So recently my little sister expressed some interest in writing down her stories
and maybe even thinking about writing her first book so in this video I’ll just be
talking about a very basic overview on the first steps to creating your first of book.
[upbeat guitar music] As always, every writer's process is
different and this list is just kind of the things that I have found in my own personal writing
journey and things that were true about my process the first time through. Right number one is Ideas.
This will look different for different writers but even most discovery writers start with at least a
few bullet points and of course it is totally okay if you don't know where you fall on the
scale of outlining vs discovery writing yet. A lot of writers do not start to figure out what works
best for them their first book around it usually takes a while. if you're unfamiliar with either of
these terms, a Discovery Writer, or a "pantser", is somebody who discovers the story as they write
it or "flies by the seat of their pants." an Outliner is someone who likes to know a lot more
about the story before they begin writing it and this is definitely more of a spectrum than "this
or that" kind of thing and I think for the most part most writers fall somewhere in the middle
of having a pretty basic outline and just having a handful of bullet points. when I first started
writing books I was a complete discovery writer I would just start with a little spark of an idea
and run with it and just pick up pieces along the way to see what I could build and after a lot of
trial and error I landed on what works best for me, which is outlining almost the complete story
before I begin writing it. I like to call myself an Extreme Outliner or an extreme plotter because
that one kind of makes me sound like a super villain. So if you're already set on a premise
then that is great but if not it might be helpful to start with some brainstorming or freewriting
sessions. freewriting is a favorite practice of mine, basically all you do is start with a
fresh page and you start writing whatever you're thinking and all you're trying to do is build
ideas and connections, and then connecting your connections to more connections, and more ideas.
All right number two is Goals. It is a good idea to consider your goals before you begin writing
your book. Now you don't need a month-to-month five-year plan here, but it might be helpful to
kind of get an idea of what your plan is for this book before you begin. This can be helpful in a
number of different ways but mostly just to keep yourself and your writing in perspective while
you're working on your book. So do you want to just write this book as something fun for your
friends and family to enjoy? Or just for the fun of writing itself? If so your plans and goals
for the book will probably look very different from someone who is intending to publish a book.
So whatever it is just keep it in mind when you're planning your project. All right and number three
is Habits. Having a good writing habit has been one of the most helpful things in my entire
writing journey so far and again this will look very different for different people. It might take
a while to figure out how much you can write in a day or week and how frequently you personally need
to write so that you can keep your mind engaged in the story, but once you do start to figure
that out it is pretty easy to start building your writing habit. So for me I know that I get pretty
easily distracted and so that means I need to write more frequently. I shoot for about five
to six days a week and for at least a few hours each day. Building a good writing habit just
means that you are training yourself to reliably write regularly. (Try saying that ten times fast!)
So just like any habit, once you build this one it will be difficult to break and that's what's
actually gonna help you write the book. Once you get into the habit of writing at a certain set
time and day your brain will become more used to doing this on the regular and so it will actually
become easier to write over time. The idea that you have to write every single day is not actually
true. Your writing process and habits are going to depend completely on your personal schedule
and what works best for you. And this leads right into the next one which is number four, planning.
So next it might be helpful to make a general plan for your project. Do you intend to write
a certain amount of time per day or week, or do you have a date that you'd like to finish the
first draft by? Having a basic plan like this can be really motivational and help keep you on track.
And with a little bit of math you can accurately guess about when you'll be able to finish that
first draft. If you need to pencil writing sessions into your schedule this would be a good
time to do that and see what you can do to make sure that these times are free of distractions.
Number five is writing doing the actual writing is the biggest part of this whole process, but it
is also the easiest to kind of tell you about. All you have to do is write the story! And that's it!
Okay that's not really it, but there are a lot of resources on techniques and different things
you can do to help yourself write more regularly and write faster but for me personally the biggest
hindrance has always been procrastination. If you'd like to hear some of my favorite methods for
eliminating procrastination, you can check out one of my videos which I will link up in the cards.
All right number six is editing. Self-editing looks different for everybody. Some writers
start editing while they are still drafting the book and make improvements as they go other
writers don't like to do any editing until they finish that first draft. (That would be me) and
others still -- I just learned about these guys -- some people do not touch their draft until after
somebody else has already read it and critiqued it and I find these people awesome and terrifying.
Self-editing is a very different process from writing and it can definitely be daunting to think
about trying to learn that whole process too. It definitely was for me. Coming back to something
critically after you have spent so much time and energy on it is kind of a difficult thing to get
over and it took me a while to figure out what I was even looking for or really even trying to do.
I’ve already posted a couple videos on my personal self-editing process which I will again link in
the cards. But basically you have two different kinds of self-editing that you need to learn.
So first, you have developmental editing. This is making changes to things like character arcs,
plot, events, plot holes those sort of things. And secondly, you have line edits, where you're going
to be looking for things like prose, consistency, dialogue, grammar those sort of things.
Your self-editing process will definitely look different depending on what your next steps are
going to be, and you might have many rounds of either of these kind of edits depending on you
and your book's strengths and weaknesses. And of course then there is proofreading, where you're
looking for really small details like typos and punctuation. Usually this isn't done until at the
earliest I would say before beta reader stage for some people, but it all definitely depends
on what you are going to be looking at doing next with this book. most writers will do some form of
editing after their first draft, and then pass it on to peer critiques, and then do some more
editing based on that feedback, and then maybe some more critiques and then some more editing,
and -- that goes on for, actually, that goes on for an eternity, and you get taken into a
different realm where time doesn't exist and all there is is pain and typos -- so then after that
you'll take your book into a different process, and depending on what that is for you it could
be professional editing and publication, or it could be just trunking the book and moving on to
something else. Number seven is Writing Friends. Having a few good writing friends is incredibly
helpful, especially in the early stages of your writing journey. Writing groups can be
incredible resources and critique partners will help you improve in ways that you never expected.
writing and critique groups are not something I have personal experience with because I just
prefer to exchange pieces one-on-one with a CP. different groups will of course always
have their own different setups, but usually a critique or writing group will have scheduled
meetings every week or two where people will bring in their pieces or chapters and you'll
all kind of read them and exchange different critiques on how you could improve the story.
And of course for us indoor cats, there is always working one-on-one with critique partners. If that
is what you prefer, that's what I prefer I know a bigger group can be really great for some people,
but for me that is just it's too many voices. It was better to just start off one-on-one with one
CP who is in the same stage of their writing journey as myself, and bonus points if you and
your CP have opposite strengths. Having trusted writer friends who can give you feedback and
critiques in different ways is always going to be really helpful as well as helping you
improve your skills in many different areas of writing. Alright and the last one number eight,
is Learning. I feel like each project that I work on and each book that I’ve written has taught
me something different, or in some cases many, many different things about the writing process,
whether that is improving different skills or just learning more about how I better work with things,
each book is a different experience and it is still interesting to me a few books in that
so many things can change about my process from one book to the next. There are always going to
be new techniques, and new books to read about writing and, new books to read about character and
plot development, and new people to learn from, and new places to get information. There's just
always going to be new everything, so you just have to continue taking in information at whatever
speed is comfortable for you. Skillshare has plenty of great classes for beginner writers
as well as of course libraries will have tons and tons of books on writing and craft and all
those sorts of things. I’ll leave some links down below to popular books on writing if you
are interested in checking any of those out. At the end of the day there is no right or wrong way
to write your book, because it is YOUR book. I would totally appreciate if you guys would
leave one of your favorite writing resources in the comments down below. I would love to
check out what other people find most helpful. If you'd like to dive into the world of Olexia,
you can check out Age of the Gods, which is a free short story available on my website, and I’ll link
it down below. Alright and that's all I’ve got for you today so thank you for watching. Bye!
[upbeat
guitar music]