How to Write a Book: 13 Steps From a Bestselling Author

So you want to

write

a

book

. I know the feeling. I have been writing

book

s for over 40 years. There are a lot of people on the Internet and elsewhere who will try to tell you that reading a book is easy and you can do it. Quick, they have five

steps

to writing a best-seller. I don't promise you a best-seller, but I do have 13 fundamental

steps

that you will have to follow if you are going to

write

a book quickly. The point isn't quality, so the first thing you'll want to do is establish your writing space. When I started, I was a young father and had no space.

I had to take a board and put it between two of them. kitchen chairs that I put in front of the couch in the living room and then I sat on that couch in front of a manual typewriter and that's how I worked that was my space wherever I'm set up it could be at a Starbucks it could be in your car if it's necessary and you should never say that you don't have a place to write. I remember when I worked at the newspaper, there were 40 of us in the same room and in those days people smoked in that room, so we had smoke, we had noise, we had typewriters that made noise, a writer and he writes anywhere, but you want to establish what you need, so if you need solitude, make sure you find a place in your house where you can close the door or you can turn off the media and you can have privacy and silence and everything you need to write and the more you can afford, the better. you will do it in terms of equipment and space.

A second important step is to assemble your writing tools and you really don't need too many words. When you write in a restaurant, all you need is your laptop and a comfortable chair. Now you may have to take whatever chair they have, but learn how it works for you. Do you need to bring a cushion from home so you can sit up straight? and your neck are important for writing, you will spend many hours in front of that computer, so don't skimp on your computer and when you're at home don't skimp on your chair and then make a list.

Of all the things you're going to need while you're at home, especially if you need paper clips or a stapler or whatever, make sure you have them all within reach so you don't get distracted by having to look for things when you knew there's a third important thing that What you want to do is divide the project into small pieces. The reason writing a book seems so colossal is because writing a book is similar to eating an elephant. How do you eat an elephant in one bite? a while, so break the task into as many small parts as you can.

You have to realize that yes, in the end it is a 4 or 500 page manuscript, but it is made up of sentences, paragraphs, chapters, just doing one at a time, that is the way to get a handle on it, step number four is to decide for your great idea and it has to be a great idea if it is worthy of a book, it will be a great concept. We no longer have room in the market for small if small concept book ideas. Use it for a blog or an article, but think about how to win friends and influence people if you're thinking non-fiction, think Harry Potter, if you're thinking fiction it has to be big.

I can't overstate the importance of this if you're trying to You wrote a book before and you hit a roadblock at the 20 or 30 day mark or maybe the 20 or 30 page mark. It could be because your idea wasn't big enough. How do you know if your idea is big enough and if it has any? legs if it stays with you if you tell your spouse or your friend what your book is about and every time you tell them it gets bigger that is a book that will also last on the market step 5 is to build your outline and however you can Look, I've made it my way forward here for you now, this may sound surprising to me to talk about outlining when I'm known as a wedgie, one who writes by the seat of his pants Stephen King is the most well-known writer who is a Pantser says he puts interesting characters in difficult situations and writes to find out what happened.

I like to do that so people think I'm not describing anything, but even us fiction writers who are Panthers should have some kind of idea of ​​where we are. Going even if it's on one side of a piece of paper, give yourself an idea of ​​where you're going next, some people, especially if you're a beginning writer, your editor or your agent may need to see a full synopsis of your novel idea , so you'll have to do more outlining than you'll have to do later, and agents and editors demand outlining for nonfiction. You can't write a nonfiction book without an outline.

They want to know what you are going to say, how you are going to do it. to put it where you get your information from and what your points will be now we often talk in fiction about the middle marathon and how that stops everyone, that's one of the places I stopped, I mean I've written More than 190 books and every time I get halfway or 3/4 of the way through and wonder why I ever thought I could do this. That's the half marathon and if you can't just survive or endure it, you have to thrive. in it because the reader is with you, if you find it boring, your reader is asleep, and this also applies to non-fiction, now you will take care of that with your outline and non-fiction, you will know that your medium has enough good things in it.

In fiction, especially if you're a panther, you'd better make sure you save plenty of important setups and rewards for that med-a-thon in the middle, and you can do the same in non-fiction, which works the same structure. because nonfiction is fiction, you don't have the same amount of elements in terms of tension, conflict, dialogue and that kind of thing, but you still need to set the payoff so that your nonfiction book says that you're writing a nonfiction book. fiction. book on how to build a ship model, you need to set it up in a way that makes it seem impossible until your specific solution arrives, that is your setup and reward and remember, don't be intimidated by a schematic, your schematic serves you, not the other way around if you have an outline and you deviate from it or you think the book is working differently, you better change the outline, don't change the book, make your outline and work for you, okay, I'm back at my desk for point number six and that is setting a firm reading schedule that includes a firm deadline that you hold sacred.

This isn't something that hangs many beginning writers, they don't have a deadline for editors so they have to set their own and sometimes we do. We tend to skirt our own deadlines, make sure you don't do that, keep your deadline sacred now, the way you do this is by calculating approximately how many pages you are going to write for your book if it is 300 400 500 divide that into the number of days you have you are assigning right now, this may change once you start and realize how many or few pages you can write per day if you schedule 10 pages per day, in fact, you are not comfortable with it. more than four or five change your schedule change your deadline but once you set it keep it sacred when I was an editor I discovered that only about 1 in 100 writers literally meet their deadlines if you do you set yourself apart from ninety nine out of a hundred Writers don't make the mistake of thinking that you're going to find time to write when I have to write I have to sacrifice something in my schedule is that an hour or two of sleep at night is a concert is it a ball game?

It is a movie? Is it a favorite television show? How bad do you want this? I schedule my days directly into my calendar on my computer. I have a color code, it's pink and you caught me when tomorrow I have to reach the 70,000 word mark, I have that goal there. Now I'm at the sixty-seven thousand five hundred mark, so tomorrow I'll have to write two five hundred words and if I do that for five more days, I'll hit my deadline because I'm keeping that deadline. Sacred point number seven is to do your research. Now everyone knows that you should do it automatically in the case of non-fiction.

You have to be an expert in what you are writing about and not only draw on your own experience, but also on Show that you have immersed yourself and all the writing in your field, but many people overlook the fact that research is just as important for fiction. In fact, I think it might be even more important if you miss a small detail of the story, the planes, or the weaponry. You can be sure that readers will point out that specificity gives fiction credibility and that fiction must be believable Now, once you've done your research, you'll be tempted to show it to the reader and you want to resist that urge. your research is not your main dish the story is the main dish the research is the seasoning that adds that specificity that gives you credibility and credibility.

I'm using a world history chart for my current project because I'm covering from 2000 BC. until the present. day I need to know when the patriarchs were born and when they died and how they overlapped, so make sure that your research becomes seasoning and that it is correct because readers notice that step number eight is to write a compelling first introduction for the reader, give it the time it deserves because If you can nail an important, compelling first line, it will set the tone for your entire book. You probably won't write a more important line than that first one.

Now most top lines fall into one of these categories. Surprising dramatic statement: philosophical or poetic. I'm not going to give you examples of all of them, but let me do it with the first two. / The surprising beginning of fiction begins in George Orwell's 1984. It was a bright, cold April day and the clocks read 13. That will keep you reading. would be me in nonfiction Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the last American man his first line was when Eustace Conway was seven he could throw a knife with enough precision to stick a chipmunk in a tree now for a dramatic statement I'm sure you've done it read Paradise by Toni Morrison remember that first line they shoot the white girl first that's a dramatic statement now let me read you the beginning of my work in progress I'm not putting it in the category of these classics but here's how I start: it's your mother Nicole Berman's father said over the phone that she stood up from her desk when she heard his voice.

What happened, hopefully, that will keep you reading now. What do I mean by reader first? Every decision you make in your manuscript must go through that reader filter first. not you first not the editor first not the agent first not the reviewer first not the reviewer first the reader first whenever I have readers tell me they really liked a book of mine, I think of that motto think of the reader first who often I write on my screen a sticky note I wanted to be the best, most compelling, most moving, most emotional experience you have ever had because I am thinking of the reader first, not anyone else first, so think of the reader first, last and Always, step number nine is to fill your story with conflict and tension, readers crave tension and yes, this applies to nonfiction too, almost every time a writer shows me their manuscript and says: I don't know where to go From here, it's because it's gotten to a point where the people on the page agree with each other. others too much and we like that in real life it is pleasant to have pleasant conversations talk to your spouse during a meal that you are talking about how nice a day is and what you are going to do there is nothing more boring in fiction than So, What you want to do is inject that confidence that one of those characters says something totally out of the ordinary, maybe one time this is not a beautiful day and the other one says, Oh, sure, you'd say that suddenly the reader and that character van What was that?

Where did that conflict come from? What is the problem in your relationship? What is the underlying tension that caused that conflict? That's going to get people turning the pages and you want to do that on every page, even if it's just a matter of someone making an appointment, they need to see the doctor tomorrow, there's an implication that something is about to happen, otherwise, what? Why would the

author

put it there now in non-fiction, how is that done, don't you want any unpleasantness? It doesn't have to be something negative, it doesn't have to be a battle, a war or a fight, conflict and tension arise in non-fiction simply by promising and then delivering, establishing and paying some of the best non-fiction writers and those They've spent The first few chapters promise you what you'll get when you finish reading this book, and then they hand you step number ten: turning off your internal editor while you write your first draft.

Most writers I know are perfectionists. Turns out I am too and that's why we have that inner critic sitting on our shoulder telling us what's wrong with every word we write, that inner critic is just you or me and we have to tell that critic to shut up, not now It's time to Critique your own work, always save editing at least until the next day and the longer you can wait between the time you write it and the time you direct it, the better for the final product. These arethe first pages of my dead work in progress.

The sea is rising next now I wouldn't show this first draft, my worst enemy. I don't worry about clichés, redundancies, lack of logic. I need to write the story, so turn off that internal editor. Write your story and then tell yourself that the next day you can put your perfectionist hat back on and remember in point number five when I mentioned the marathon in the middle. I want to make that point eleven and touch it again because if there is any place you are going to give up, it is Being in the middle during the marathon, this is also the most difficult point for me.

I have written more than 190 books in 40 years. I get to the middle marathon every time and I wonder why I did it. Getting into this business, the problem with the middle marathon is that we all have great ideas to start with and we can't wait to get to that big finish, but now we have a couple hundred pages in between to fill and if you just start patting fiction with extra scenes or non-fiction with extra points your reader will abandon the page, this is where you not only survive but thrive e.g. In my current work in progress, The Dead Sea Rises, this is a long novel of eighty thousand words, so the marathon in the middle is quite a stretch.

The way I solved the problem of not letting it falter in the middle is to alternate from 2000 BC. to present day and even back to Vietnam and I'm establishing my The rewards are so good in the middle that I can hardly wait to get to the end and the end will work out better because I didn't just persevere through the marathon. I just arrived. Step number 12 is to write a resounding ending with which you want your book to end. the way a Broadway play ends when the curtain falls with a satisfying thud. I'm working on my 195th book, so I have over a hundred 90 books here and they all had to have endings that worked.

Two thirds of my books are novels. a third are non-fiction, so even non-fiction has to have a great ending. How do you make sure your ending doesn't fall flat? You give it the time it deserves. I've talked to a lot of writers who wrote their entire manuscript to get to the ending and they rush it or say I just don't know how to make it work don't settle for second best if it takes you longer to write your ending than the rest of them we'll now put together or the nonfiction book together, do whatever it takes to make it work and if you have several ideas about how it could be better, choose the one that is most emotional because readers remember what moves them, my last and most important point, step 13 it's that you need to become a fierce self that happens what it means to be fierce you know what it means to be aggressive everything else is in vain if you don't polish your manuscript to the point where you're happy with every word that doesn't mean it's going to be perfect or that you don't need an editor if you should put it with an editor, but you need to polish that thing until it sings why because agents and editors can tell in two minutes whether your manuscript will be worth reading or reject, that doesn't sound fair and such.

Maybe it's not, but they have so many things to read, the competition is so vast that they've learned to be able to tell in a page or two whether this has potential or not, that puts the entire responsibility on you to self-publish people said: should I pay an editor? If you pay an editor, which editor buys your work or someone else's? learn to edit yourself cuts to add power. I have the list. of 21 self-publishing tips, you can find it at Jerry Jenkins com. I've been so blessed in my career that I love to give back, so I send out free writing tips and writing blogs.

You can find all that on that website and you'll be good to go.