How Do I Start a New Book? Lets Do It Together!

It’s still wild to me that I’ve been writing for almost 15 years. When I was little, I always used to envy people who started working at a skill at an incredibly young age and became a prodigy in their own right. Working tirelessly at playing an instrument, becoming a figure skater, learning to shoot 3 arrows out of a bow simultaneously into three separate rings of fire…

I am not the prodigy I looked up to when I was a child. But I now understand that for me, writing is that skill. One that I’ve been honing for half my life. One I will continue to hone for, hopefully, the rest of my life. It’s something that can’t be taken from me. My knowledge, practice, blood, sweat, tears, anger, and teeth-gritting hard work will remain with me forever.

So keep doing that thing you like.

Paint. Skate. Draw. Write. Build. Sing. Dance. Cook. Photograph.

Hone your skills. Get better at the things you like. It will pay off.

Thus, the completion of my first novel’s rewrite. This is a long road, but everything that happens with this novel from this point onward is new territory.

This includes shelving the thing after said rewrite while I let my alpha readers do their thing and prepare to look it over with fresh eyes in a few months.

And while I have an absolute boatload to do in regards to worldbuilding, blogging, my dreaded magic system ,(if you’d like to read more about my pain, check out the linked post) and continuing to flesh out the fantasy folk that fill my world of Feiradyr, I also simply can’t go through my life without a large-scale project to sink my teeth into.

I’ve been working on a large scale project (specifically a book) since I was a teenager. I couldn’t imagine not having one in the works to fall back on.

You know what this means, don’t you? Dear reader?

I’ve been doing this for years, I have around 30 WIPs (works in progress) in varying stages of completion in my possession ranging from a few brief words of outline all the way up to 50,000 words plus.

I’m gonna show you how I start a new book.

This is a project that’s been a long time coming. I love sharing my process, and I have a very specific way of doing things that I’ve slowly built on over the years. Hopefully I can inspire you with a few tips, or at least be mildly entertaining for awhile.

Let us visit the magical drawer of WIPs.

It doesn’t look like much, but this is where I keep all of my folders that contain the wonderful words that could conceivably become stories someday.

And no, you aren’t allowed to see my trash fanfiction folder…

I absolutely love organization, so I may be biased, but I definitely recommend keeping all of your WIPs as organized as you possibly can. I prefer to use these tabbed folders, and stuff every scrap of paper I ever wrote information about them on inside. Then I just hook them onto this fabric cube and keep it inside my bookcase.

I don’t know about you, but I got tired of sitting up in bed at 3am mortified because I couldn’t remember where I’d put a vaguely remembered slip of scrap paper 13 years ago when I wrote down a cool story idea in math class…

So this is where I keep them all, as well as typed up on two separate super secret flash-drives that I have hidden.

Paranoid? Who’s paranoid?

Anyways, this is the stage where we select a WIP. I have three main categories of these.

• Ready to be written
• Needs experience
• Needs work

Ready to be written WIPs typically have at least one fleshed out character, a brief but workable outline, and doesn’t need wild amounts of worldbuilding, folk of Feiradyr, or magic system work to be completed. They are usually between 10,000-50,000 words in length already despite the fact that they’ll be rewritten completely when I take them on as a serious project.

Needs Experience WIPs typically pique my interest, but they are works that I personally feel I need more experience as a writer to do justice. They might have a handful of very interesting characters and an intriguing story idea, and sometimes even an outline. But their premise is simply too much for me to handle at the moment. The main example I use to explain this category to people is my merfolk WIP. Underwater antics, describing objects in the water and how they interact, deteriorate, and move, the plethora of life beneath the waves and their descriptions, the way lighting and sound and temperature work and-

Yea… A little more research and understanding than I’m willing to tackle in this moment.

Needs work WIPs are more akin to ideas. They might simply be a character that I want to build a story around, a quote that I have an idea around, a dream I had that could become a story, or a very rudimentary outline. They could also be stories that come much further down the timeline in the world of Feiradyr, and are unable to be written yet to maintain general continuity of my world.

At this moment, I am choosing to go with a ready to be written WIP. This is a project I’m going to be working on for a few months while I let my completed novel rest and my alpha readers work through it to present their findings to me. So I don’t want to start from the ground up on this project and risk too lengthy a distraction from my first completed novel.

I’ve chosen a coming of age story about a boy from a cold southern tribe that has leadership thrust upon him in a world of lethal predators and perilous natural disasters.

We’re not going too far into the mechanics of the story itself in this post. I have several reasons for that, including potential spoilers for a future Folk of Feiradyr post and the knowledge that this post would become about 3 times as long. We’re focusing mainly on setup in this post, so let’s get on with it!

Now that we’ve selected a WIP, we need something to hold all of our supplies and the book itself. I LOVE these binders. They are a little pricey, but I absolutely love being able to just grab a binder and have everything I could possibly need to write my book over my shoulder. They can be stored in bookshelves out of the way, but you have all of the pleasing organizational firing of dopamine your brain could want at your fingertips.

I’ve decided to go with this red one, so let’s remove all of the cardboard and see what we’re working with.

Now that we’ve got our binder and we’ve chosen our WIP, we need to gather the rest of our materials for the binder.

Things I like to include in my book writing binders so I’m prepared for everything:

• Folder including all information on the WIP (any maps, character lists/descriptions, outlines, rough drafts, (printed or hand written) etc.
• Index cards (I will talk more about this later, but index cards are always handy to have anyway).
• Sticky page markers (these little guys are handy for marking your spot while doing rewrites, marking your chapters if you prefer to hand write like I do, making copious color coded notes for book reviews/your own work, etc.)
• Business cards (these are obviously optional, however I like to keep a few of these on hand in my book binders in case I’m out and about with a book and need to plug my stuff, or if I run out in my purse).
• Label maker (while not included in my actual book binder, I use my beloved label maker to indulge in my obsession with organization by labeling most things in my binder).
• Binder clips (I prefer to get an assortment and include a couple of all the sizes in my book binders. If I’m working on a rewrite and need to separate sections but keep the book together, I can section it off using these. Not only that, they can even be labeled by my sticky page markers or label maker so I don’t get anything mixed up or backwards).
• Pens/pencils (obviously I need something to write with, as I prefer hand writing and I don’t have a laptop. I personally prefer pens for several reasons. They don’t smear as easily as pencil inside of notebooks, I don’t have to bother with sharpening them at any point or dealing with a continually breaking lead when I’m in the zone, and you can’t beat the satisfying glide of a pen over paper).

Now that we’ve gathered our materials, we need to sort through our folder and organize our existing info into categories for our binder.

I added 4 initial categories to this binder with my label maker

• Misc. (this includes various information I have on this book including some scene snippets, and anything that doesn’t fit in the other categories)
• RD2 (this stands for rough draft 2, as this is the most recent version of the rough draft of this book since it has some edits done by me ages ago)
• Maps (any pertinent maps I need to make of the landscape, village/cities/towns, etc.)
• Characters (info on characters, character lists, possible names, etc.)

Now we can add the contents of our folder to our categories

As well as the rest of our gathered materials.

Also, since I hadn’t taken the time to write a proper outline for this book just yet (I was very young when I started this one and it was in desperate need of a reboot) I went ahead and did that.

I jotted down some very quick and messy ideas for this book and a vague path I’d like the story to follow, as well as some questions for myself.

The list of themes I came up with are simply ideas I’d like to keep in mind while I write the story. I keep this outline near me when I write the book so I can consider these things.

As you can see, this outline is very vague and full of questions, and I prefer to keep it that way. Usually I’m the only one who can understand this drivel, which is also by design.

A question that floats around the book/writing scene a LOT is pantsing or planning?

Both are methods of writing, and both can be viable. “Pantsing”, sometimes known as “gardening” is a method of writing that allows the author to meander around and come up with the story as they go, rather than having a strict outline/plan in place. Whereas “planning” authors/writers are sometimes known as “architects”, and they are much more rigid in the structure of their writing and sometimes have the entire thing planned out before they even sit down to write.

Likely the most famous example of the duo of plotting vs. pantsing is George R. R. Martin and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, the writers of the famous A Song of Ice and Fire series and The Lord of the Rings respectively. Both men are/were juggernauts of high fantasy, immensely successful, and were instrumental in bringing a love of fantasy to the mainstream. Martin is famously a pantser, making a lot about his stories up as he goes along, whereas Tolkien had planned out his world years in advance, before The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings were even considered, and plotted/planned extensively for his stories.

The battle of planning vs. pantsing will likely go on until the end of time.

I’m sure your main question while reading this blog is,

Well, what are you? What method do you think is better?

And the answer would be…

It’s a lot more complicated than I can discuss in this post. But I will be going in depth on this conversation in a future post, so stay tuned for that!

Now that we’ve gotten our vague outline, we can add it to our binder and move on to our next step.

Something you may not know about me, is that I am a notebook SNOB. What’s with the skinny lines? Why do words smear so bad when you leave a notebook for a few years? WHY ARE THEY SO SKINNY?! What’s with the pliable, easily torn covers? Why do I go to tear out a page and the perforations are so poorly done I end up tearing my entire notebook if I don’t spend 20 minutes CREASING?!

Enter the Five Star brand notebooks…

College ruled… Five subject… 200 sheets of thick paper… Water resistant… Reinforced covers… Ink resistant paper…

This is the end all be all for a notebook in my eyes. They’re pricey, but these are the only notebooks I’ll use for book writing. (Keep in mind this is specifically book writing. I’ll scrawl notes or lists or random thoughts on just about any notebook. We’re talking rewrites/novels here).

I had to get a couple more because I’d used up the ones I had, and I decided to go with the purple one for this book.

Next, I keep these bad boys on hand for references.

I have a collection of smaller notebooks that I use for different things:

• Worldbuilding (this includes the origins of my world, biomes and landscapes, points of interest, magical items/lore)
• Storybuilding (I use this notebook while I’m actively working on a book to storyboard/work out/write myself out of any issues or take general notes that I don’t want to include in my actual book notebook, to avoid clutter of course)
• Characters/book ideas (this includes ideas or single characters that are too small or vague to have their own folder in the WIP drawer yet. Usually they’re dreams I’ve had that I just jot down real quick, or a general vague idea I’ve had)
• Marketing (this includes plans for future blog posts, marketing plans/ideas, etc.)
• Deranged rambling (this is literally exactly what it sounds like. When I have a problem or idea I’ll literally scribble down my thoughts or questions or draw a horrifyingly ugly picture and get myself out of a jam or just produce a brain dump to spark some inspiration)
• Flora and Fauna (where I record and answer questions about the unique life forms, both animals and plants, found on Feiradyr including but not limited to names, descriptions, types, colors, shapes, sizes, notable features, harvests/spoils, habitat, food source, smell, taste, cooking methods, etc.)
• Races/cultures (my notebook detailing information about all of my fantasy folk, including origin, homeland, culture, economy, government, etc. I’ve even started a series about it! Check it out if you’re interested)
• Magic system (my notebook detailing the ins and outs of my magic system, which is still a work in progress. It includes categories of magic and how magic connects to the origins of my universe)

For this particular book, I’ll be mostly using my race/folk notebook and my worldbuilding notebook for references. The folk I’m working with in this book have been detailed extensively in said notebook, and my worldbuilding notebook is used for any other references needed.

So, at this point I have my notebook selected, my reference materials available, and my to do list on the side for anything I need to complete. Then, we’re ready to add the notebook to the binder.

And now there is nothing left to do but start the process of writing a new book! I’ve completed the first chapter and I’d like to give a couple tips on getting started to finish off this post.

1. It’s going to be hot garbage. Yes, we’re starting off on an inspirational note. But truly, just about EVERYTHING I write in this rough draft is going to be drastically changed, or full on cut by the time all is said and done. My goal here is simple. Straightforward. Get the story on paper. That’s it. Write that shit down. Things aren’t going to make sense. Characters’ eye colors are going to change spontaneously mid story. Tenses are going to make wild interdimensional leaps from past to present. Shit won’t add up. It’s all part of the process. If done right, this thing is going to be rewritten AT LEAST 3 times before it even sees an editor. I find that giving myself too many goals and getting my expectations too high is a recipe for burnout, disappointment, and an overall lack of progress. I prefer to give myself vast amounts of creative freedom this first time around. The main character has less of their own agency, and is more a pair of glasses through which I can see the world and the story. They still do things in the story, for sure, but my real focus here is telling the story. Just get through it. Breathe through the bad.
2. I have my outline, but sometimes I have individual goals for a specific chapter, character, or general things I want to include. In this case, I really want to focus on the idea of community, togetherness, and intimacy within these particular folk of Feiradyr, which is something they value greatly. This is where the index cards come in. I typically write down a handful of goals for a particular draft of a story (no more than 10). This allows me to dial in my focus, avoid overwhelm/burnout, and make genuine and quicker progress. They could be a theme or overall message I want to convey, a character focus I want to hone in on, or even something as broad as “including more details.” For example, my recently completed outline of my other novel’s list of goals was:

• Give main character more depth and backstory
• Fix some tense issues
• Write all missing scenes
• Loose chapter layout
• Be more descriptive

These were some simple, broad goals I could implement throughout the story to continue to make progress. I have a good mix of more technical goals such as fixing tense issues and working on a loose chapter layout and goals to do with writing specifically like giving more depth to my characters and being more descriptive. I am pleased to say I managed to implement all of these without bogging myself down, and these things are done for next time.

My next set of goals for my next rewrite is a lot more comprehensive, but still manageable. And I’ll share those with you too, just so you can get a good idea of what my process is like.

• Fix issues with characters pulling tools/objects out of their asses
• Fix worldbuilding blunders (mentioning hell and other earth things)
• Design weapons and do in-depth research on them
• Iron out magic system
• Include political consequences for relevant character and world events
• Add additional scenes that contribute to exposition and main character’s understanding of the world

These goals are a lot more to tackle, but they’re still not overwhelming for me, and hopefully you can get an idea of the jump in difficulty from these two lists.

This was an enormous post, and it took me a long time to get all of the pictures, get them edited lightly, get everything I wanted to say in order, start a new book, and type all of this up. I know I didn’t discuss anything pertaining to this specific book, but I wanted everything to be authentic, so I started it before I wrote this post anyway.

Thank you all for your immense patience, as this was a big project. I hope it was worth the wait, and I’ll be continuing to work on more content from here.

I have several plans for new posts in the coming months including at least 2 new Folk of Feiradyr posts, a new Child of Feiradyr post, another photography post, a magic system update, and a possible Shadow and Bone season 2 rant…

If you’d like to get updates more regularly, consider following the official Writing My World Facebook page. We’re on the cusp of another follower milestone, so give me a follow or become a member of the notification squad on the main page of this blog to receive an email every single time I post on here.

Thank you again for reading, and see you next time!

Happy reading!