Writing Your First Book, Pt. 2

Before you even start writing your first page, there are a few considerations worth going through that will effect how your book will turn out. It is pretty rare that people are possessed by inspiration so awesome that they stomp out a novel in 2-3 days. Good ideas and structure take time. What you start writing is rarely what you actually end up with.

For me at least, when I first fill an empty page, my ideas are pretty shitty. It really starts with a wish fulfillment fantasy -- "Man, wouldn't it be awesome to be locked in a mansion with twenty horny babes." Whether it's a errant professionalism, some kind of aspiration to be a better artist, or just plain boredom, my plots become more and more complicated. I add layers -- "What if one of the girls in the mansion is a ghost?!" A little intrigue here and there. An interesting character flaw. And it keeps going -- "Maybe she's not really a ghost... and it's everyone else whose dead!!"

Sitting down and just writing ideas is pretty hard for me. I can only do that for ten minutes before I start playing Crusader Kings II. The brainstorming for me is in the execution... I'm doing something and then I think of something I want to play around with. That could mean I throw out everything I've done so far... perhaps thousands of words. I've done it before... I'll do it again. That's in stark contrast to a writer such as BBBen, who will sit down and write pages and pages and pages of notes before committing even the introduction. That's a skill I want to have.

If you have a plot that's of any kind of complicated, some measure of planning is basically required, or else you're just writing Lost, you're throwing twists at the viewer with vague promises that it'll all make sense eventually. That's a cynical way to write a story. On the other hand, you don't have to map out the story all beforehand. You have to leave some room for the plot to expand and change according to the direction of the story. My plot outline for Fencing Academy came out to be a page long, and I sort of stuck to that. I have other notes, but it's all world building and notes for myself in case I forget certain things.

Basically, if you are anything like me, it's very likely you'll throw out your first dozen efforts to write a novel. But that's good. You'll get a feel for the characters. Whose important. Whose boring. After you sleep on your failed efforts for a while, you'll come back and write something better than that.

And maybe throw that out too, just to start it anew.