How to write a book

copied from Udemy, for personal use.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed”

 -Ernest Hemingway

Pick Genre
Start from the end of the book
Make characters. Create biography, motives, create character development, create character struggle.

• Give a brief overview of what happens in each chapter.
• Delineate the primary struggle in the novel.
• Show how different events and characters interact and affect each other (A murders B, C takes the fall, etc.)
• Allow plenty of room for improvisation

Write the first draft.
relax
rewrite

“Write Drunk; Edit Sober”

– Ernest Hemingway

Edit

Done with the first rewrite? Don’t start partying yet. There is still lots of work to be done.

Editing is the opposite of creative writing. Instead of spinning beautiful metaphors and creating lush imagery, you have to actually delete linguistic flourishes. The amazing adverb you found after an hour’s search in the thesaurus? Gone. Those long-winded, poetic asides? Deleted.

This is where, as Stephen King puts it, you  must “kill your darlings”.

To make this murder slightly easier, follow these tips:

• Minimize Adverb Use: Adverbs are the lazy man’s writing crutches. They reduce into a single word what should generally be conveyed by context. “He walked quickly to the door as Lily pulled into the garage” is not bad writing, it’s lazy writing. Try being more descriptive – “He rushed to the door as soon as he heard Lily’s car pull into the garage”.
• Use Plenty of Synonyms: This quote from Dead Poet’s Society says it all:
  “So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.”
• Tighten Up: A book is no place for lazy writing. Take out words and passages that aren’t absolutely crucial to the story. Your book should be half its original length after a solid round of editing.
• Get Outside Help: Most writers don’t have the critical distance to edit their own books properly. Consider getting outside help – a professional editor or a friend – to look over your manuscript.