062: 5 Things to Do Before You Start Writing Your Book
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5 things to do before you start writing your book
Hi, friends. So this week, we're going to talk about five things to do before writing your book before you actually start typing on the computer or writing in a notebook with a pen. Five things to do before that point, and then next week's episode is going to kind of continue that with some tips for actually starting your novel. But this is the prep work, this is what you do before. I mean, technically, there are a lot of things that you can do before but I distilled it down to five things that you have to do a couple of these are decisions that you're going to have to make. And a couple of these are practical things to actually do.
Okay, so you've got an idea for a book, maybe a couple of ideas swirling around your head, you've decided you've committed that you're going to do this. Here is tip number one, first thing to do decide on a book idea. This is true for if you have multiple ideas that are floating around in your head, this is something that I've I've noticed with writers that I've worked with, where they're at the beginning stages, they've either started writing a book a little bit, or they have an idea, they want to write a book, but something that I've noticed is that they often have multiple ideas. They're like, well, I've got this plot idea. But like, I also had an idea for this, and maybe I'll go with this one. And it's like they're at a crossroads. And they can decide to go with option A. Or they can decide to go with option B, or C or D or you know, etc have depending on how many ideas you have for a book. But remember that all you're doing is deciding on which idea you're going to go with now, which book are you going to start writing. Now, it doesn't mean that you're not writing those other book ideas, it just means that you have to choose one to move forward with before you can actually start writing seems kind of obvious, but it's it's you got to do it.
So decide on a book idea or really make the commitment that this is the idea you're going to pursue. And if you're someone who has multiple book ideas, what I would suggest is pick one commit to one for at least a few months. And if you honestly feel like it's not the right idea, it's not exciting to you, you hate every second of it, then you can always pivot and go to one of the other ideas. But why I think it's good to give yourself a few months is that really lets you see, okay, is this just I'm feeling unsure. And so I want to jump ship and go to a different book idea? Or is this like just a normal part of the process where you're gonna feel kind of stuck some days, and that's fine. So give yourself at least a few months commit, decide on a book idea.
Second thing to do. Get out a document whether this is a pen and paper, a Word document, a Google Doc and brain dump everything you know so far about this story? What has come to you already? Do you know anything about the main character? Do you know anything about the world that this story takes place in? Do you know what happens in the plot? Do you know where it takes place? When it takes place? What do you know, this can be just a few rough ideas if the ideas come to you, but you haven't really fleshed it out very much, that's totally fine. Or this can be Hey, I've been working on this idea for years, I've got a lot of things I know about this book. Perfect. That's great as well, just brain dump.
When I say brain dump, I mean just taking everything that's in your brain and getting it out onto the page. You can write in sentences, you can write in bullet points, however you want to do this. This is just to get everything onto the page. So you can assess, okay, what do I know about this book so far? And what, if anything, do I want to figure out before I start writing, so before you start page one, chapter one, maybe you have to decide where the book takes place, maybe you're not sure about the setting where page one chapter one is going to open. So that might be a good idea to do a little bit of brainstorming about what's going to happen in that first opening moment of the book. Different writers have different preferences in terms of like, do you want to do a lot of outlining and brainstorming before you actually start writing? And some people just want to jump right into the writing process. And if you're a new writer, you might be like, I don't know, I don't know how much brainstorming to do, how do I know when I'm ready to write? That's something that you're going to have to experiment with. Again, every writer is different, there's no right answer. But at least get an idea, I would say, have a rough, rough story kind of what you want to have happen, maybe an idea or two about the main character. And then where you're going to open, like what happens page one, chapter one.
Now some people start writing the book in the middle, maybe you all you have is a scene between two people, and it's been in your head, and you can see it so clearly. And you decide that that's where you want to start writing, that's totally fine. So you know, in that case, the setting, you know what's going to happen in that scene, or like where you're going to open that scene. So you can start writing, that's perfect. The third thing to do before writing your book is to decide on point of view. So if you have one protagonist, and you are only going to be writing from that protagonists point of view, meaning that we are in their head, and we are seeing what they're seeing, we're where the reader is seeing the world through their eyes, then there's nothing to decide you don't have to decide on on anything. If you have multiple, what seem like multiple main characters, maybe it's a group of people, maybe it's a romance, and you have two romantic main characters. And you want to have some chapters be in character A's point of view. And some chapters be in character B's point of view, that's great. But that is something you have to decide before you start writing.
And the other part of of point of view is, do you want to use third person? Or do you want to use first person, third person is he said, he walked down the road, he decided he shouted, you know, he, she they pronouns, the character's name, that kind of thing. And then point at the first person point of view is I so I walked down the street, I shouted, I did this, I thought this, etc. And second person is you. But it's, it's pretty rare to... Well, I shouldn't, it's just not very common to have novels that are written in second point of view. And I would strongly encourage you if this is your first book to not do second person point of view, because it is a little tricky. And just do either third person or first person. Now you can change your mind on this, you don't have to, it's not set in stone, if you get into the book, and you realize that you want to switch from third person from the he and she and go into first person, that's totally fine, you can do that. I mean, you can even get to the end of the book and decide that you want to switch, that's fine as well. But it's a good thing to at least make a tentative decision on before you actually put pen to paper and start working on that very first scene that you're writing.
Another thing to decide is tense. Number four, the fourth thing to do is to decide on tense. Do you want to write this in past tense? Or do you want to write this in present tense? So let's say you're writing in first person just for the sake of an example. Past tense would be I walked down the street and noticed that the sun was shining, I talked to my brother and I said, blah, blah, blah, that's past tense. And then present tense would be, I walked down the street, and I noticed that the sun is shining, I turn to my brother and say, blah, blah, blah. Again, this is something that you can switch down the road, you can even get to the end of your book, and switch. That's certainly fine. But it's a good thing to get clear on before you start writing. Because what you don't want to do is switch back and forth between past and present tense. The only, there are exceptions. Of course, like if your character is if you're writing a present tense and your character has a memory, or they're thinking about something that happened to them previously, they have a flashback, then maybe that part, that moment is written in past tense. But it's not a good idea to switch from past to present tense just randomly, you want to pick a tense and stick with it.
And the fifth thing to do before you start writing is decide what, there are a lot of decisions again, pick, decide what writing tool you want to use, like where do you want to write this? Do you want to write with pen and paper longhand? Are you going to write in Google Docs? Are you going to write in Scrivener? Are you going to write a Microsoft Word, make a decision about where this manuscript, where this book is going to live where you are going to have it? Some people do kind of a hybrid where they write the scene, maybe a rough draft longhand, and then they type it up on the computer, that's fine. But you have to know where this manuscript is going to live before you can actually start writing the manuscript. So, again, I There are so many things that you can do before you start writing. But I think those five things are a really good starting point. So when you've made some decisions about these things, when you've picked a picture book idea made some decisions about what you're going to write and how you're going to write where you're going to write, like, that just makes the process so much easier. So then, when you have page one, open on your computer or in your notebook, you can hit the ground running. And you don't have to decide at that moment, oh, wait a second, should I write this, as I said, this, or they said this, or he said that like the point of view and the tense. So you don't have to decide all those things. Right, then you can just hit the ground running and start writing.