Writing a Book: Tips and Tricks

So, now that I am a certified* and thoroughly professional** author*** I feel it is an appropriate time to add another ‘So you want to write a book, eh?’ article that will get buried in the heap of similar writings on the topic. I personally am not a fan of retreading a path thoroughly beaten in by others, but in this instance, I think what I have may be useful addition. If nothing else this will serve as a nice summary of what I found during my own research and reading as I wrote the first draft of The Azure Abyss: Secrets of Alexandria.

Before I jump into it, I wanted to give a little more background about my own writing journey. I have been trying to write a book for well over a decade and managed to cobble together the most disjointed and thoroughly awful collection of ~130,000 words I embarrassedly called a book just once in my early 20s. I, of course, thought it was brilliant. Thankfully self-publishing had not come to quite the level it is at today or I may have actually even published the thing too. When no agent showed the least bit of interest in my initial work (and yes, I did send the effectively unedited manuscript, somehow assuming they would be willing to put in the work to commercialize it as-is) and I eventually tossed the whole thing.

At that point I returned to the dull world of “finishing my degree” and “getting a real job”, both of which consumed me for close to a decade before I decided to pick up my pen again and give it another shot (metaphorically speaking, of course). This time, though, I was much more prepared. I did my research, tons and tons of it in fact, on pretty much every part of the process I could find. I read hundreds of pages of articles, blogs, and books, and listened to dozens of hours of podcasts, videos, and audiobooks on the subject.  Below I have broken down the main problems I encountered during the first few drafts of my first book, and what I personally did to solve them. Just to be clear, these are problems I struggled with and how I solved them.

Take a look at what I have below, but keep in mind writing is a highly personal effort. There is no single solution or magic button that works for everyone. Maybe what I have below will help, maybe it won’t. Either way you will now have another tool in your arsenal that may assist in getting through the seemingly insurmountable task of actually writing something.

Actually Writing the Book

Unsurprisingly, actually writing the thing is easily one of the hardest parts of the whole business. The average length of a completed novel is 70-90 thousand words, give or take, depending on the genre. That is a lot of words. It takes a lot of time to write that many words, even if you have a fully fleshed out and developed story to arrange them around. I tried most of the common suggestions, always writing at the same time, trying to setup my space so writing was easy, write what you know when you know it, and so on to little effect.

Like most people I had a job, a family**** and other responsibilities that required my time and mental effort. Additionally, wrapping up a writing session with only a few hundred words or maybe a page or two written did not feel good. Technically progress was made, but it was not the fast and glorious process I had pictured or hoped for, which left me feeling defeated and discouraged. This went on for months and months and I barely made it through chapter two before I finally decided to shake things up and try something new.

What I found very helpful was, following the excellent guidance found in the book Atomic Habits, was tying my writing to another habit I was already doing. In this case, it was while playing video games. I trend towards playing more strategic games, or games with defined rounds/regular pauses, which meant there was plenty of time I would be waiting for something else to happen. With the benefit of two monitors, I began having my novel up on the other screen instead of mindlessly binging another show.

Whenever a pause happened or a round ended, I would look over and write a little bit. I still made similar progress to when I was wholly-focused on the writing, but now I was not quite as defeated since I wasn’t “wasting” time. During this stage I also switched up how I was writing the book. From the start I always had a general idea of the main parts of the story, the challenges, the characters, et cetera. Before getting started writing I even did a general outline of the book, listing the three acts and the core pieces I wanted to include. From there I wrote chapter by chapter, following the mental roadmap I had. This was OK, but it was slow and not really my style.

Instead, I began to go chapter by chapter and write a bulleted list for each one. The list included scenes I wanted, dialogue I wanted a certain character to say, and just generally listed the flow of that section. Then, when I got to the end, I picked up where I left off and expanded each bullet or idea. This gave me a better framework to build off of and made the whole process way less daunting. I did not need to write a whole chapter, just 5-10 bullet points, followed by not needing to write a whole chapter, but just expand said points. This ultimately let me write much quicker and maintain a more consistent plot structure as well.

Creating Characters & Maintaining Consistency

Characters are, in my completely un-humble opinion, easily the most important piece of any story. There are honestly only so many “types” of books that can be written, and pretty much every single one follows some sort of trope or expected sequence. The story is ultimately a back-drop, scenery and events for the characters to bring to life. Dull stories can easily be saved by great characters, and dull characters can easily kill a great story.

Sometimes (rarely) creating these characters is easy, they just ‘appear’ in your head fully formed. Often times however, it is an incredibly painstaking and difficult process. Even once you thought up the character, gave them a name, and figured out where they fit, keeping them speaking, thinking, and acting consistently throughout the 10s of thousands of words is even harder. How was I supposed to know how this character or that character may react in this situation? What made the most sense, while still being fun and exciting? I ran into this problem in almost every chapter until I realized I needed to really find a systematic way to fix it instead of just blundering ahead.

What I found to be most effective way to combat this was to leverage a format I was quite familiar with already, the famous Character Sheet used in Dungeons and Dragons.  For those of you not familiar, in Dungeons and Dragons each player character will have a sheet that details their name, class, abilities, background, and so on. This tracks the players stats, items, and gives the player something to work off of as the game is played.

It also, for me at least, was a great way to help decide how each character would react in a given situation. I sat down and made reasonably detailed sheets for all the core characters (sans the class/ability section) I was struggling with. Then, whenever I came to a scene or event I was unsure about, I would reference the sheet and put myself in the character’s shoes to mentally ‘act out’ their role while having an easy source of character-related information to pull from (weaknesses, background, beliefs, et cetera).

Letting Go

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I have actually written a novel before. However poorly done it was, it was a complete, written novel. Deciding when “enough is enough” when it comes to the writing/editing process is a challenge all its own. There are some obvious signs, like when you have covered the arc of your story, or when the villain is defeated. Those just signals the end of the story, however. Once you have the thing written you have to then go through numerous rounds of editing to get it ‘perfect’, and therein lies the challenge.

When it comes to writing there really is not a ‘perfect’ state you can get to. You can, of course, correct all the grammar or spelling mistakes you may have, fix formatting, and so on. Beyond that, though, everything becomes muddied by individual perceptions and preferences. Maybe you (or the genre you are writing in) prefer short, punchy sentences. Maybe its better or more appropriate to have long, drawn out sentences that convey lots of detail with descriptive words. Neither one of these is inherently “correct”.

You can sit there and play with the words you use, the way you structure your sentences, and things like that forever. It can completely derail your progress as you sit there and pick at each and every word or bit of punctuation you come across. Trust me, I speak from experience here. The best thing you can do is learn how to let enough be enough, and let go of your work. I personally set specific time-limits during my editing process, for example only giving my self 5 or 10 minutes on any given section before I had to move on. The most important thing is to not miss the forest through the trees, as it were. Do not get bogged down or stressed over minor word choices, ultimately, they will not matter.

Seriously. Think back to your favorite book or story, the one you’ve read a hundred times or more. Do you remember that awkward word choice on page 123? Or that one sentence that ran a bit too long? No, you almost certainly do not, and neither will your readers. If the story is good, the way you tell the story is almost immaterial. Pick the words that sound best, that fit your story and genre best, and that feel right. As long as the grammar and spelling are on point, the rest will past by unnoticed.

Summary

Phew. This post was a lot longer than I planned on it being. I hope you found some of it helpful, or at least found a new way that doesn’t work for you. All I can say is do your best and always keep writing. Even if its just a little bit at a time, it will all add up eventually. Make sure you stay on top of your characters, keep track of the little pieces that make them “them”, and avoid getting lost in the weeds of minor word choices.

Also, pay for a professional editor. Seriously, it’s worth it. Yes, it is expensive (the cheapest price for a good editor runs at about 1 cent per word), but you only get one bite at the apple when it comes to releasing a book. It’s better to delay the book a bit and save up money or rearrange your budget to make sure its as good as it can be rather than rushing it out before its ready.

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*Please note I am not, in fact, certified in writing. Or anything else, actually.

** This is also a lie.

*** Technically true, in a “this will be true eventually once I do all the other work but is actually a lie as I write this now” sort of way

**** I still do, but I did have as well.