Writing a book for the first time? Follow these simple steps (Part 2)

This post tells you how to write your first book when you already have some experience in writing stories. If you’re a complete beginner writer, you should start from part 1: Easy ways to start writing a book with no experience

If you’re writing a book for the first time, you probably have more questions than answers about the process. In this post, I give you the steps to writing a book that you can follow even if you feel like you have no idea what you’re doing.

Why should you listen to me instead of just starting? Because if you’ve never written a book, you don’t know how to write a book. Simple as that. Maybe you’ll find out that the way I talk about and teach things doesn’t suit you, but you still need to listen to SOMEONE and follow their process. Here, I’m making it simple for you. You’re welcome.

Related: The best writing tips for beginners – Writing exercises for beginners – My methods of outlining – The Genius Plotting System

Are you ready to write a book?

An entire book shouldn’t be the very first thing you write. I’m not saying that because I don’t think you could do it, but because writing is always a learning process.

If you start writing today and you finish twelve months later, you will have learned quite a few things over the course of the year but the quality of your writing in that book will probably be uneven. You might want to get most of those lessons out of the way before such a big undertaking.

I know you’re probably eager to start writing your book since you’re reading this post, but if you’ve never tried your hand at writing fiction or if you don’t do some other kind of writing for a living, I’d advise you to wait and practise. Read about the craft of writing and do shorter writing practice sessions, and get into the habit of writing regularly. You could also start with these writing exercises.

If you’re ready, we can continue with this post.

Commit to your story premise

Now that you’re ready to write a book, you need to decide what you’re going to write about. And once you’ve made that decision, you need to stick to it.

I know it sounds obvious, but this first step to writing a novel can be a stumbling block for many beginner writers. Writing a book is a big project, and you need to know exactly where you’re going when you start it. As well as your premise, you need to know what your genre is, and your tone can’t change in the middle of the book either. Imagine you start reading a horror novel just to notice after 150 pages that it has turned into a comedy.

What is a premise?

In case you don’t quite know what “premise” means, here’s a quick explanation: Your premise is a sentence or two describing your story in simple terms, and it should include your protagonist, their goal and either some kind of an obstacle or unusual circumstances.

For example, the premise of Truman Show is “Truman is the most famous reality TV star in the world – he just doesn’t know it yet.” The premise of Calendar Girls is “When a group of friends from the Women’s Institution want to raise money for the local hospital, they end up raising more than a few eyebrows.”

A premise is a great tool for keeping you focused, and it helps you choose what to keep in your story and what to leave out. If your premise were “two women find love in a post-apocalyptic world and they start a cat rescue in the wasteland that used to be Europe”, you probably won’t be focusing a lot on politics or armed conflicts.

When you’re just starting out with your book, your premise doesn’t have to sound as cool as Hollywood movies. Catchiness is not necessary at this point. The important thing is that you know what your story is about and that you have enough clarity about it to be able to sum it up in a couple of sentences.

By the way, if you don’t have your winning story idea yet, you should get the free story idea workbook that solves that problem for good.

Related reading: How to write unique stories.

Take time to plan your novel

When you’ve never written a book before, it’s better to spend some extra time planning your story before you start writing it. I know there are writers who don’t like to plan much, but you can’t know what works for you if you’ve never written an entire book before. Wouldn’t you rather spend more time than necessary on planning your novel than not spend enough and then get lost while writing it? I do want you to finish writing your book, too, not just start.

Ideally, you should know your most important characters through and through. That doesn’t mean you need to know their hair colour or what their first school teacher was called, but you do need to know what their goals, strengths and weaknesses are. You need to know what kind of people they are, and how they react to different types of situations. Those are the things that actually move your story forwards.

Obviously knowing your plot is important and you should take time to list all the most important events of your story. While I recommend you take your time with doing that, I still believe it’s totally fine to leave some room for discovery when you’re writing a book outline. Knowing what happens at the end of the story and what kind of a transformation your protagonist goes through are crucial, however. If you don’t know those when you start writing, you won’t know where you’re going.

Let me reiterate: A story is a change-making machine that uses problems to turn your character into a changed, possibly better, person. Either you need to know what the end result is so you can machinate the right events, or you need to know what the events are so you can see how they change your main character.

Can you write a novel without planning?

Sure, but this is a case of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”.

If you dive into writing a novel without any kind of planning, you’re punishing your future self with a LOT of work and rewriting. Editing a novel is a lot of work even with a solid outline, you don’t really want to make things even worse for yourself. Especially not when you’re still only writing your first novel.

If you’d like a very minimal way to outline your story, check out my four-step outline method. I would still recommend you try my other methods of outlining to see which one works for you and not avoid planning just because you don’t like the thought of it.

I know someone on Pinterest is going to comment something like “well *I* don’t like to plan anything, it’s totally fine to write a book without planning *anything*”. Is it, though? Can you sit down to write with ZERO thoughts on what you’re going to write? Will you use NOTHING you’ve previously planned, learned or dreamed of? Yeah, I figured that’s impossible, too. Why not jot down those things before writing so you can make better sense of them?

More blog posts about planning your story:

• Turn vibes into a plot
• How to structure your novel
• How to write a plot twist
• Do you need a scene outline?
• Grow your plot with these questions

“Cool beans, but I don’t know what’s going to happen in my story, so writing an outline is pretty hard.”

You’re right, buddy, it’s pretty hard to outline or write a novel when you don’t know what happens in it at all. Fortunately for you, I’ve got a fix for that.

When you’ve got a character that you know and understand really well, and you hit them with a problem that they can’t run away from and that hits them where it hurts, you’ve got almost everything you need to discover those plot events. It’s really that simple.

You might be protesting, saying it really ISN’T that simple, but that’s just because you haven’t yet trained your brain to see all the possibilities. That’s exactly why you need to write an outline for your story – you get to try out different events and plotlines before you have to commit to them.

Before you even try coming up with a full plot, though, just brainstorm all kinds of possible events that could take place in your story. Are they bad? Unrealistic? Downright awful? Did you steal half of them from existing works? Doesn’t matter! Write them all down and keep going! This will teach your brain to start looking for those plot opportunities.

If you want an easier way to find your plot events and get all my outlining tools that keep you organised and efficient like a total pro, you need to get your hands on the Genius Plotting System. (It also includes the Ultimate Character Workbook that I linked earlier.) Knowing exactly what you’re doing every time you sit down to write is just around the corner, bestie.

Make time for writing

Now that you’re ready to start writing, you have to make the time to do it. If you have more than enough free time without distractions, congratulations! I can only envy you. But the rest of us need to make an effort to create the time to write our books.

If you have a full life with work and other adult responsibilities, it can feel almost irresponsible to take the time to focus on your writing. But the thing is, if you don’t make the time to write, nobody is going to come in and give it to you. It doesn’t matter if you can only write for half an hour each day – that’s still better than not doing it at all because you “don’t have the time”. You can establish a daily writing routine when you evaluate what’s really important to you and what you can leave out.

Even if you don’t have children, my post on writing while parenting still has great tips for finding time to write a novel. I’ve also got the Efficient Writer Workshop & Workbook that’ll help you prioritise your time better.

And again, having an outline helps here, too, whether you used one of my methods of outlining on your favourite notebook, jotted down your important plot points in the Google Docs outline template or the Google Sheets one-page planner. When you know exactly what to write next, you won’t waste time staring at the screen or writing side quests that need to be deleted later.

You don’t need more time, you just need focus and dedication. Half an hour of focused writing that moves your plot in a meaningful way is better than two hours of twiddling your thumbs and writing something that sort of makes sense, maybe.

Related reading: How long does it take to write a novel? – How to write efficiently

How should you start a story?

When you’re just getting started, I don’t want you to agonise over how to start your story – just start. I know you might be screaming “But how?!” at me right now, so I’ll give you this nugget of wisdom: start the story as late as possible and finish as early as possible.

When you start writing a story, your protagonist should already be at some kind of crossroads. Your readers should get the feeling that something is about to happen. Don’t ease into it, just start in the middle of things. If you feel like it’s too confusing and your readers genuinely need more info, pull back a little. Nobody says you need to get it right straight away.

Anyway, the thing is, you don’t need to know that when you’re just writing your first draft. Just start wherever, even if it’s your protagonist going to the grocery store, and then re-evaluate when you’re editing your novel. There are also other important things that your story needs and you can find out more in this post about beginning your story the right way and you also need to understand story structure.

Don’t try to write a good first draft. Seriously.

Your first draft is never going to be great. Sure, there are probably some gems and great ideas in your writing, but your first draft doesn’t need to be good or even decent. It’s not a part of its purpose. (If you’re confused, you should read my blog post about why you’re really writing the first draft!)

When you’re just a beginner writer, you might look at your writing and think it’s terrible. Then you feel bad and you decide that you shouldn’t be writing anything at all, because clearly you aren’t cut out for it.

Stop right there! You’re comparing a rough sketch to a finished painting. Unless other writers have given you permission to read their first drafts, you likely haven’t ever read one. All the books you’ve ever read have been revised and edited multiple times, and they’ve likely been worked on by other people in addition to the author.

I’m going to say it again: your first draft is not supposed to be good. I’m not just saying it “doesn’t have to be good”, I’m saying that you SHOULDN’T TRY to make it good. It goes against the purpose of the first draft altogether. You should just be telling yourself the story so that you can have something to work on later – you can’t edit an empty page, after all. Trying to finesse your writing at this point is a waste of time and effort.

How to actually finish writing your first draft

So now you know what NOT to do. But what should you actually do to actually finish writing your first draft?

What I’ve told you earlier should be your priority: know what you’re writing and focus on making progress, any progress. Writing the first draft can be ugly and uncomfortable, but all feelings are normal and valid. Don’t be fooled into thinking that feeling yucky about writing means anything but business as usual.

Sit down to write whenever you can and don’t give into the drama of not having enough time. If you have time for the drama (or for the memes) you have time to write. So what if you only have fifteen minutes today? You’d never finish writing an entire novel in one sitting anyway so why get worked up over how short your writing sessions are? You won’t be able to count them anyway.

Accept that there needs to be several drafts before you’re finished

Did you think you could just write your story from start to finish, check for typos and then be done? Sorry, but think again! Editing your novel happens in many stages.

“Writing” is just one part of writing a book. There’s also rewriting, revising and editing. That’s where all the magic happens, and if you want to write a great book that people will love, you can’t rush that process. It took me more than two years to finish my latest novel, even though writing the first draft took just three months. That is a lot of revising. (Edited to add in 2024: I’ve been editing and querying and editing that novel again for almost five years now……..)

It’s impossible to say how many times you should revise and edit your novel or how long it should take. What I can say is that you should probably prepare for it to take longer than you think.

You’ve finished your first novel – now what?

What you do after you’ve got a finished novel manuscript in your hands is up to you. Did you want to write just for fun? Are you posting it on Wattpad? Do you want to self-publish or pursue traditional publishing?

In most cases, you’ll want to get an outside opinion. You need beta readers. Yes, you’ll probably want to get their opinion before you’ve fine-tuned your story to perfection in case you end up making changes based on their feedback. It’s usually a good idea to ask your beta readers to focus on specific things to give feedback on – these should be things you personally are unsure about.

If you’re going to self-publish, you absolutely need an editor. I can’t tell you how many dumb things I’ve had to remove from my manuscript even after I’ve thought the previous draft was the final one, and that isn’t just a me problem. You become blind to your own writing and even editors need someone editing their writing.

If it’s traditional publishing you’re after, paying for an editor before querying won’t hurt you, but if you get a publishing deal, your manuscript will get edited again regardless.

That being said, your first novel might be the furthest thing from publishable and that’s okay. Not every book is meant to become published and you will always keep improving as long as you keep writing and learning.

Related reading: Should you write a book or a blog, How to get published traditionally

Your first time writing a book doesn’t have to be hard – here’s how to get started

I know this blog post has been useful for you, but what if you need more help getting started? Could someone tell you exactly what to do to start writing a novel?

If you’re tired of wasting time reading writing tips that you never get to use, my free 5-day course Start Your Novel gets you started on your writing journey in less than a week. I won’t just tell you what to do, I’ll tell you exactly how to do it. This time next week you could already be writing your first draft.

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Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.