The 6 Steps to Pre-Writing A Book
Have you ever tried to write a book?
If not, have you ever thought about how much work goes into it?
More importantly, if you have… have you ever thought about how much work goes into it?
Most wannabe writers, or most people who think about the daily life of writers, think that all a potential or actual writer has to do is sit down at the computer with a story idea one day, write and write for days on end until they finally let it all out, and then work away at the editing before all of a sudden in just a few short magical weeks they have something absolutely and completely out-of-this-world-amazing.
Incorrect.
I was talking with one of my writer friends the other day, who’s been with me along most of my writing journey since before the publication of the First Edition of Immortality Awaits.
The whole time, he’s been toying with the same story idea, trying to work it out, but says that he has this burst of energy where all he wants to do is write, but when he sits at the computer, nothing comes out.
“What’s your process like?” I asked him.
“I don’t know, I don’t really have one,” he says.“What do you mean, 'you don’t have one'?”
“I just sit down to write, and nothing comes out.”
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
Wrong.
A writer does not simply sit down and write a book.
One does not simply walk into Mordor.
Okay, well, I guess technically some writers just sit down and write the novel, but they're known as "panstsers", or people who can just...sit down and write the novel.
Then there are those like me, who, like my friend, can not just sit down and let it roll.
We are known as the "plotters."
So, if you've tried to be a pantser and it hasn't worked out for you, and you'd like to try and be a plotter but aren't exactly sure how to get started, here are six steps that will help you get your manuscript ready before you even write the first page:
#1: Write Down Every Idea
It may seem petty and kind of, like, “duh,” but it still needs to be done.
This is the bulletpoint stage.
The only purpose of this stage is to get the ideas you already do have out from your head and onto paper somehow.
I, personally, like to handwrite every step on this guide. It not only connects me better to the story because, after a while, it physically hurts me to write it, but it also gets me ready for the mental stamina and preparation I’ll need to write the actual manuscript, and forces me to think in less detail, which I feel at this stage is one of those “less is more” times.
If you’re immediately trying to put everything into its prospective chapter, and write the appropriate scene about it, and try to just make it beautiful, your brain gets muddled (for some of us.)
If you write down the ideas, just as they are, with no thought of when or where they’re going to happen, by the time you get all of those out, you’ll start to see the structure of the story becoming laid out in front of you.
#2: Ask Yourself Questions
If you tell anyone that you’re writing a book, or that you have written a book, or that you’re thinking of writing a book, or you have any sort of idea, they’re obviously going to ask you, “What’s it about?”
You can start this process by asking yourself the same question, and really thinking about the answer.
Other questions can be, “What are the main emotions and how are they examined?” or “What themes do you want to use?” or “Where do you see this book going?”
Questions like these help you focus on a target audience, who you want to market it toward, and give you a better structural idea of what will happen in the novel as opposed to how it will happen.
Set yourself some early goals once you have all of your general ideas out, so you can start to motivate yourself to work for something based on the questions you ask yourself.
And, trust me, after it’s written, when you go back to the questions and answers you wrote before you even wrote anything, you’ll see how far you’ve come and how important this process is, as well. (You can read more about my personal experience with that here.)
#3: Make a Projected Chapter Number List
This is another seemingly pointless idea, but, if you think about a general idea of how many chapters you'll have, you can arrange everything you’ve already written-without-actually-writing-anything by this point into their prospective locations.
After that, you can think of a projected average chapter length.
For example, my friend, while now using this very process to actually write the book he’s been trying to write for 14 years, says he projects 37 chapters, aiming at an average of 1500-2000 words per chapter, equaling a projected 55,500-74,000 words, which is a good visual to have all around for the early structuring of your book.
In this particular case, that also falls into desired ranges of word counts for publishers, so it’s a good starting point to set yourself another goal to toward.
#4: Write the Prospective Chapter Character POV, if it changes throughout
This is potentially a step you can skip, if you only have one perspective character throughout the entire narrative.
However, the real point of this process is to take the ideas you’ve already written down in step one and decide if they’re a beginning, a middle, or an end idea.
This, alongside all of the “what’s it about” questions and the projected chapter/word count, will help you start to see the overall structure of the novel in and of itself, and will help you start to think of the linking storylines that will help get you from the beginning to the end.
#5: Write Two Sentences for Each Chapter
This is about the time where some real patient work is going to have to be put in, especially if you’ve written everything out.
Once you have the entire storyline mapped and planned out, write a two-sentence summary for each chapter, basically answering the simple question, “What happens?”
This is very similar to the first step, in that it is just the idea stage, where you just say something like, “Alvara is escaping through the Frozen Forest and stumbles upon a conversation with some surviving members of the Army that attacked her. They catch her, but she kicks some ass and takes one of them prisoner.”
Plain, simple, done, and now I have a base idea of what’s going to happen in this chapter.
Once I’ve done it for each of my chapters, I have a base idea for every chapter and my whole story is written.
#6: Write Three Paragraphs for Each Chapter
The most obnoxious step of all, in my personal opinion.
This is when you take everything you’ve done up until this point, and you write out three paragraphs for each chapter: a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Taking into account that you have two sentences for what happens already written for this chapter, and assuming that a paragraph is around 4-5 sentences, at the end of 15 sentences about what happens in the chapter, narrowed down to the three linking objects that define the chapter’s story arc, you’ll have an in-depth look at exactly what happens in your novel.
Bonus #7: WRITE
The best part about this stage is putting the pen down, because by this point you’ll probably be where you thought writer’s were a long time ago — sitting at the computer and flying off the handle writing this manuscript. Good luck!
