So many people have sought me out to tell me that they have great ideas for books, but no clue how to make bring a book into the world. I felt the same way when I sold my first book 15 years ago. With my fifth and sixth books coming out in 2022, and a new manuscript heading out for submission, I’ve learned a lot since that sale.
I’ve distilled those lesson into 20 tips for writing and selling your novel.
1. Read first
It sounds basic, but it’s true: You need to read other people’s books. Your best training as a writer comes from seeing how other people wrestle with, play with, conquer, or get tripped up by language. Reading helps you discover what you respond to and what does not engage you at all. Sometimes, writing is an act of saying “I can do that” and sometimes it’s more like “I can improve on that.” Whether a book provides something to aspire towards or something to reject and replace, it enters your fund of knowledge: the bank of resources that will inform how you do and don’t approach your own work.
2. Write what you want (and need) to write
It is a losing proposition to write the book you think will be a best-seller, especially if that belief is based on current trends; book publishing takes so long, any trend is likely to be well worn out by the time your book arrives (and a million other writers will have submitted similar manuscripts trying to ride the same wave). Even seemingly timeless trends — crime stories with women in peril, tender coming of age stories — aren’t foolproof because there simply is no guarantee in publishing. Your best starting point is to write the book you want to write and the one you need to.
If you’re going to spend years of your life from the first word to the published product (and, yes, it will be years), you want to be in love with your idea, your characters, and the story you are telling.
Some great questions to ask: Why this story? Why tell it now? And why are you the one to tell it? (Should you be? If you are writing about cultures outside your own, for instance, what meaningful connection do you have to those cultures?) What is it about your personality, voice, experience, or passions that will make this story come alive? If you can answer those questions, you can write with intentionality. And if you write with intention, you’ll write a better book.
3. Write before you write
People often ask me where to begin. I think the answer is to do a whole lot of writing before you worry about where the draft will actually start. Know everything you can about your characters (from what their bedroom looks like when no one else can see it to the nickname they had as a kid and how they got it). Be able to picture their world, whether that means the route they take to work or the coffee shop whether they flirt with a barista. Know the milestones of the life they’ve led before your story begins. Free write about all of these things without worrying whether any of the details will show up in your book; as long as they’re in your mind, they’ll inform your storytelling.
4. Come up with a strategy
Once you’re beginning to understand who your characters are, you can start imagining the rest of the book. For years, I’ve been teaching a method I call Character, Conflict & Motion ™, which basically argues that storytelling is premised on three things. You have a character with a want, need, fear, or value; they encounter a conflict (an obstacle to, or complication for, that want, need, fear, or value) which raises the stakes; motion comes from the way the character’s responses to conflict change them and hopefully change the reader as well.
You can prewrite — either in narrative form or just as brainstorming prose — all three elements. Write a passage that shows your character’s wants without them saying so. Write a scene that shows the first appearance of the conflict. Make a list of 20 things that could happen on the journey spawned by the conflict. Write three possible endings — make them as different from each other as possible. Write all of this without caring if you’ll ever use it. The idea is to get your mind used to living in the possibilities of this story.
If it helps you, outline just one version of the narrative so that you have a road map to follow as you dive in. Just don’t think of that map as a sacred text; as I discuss in the next installment, way will lead unto way. Your map will likely evolve and evolve again. That’s how writing works.
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Previously Published on Medium
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