine, but it’s what makes you an author. 

Step 2. Find a mentor.

Get help from someone who’s been where you want to be.

Imagine engaging a mentor who can help you sidestep all the amateur pitfalls and shave years of painful trial-and-error off your learning curve.

Just make sure it’s someone who really knows the writing and publishing world. Many masquerade as mentors and coaches but have never really succeeded themselves.

Look for someone widely-published who knows how to work with agents, editors, and publishers .

There are many helpful mentors online . I teach writers through this free site, as well as in my members-only Writers Guild .

Step 1. Decide on your publishing avenue.

In simple terms, you have two options when it comes to publishing your book:

1. Traditional publishing

Traditional publishers take all the risks. They pay for everything from editing, proofreading, typesetting, printing, binding, cover art and design, promotion, advertising, warehousing, shipping, billing, and paying author royalties.

2. Self-publishing

Everything is on you. You are the publisher, the financier, the decision-maker. Everything listed above falls to you. You decide who does it, you approve or reject it, and you pay for it. The term self-publishing is a bit of a misnomer, however, because what you’re paying for is not publishing, but printing. 

Both avenues are great options under certain circumstances. 

Not sure which direction you want to take? Click here to read my in-depth guide to publishing a book . It’ll show you the pros and cons of each, what each involves, and my ultimate recommendation.

Step 2: Properly format your manuscript.

Regardless whether you traditionally or self-publish your book, proper formatting is critical.

Because poor formatting makes you look like an amateur .

Readers and agents expect a certain format for book manuscripts, and if you don’t follow their guidelines, you set yourself up for failure.

Best practices when formatting your book:

• Use 12-point type
• Use a serif font; the most common is Times Roman
• Double space your manuscript
• No extra space between paragraphs
• Only one space between sentences
• Indent each paragraph half an inch (setting a tab, not using several spaces)
• Text should be flush left and ragged right, not justified
• If you choose to add a line between paragraphs to indicate a change of location or passage of time, center a typographical dingbat (like ***) on the line
• Black text on a white background only
• One-inch margins on the top, bottom, and sides (the default in Word)
• Create a header with the title followed by your last name and the page number. The header should appear on each page other than the title page.

If you need help implementing these formatting guidelines, click here to read my in-depth post on formatting your manuscript .

Step 3. Set up your author website and grow your platform.

All serious authors need a website. Period.

Because here’s the reality of publishing today…

You need an audience to succeed.

If you want to traditionally publish, agents and publishers will Google your name to see if you have a website and a following.

If you want to self-publish, you need a fan base.

And your author website serves as a hub for your writing, where agents, publishers, readers, and fans can learn about your work.

Don’t have an author website yet? Click here to read my tutorial on setting this up.

Step 4. Pursue a Literary Agent.

There remain a few traditional publishers (those who pay you and take the entire financial risk of publishing your book rather than the other way around) who accept unsolicited submissions, but I do NOT recommend going that route. 

Your submission will likely wind up in what is known in the business as the slush pile. That means some junior staff member will be assigned to get to it when convenient and determine whether to reject it out of hand (which includes the vast majority of the submissions they see) or suggest the publisher’s editorial board consider it.

While I am clearly on record urging you to exhaust all your efforts to traditionally publish before resorting to self-publishing (in other words, paying to be printed), as I say, I do not recommend submitting unsolicited material even to those publishers who say they accept such efforts.

Even I don’t try to navigate the publishing world by myself, despite having been an author, an editor, a publisher, and a writing coach over the last 50 years.

That’s why I have an agent and you need one too.

Many beginning writers naturally wonder why they should share any of their potential income with an agent (traditionally 15%). First, they don’t see any of that income unless you’re getting your 85% at the same time. And second, everyone I know in the business is happy to have someone in their corner, making an agent a real bargain.

I don’t want to have to personally represent myself and my work. I want to stay in my creative lane and let a professional negotiate every clause of the contract and win me the best advance and rights deal possible.

Once under contract, I work directly with the publishing house’s editor and proofreader, but I leave the financial business to my agent.

Ultimately, an agent’s job is to protect your rights and make you money. They profit only when you do.

That said, landing an agent can be as difficult and painstaking as landing a publisher. They know the market, they know the editors, they know what publishers want, and they can advise you how to put your best foot forward.

But how do you know who to trust? Credible, trustworthy agents welcome scrutiny. If you read a book in your genre that you like, check the Acknowledgments page for the agent’s name. If the author thinks enough of that person to mention them glowingly, that’s a great endorsement.

If you’re writing in the inspirational market, peruse agents listed in The Christian Writer’s Market Guide . If you’re writing for the general market, try The Writer’s Market . If you know any published authors, ask about their agents.

The guides that list agents also include what they’re looking for, what they specialize in, and sometimes even what they’re not interested in. Study these to determine potential agents who ply their trade in your genre. Visit their websites for their submission guidelines, and follow these to a T.

They may ask for a query letter, a synopsis, a proposal, or even sample chapters. Be sure not to send more or less than they suggest. 

The best, and most logical place to start is by sending them a query letter. Query simply means question, and in essence the question your letter asks is whether you may send them more.

Step 5: Writing Your Query Letter.

It’s time to move from author to salesperson.

Your query letter will determine whether a literary agent asks to see more, sends you a cordial form letter to let you down easy, or simply doesn’t respond.

Sadly, many agents stipulate on their websites that if you hear nothing after a certain number of weeks, you should take that as an indication that they’re not interested. Frankly, to me, this is frustrating to the writer and lazy on the part of the agent. Surely, in this technological age, it should be easy to hit one button and send a note to someone who might otherwise wonder if the query reached the agent at all.

But that’s the reality we deal with.

So, the job of your one-page single-spaced email letter is to win a response—best case scenario: an invitation to send more: a proposal or even the manuscript. 

Basically, you’re selling yourself and your work. Write a poor query letter and an agent will assume your book is also poorly written.

Without being gimmicky or cute, your letter must intrigue an agent. 

Your query letter should:

• Be addressed to a specific person (not to the staff of the agency or “To Whom It May Concern”)*
• Present your book idea simply
• Evidence your style
• Show you know who your readers are
• Clarify your qualifications
• Exhibit flexibility and professionalism

*If you see a list of agents in a firm, choose one from the middle or bottom of the list. It could be that they get less personal mail than the person whose name is on the door. Who knows? That you single them out may make them see your query in a more favorable light.

For some great advice on writing a query letter, check this out: https://janefriedman.com/query-letters/  

• You Have What It Takes to Write a Book

Writing a book is a herculean task, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

You can do this .

Take it one step at a time and vow to stay focused. And who knows, maybe by this time next year you’ll be holding a published copy of your book. :)

I’ve created an exclusive writing guide called How to Maximize Your Writing Time that will help you stay on track and finish writing your book.

Get your FREE copy by clicking the button below.

Are You Making This #1 Amateur Writing Mistake?

Faith-Based Words and Phrases

What You and I Can Learn From Patricia Raybon

Before you go, be sure to grab my FREE guide:

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

Just tell me where to send it:

Enter your email to instantly access the free PDF version of How to Write a Book: Everything You Need to Know in 20 Steps .

Enter your email to instantly access my ultimate guide: 

How to maximize your writing time.

• Editorial Services
• How It Works
• Literary Agent Alert

A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Your First Novel

Many of us dream of writing a novel one day but only a few of us make that dream come true.

Here’s the thing: as long as you keep the task of “writing a novel” in the “eventually” pile, it won’t happen.

There will never be a perfect time or enough time. You must make the time.

Writing a novel isn’t easy. Some days, you’ll sit at the keyboard and feel completely uninspired. Other days, you’ll be unable to rein in all of your great ideas. But successful novelists don’t wait for inspiration. Instead, they write every day because they know that consistency (and not inspiration) is the best way to finish a novel.

In addition to rock-solid discipline, you also need guidance to complete your first book. You may be a born writer, but no one’s a born novelist. Every first-time novelist can benefit from a step-by-step plan.

Well, here it is!

Below, we share all the steps that you need to finally crank out your first novel.

Let's start with the basics.

What is the common structure of a novel?

Most novels contain five elements: characters, conflict, plot, setting, and theme. While some experimental novels may deviate from this structure, the majority interweave these elements to tell a relatable and entertaining story.

What is the average length of a novel?

The average novel contains 80,000 words, but don't let that word count scare you! A novel of this length could be written in less than a year . It’s even doable in less than three months.

Thousands of writers participate in the annual novel-in-a-month project, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This project takes place in November and encourages participants to complete a 50,000-word novel in only 30 days.

The idea behind NaNoWriMo is the same one that I'm emphasizing in this post: write now and write every day. Even if you only write 1,000 words per day (which amounts to approximately two typed pages), you can complete a full-length novel in 90 days.

Now, let’s discuss what steps to take to complete your novel.

Step 0: Develop a Basic Story Idea

Let's call this “Step Zero.”

Before you can move forward with this guide, you need an idea.

As simple as it sounds, the process of developing a viable story can be difficult. I've spoken to many fledgling writers who have a desire to write a novel but are unsure of what to write about. Indecisiveness is common among us writers.

Maybe you have so many story ideas that you’re overwhelmed and not sure which one to choose. If this sounds like you, my advice is to go with the story idea that you like the most.

Maybe you feel compelled to make a statement on the human condition but aren’t sure how to turn it into a story. You have a theme (i.e. a big idea, such as “love conquers all” or “hard work pays off”). What you don’t have is a vehicle to drive that theme home. You need the other four elements (characters, conflict, plot, and setting) to create a story. If this sounds like you, use a story generator. Here are some to try:

• Plot Generator by Masterpiece Generator
• The Story Idea Generator By Film Crux (This generator is for screenwriters but it can work for novelists, too.)
• Plot Generator by RanGen
• Random Plot Generator by WritingExercises.co.uk

Learn more about story ideation here: How to Turn Your Simple Idea Into an Unforgettable Novel

Step 1: Get to Know Your Main Characters

Characters drive the narrative. In other words, the story doesn’t happen to your characters. Instead, your characters create the story.

This means that you can’t write characters you don’t know. Get to know your characters, especially your protagonist and antagonist. Discover their backstories, their idiosyncrasies, their goals, and what compels them to act.

Here are two guides to help you craft well-rounded characters:

• 6 Tips to Avoid Writing Cliched Characters
• Developing a Sympathetic Villain for Your Novel

Here’s a handy checklist to help you write your first novel. Subscribe to receive this extra resource.

Download your bonus content:

Step 2: Insert Conflict

Conflict happens when two forces oppose each other, such as character against character or character against an idea. Conflict is necessary to move the story along in a forward direction.

A good story introduces two types of conflict: internal conflict within the minds of the main characters and external conflict which prevents the characters from easily meeting their goals.

To learn more about conflict, check out these resources:

• Tips for Balancing Characterization With Plot
• Tension! What It Is & How to Develop It In Your Novel

Step 3: Choose a Point of View for Your Story

It’s important to consider your story’s point of view (POV) before you start writing. Decide who will tell your story.

Will it be a personal narrator, such as the story’s protagonist? This is the first-person POV and it uses “I.” A first-person narrator is someone who is personally involved in or tied to the story as a character. This personal narrator could also be a secondary character in your story.

Will you choose the POV of the reader? This is known as the second-person and it's the least common POV. It requires that you turn the reader into an active character in your novel, which is hard to do, but it has been done. This POV uses “you.”

Will you use the POV of an impersonal narrator who does not exist within the story? This POV is known as the third-person and it uses “he,” “she,” or “they.” This POV can be broken down even further.

You can write from a third-person limited POV where the narrator sticks with one character, usually the protagonist.

You can write from the third-person multiple POV where the narrator can hop between several characters. The narrator doesn't know everything, but he does know the characters that he follows.

Finally, you can write from the third-person omniscient POV where the narrator has a god-like knowledge of every character in the story, including their motivations and thoughts.

Need help choosing the right POV? Check out this guide: All About Point of View .

Step 4: Choose a Setting

Let's talk about the setting of your novel. Decide on the time period and whether it's an actual location or an imagined one. Because your characters live there, it's important for you to see and know what they do.

We've created two helpful guides on world construction that you can find here:

• How to Build a Dystopian World
• Fantasy World Building 101: How to Create a Breathing World for Your Fantasy Novel

Step 5: Give Yourself Plenty of Deadlines

There's nothing like a looming deadline to motivate me. Do you feel the same?

According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, we perform best when pressure (i.e. stress) is applied. This is why deadlines are important. A deadline doesn’t only provide a time limit, but it also encourages you to do your best work.

To complete a novel, you’ll need plenty of deadlines. Here’s a basic guideline that you can borrow:

• Give yourself a deadline to choose a story idea. This step can take years but don’t let it take longer than 15 minutes. Seriously . Decide on a topic that you like and then move on to the next step.
• Set a time limit for research. This includes learning about the main and background elements in your story, such as its location and time period. It also includes figuring out how to write a compelling story. Set a time limit for when you should leave this step and enter into writing mode. If, after researching, you realize that you don’t like your story idea, go back to step 0. But be careful not to repeat this loop too often.
• Outline your story. There are two groups of people: those who like to outline their novels and those who don’t. Because you’re reading this post, I’m willing to bet that you prefer outlining. Set a deadline for when you'd like to complete your story’s outline.
• Give yourself a word count to target each day, such as 1,000 to 2,500 words. This deadline should reset each day.
• Set a final deadline for when you’d like the first draft to be completed.
• Read through your first draft and make revisions. This process may take a few weeks.
• When making revisions to your first draft, assign deadlines to complete each chapter. Check out these tips for writing chapters .
• Send your manuscript to a professional editor for a manuscript critique (also known as the big-picture edit). This edit takes between five to seven weeks, on average.
• Make a second round of revisions based on the editor’s advice. This process can also take a few weeks.
• Send your revised manuscript to a professional editor for a comprehensive edit , which also includes a line edit. This process takes between six to 12 weeks.
• Review notes from the comprehensive edit and then make changes to your draft. This process can take a few weeks.
• Send your manuscript to a professional copyeditor for a copyedit. This type of edit focuses on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other technical errors that may be in your manuscript. Copyediting is necessary for any novel before publishing. This process takes between three to five weeks.

Learn more about our editing packages here .

Impose plenty of deadlines to keep yourself moving forward.

Step 6: Hire a Professional Editor

Speaking from my experience as a writer, all writers need editors. Just like peanut butter goes with jelly and coffee with donuts, writers and editors make a great team.

No matter how much time you take away from your novel, you will always be too close to your own work to critique it impartially. Plus, there's the matter of grammar. From dangling modifiers to adverb abuse to subject-verb agreement errors, you may be committing tons of grammar sins without even realizing it. Let's not even talk about typos! Even the smallest grammar mistake could damage your story because it interrupts the reader's focus.

Learn about our editing services here .

Step 7: Resolve to Finish

This step requires a simple mental shift, but it’s perhaps the most important step in this guide. Make a promise to yourself that you will finish your novel by [ insert deadline here ]. Write the promise down. Tell others. Let us know in the comments below! Hold yourself accountable. Remember that only you can make this dream happen, and that process starts right now with a promise and an action plan that you can find in the downloadable resource at the end of this post.

Final Thoughts

To complete your first novel, you need to take a practical approach. You can’t wait for inspiration to strike. Use the above guide to turn your dreams into a realistic action plan.

Before you go, don’t miss these related resources:

• Use These Novel-Writing Tips to Get Unstuck
• What to Do Before Writing Your Next Novel
• A Guide to Writing Your Novel in One Year

Enter your email for your FREE 7-Day Bootcamp and learn:

• 5 Unconventional Techniques to help you finish your Draft
• The Key to Getting Readers to Care About Your Characters
• How to Master Dialogue, even if you’re a First-Time Writer
• What You Need to Know to Hold Your Reader’s Interest

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Novel Writing 101

Taught by: Tom Bromley

So, you want to learn some novel writing basics ? In this free course, author and ghostwriter Tom Bromley will introduce you to all the essential steps you'll need to take before you start writing your novel's first draft.

With practical exercises in every lesson, this course will guide you through the planning stages of your novel and teach you essential elements of novel writing, including:

• Creating characters and choosing your point of view
• Bringing your setting to life
• Building enough of a structure to draft your manuscript
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The Best Writing Books For Beginners 2024 (My 10 Favorites)

Being a beginner writer is overwhelming. There are so many options, and beginners often don’t know where to start. It seems like every blog and YouTube video is recommending a different set of tools, resources, and books for writers.

There are a lot of good books out there, but what are the best writing books for beginners?

Here are the best writing books for beginners:

The Secrets of Action Screenwriting

Writing a breakout novel workbook.

• Save the Cat

The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes

Writing for emotional impact, secrets of story, dialogue secrets, act two secrets.

• Scene Secrets

Supporting Character Secrets

I’ve kept a running list of my favorite writing books ever since I started over 20 years ago. In this post, I’m going to share with you my top 10.

My Criteria for Choosing the 10 Best Writing Books for Beginners

Table of Contents

Here are my criteria for choosing these 10 books.

My criteria: I’ve actually read the book, learned a ton, and consistently apply its principles and practices to my writing on a regular basis. The book consolidates practical, clear, and concrete writing lessons that have transformed my writing.

Not my criteria: I listen to the recommendations of other people but, if I’m completely honest, I think a lot of their recommendations are trash. Not that the books themselves are bad, but they don’t have the practical insight and tools that have helped me when I sit down at my keyboard to type.

Here’s also what was NOT my criteria:

• What I thought were popular books (popularity doesn’t equal good or helpful)
• What I thought you expected to hear (There are some surprises on the list)
• What I thought you might buy through one of my affiliate links (I’ve only listed books that I personally own and use regularly)
• What bestselling authors or popular authors say (There are many decent writing books out there. These are by far the best I’ve come across)
• What I wanted you to believe, like my own books (I didn’t put any of my own books on the list)
• Pretty book covers (Some of the book covers on the list look terrible and cheap. I didn’t choose the books for appearance; I chose them for content)

My ultimate criteria was: did this book change my life as a writer, level up my skills, and help me to write a better story?

If so, it made the list.

The 10 Best Writing Books For Beginners in 2023 (My Personal List)

My list has changed some over the last two decades, but most of the books on here have remained largely the same.

If I could go back 20 years and give my younger self 10 books on writing, these are the books I would gift.

Yes, this is a screenwriting book.

Trust me, it doesn’t matter. This is by far the best writing book I have ever read in my life. It’s my absolute favorite and that’s why I listed it first. It’s a gold mine of practical understanding of what a story is and how to write a really good one.

There are so many tools and techniques in this book, I really think that it should be an entire course that’s into the hundreds of dollars.

I 100% believe it’s that valuable. If you only get one book on this list, please do yourself a favor and go get this book right now.

I read all of these books on this list every time that I write a new novel, but this is by far the one that I read the most intensely and from which I apply the most tools and techniques.

Here are the book details:

My biggest takeaways from the book are all the specific and practical writing techniques such as how to build out scenes from your theme, connect your characters, and connect internal conflict to external conflict…

I could literally go on for days. This is also the book that gave me my favorite definition of story.

I put this book second because this is the oldest book on my list.

I’ve literally had it for three decades and go back to it time and time again to make sure that I understand and apply the techniques to my stories.

Yes, it’s a workbook, which means there’s an actual book that goes with it.

I’ve read that book, too, and honestly, I prefer the workbook. It has the same information and, in my opinion, the information is more effectively communicated in the workbook.

There are practical exercises with writing techniques very clearly laid out.

Basically, the book goes over the main elements of a blockbuster or best-selling story from one of the best literary agents in the world.

Book Details :

Save The Cat

Oh look, another screenwriting book.

This is a very popular book among writers and screenwriters because it is a simple and straightforward outline of a successful story.

I really like that this book gives you a complete approach to outlining the major plot points of a novel or script.

It really covers everything from the start of the novel all the way to the conclusion.

My biggest takeaway is the 15-point outline or “beat sheet” for the major events of the story.

I also really enjoyed the idea of the different sections of a story that he calls thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. I just think it’s a good framework for understanding what needs to happen in each segment of the story.

There are a couple of cool techniques like “save the cat” (from which the book got its title) and “pope in a pool” that I have never forgotten and continue to use in all of my stories.

This is one of the most beginner-friendly writing books I’ve ever read.

It covers a lot of ground but it does so very clearly and with good examples. The other thing I really like about this book is that it teaches you 38 practical writing lessons that, to get elsewhere, you’d have to read (at least) 5 and 10 separate books.

As a beginning writer, it’s a very approachable book with easy-to-understand and apply lessons.

And, just like the title suggests, by reading the book you can avoid some of the most common writing mistakes. That, in and of itself, is invaluable.

My biggest takeaways are the simple lessons that save you a lot of time and pain as a writer learning the ropes.

This is more of a dense book so not one that I would start with, which is why I put it here in the middle of the list.

But, it’s a really good book that can take your writing to a much deeper and more impactful level. There are tons of tools here to add emotional depth to your characters, scenes, and stories.

Add it to your beginner writer bookshelf.

Book Details:

What I love about this book is how it helps you break or build out a story based on the theme.

The model in the story is called the thematic method. It’s all about how to develop a very connected story that is layered and powerful. You learn how to create characters, secondary characters, and scenes that all include the “DNA” of the story.

It’s another very practical book full of useful tools for writers. Storytelling is, after all, the most important part of being a novelist.

This book is a gold mine of dialogue techniques.

I really can’t explain how thorough and complete your education about dialogue will be after reading this book. Super practical, super actionable, and incredibly informative.

Tons of examples make applying the techniques to your own writing as easy as possible.

You will learn more about dialogue from this one book than from a whole collection of other books on the same topic.

Dialog is a key element in writing a story because most scenes include some form of dialogue. And many writers really struggle with how to write realistic dialogue that reveals character while also advancing the story.

You can learn so many techniques (over 50) to level up your dialogue from this book. It’s a must-read.

Book details :

As a beginner writer, one of the most important lessons to learn is how to write the middle section of your stories.

This is called act 2 in screenplays.

Don’t be put off by this being another screenwriting book. Again, screenwriters seem to understand the practical structure and techniques to put together a story much better than most novelists or writing teachers.

This book will teach you everything you need to know about what to put in that middle section of your story to:

• Escalate the conflict
• Advance the plot
• Deepen character
• Keep the reader engrossed in the story

In many ways, act two is the story.

At least, it is the most important part of the story because it’s the biggest section where most of the story happens. So, understanding the middle of the story and how to write it well is essential to Your growth as a writer.

This book puts so many different pieces of the story puzzle together for me.

Scene S ecrets

A story is a collection of scenes.

This book explores every angle and aspect of what makes a compelling scene. you’ll find the answers to the following questions: What kinds of scenes do you include in your story and what kinds do you leave out?

What’s the best way to write a scene? What do you actually put in a scene? How do you make scenes more compelling to the reader?

It’s a fantastic addition to your writing library.

This book explains clearly and in detail everything you need to know about how to create secondary characters and subplots for your story.

This is an area where many writers get confused, lost ,and go wildly astray.

You can really shorten your learning curve by reading and applying the ideas in this book.

You’ll learn what secondary characters are, how to create them, and how to interweave subplots into your overall narrative. Lots of examples are included from different genres so that all of the points are super concrete.

A Few Comments About My List of Best Writing Books

You probably noticed that many of the books on the list are written by the same author (William C. Martell).

Martell is a practicing screenwriter and not a novelist.

One of my biggest aha moments as a writer in the last two decades is to realize that screenwriters, in general, seem to have a better grasp on the practical structural techniques of a story.

There are certainly differences between the visual medium of movies and the more personal and intimate experience of writing fiction.

However, I have found that the vast majority of story principles, tools, and techniques cross over very well.

That’s true of fiction and nonfiction.

I’d go so far as to say that I never understood story as well as when I read these “blue books”. You don’t have to believe me, just read the books, (they’re very cheap Kindle books on Amazon), and watch the results you get with your own writing.

There are a lot of good books on writing that I didn’t include in this list that many other people include on their list, like Writing Down the Bones , On Writing Well , War of Art , and I could go on.

What I found in my own journey is that after reading a few of these books about the main elements of a story (characters, conflict, plot, etc.) all the other books on the same subject mostly said the same thing.

Even if they did say a few extra little things that helped, those books never seemed to leapfrog me ahead in my understanding of story or my ability to write a good yarn.

The exception were the books on my list in this post.

These are the books that have stayed with me for many years, some of them for the entire two decades. Every time I write a new novel, I go back to them and reread them to make sure that I understand their ideas and apply their techniques.

I think you’ll find them amazing books that will level up your writing.

There are no shortcuts to being a great writer. The key seems to be to write a lot and read a lot, get feedback and continually push yourself to improve.

These 10 books are the best books to get you to great writing faster.

Honorable Mentions for Writing Fiction

On W riting

Part memoir and part writing instruction, Stephen King’s book on writing is fabulous.

If you are interested in his story interspersed with some very clear and practical writing advice, please do check it out. I consider it an essential book in any writer’s library.

However, it’s not a book that I return to over and over again to reread.

That’s why it’s not on the main top 10 list. But it’s still very good.

Plot and Structure

James Scott Bell has several good books on writing that are practical and useful.

You might check out some of his books and see if any of them resonate with you. I actually really like this book and it was helpful for my understanding of plot and structure.

It’s just not a book that I go back to year after year.

Best Nonfiction Writing Book for Beginners

I didn’t want to leave the nonfiction writers out of this list. So, I made a very short list of what I consider to be the best nonfiction writing books for beginners.

100 Ways to Improve Your Writing

There are so many nuggets of information here on how to write faster, keep readers engaged and simply write better. All of the tips are very short and actionable so it’s a quick and easy read.

How to Write and Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit: Your Guide to Writing and Publishing Books, E-Books, Articles, Special Reports, Audio Programs, DVDs, and Other How-To Content

This is literally a book about how to write other how-to books. I’ve never read a more simple, straightforward, and practical book on how to create a very valuable resource for others.

If and when you write your book, you’ll probably want to know some good eBook Marketing Strategies .

What’s the Overall Best Writing Book for Beginners?

I’d say without a doubt it’s the Secret to Action Screenwriting .

It just covers all the bases of a story (and I mean all). The book is incredibly thorough in covering all of the essential story elements.

It doesn’t matter if you write screenplays or novels or in which genre you write.

This book is the key to taking your storytelling to a whole new level. It will literally teach you more than most other writing books combined.

Final Thoughts: The Best Writing Books for Beginners

Those are the 10 best writing books for beginners (plus lots of other freebies and recommendations). I truly believe you’ll find these books to be fantastic resources that you’ll be using decades from now.

What to Read Next:

• What Courses To Take To Become a Writer (Solved)
• The Best Thesaurus for Writers (Best 9 Tested & Solved)
• 15 Best Software for Writing a Book With Pictures (Solved)
• My Most Recommended Tools for Writers

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Novel-writing for beginners: A masterclass with Ross Raisin

T here's an aura of mystique that surrounds the notion of being 'a writer', with publishing a novel often regarded as the pinnacle of success. However, this allure can make the dream feel unattainable, becoming a barrier that stifles writerly ambitions before they have a chance to take root and grow.

This two hour masterclass with the acclaimed novelist Ross Raisin will help you overcome these doubts and allow you to put your idea into action. 

What will you learn?

This masterclass is for anybody who feels a yearning to put a novel idea to paper – but just needs an encouraging nudge to get started. Through an informal combination of advice, discussion, reading of short examples of texts, and writing experimental morsels of your own, you’ll come away feeling fearless about what you can achieve long after the course ends.

Who is it taught by?

Ross Raisin is an award-winning author, RSL fellow, and teaches creative writing in workshops, schools, and universities, including on the acclaimed Goldsmiths MA. He is the author of four novels: A Hunger (2022), A Natural (2017), Waterline (2011), and God’s Own Country (2008), and the creative writing guide Read This if you Want to Become a Great Writer (2018).

Why should you attend?

If you have an idea for a novel, or simply the itch to write, and don’t know how to get started, this practical workshop will give you the tools and the confidence you need to tackle the first stretch.  

Date: Monday 8th July 2024

Time: 7-9pm BST

Location: Online masterclass A catch-up recording will be available for two weeks after the class.

Price: £75 plus £1.90 booking fee ( newsletter subscribers pay no booking fees) 

Early booking offer

Book today and receive a free digital copy of Read This if you Want to Become a Great Writer with your booking. This offer ends on 22nd June, but copies are limited so reserve yours quickly before they run out.

Subscriber exclusive

Sign up  to our newsletter today and say goodbye to booking fees when you enrol.

About Masterclasses from the Evening Standard

This masterclass is available globally. If you are joining us from outside the United Kingdom, please use this time zone converter to check your local live streaming time.

You will be sent a link to the webinar 24 hours and a reminder 2 hours before the start time. Please email [email protected] if you do not receive the access link.

Masterclasses are delivered in conjunction with our commercial partner MDMB Creative and will appear as such on your statement when you purchase a ticket.

How does buying a Masterclass support London’s future?

The Evening Standard has been serving Londoners for nearly 200 years. To ensure London remains the most amazing, dynamic and inclusive city on Earth, we keep the Standard free to read for everyone. Purchasing a ticket to a Masterclass is a powerful way you can support this mission.

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Virginia Assistant Commissioner, Personnel Records, Station Books and Rosters of Officers and Civilians, Vol. 1 (40), 1867

About the project.

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, often referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established on March 3, 1865. The duties of the Freedmen’s Bureau included supervision of all affairs relating to refugees, freedmen, and the custody of abandoned lands and property. These documents come from the Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Virginia, Series 11: Personnel Records.

Additional resources are available on the  Freedmen's Bureau Instructions Page . Please help us transcribe these records to learn more about the lives of formerly enslaved men and women during the Reconstruction Era.

Three volumes of station books and rosters of officers and civilians on duty, January 1, 1867–May 1, 1869, are arranged by year and thereunder by type of record. The volumes for 1867 and 1868 are similar in format and each is divided into four sections. Section 1 lists all personnel by name; rank, and command (for military); station, duty, and order assigning to duty; and monthly remarks noting transfers and assignments to duty. Section 2 is a roster of all Bureau personnel as of January. In addition, the 1868 volume has a similar roster as of July 1. Each roster gives the name, rank, and duties or occupation of the employee; duty station; salary; service dates; name of employer; former command (for military); date of assignment order; and related remarks. Section 3 consists of monthly lists of changes in personnel assignments. Section 4 consists of monthly lists of civilian agents and clerks employed by the Bureau. In the 1867 volume the lists begin with June; in the 1868 volume the lists cover the entire year. The lists in both volumes, subdivided into sections for agents, acting assistant surgeons, and clerks, give the same kind of information as the general list of personnel. The volume for 1869, arranged somewhat differently, contains monthly rosters of all officers and civilians on duty, January–May.

About Project Difficulty

Level 1 - beginner.

Content: all typed Language: English Format: letters, diaries, flyers, pamphlets, and one-page documents Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: none required

Content: mostly typed, handwritten in print, or otherwise very clearly written/readable Language: English Format: memorabilia, advertisements, image captions, telegrams, diaries, letters, notes Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: none required

Level 3 - INTERMEDIATE

Content: typed and handwritten materials in cursive or print Language: English Format: newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, letters/diaries/notes that may include annotations or margin notes Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: experience reading cursive writing may be useful

Content: handwritten materials, primarily in cursive or somewhat difficult to read (predominantly from the 19th and 20th centuries) , audio recordings that are relatively easy to hear/decipher, and scientific materials Language: English and/or other languages that use Roman script but may require the use of diacritics (French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc.) Format: audio recordings, letters, diaries, notes and other written materials, projects with templated fields and special instructions Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: some knowledge of non-English Roman-character/script languages and diacritics may be useful, as well as experience reading cursive handwriting. A general knowledge or familiarity with scientific terminology.

Level 5 - ADVANCED

Content: handwritten materials in cursive (from the 19th century or earlier) or in a non-Roman script language, audio recordings that are difficult to hear or are not in English, specialty materials/projects such as numismatics projects and the Project Phaedra notebooks Language: foreign languages that use non-Roman characters (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Greek/Cyrillic, Native American and Indigenous languages, etc.) and English Format: audio recordings, columned data/tables, manuscripts, letters, diaries, notes, currency sheets, coins Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: knowledge of a specific language and access to a keyboard with the characters in that language may be required for certain projects. Experience reading cursive handwriting and familiarity with 19th century (or prior) handwriting and conventions/abbreviations may be useful, as well as knowledge of scientific terminology, astrophysics data, or linguistics.

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