Tips For Completing Your First Book

  To all those writers out there who haven't finished their first book, are thinking about writing a book, or happen to be reading this... This is for you!
  Writing a book can be hard. Sometimes the words do not fluently flow onto the paper in ways that you think they should, or you don't know where the story is going, or any number of issues like that. So here's what helped me finish the first draft of my first book!

1. Quantity Over Quality

  When you're writing the first draft... Forget quality. It's not gonna be perfect, that's why we have this thing called the editing stage. Again, FORGET QUALITY. Just get words in a semi-coherent form onto paper until you reach the end of your story. Okay? You can edit the thing once you've got something on the paper, but you're at step one the longer you don't. 

  Here are some more reasons to forget quality... The majority of the time when writing, you might change something somewhere, and have to go rewrite that thing. You might find that that scene is unnecessary and just delete it. Chances are good though that something's gonna happen and you're going to end up deleting or rewriting something... (If you don't, that means you haven't improved, so yeah.) 

2. Don't Touch It

  Don't edit until you reach the end... Seriously. For some people, they get sucked into the endless pit of editing to perfection (in your eyes it's never gonna perfect, that's the truth of it!) and that is an amazing way to feel discouraged and give up writing. 

  And what I said in #1 holds true here as well: Things change. You're most likely going to cut something out or have to redo it, and that's gonna be painful if you spent hours or days editing! Leave it be until you get to the editing stage! 

3. Trust Whoever Reads That... 

  Especially on the first book, your self-confidence can a touchy thing. Don't hand off your partly written thing to someone who doesn't like the genre, or has a reputation of being blunt to the point of hurting people, or an unsupportive friend. Having someone read your book before it's published is a great idea, but don't hand it to someone who's gonna tear you down. 

  Constructive criticism is a useful tool, but if it doesn't come in a kind form, it can be painful. So for that first book especially, protect your feelings and love for it by being careful who it let read it. 

4. Take A Break

  Until you're a professional writer making their living off writing books, it's perfectly fine if you take a break. Even a long break. Everyone always makes a big deal about consistency and dedication, writing every single day without a fail, all that stuff. But seriously, if you need a break, taking a break is okay. If you're anything like me, you'll be thinking about the book a lot over your break anyway, and might even gain some great insights or ideas that might not have happened had you been forcing yourself to write. Within a few days, you should feel refreshed and ready to get going again! (Writer's block? Here's how to deal with that.)

5. That Spark Isn't Always Gonna Be There

  You know that excitement you get when you have this awesome idea, that inspiration, and you can't wait to get started? Yeah, it's gonna ditch you. That inspiration and excitement aren't always gonna be there, and when it goes away, you've still gotta write. You can't just quit writing until you feel motivated and expect to get the book written in a timely manner. The good news is, the spark almost always comes back! It's not always there, but it consistently comes to visit.

6. Writing Tools

  I have a whole post about writing tools, all of which should be free because I'm stingy and broke. From what to use to write, to improving your work, to finding inspiration, you should find what you need! Read the post Here. 

How To Develop A Story Idea

  Chances are, you've got an idea for a story... Maybe even multiple ideas. But can that idea last a whole book? Is it half-thought out, and you don't know how to flesh it out a little more? Do you need to make the plot more complicated?
  Well if yes, here are my favorite ways to develop my story ideas...

1. Subplots

  Subplots are awesome. More ways to show who your character is, more stress on the character, and a way to switch things up a little! I'm pretty sure everyone knows what subplots are so I won't give an explanation for that, but here some pointers to make sure you've got the right subplots...

•  It adds to the story
•  It's not redundant (for example, if you've got a superhero story and add in another villain as a subplot.)
• It ties in with the main plot somehow (as in it shouldn't be a totally different story within your story, it should be woven in with the main plot and other subplots. It should also influence your character and the other plots.) 
• It's something that fits your character (Shouldn't need to be said, but yeah. If your character is a loyal guy happily in a relationship, then a subplot of him trying to cope with the loss of his ex doesn't fit and sends conflicting signals that could make him look bad!) 
• It's not cliche. 

2. What Could Go Wrong? 

  Time to bring out your inner sadistic self and think... What's the worst, most painful thing that could happen? (Within reason! Don't kill too many people or ruin the story!) Conflict of any sort is what keeps the story going, stop your character from reaching their goals! 

  I personally have a notebook full of ideas... Anytime I hear about an accident, natural disaster, a horrible way someone got cheated or dumped, sickness I've never heard of, murder, etc. I write it in the notebook and reference it whenever I don't know how to crush my character's dreams... 

  Don't go too overkill with this, if your character can't realistically get through it and get to their goal then you're just going to look desperate and melodramatic. 

3. Build The Characters and The Plot at The Same Time 

  The plot revolves around the character, challenging and changing them. And the character does the same to the plot, trying to get through and make it to their end goal. They've got to fit together like puzzle pieces, perfect for each other, completing each other. The best way to accomplish this is to build them off each other, at the same time. 

  How you do this is have the basic idea for your plot, and then figure out what kind of character would be needed to be able to overcome the challenges while still being challenged. Then once you've got that basic character thing, you add onto it and see how the new additions affect the plot, then just keep adding and seeing what happens until you have a deep, detailed plot and character. 

4. Add More Characters? 

  This one... I hate to say is usually not a valid option, but it worked for me. My story wasn't nearly as long as I wanted it to be and I had no idea what to do to make it longer without making it cluttered, so I added in the point of view of another character. This doubled the length, and I was able to get much deeper into the story! 

  Doing this just because is generally a bad idea... Done right, yes, it can be awesome. But not done right, and you've just kind of got this messy thing that seems unnecessary...