UNCLE ALEX’S SHORT, SHARP AND KIND OF PAINFUL GUIDE ON HOW TO DO A BOOK

This process takes a minimum of one year. 

I’m not going to tell you how to come up with ideas because no one knows how that works.

Actually screw it, I’ll give you a very quick exercise if you’re stuck: 

1. Write down all your favourite books, films, video games, TV shows, comic books, Medieval tapestries, ballads, cave paintings and bawdy ribald limericks... anything with a story, in other words. 
2. Look up the TV Tropes page for all of those things and list out all the tropes you see repeated multiple times and which they all seem to have in common.

That list of tropes? That’s what you wanna try and write about.

Realistically though, ideas will just come randomly. Three of my novels (I’ve written five) came to me while I was on the toilet. One came in a dream. And one came while I was walking through a forest.

Anyway, let’s say you do come up with an idea? Well for the love of all that is holy, write it down! This is why I have multiple notebooks, including one that I keep on me at all times.

And after you've written it down... you wait. For at least a year.

Brewing an idea is a lot like brewing beer or whiskey. The idea is like the sour mash—it’s comprised of various blended up ingredients. But you don’t just add water and walk away, that’ll taste like shit and you’ll still be sober afterwards.

You have to let the ideas percolate and ferment. And, in my experience, a minimum of one year is needed (which is around the time it takes to brew beer). 

Like the fermentation process, a good idea will grow other ideas on it. You’ll start seeing fragments and other ideas as you daydream throughout the year—remember to write them down too. Eventually, all these ideas will form together into a story, in your head.

But it’s very important to give the ideas time to breathe and develop inside your head. Don’t rush. My second book was an incoherent mess because there were only two months between me coming with the initial idea and me starting work on the book.

As a famous New Zealand advert for cheese says: "Good things take time". 

But after a minimum of one year (though, like a good whiskey, two years or more is better) your idea should be well fermented and ready to become a book.

You might have multiple story ideas written in your ideas notebook, but after one year there will always be one coherent, clear idea that stands above the rest and begs you to turn it into a book.

Which means it’s finally time for...

Prewriting involves two steps:

1. Organising your ideas

2. Outlining

Personally, I do all my prewriting by hand, while the actual writing is done on the computer. But just do whatever works for you. I'm not your dad, I don't care what you do.

I don’t write a particularly detailed outline, but for me outlining is like scaffolding. The book will always go in its own direction when you write it, but the outline will hopefully stop you going too far off course or (much more importantly) help carry you through those writers block days when you sit down at the keyboard with no idea what to write that day.

But before we do that, we need to organise our ideas.

This consists of going through the ideas notebook, going through your daydreams, going through everything you’ve been thinking through the last year and writing absolutely everything down. It doesn’t have to make sense, but try to get every thing you’ve thought of that seemed cool (scene fragments, character ideas, lines of writing, settings, whatever) into your main planning notebook.

I always call his section my “general sketches” section and it usually comes in the form of bullet points in which I’m telling myself “Here’s what I think this book will be...”

Depending on the book, it’s usually between 4 and 8 pages of bullet points, some of which will come later, while writing the book.

Once you’re reasonably confident you’ve got everything down, it’s time to organise them into an outline.

Quick note: This is also a good time to decide approximately how long you want the book to be. 

I always aim for between 80,000 and 100,000 words. I feel that anything below this is too short (unless you’re writing romance or YA) and anything above 100,000 words is too long (unless you're writing Epic Fantasy - but even then anything over 120,000 words is really pushing it for a first novel)

Your idea will usually tell you how long it plans to be (you have to learn to talk to your ideas, they are like little invisible people).

I tend to eschew the traditional three-act structure in favour of a four-act structure (loosely inspired by the traditional Japanese Kishōtenketsu structure). There are also eight (or nine) beats (two per act) that I have to hit in any book:

NOTE: In this example I'm assuming this is an 80,000 word novel. 

The absolute bare minimum that I need before I can start writing are: 

• The first line

• The last line

• The 8 (or 9) story beats

But I always prefer to do a little more planning for safety.

Once I have my structure and the 8 or 9 story beats, I move on to the next outlining step: Planning each chapter, and planning each scene within a chapter if the chapters are looking long.

Some books want me to write lots of short chapters (e.g. Joie de Vivre, which comprises 108 chapters of around 800 words each), other books are happy with 20 chapters of 3000-5000 words (e.g. Then Came the Night of the First Missile). Learn to talk to your ideas and they will eventually tell you what they want to look like. 

My outline is nothing detailed – just a few bullet points so that if I get stuck I can look at the notebook and go “Oh right, I’m supposed to be writing that big scene with the talking banana today!”

And finally – characters. I don’t do much outlining on characters. Just very basic details, name, rough backstory and usually their MBTI personality type (or Enneagram if you're that way inclined).

Characters will tell you who they are as you write the book so in my experience, planning them in detail is a waste of time. You can plan a plot, but the characters are generally best left discovered as you write.

Note: I just realised I skipped over worldbuilding and research. Depending on what you're writing, you'll probably need to do at least one of these things during the prewriting process. I don't have much advice about either of them, sorry - but I'm sure that if you listen to the ideas, they will tell you if there's anything important that you need to know about before you start.

I write a minimum of 1000 words every day when I write (and I have a tracking app on my phone so I know how many words I’ve written each day. It even creates a graph vibrates whenever I reach my daily goal).

This means it takes me 80 days to write an 80,000 word novel. Sometimes less. Usually I’ll write slower at the beginning of a book but toward the end I’ll often belt out 3000-4000 words in a day. (My highest score was around 8000 words in one day.)

There is a catch: I don’t actually write every day. (In fact I avoid writing during the day, unless it’s the middle of winter and so cold and dark outside that it might as well be night.)

I write at night, sometimes starting right on the stroke of midnight but usually starting around 9pm and finishing around 2am, depending on the day. And I write from Sunday until Thursday.

Friday nights, traditionally, were my night to go to the pub with friends and I can’t write while drunk. Saturdays are sometimes writing nights, sometimes social nights/playing video game nights/relaxing nights. I don’t have to write on a Saturday if I don’t want to.

I do this to avoid burnout because I once tried writing 1000 words every single day and the result was that I got so burned out that I ended up taking an entire  month off writing. So factoring in regular non-writing days each week still means I can finish most books within three months. (The first draft of Joie de Vivre clocked in at 100,000 words and that took me only two and a half months to write.)

One more little productivity trick: I always try to schedule in double what I need, in case anything goes wrong. So if I know it’ll take three months to write a book, I give myself six months. (During my fourth book this came in useful because I ended up in hospital while writing that. Twice.)

It's also important to give yourself permission to write absolute twaddle. Your first draft will be crap so don’t even bother being a perfectionist. The perfectionist, critical part of your brain is absolutely useless during the first draft. It’ll one day get its chance, so to shut it up here’s the deal you need to make:

1. Promise your perfectionist self that it’ll get its chance during the editing process.
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3.  Promise yourself that NO ONE EVER will read your first draft. Only you. It can be as bad as you want because only you will ever see it.

With that, keep doing your 1000 words a day (on a good day you can write that in an hour), be consistent and disciplined and eventually you’ll hit the end.

Of the first draft...

I’m not joking.

Writing a first draft is a huge accomplishment. You should celebrate. You should also take some time off.

Ideally six months, three months at an absolute minimum and if you can stretch it to a whole year that’s even better.

I usually work on (at least) two books simultaneously so after a few weeks I’ll usually go and either write or edit a different book while I try to forget about the one I just wrote.

You can print out your book if you want but here’s the thing: YOU CANNOT LOOK AT IT.

I’m serious. Do not look at the book you just wrote. Do not read it. Do not think about. Do everything you can to forget it even exists. Don't even breathe on it.

Starting a new project is a good way to distract yourself, but if that’s not possible then you can always take up binge-drinking, drug abuse or repeatedly bash your head against a wall so hard that you damage your brain.

After around six weeks to six months, once you can’t even remember what your book was about, and once your attention is firmly on some shiny new project, then and only then can you move on to...

It’s now time to read your first draft. Hopefully it’ll be like reading a book by someone else and you’ll have forgotten most of it.

The faster you can read through it, the better – in one go if you can, but for longer works you might need another day or two.

Now, get your notebook. It’s time to write the reverse outline. (I do this part by hand.)

Your plot will have changed from your original plan. That’s inevitable. You can’t rely on your original outline from this point on, so you need to write out, in bullet points, every scene in the book, taking note of what actually DID happen.

If you want, you can jot down some notes about your general thoughts after your first read through. (E.g. “Better than I remember” or “That 20 page sequence where all they do is make pancakes really detracted from the book” or “Why did I have a talking horse as the main character’s love interest when clearly he’s more into cows?”)

Now it’s time to start going through the book in detail.

First – I print out the whole thing. I need a hard copy for editing.

I also have two pens – red for line editing (spelling, typos, grammar, sloppy writing) and blue for developmental editing (plot holes, characters behaving out of character, bad dialogue, scenes you forgot to write, things that make no sense).

At this stage the developmental edit is FAR more important so your blue pen is your friend here. You might see from your reverse outline that something doesn’t make sense, or needs moving around but either way, it’s time to read the book very closely.

I generally try to do 5% a day (or, if the book is 100,000 words with 20 chapters, one chapter per day) but this can be time consuming especially if you need to do a lot of changes. In my experience, I spend far more time on the editing process than I do actually writing. 

But basically, you want to go through each chapter, making notes and crossing things out - I encourage you to scrawl all over your first draft.

And then, once you’ve made your notes, you go to your computer, make a new document for your 2.0 draft and start implementing the changes.

Usually this takes me two months (if I’m very lucky, one month), but eventually you should wind up with a second draft, this time with fewer plot holes and hopefully better writing.

Now is the dreaded time to get people to read it. And give you feedback.

You want it to go to people who will give you useful feedback, so while friends are sometimes a good source, usually you want someone who will be honest.

Writing groups are good if you live somewhere that has people who write books living in it (I don’t), otherwise online critique partners are a good source. (The website I used to use no longer exists, which sucks, but I’m sure the internet has something somewhere.)

I’m not sure how many people to ask but the more the better. It can be hard to convince people to read your stuff, but I’d say three to four people is a good minimum.

If you can get their feedback in writing, this is ideal, but otherwise have a conversation and take notes.

This is a hard process emotionally and often time-consuming (you can easily write another book in this time - and I would encourage you to do so) but once you have some feedback, you should compile it and compare it.

• Not all feedback is good. Everything is subjective, some people just won’t get what you’re doing.
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• Generally, if everyone or multiple people point out a problem, they’re probably right. If just one person does... they might be right but they might also just be a nutjob.
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• Don’t get angry at bad feedback. Everything they tell you is true - if they didn't like something, it's because they didn't like it. Your difficult job is to work out whether their feedback is a valid point worth listening to or just someone whose tastes are different to yours.

With time and experience, you’ll figure out what advice needs to be listened to. And by the end of this process you should have a decent idea of what is and isn't working, in which case it’s time for...  

Basically, for this draft you go through your book and decide whether or not you agree with the feedback. If you agree with the feedback that chapter six made no sense and needs rewriting... then rewrite it!

I always use the feedback I agreed with to create a sort of to-do list and then I methodically go through the book implementing all the recommended changes. Depending on what people said, that might involve a very big change (completely rewriting the main character) or a it could be something more minor ("Maybe change 'a' to 'the' on page 74.")

This is the part of the process where it gets hazy. If I'm trying to get something traditionally published, this is the point where I start querying. If I'm indie publishing (or, in my case, managed to get someone who runs a small press drunk enough to accept my manuscript), then this is where a professional editor takes over. 

Warning: If you're going indie this can be the most expensive part of the process. 

There are three main types of editor:

• Developmental editor (probably the most common and most useful. They deal in the actual story, characters, plot, themes, etc.)
• Line editor (they help your writing be less bad)
• Copy editor (they make sure your writing ain't got no spellin' and grammar mistakes)

If you're going through a publisher, you'll probably get access to all three. If not, you'll probably have to pick just one unless you're already super wealthy, and it's most likely going to be a developmental editor. 

So at this stage, you're twiddling your thumbs waiting for your editor to get back to you. (Or, if querying, waiting for an agent or publisher to get back to you.) So maybe work on another project while you wait?

(If you're querying at this stage, I have absolutely no advice for you. At time of writing, my fourth novel has been stuck neck-deep in the querying trenches for nearly a year, so I have no idea what, if anything, happens next)

Hopefully by this stage you've got an editor. (Or an agent, who has landed you a publishing deal and thus landed you an editor.) And hopefully they've read your work and told you what they think you should change. 

Like any feedback you theoretically have the right to ignore them, but it's 90% of the time I'd advise against this as most editors really know what they're talking about. (Key word: "Most". I'm sure there are some back-alley scallywags out there who are really just garden variety beta readers with a hefty price tag.)

It's basically the same process as the third draft. I make a checklist and I methodically change things as required. 

For me personally, this also tends to be the part of the project where I'm more focussed on line edits (red pen) than development edits (blue pen) but your mileage may vary. After 3+ drafts I'm generally reluctant to make any major changes to the plot or characters, apart from some dialogue rewrites or squashing hitherto unnoticed plot holes. 

Your editor reads your fourth draft and gives you either thumbs up or thumbs down. Or, in all likelihood, sideways thumb. 

If your editor doesn't have thumbs, this process may look different for you, and I'd recommend taking the time to make sure your editor is definitely a human and not, say, a cat. 

By this point I'm usually at a point where I'd rather be injected with Liquid Pain and spend a whole weekend alone with MACHINE than write another draft or ever read my book again. 

Mostly this is a final line edit and proofread. If the editor is really unhappy (or, for some reason, I'm really unhappy) then I'll churn out a full fifth draft and repeat the last two steps, but usually by this point I'm so exhausted and checked up that I'm willing to let go of the book, even with all its imperfections. 

If people want to excoriate the book, by this point my attitude is typically "whatever, I don't care, so long as I never have to read or rewrite the fucking thing ever again". 

No matter how many times you reread your book, there's ALWAYS a typo that you missed. I'm pretty sure there are fairies or magical elves that come out while you're sleeping to wreak havoc on your hitherto perfect manuscript. 

Well, this is your last chance to squash those typos. It's generally better to rely on a professional proofreader (of you have the budget) or gamma readers (if you have any) but this is it. 

One good method is to use a very large, weird font that you're not used to. Another is to read backwards, or out of order, so you're concentrating on the words and not the story.

Generally though, by this stage you'll probably have a proof copy to look at. 

It's up to you to give the final approval, so at this stage it's good luck, hope like hell you didn't miss anything and then finally...

You're done. You wrote a novel. You'll have to market it yourself (yes, even if you're traditionally published) and that will involve things like getting on social media, making a website, or giving people writing advice that you're wholly unqualified to give so as to as have some useful content on your website. (Literally every author website I've ever visited contains writing advice, which is why I made sure to include some on mine too.)

I don't really have much advice beyond this point. I don't think anyone does, really. 

Writing, and indeed all art, is really just gambling. You've done a lot of work but ultimately whether success finds you or not is entirely random.

So sit back, enjoy the ride and may MACHINE smile upon you...