I’ve had several people ask how I wrote my first book. Now that I’m starting my second I consider myself qualified to give an informed answer.
I think the best way to start this is how I started. I’ve written screen plays and short stories before (for no one except myself), but never anything as ambitious as an epic size novel. I’m not a university trained writer – I’m an engineer (you’ll be able to tell from how I plan things). So, I sort of self educated myself in a way that worked for me. I hope this helps anyone who reads it.
Joe’s infallible tip – time and effort
I wanted to write the absolute best novel that can be written, I hope you do too. Time and effort were briefly considered and then thrown out the window. When you start placing deadlines on what you’re doing or other outside pressures, these can spoil the end product. I wanted to produce the best work, not the quickest work. It gets done when it gets done and that is how it is.
Topic
Now I had to choose what I wanted to write about. For me I, it had to be a grand book about superheroes. Luckily I’m a fan of the genre and I don’t need to educate myself too much on that. If I wanted to write on something like, ‘Pioneers of steam engines from 1760-1795;’ I would know nothing. This would require a great deal of time to educate myself on the subject until I could speak with some authority. You have to know you subject matter. If you’re writing a comedy you had better be funny.
Write down one word which states your Topic.
Goals
What did I want the book to be like? What did I want people to think after they read it? Did I want it to impact or entertain? If two people had a conversation about my writing after they read it, what would they say?
It’s kind of like using a forward vision to see something that hasn’t happened yet. Think of a guy getting out of a high performance car with a big smile on his face. His hands are still shaking from the speed and his stomach is unsettled from how fast he cornered. Then he opens his mouth to give his critique of the driving experience. If you were the engineer who designed that car you would give anything to hear what he had to say 36 months earlier while you sat at a blank computer screen getting ready to work on your new car.
We can’t see the future or at least you can’t. We can, however, envision what reaction we would like to see or hear from our readers. Think about it. What would you like people to say about your work?
In the engineering world, I’m a certified project manager and I’ve worked on some big deal type projects. Goals in this context would be like a mission statement. Either one is something that should be used as a test in everything you do. If your mission statement is (a very simple one) ‘eco friendly,’ then everything you do has to pass that test.
If my goal for writing is ‘funny,’ then I should avoid things that detract from the humor or could be offensive. This counts when I’m making up names, picking locations, manufacturing circumstances, or any other creative decision. Is what I am doing in line with my Goals?
Write down your Goals.
Vision
I was working a manager out in LA in the mid 90s for a high tech firm. There was this developer I was going to interview for a job. He came highly recommended and was considered one of the silicone valley wiz kids. Our VP told me he had graduated when he was 16 and been a consultant all over for big companies. During the interview he told me about a conversation he had with Bill Gates. Now, whether this guy was full of BS or not is of great speculation. He said Bill Gates took him to lunch when he was a teenager and asked him what his visions of the future of computers were. True or not, the idea that someone on top of his game was looking for more insight is a lesson in itself. BTW – I didn’t hire this guy. I thought he was too full of himself to be of any value.
Now is the planning part of your writing. You know what you’re going to write about and what your Goals are. It’s time to start mapping out the frame work of your story. Start asking and answering questions about your story. What are the big events that will happen? Who are my lead characters? What kind of challenges will they have to deal with? Will they succeed or will they fail? If they fail do they get a second chance? Who or what are the negative elements? Who falls in love? Who dies? How much do I tell the reader and when?
That last part was very important. Writing isn’t just about dumping information on the page. You need to decide when someone is supposed to know something and judge how it will affect them. It’s not about your Vision or how you see things (contrary to popular belief) it’s how you can make someone else see it. Think back to your Goals (always think back to your Goals) how do you want the reader to perceive what you are writing.
Let’s go back to the Bill Gates example. He was on top of his game, but wasn’t disillusioned enough to think he was the only one with a good outlook on the future. Find a few competent rational individuals to bounce your initial ideas off of. Think of it as a focus group. Is this the kind of story they would like to read? You don’ have to give the plot away or go on for hours, give them a five minute pitch and listen to the feedback.
Do this a few times until you think you have a winning Vision. Now you should have a Topic, Goals, and Vision. Write them all down and make it orderly.
Joe’s infallible tip – Copyright
Once you create something it’s yours by copyright, that’s the law. But, as the saying goes – ‘a copyright and no paper work plus an empty sack is worth an empty sack (I think a Ferengi said this.) Bottom line – if you go to court saying something is yours without proof expect the one with more money for attorneys to win.
Getting a federal copyright is cheap and easy. Go to copyright.gov and spend 35 bucks to enter a copyright for your work. You simply upload a document with what you have on your story to date and update as often as you want. Then if you have to prove something is yours you have substantial proof as backing. Your attorney will love you for it; he’ll also love your money.
Threads
Do you remember back in high school when everyone had to debate at least once for one class or another? Remember how you had to keep topics or points going on or rebuff their points? The points had to carry from the beginning to the end? Yes, maybe, No?
The idea of Threads is that they are plot points that keep coming back again and again throughout the story. Think of a character in your story that is dying of a horrible disease. It would be poor storytelling to say at the beginning of the book that someone has horrible sickness ‘A’ and never mention it again until they died near the end. Threads are something that need to be revisited periodically through the story.
I sat down to watch a TV show with my father in law. It was on crime scene show and I watched the first four minutes with him and stood up to leave the room. He asked if I didn’t like the show. I told him the coffee counter guy was the murderer. He laughed and an hour later he told me I was right. The writer of the show had clumsily introduced only two non cast members before the mystery began and only one seemed interested in the mystery before it became one. It was a case of only one thread being added to the plot. Of course I knew who had done it.
Some threads are simply for flavor. The grizzled old detective who chews bubble gum after he lost his wife to throat cancer may have nothing to do with who did it, but may have everything to do with how you tell it. Flavor threads can be added anywhere in the planning process and even in the writing process. These are some of the things that will enhance the readers experience just like seasoning enhances a steak. The old masters of suspense didn’t just say, ‘the killer was behind her.’ They would have her talking on the phone, going about her day, getting ready to go to sleep for the evening, and in general build an illusion to be shattered. What was she wearing? That’s not a plot point or plot threat, but it is a story making pillar. I wrote down several flavor threads that simply had to do with character interaction and how two people became friends.
The more Threads you can add and do well the more complex your story will be. This is a two edged sword, make sure you can keep track of the threads. If your story becomes unmanageably complex it will be too confusing to read. Make sure your Threads are in line with your Goals.
Write down your Threads.
Making it real
Flat character, flat locations, and flat imagination make for a flat book. These things don’t have to be flat. They can be as real and vibrant as you want them to be. This has to start with how you see them. For my main characters I like to make a separate ‘character sheet’ for them. I write down birthday, height, weight, education, where they live, family members, what they like to eat, who they don’t like, how they were raised, and I keep going until I have constructed a real person. It is critical for the character to be real to you. If you can’t identify with or connect to the character your readers have little chance of doing so.
The same thing goes for locations. If you can visit where you are writing about, that’s the best. I wrote about stuff from all over the planet so I had to rely on documentaries and the travel channel to get a feel for the locations. Is watching TV about a place as good as visiting? Will Wikipedia give you enough information about a location to use it? How accurate is the documentary you are using? I guess each of us needs to answer this and try to get as good a feel for the location as possible. Keep your research up until your story locations are well rounded like your characters.
I also mentioned imagination. For those of you who read my book you know I constructed an alternate earth with my own technology and superheroes. Along with that went a system of government and a new superhero subculture. This is unique to what I wrote but the concept is not unique. If you should be writing a legal drama you had better know or have access to someone knowledgeable about law. It doesn’t matter if your thing is biological diseases that spread like wildfire or meteors that strike the planet; you had better educate yourself on your subject or it will sound foolish.
Use this as an exercise in fleshing out your writing environment – write it all down.
Outline
Now that you have your Topic, Goals, Vision, Threads, and have done the work to develop your environment; it’s time to start assembling the pieces. This can be done any number of ways and I don’t discount other methods. I’m just going to show the way I did it.
Some people may just sit down and start typing with ‘the night was sultry’ and go all the way to the end. I don’t think I could ever do that. I made the initial mistake of trying to follow the way other authors had done their works. Breaking the story into logical chapters that would neatly start and end sounded like a good idea. Unfortunately, this didn’t work with the story I wanted to write.
This is where I found myself exercising some creative license. I figured it was my novel and I would write it my way. For the sake of my readers and for simplifying an already complex plot, I decided to write dated entries on a timeline. This allowed my readers to more easily follow the big story I had in mind.
This decision is all yours. Pick how you want your outline to be written. Make a map for you book if you want to. Use a flow chart if that does it for you. Always keep in mind your Goals for the book. Figure this part out before you start expanding your outline.
I say expanding the outline because I can’t write from beginning to end without missing something. I started by writing - this how it starts and this is how it ends. Then I looked to my Visions and added in the main events and when they happened. Then I started writing in plot Threads as my outline expanded. Once I had the framework for the plot I started in on my flavor Threads and how I wanted to develop my story along with when to show parts of the story to the reader. This isn’t a quick process. From when I started back at Topic until done with this part took me about two months. Keep in mind I have six kids and a full time career, figure I had 10-20 hours a week into working on this.
By the time you are done with this you have a story in your head that just needs to be put on paper or your hard drive. Still there are a few steps to do first.
Make sure to write all this down and update your copyright information.
Talk it out
Working in a vacuum is one of the best ways to turn out a confusing piece of crap book. Remember those reasonable people that you gave the five minute pitch to? Seek them out once again and tell them your story. You don’t have know everything or have all your lines written. Just talk your way through the outline and give them a broad idea of the scope of your work.
If five out of five people don’t get it or thing it sucks, maybe it isn’t the five people. If you get nothing but negative feedback or questioning looks it’s time to repeat a few steps.
The reaction you want is, ‘can’t wait to read it.’ That is like getting the green light on your project plan. Consider this a ‘go’ ‘no go’ for launch.
Joe’s infallible tip – Care and feeding
In the business world if I said ‘care and feeding’ of a datacenter. That would mean electricity, air conditioning, power quality, work to be done, hours worked by competent employees, etc etc. Kind of like saying what does it take to feed the beast (write your book)? Well you’ve come to a point where you will be feeding a beast. Writing can become all consuming once you get going. Make a plan to take care of the person who feeds the beast.
Make sure you get your sleep. Don’t neglect your day job. Make sure you spend time with loved ones. Don’t start in on a diet of crap (read Mountain Dew and Cheetos) because you’re busy. In general make sure you take care of the person who does the feeding or the beast will suffer.
Writing
Now it’s time for the rubber to meet the road. After all that planning you should have no trouble knowing what to write, right? HA! I remember how I wanted everything to be perfect and the care I took on those first four pages. Those pages took me two weeks.
That wasn’t working. After a certain point I just started treating it like free writing. That’s when you just start writing with out proofing or looking back – just let it flow. I did that for a bit and went back to proof some really poorly written paragraphs.
Then I found the right mix of saying what I wanted to say correctly and not worrying about minor mistakes. After a while I was up to three pages a day. A page for me was a normal word document page with double spacing and a size 12 font. A day for me was a three hour period without interruption.
I found that I couldn’t be dad and be a writer in my own house. So, I picked up my laptop and looked for a place to work. The library became my place of choice to write. I tried the coffee shop but there were too many talkers there. I tried the bookstore but there were too many people talking about books and not enough reading them. At the library the people are trained to be quite and I don’t know enough people there to be interrupted. A few ear buds and some background music and I was in my own world. God bless the public library.
After three months I was doing 8-10 pages a day and was really cruising. After I had found the method that worked for me I know I did twice as much work the second 90 days as I did the first. That’s right, it took me six months to finish my 1,100 page (360,000 words) first draft. Remember what I said about time and effort not being an issue. I incorporated everything I had planned on and when done the story was sizable.
Update your copyright info.
Proofing
I am the first to admit that I cannot proof my own work. This is where I imposed myself on friends and family to help. Just by exploiting those around me I was able to correct 95% of the errors or issues with the manuscript. Once they had shown me the holes in my own writing I could go back over and look for similar mistakes. It is kind of a lesson in self evaluation.
This step can take as long as you like, but it shouldn’t be done until you nor those around you think there is anything else wrong with the manuscript.
Editing
Editing is more story flow than mistakes found in proofing. You better respect the opinion of the person you have editing or you won’t listen. This is the toughest criticism to take. When you had just an idea and someone shot it down; hey it was just an idea. When someone found a punctuation error, you knew that’s a black and white error to be fixed.
Now that you have something that you are fully invested in and you put your heart and soul into it (hopefully you did); it becomes representative of you. It’s like an artist and his art. You get some editor to read this and give you an opinion on it. It can be tough to take if you don’t have a little information first.
A good editor is like a good coach, they want you to succeed! An editor that just gives criticism is a critic posing as an editor. Don’t pay attention to the later. Move on and get a different person to edit your book.
I didn’t have one editor for my book; I had several amateur editors give their opinions. Some were quite helpful and others not so much. A big red flag is when someone calls you up and starts giving you a list of things you need to change to make it ‘good.’ Then when asked what they thought about the ending they explain they are only on page 8. WTF? Never listen to anyone who has not finished reading your work! If the person only has negative criticism they are not a help to you.
Once you have that good editor, listen to what they say with an open mind. Remember this isn’t about you being right. It’s about the Goals you set for your book. Do the suggestions they make bring you closer to or farther from your Goals. This is how you should view good editing.
On a personal note – I put my first soft cover out just two months ago. It’s starting to sell and the feedback is extraordinary. After enough prodding I’m starting to get a hard cover together. Then, low and behold another editor comes out of the woodwork. Some of his suggestions are nonsensical and others really quite good. So I find myself making a few adjustments to the story before the hard cover comes out. Because hey – one of my Goals was the best book possible.
Note from the wife: (I let her read before I posted)
It’s a long and sometimes seemingly endless effort you may have to support. The children will be your responsibility, and you will have to sacrifice to help your husband/wife/mate succeed. At the time, you may get upset. But persevere, it IS worth it in the end and hopefully there will be a fantastic book as a result. If your husband doesn’t appreciate your input, get over it. It is his book. I am not a big fan of superheroes, but I CAN appreciate a well written book, even if it is not what I would normally choose to read. Just remember to be supportive no matter how ridiculous or crazy you think it is (thanks honey). If you tell him he’s a loser, he will be, but if you tell him he’s doing a great job, he will. Jana
Joe
