Where To Start When Writing A Book

A super-simple step-by-step guide for new writers

Are you writing a book? Maybe you're starting out for the first time? Twenty years ago, I was in your exact position. My wife was seriously unwell. I'd quit work to look after her. And yes, a lot of my time was spent caring for her… but that still left a whole lot of hours in the day.

I didn't want to donothing with that time. And I'd alwayswanted to write a book. (I've still got a little home-movie film clip of me, age 9, being asked what I wanted to me when I was grown up. I answered, "I want to be an author.")

So, sitting at home, and often quite literally at my wife's bedside, I opened my laptop and started to write.

That book grew into a 190,000 word monster. I slaved at that damn thing too. Worked really hard. Was a perfectionist about every detail.

I got an agent and I got a six-figure book deal with HarperColins, one of the world's largest publishers. And the book went on to become a bestseller that sold in a load of foreign territories too.

And best of all? I got a career I loved. I've been in print continuously ever since, bringing out about a book a year in that time, and I've basically loved every second of it. (Oh, and my wife? Yeah, she's got a long term condition that will never leave her, but she's about a million times better than she was back in those days. It's been an up-down ride, but we've been a lot more lucky than not.)

But you're not reading this because you want to know about me. You want to know how to start book writing.

You've got a big empty screen to deal with. A headful of ideas, a desire to write… but no structure for putting those ideas into practice. You want to know: what next?

Well, that's a good question. (One I didn't think about too hard when I started out, but then again I did end up deleting a 60,000 word chunk of my first draft because it was just no damn good.)

So what do you need to do next? Well, you do this:

If you want to start writing a book, take the following steps, in the following order…

Write A Book In 10 Steps

Take one fabulous idea
Build a blistering plot
Add unforgettable characters
Give your characters inner life
Add drama by showing it unfolding on the page
Write with clarity, economy and precision
Writing for children? Same rules apply!
Be disciplined
Revise your draft
Get feedback

1. Take One Fabulous Idea

If you want to know how to write a novel, there is only one sensible place to start, and that's not with the first line as you might think, but with the very idea of your book – the thing you want to write about.

Concept matters massively. It's almost impossible to overstate its importance. Stephenie Meyer writes competent prose, but it's her concept that turnedTwilight into a cultural phenomenon. Dan Brown, Stieg Larsson, Stephen King are similar. They're decent writers blessed with stunning ideas.

Agents know this, and – no matter what your genre – a strong premise is essential to selling a book. Given any two broadly similar manuscripts, agents will almost always pick the one with the strongest central concept.

How, then, do you get your amazing book ideas? The answer is that you probably already have them. Your killer idea may be germinating in your head right now. It may arise from a passion of yours; it may come out of a book you love.

It's not about theseed of the idea. It's how you develop it that counts.

The key here is:

(A) picking material that excites you,

(B) pickingenough material (so you want several ideas for possible settings, several ideas for possible heroes, several ideas for basic challenge/premise, etc. You want to be able to make choices from a place of abundance.)

(C) –and this is the genius bit – you need to start combining those ingredients in a way that ensures you have at least one rogue ingredient, one unexpected flavour in your concoction.

So let's say that you just wanted to write a 1940s, film-noir style, private-eye detective story – anhomage to Raymond Chandler and that great generation of writers. If you just replicated all those ingredients, you'd have an unsaleable book. Why? Because they're too familiar. If people want those things, they'd just buy Chandler's own work, or others of that era. So throw in – a ghost. A German secret agent. Or set the story in a black community in Alabama. Or… whatever. Just make sure there's one discordant ingredient to make readers sit up and take notice.

Need more help? Then go watch this 10 minute video I put together that walks you through the exact process.

Expert tip:

It also helps to know really early on what kind of word count you should be looking at. The gold-standard way to figure this out is to get hold of five or six recently published novels in your exact area. Then count the words on a typical page and multiply up to get an approximate total. If that sounds like too much work, then just use our handy guide. The gold-standard approach is better though!

2. Build A Blistering Plot

The next essential for any novelist is a story that simply forces the reader to keep turning pages. Fortunately, there are definite rules about how to achieve this.

Here are the rules you need to know:

Work with avery small number of protagonists (ie: main characters in your story. These are the ones who propel the action and whose stories the readers invest in.) You probably only have one protagonist, and that's fine. If you have two or three, that's fine too. More than that? Not for a first book, please! They'll make your job too hard.
Start your story byunsettling the status quo very early on – first page possibly, but certainly within the first chapter. The incident that gets the story rolling is called the Inciting Incident, and it's the catalyst for everything that follows. Read more about how to make your Inciting Incident work really well here.
Give your protagonist a major lifechallenge very early in the book and don't resolve things till the very end. The reader basically read the book to see whether your protagonist gets the thing they're seeking. Does the gal get the guy? Does James Bond save the world?
Over the course of the book, make sure thatjeopardy increases. That doesn't have to be an even progression, by any means. But by the final quarter or third of your novel, your protagonist needs to feel thateverything hinges on the outcome of what follows.
End your book with acrisis andresolution. So the crisis part is when everything seems lost. But then your hero or heroine summons up one last effort and saves the day in the end. In general, in most novels, the crisis wants to seem really bad, and the resolution wants to seem really triumphant. It's achieving the swing from maximum light to maximum dark that will really give the reader a sense of a satisfying book. (More on plot structure here.)
And finally, one more crucial tip: if a chapter doesn'tadvance the story in a specific way, you must delete that chapter. How come? Because all the reader really wants is to know whether your protagonist achieves the thing they're seeking. If that basic balance between protagonist and goal doesn't alter in the course of a chapter, you've given your reader no reason to read it. So axe unnecessary backstory. Ignore minor characters. Care about your protagonist with a passion.

Sounds simple?

Well, the principles aren't that hard to understand, although executing the advice can a wee bit trickier.

Expert tip:

Use the "snowflake method" to build your structure. The heart of this concept is the idea that you should start with an incredibly bare-bones summary of your narrative – one sentence is fine. Then you add something about character. Then you build that sentence out into a paragraph. And so on. It's a great way of allowing your plot to emerge somewhat naturally. More help on that technique here – but don't ask my why it's called the snowflake method. It's nothing like a snowflake.

3. Add Unforgettable Characters

Long after a reader has forgotten details of a plot, the chances are they'll remember the character who impelled it. The two things you absolutely must bear in mind when constructing your characters are:

Make sure that thecharacter and the story bounce off one another in interesting ways. If, to take a stupid example, your character has a fear of spiders, the chances are that your story needs to force your character to confront those fears. You must bring your character into their zone of greatest discomfort.
Make sure you really,really know your character. It's so often little things, subtleties that make characters seem human (e.g. Amy has a passion for Manhattan in winter; she collects a shell from every beach she's ever visited.) If you want to check if you know your character well enough, we suggest you use our ultimate character builder.

Oh yes, and one great tip (albeit one that won't work for every novel) is this: if in doubt,add juice to your character.

Here's an example of what I mean:

Stieg Larsson could have just written a book about a genius computer hacker.

But he didn't. He could have written a book about a genius computer hacker with Aspergers.

But he didn't. He could have written a book about a genius computer hacker with Aspergers and a hostile attitude towards society.

But he didn't. He could have written a book about a genius computer hacker with Aspergers, a hostile attitude towards society, and who was also a rape victim.

But he didn't.

He also tossed in a complex parental background, bisexuality, a motorbike, years spent in the Swedish care system, and an aptitude for violence.

It was the intoxicating brew of all those elements combined that created one of the world's most successful recent fictional creations.

Short moral: if in doubt, do more.

Expert tip:

Our character development page has got a free downloadable character profile questionnaire that asks you 200+ questions about your character. Those questions basically challenge you to know your character better than you know your best friend. It'll only take you an hour or two to complete the worksheet – and your character knowledge will be propelled to a whole new dimension of awesome. Honestly? It might be the single most useful hour you can spend right now. Uh, unless you are on a burning ship in a storm. In which case, reading this paragraph is not a good use of your time.

4. Give Your Characters Inner Life

One of the commonest problems we see is when a character does and says all the right stuff, but the reader never really knows what theythink orfeel.

If you don't create that insight into the character's inner world, the book will fail to engage your reader, because that insight is the reason why people read. After all, if you just want to watch explosions, you'll go to a Bond or Bourne movie. If you want to feel what it's like tobe James Bond or Jason Bourne, you have no alternative but to read Ian Fleming's or Robert Ludlum's original novels.

This character insight is one of the simplest things for a novelist to do. You just need to remember that your protagonist has a rich inner world, and then you need to tell us about it. So we want to know about:

What the character thinks
What their emotions are
What they remember
What their physical sensations are
And so on

It's OK to use fairly bland language at times ("she was hungry", "she felt tired"), but you'll only start to get real depth into your characters if you get individual and specific too. See for example how much richer this passage feels, and how full of its character it seems to be:

seeing the meat, she felt a sudden revulsion. The last time she'd seen mutton roasting like this on an open fire, it had been when [blah, blah – something to do with the character's past]. As the memories came back, her throat tightened and her stomach was clenched as though ready to vomit.

Because the character has thoughts, feeling, memories and physical sensations all combining here, the moment is richly endowed with personality. A simple "She felt revolted" wouldn't have had anything like the same impact.

Expert tip:

Once you've written 20-30,000 words or so, it's worth pausing to check that your characters seem alive on the page. So just print off four or five random pages from your manuscript and circle any statements that indicate your character's inner life (physical sensations, memories, thoughts, feelings, and so on.)

If you find nothing at all, you have written a book about a robot and you may need to rethink. If you do find indicators of inner life, but they're all bland and unengaging ("I was hungry", "I remembered a barn like that when I was a kid."), you may want to juice up your character. If you find a rich inner life, then you're doing great. Just keep at it.

5. Add Drama

Your job as a novelist is toshow action unfolding on the page. Readers don't just want a third-hand report of what has just happened. That means you need to tell things moment-by-moment, as if you were witnessing the event. Consider the difference between this:

Ulfor saw the descending sword in a blur of silver. He twisted to escape, but the swordsman above, a swarthy troll with yellow teeth, was too fast, and swung hard.

(This form of narration is "showing".)

And this:

Ulfor was badly injured in a swordfight.

(This form of narration is known as "telling".)

The first snippet sounds like an actual story. The second sounds like a news report.

Obviously, you will need to use the second mode of storytelling from time to time. Telling can be a simple way to convey facts and speed things up, but for the most part, your tale needs to consist of scenes of dramatic action, glued together with bits of sparse narration. If in doubt, look up our free tips on the 'show, don't tell' rule.

Expert tip:

One of the real drivers of drama on the page – and one of the real pleasures of fiction – is intense, alive, surprising dialogue. Writing dialogue competently is pretty easy – you can probably do it already.

But writing really great dialogue (think Elmore Leonard, for example) is not so simple. That said there are rules you can follow which just make your writing better. For more advice on all this, just check out our page on dialogue.

6. Write Well

It sounds obvious, but it's no good having a glowing idea and a fabulous plot if you can't write.

Your book is made up of sentences, after all, and if those sentences don't convey your meaning succinctly and clearly, your book just won't work.

Almost everyone has the capacity to write well. You just need to focus on the challenge. So think about the three building blocks of good writing:

Clarity. You need to express your meaning clearly. Of course YOU know what you're meaning to say, but would a reader understand as clearly? One good way to check yourself here is to read your own work aloud. If you stumble when reading, that's a big clue that readers will stumble too.
Economy. Never use ten words when eight would do. That means checking every sentence to see if a word or two could be lost. It means checking every paragraph for sentences that you don't need. Every page for surplus paragraphs. If that sounds pedantic, just think about this. If you tried to sell a 100,000 book that had 20,000 surplus words in it, you shouldn't be surprised if agents rejected it, because it was just too boring and too baggy. But that's the exact same difference as a 10 word sentence and an 8 word one. In a word: pedantry matters. It's your friend!
Precision. Be as precise as possible. This normally means you need tosee the scene in your head before you candescribe it clearly to a reader. So it's easy to write "a bird flew around the tree", but that's dull and imprecise. Just think how much better this is: "A pair of swallows flew, chirrupping, around the old apple tree." The difference in the two sentences is basically one of precise seeing, precise description. Need more help? Then you'll find this article really useful!

If you can manage those three things – and you can; it's just a question of making the effort – then you can write well enough to write a novel. That's nice to know, huh?

Expert tip:

Descriptive writing sounds like it ought to be boring, right? Everyone knows what a coffee shop looks like, so isn't it just wasting words to tell the reader?

Except that's not how it works. The reason why writing descriptions matters so much is that the reader has to feel utterly present in your fictional world. It has to feel more real than the world of boring old reality. That's where great descriptive writing comes into its own. If you can – economically, vividly – set a scene, then all your character interactions and plot twists will come into their own. They'll feel more dramatic, more alive. And again: there are simple repeatable techniques for strong descriptive writing. Read more about them right here.

7. What If I'm Writing For Children?

Same rules apply, no matter the age or genre you're writing for, but we've put together a collection of our best tips for children's authors, including help on how to get a literary agent who's right for you and your work.

Whatever else, write clearly and economically. If your style isn't immediate and precise, children won't have the patience to keep up with you. If a chapter doesn't drive the story forwards, you'll lose them. If in doubt, keep it simple. Write vivid characters to an inventive plot. Write with humour and a bit of mischief.

But really: if you're writing for kids, then follow ALL the rules in this blog post, but do the whole thing on a smaller scale. The only really crucial issue that distinguishes children's fiction from adult work isword count. You just have to know the right kind of length for the specific market you are writing for.

That means:

Figure out what age range you are aiming at
Figure out what kind of books you are writing (books about unicorns for 6-7 year olds? Adventure stories for young teens? Contemporary issue-driven books for mid-teens?)
Get hold of some books in the right niche
Take a typical page in those books
Count the words
Multiply number of words by number of pages. Done!

Oh, and don't rely on internet searches to give you the right answer. Because there is so much age-dependent variability in kids fiction, criss-crossed by a good bit of format and genre variability, the only safe route to follow is the one we've just given.

Expert tip:

The commonest mistake made by aspiring children's authors has to do with writing down to children. And that's wrong. Children don't want to be lectured or patronised. They want their world to be taken as seriously by you as they take it themselves. One of the reasons Roald Dahl was so successful was that he wrote about stuff that adults (in the real world, outside fiction) would have disapproved of. A giant who spoke funny? Adult twits who behaved badly? A lethally dangerous chocolate factory? Dahl's willingness to be subversive put him clearly on the side of kids, not adults. Authors such as Susanne Collins, Veronica Roth, JK Rowling, and Stephenie Meyer all use the same basic trick. Copy them!

8. Set Up Some Good Writing Disciplines

First rule of writing is this: Good writers write.

They don'twant to write. They don'tthink about writing. They don'tblog about writing.

They write.

Sure you can do those other things too, but they're not what counts. What counts is bum-on-seat hours and that document wordcount ticking ever upwards.

Now the truth is that different writers approach their work differently. There's no one set of rules that works for everyone. But here are some rules thatmay work for you. If they do, great. If they don't, adapt them as you need. Either way, if the rules help you write, great. If they don't, discard them.

So. The rules:

Set up yourwriting space so it appeals. Lose the distractions. Make sure you have a computer, pens, and notebooks that you like using. Get a comfortable chair.
Eliminate distractions. Got a TV in your writing room? Then lose the TV. Or change rooms. Get rid of the distractions that most bother you.
Determinewhen and how often you will write. If you have a busy life, it's OK if that's a bit ramshackle ("Tuesday morning, alternate Wednesdays, and Saturday if I get a chance.") But the minimum here is that you set a weekly allowance of hours, and stick to it come hell or high water. Pair that up with:
Aweekly target wordcount. Hit that target every week, no excuses.
Make some kind ofoutcome commitment. For example:When I have finished this book, I will get an external professional editor to give me comments. Or:I will share this with my book group. You just need to have in mind that this book will be read. That knowledge keeps you honest!
Commit to a deadline. Don't make that too tough on yourself, but do make it real. Almost anyone should be able to manage 2,000 words a week, even with a busy life. And most adult novels are 70-100,000 words long, so in less than a year, you have yourself a book, my friend. With practice, you'll get faster.
Work to an outline. I said you needed to sketch your plot, right? (You can get that plotting worksheet by navigating to the top of the sidebar on this page.) Use that outline as your story-compass. If you need to tweak it as you go, that's fine – but no radical changes, please!
Always prioritise the reader's perspective. Don't write to please yourself. Write to please the reader. If you need to imagine an actual Ideal Reader, then do so. Write for them.
Don't worry if your first draft is lousy. It's meant to be! That's what first drafts are for. Jane Smiley said, "All first drafts are perfect, because all they have to do is exist." Same goes for you, buddy.
Take breaks. If you're a fidgety writer (as I am), you'll want to take a lot of breaks. If you concentrate fiercely for twenty minutes and take a break for five or ten, that's fine. Just keep going that way.
Warm up each day. I always edit my work of the day before as a way to warm myself up for the chapter I'm about to begin. If you like to warm up differently, then go for it. Just remember you may not be able to just start writing fresh text at 9.01 am precisely. Most of us need to warm the engine a little first.

And that's it. Do those things, and you should be fine.

9. Revise Your First Draft

Nearly all first drafts will have problems, some of them profound. That's okay.

A first draft is just your opportunity to get stuck in on the real business: which is refining and perfecting the story you've just told yourself.

That means checking your story, checking your characters, checking your writing style.

Then doing all those things again. You'll find new issues, new niggles every time you go back to your work (at least to start with), and every time you fix those things, your book will get better. It's a repetitive process, but one you should come to enjoy.

Don't get alarmed by the repetitions: think of this rewriting task as climbing a spiral staircase. Yes, you are going round in circles, but you are rising higher all the time.

We've seen hundreds of new manuscripts every year, and we're pretty good at recognising common problems. We've even got a checklist of recurring issues we find. Most are fixable, so you don't need to worry too much if some of those apply to you.

The thing is simply to figure out what the issue is, then sit down to address it. Remember that all successful novelists started the same way as you did: with a lousy manuscript.

Expert tip:

Editing your own work can be a challenging and somewhat mysterious process. So we've removed the mystery. We've put some actual edits to an actual book (by me, as it happens) up on the blog, so you can see how the self-editing process works for an experienced pro author. You can find more about all that over here. While you're at it, you may want to take a look at the various different types of editing that are available. But don't jump into paid editing until a very late stage. For now, self-editing will improve your manuscript and build your skills.

10. Make Friends, Get Feedback

Writing a book is hard work. It's lonely. Those around you are seldom equipped to offer expert feedback and advice – and, of course, this is a difficult road. Most first novels do not get published.

So please don't try to go it alone. Here are some things you can and probably should do:

Join a writing group or online writing community. See our expert tip below.
Go public with some of your writing goals / achievements. That could just mean updating your Facebook page, or talking with your friends at the office. The main thing is to avoid your book feeling like a dark secret you're not able to share.
Get friendly peer feedback when you think you're ready. When your book is finished and roughly edited, it can be useful to seek supportive feedback, of the "Wow, you can really do this!" variety. You'll need to get tougher in due course, but that early support can work wonders.
Build your skills. That could mean doing an online creative writing class, or taking a course, or working with a mentor, or attending an event. Whatever you choose to do, you will improve as a writer and writing & editing your next book will come easier than it did this first time round.
Get professional feedback once you've done as much self-editing as you can manage. There is absolutely no better way to improve a manuscript than to get a rigorous set of comments from an experienced third-party editor. Watch this video for tips on how to process and make best use of that feedback.

Remember, you don't have to do all of this at once. This is a marathon, not a sprint. So go easy with yourself when setting out your goals. Under-commit and over-deliver, right?

Expert tip:

Meet friends in a free and knowledgeable community of writers. I blog there every week and thousands of writers like you meet to share peer-to-peer critiques, gossip, advice and support. And also – friendship. Passion makes friends like nothing else and our community is all about passion. Sign up is totally free. And fast. And easy. Just go here and do what you gotta do.

Bonus Tip: Get A Literary Agent

Literary agents only take about one book in a thousand, so before you take this final step, we do suggest that you've completed numbers 1 to 9 properly. You should also take a look at our advice on manuscript presentation to make sure you're really prepared for the next stage. That said, if your novel is good enough, you will find it easy enough to secure representation. Just follow these steps.

A) Select your target agents. We have a complete list of literary agents and you can filter all data by genre, agent experience and more. It's the most complete source of its kind.

B) Choose about 8-12 names. You're looking for agents keen to take on new writers. If they happen to represent authors you love, so much the better. (More advice on how to start your agent search.)

C) Write a fabulous covering letter, using this advice and sample letter.

D) Write a good, clear synopsis. A process that terrifies most writers, but this is easier than you might think. Just follow these tips.

E) Get your stuff out there.

And there you have it: 10 steps to get you started writing that novel.

Happy writing, good luck. And keep going!

Jericho Writers is a global membership group for writers, providing everything you need to get published. Keep up with our news, membership offers, and updates by signing up to our newsletter. For more writing articles take a look at our blog page or join our free writer's community.