how to start writing a book
PART ONE: IS THIS EVEN A GOOD IDEA?
Hi! If you don’t know me, I’m Allison Carr Waechter. I have written and published seven novels, one novella, one collection of short stories, been published in two anthologies, ran a small press literary magazine, have a BA & MA in English Literature, taught writing at an R1 university here in the US for over a decade, and I was a professional writing consultant for nearly fifteen years. And, as a part of my job as an author, I have the pleasure of being an alpha reader and critique partner to some really fantastic authors.
I have… a little experience doing this. And while I would really need to do one-on-one consultations to “solve” the world’s writing issues, I can definitely take you through some general ways to think through writing a book. This will be a multi-part series that takes us through some of the ways we move from ideation to actual writing.
IS THIS EVEN A GOOD IDEA?
Recently, when I asked Instagram to ask me questions about the writing process, within five minutes the majority of my questions were about “how to start,” and one, in particular struck me as not only a really great question, but one that I think plagues a lot of novice writers, and that was:
“How do I know if my idea is a good one?”
It’s a great question, y’all. And I have what will probably become a pattern of answering for me here: You don’t.
Okay, that’s a little too pat, tbh and I don’t love it as an answer. Of course, I’m gonna elaborate… C’mon. You didn’t think I’d leave you hanging like that, did you?
LET’S CHANGE OUR PERSPECTIVE
To start with: this question is often more complicated than it first appears. The question of whether or not an idea is good has the propensity to wrap up a few different questions all in one:
Will this book sell? (nobody knows the answer to this until a book is published—it’s wild)
And yes, seasoned industry professionals have some ideas about what will sell and what won’t, but there’s a reason trad pub works on a “wide net” model… they honestly don’t know what the market will shift to want. Indie can more easily rise to meet the market in a timely fashion, but even then it’s hard to know which books will really blow up, which will do solid sales, and which will flop.
Is this an idea readers will enjoy? (the only way to find this out is to ask readers, but even then, we can’t ask them all, or typically even enough to get a solid sample size—and frankly, even if they like the IDEA, they might not like the execution. Please don’t hate me, we’re getting the shitty parts of the discussion out of the way first!)
Is this a good idea for me, as a writer? This is the question I think more of us should be asking, because of numbers 1 &2 and the overall volatility of the publishing industry as a whole. 100% there are some solid ways to plan for a good career, but publishing is a long game—sometimes the longest of games. And frankly this road can be hard. I urge you strongly to travel with friends you love (I am referring to your characters—to be clear, lol!).
And I do want to point out that points one and two become a LOT easier to establish answers to when you actually have readers. You get to know what your readers want from you and then you craft books you love to write and they love to read and voila! Career!! Buuuuutttt… That process is long, sometimes hard, and frankly, kinda risky-feeling for some folks.
So where do you start with all this when this is your first book?
SPOILER ALERT: THE ANSWER IS “WRITE”
This is where I must offer the disclaimer that I am two things you may not be and while I can advise folks who write differently, it does always color my advice: I am a discovery writer (meaning that I learn a lot about worlds/characters as I write) and I am a “planner” not a “plotter” meaning that I do not start with an outline of plot points. Ever. (though I do use outlines—that’s another post)
All that being said, this advice can be used for plotters, planners, pantsers and anywhere in between, because we’re not talking about writing the BOOK yet, we’re talking about testing the idea out. And that, in my opinion, can take a little toggling between steps of the process.
Please note that there’s overlap here with my process suggestions, you’ll find that some pieces repeat themselves, and that’s because I believe process is always a little bit of a mash-up of what you need and where you’re at. It’s the combinations of activities that can shift how we see a piece of writing.
This can mean doing things like:
Go the immersive route! Write stuff, any stuff (outlines, snippets of dialogue, take your MC on a walk through the town square, worldbuilding, the first chapter of your book) whilst you make playlists, mood boards and do research. See how what you write changes as you put your “world” together (and yes, you should be worldbuilding even when you’re writing in “our” world and there are no speculative elements.)
Writing exercises to explore things like: worldbuilding, voice, ideation. This could look like:
Writing a scene that has no real goal, motivation or conflict to start out with. Just take your character on a walk through a busy part of what you might imagine their world to be. Literally, just say “Main Character is going on a walk across the town square” and see what happens.
If you need more structure than this, give your MC a task that makes sense for your basic ideas of worldbuilding (like don’t have MC milk a cow if they live on spaceship, unless it’s a pretty unconventional spaceship…. you know what I mean, right? Give them something to do that’s easy and makes sense, but will give them some direction).
Freewrite an outline: If you need something more concrete and love an outline and need that to write, try sitting down to write your outline without beat sheets, etc. Don’t give it too much thought, you can work out the flow later. Can you sit down and begin to “see” the story as you outline?
Write the vision! Try writing your opening chapter. Especially if you “see” a vision in your head really clearly, or have a really strong impression of where the story should start (or end)… sit down and write it.
THAT SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF WORK THAT IS NOT WRITING THE BOOK
Yep. Please don’t let that deter you. All writing is worthy of our time. The more you write around a project to see if it’s a good fit for you, and test things out, I promise, the happier you’ll be in the end.
Okay, so I’m going to insert three illustrative stories for you here so that you know this is thing that real authors go through:
The Hollow Plane was once about a young woman (Mina) running away to the circus and summoning an entity (Ashbourne) from another world. It was a great idea, one I will might write eventually, though not in combination (the two ideas did not fit well together for me). But it was not right for the characters and it was not right for the book. I would not have known this had I not just tried it out.
I am… right this very second… about to scrap 15k words on my newest project, SCION, which is a real freaking bummer. It is also the exact right thing to do. I’ve written the start of the book in 10-25k spurts FOUR TIMES. None of them were right. But this idea is a winner (for me, meaning it’s one I know I want to write because I’ve published eight books and written like 12, so at this point I get a “feeling” when I’m in the right place. Sorry, some stuff about creative intuition is hard to describe. We can talk about that another time, if you like.)
I pushed through with Vessel of Starfire (my first published novel), and made it into a book that I really didn’t want to write the way I was writing it so that it would fit in with the YA market at the time. And now, though I love the series, I don’t really want to finish it in the vein I started it in. Luckily, that series had very few readers to start with, and I will likely overhaul the whole thing at this point to turn it into what I want it to be… but I wish that when I decided to opt out of trad publishing that I’d considered overhauling the whole book then. But I got precious with it and now I’m in this place. (I’m not complaining, but rather, I want you to see that you can actually write yourself into a corner you might not like staying in.)
So, when I say, “spend some time with the idea,” “follow your hunches,” and “try at least for a little while, to think about what you can sustainably spend your time doing and what you will enjoy,” I am saying this because I don’t want you to end up two books deep in a trilogy that you don’t really want to be writing anymore—despite how much you may love the world and the characters.
I think giving yourself a bit of grace and learning to trust your intuition on some of this is important. AND that is something you have to practice as a writer. All of writing is a practice, and this is just one important aspect of things.
So… expect that some of this kind of stuff may happen when you “try things out” to see what is right for you:
You may start any one of these activities and immediately lose interest. That is fine! It doesn’t make you flighty or that you have bad ideas. It might mean this one wasn’t for you. Or, it might mean that you need to try something different. A different angle, a different setting, mixing something in from an old idea!
You may work on this idea for a few weeks or even months and lose interest. Same as above. This just wasn’t the right idea.
Your idea may RADICALLY change during this time. That is also okay. It is also okay if you change it all back at some point.
The key is here that to know if an idea is a good one for you to write, you have to really want to write it. If you decide you do want to write a book, you’re in for a minimum of about 60-75k words. That’s a lot of time and energy. Knowing when to jump ship on an idea is as important as knowing when to stick it out when shit gets tough (and friends, it will get tough, and we will get to talking about that eventually).
But what about “the market”?
The most important thing about this process though, is finding out whether or not you like this idea…. But/and… there is NOTHING WRONG WITH WANTING TO SELL BOOKS. Yes. I. Am. Screaming. That. Toss any ideas about being a “sellout” right outta your adorable head. There’s zero wrong with wanting to sell books and “writing to market.”
BUT/AND, as your creative consultant… If you were my client, I would strongly urge you to think about finding an idea that is “to market” that you actually like and can stick with writing, especially if you plan to write in a genre that includes a lot of series. Series are a whole other ballgame, mentally, and I deeply urge all new genre writers to consider a duology or standalone as their first project… but that’s a story for another day.
So is this a good idea or not?
Listen, I think one of the hardest things about being a professional writer of any kind is that we really just don’t know if our idea was “good” in a material way until it gets into readers’ hands. That’s capitalism, y’all. And it is super important that if we are authors who’d like to get paid that we acknowledge this early on in our careers.
BUT/AND:
Liking your work and knowing that your project was a good one for YOU is the core of keeping a healthy writing practice. I urge you early on in your journey to becoming a published writer to start developing a strong emotional boundary between your creative process and your business life as an author. Because friend, you can write a book that is TAILOR MADE to the market, that “should” sell like gangbusters, and it can still “flop” from a commercial standpoint. That does not make your idea (or your writing) bad.
It doesn’t even make your business model bad, necessarily. I urge you to dig into Becca Syme’s body of work (and maybe particularly this episode of the QuitCast) to find out all the reasons that books can fail that have NOTHING to do with you or your business model.
I know I’ve said it a few times in this post, and you’ll hear me say it a lot here, over time: but this is a HARD industry to get a handle on. Authoring is a lot like gambling with a really significant buy-in of time, effort, and if you’re indie, money. Don’t take that shit lightly. But also, don’t let it ruin the love you have for stories or writing. Protect those feelings—they’re what keep creatives going in the lean times.
xoxo,
ACW
TO SUM UP:
Have an idea! YAY!!
Try out some ways to “test write” and see:
What kinds of “testing” work for you.
What your interest level in the project is.
This is your “gut-checkpoint.” If you lose interest while testing/ideating, that’s okay! If you don’t, keep going, but remember that it’s always okay to abandon ship if the muse leaves you. We’ll talk more about how/when you can know it’s time to abandon a project versus when it’s time to buckle down and get the work done later.
Remember: You are getting to know your process if this is your first book. Be patient, the more data points you give your brain, the better you will develop your intuition about these more nebulous ideas.
DISCLAIMER: All of this advice is my opinion. I cannot promise that it will work for you, or that it will fit every writer. When I write these posts, I am writing from a subjective perspective, as are all folks who write about/talk about creative processes. Take what serves you, leave the rest. I encourage you to sew together your own POV about writing and creative processes from a lot of different perspectives! No one person can give you the full picture of how YOUR creative life should play out.