Write Better Right Now: How to Write a Book

By Jade Varden

Everything you need to know to write a book, create characters, design a setting, conduct research and create something that is going to sell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jade Varden
• Release date: Sep 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215539064

Jade Varden

Jade Varden is a teller of tales from Louisville, Kentucky. The Deck of Lies series is the first in several young adult series and stand-alone novels Jade will publish in 2012 and 2013.

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Write Better Right Now

Volume 1: How to Write a Book

By Jade Varden

Copyright © Jade Varden 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Created and published in the United States of America.

Chapter 1: The Basics of Book Writing

So you want to write a book. Learn the process, and this very ambitious plan won’t seem so overwhelming.

In order to write a book, all you have to do is break it down to its most basic parts and plot points. For this example, we're going to write a book about two best friends who fall in love. But the template is solid, and you can use it for any story.

When you write a book, always keep the big picture in mind. Every word should drive the plot further. Allow me to illustrate:

Introduction: Start with the scenes that introduce your main character. Show the reader what this person is like. Maybe she's a free spirit, so the opening scene is her bungee jumping. This gives the reader immediate information.

Introduce the cast: What's this world like? Show the character in her normal life, interacting with the people who make up her world.

Introduce the drama: Time to meet the love interest (or whatever it is that will move your plot forward). Set it up for the action.

Show the action: Okay, introductions over. Time to make stuff happen. Throw obstacles in the way, give your characters challenges. Allow them to succeed or fail.

Progress: Readers want to know they're getting somewhere. Make sure your character is reacting. They should grow and change in direct relation to the events of the book. Lets use our example. A girl in love might change her appearance, maybe join activities to get her closer to the one she loves.

Result: The character is reacting and taking action. What are the consequences of that? It helps that there are only two possibilities. It will either push the character closer to their goal, or set them back.

End: Know how it ends, or your story will meander along with no purpose at all. Always be driving toward the end.

And everything else? It's mostly cosmetic. Once your plot is in place, either on the page or in your mind, the details are easy. Be descriptive without going overboard, edit until you just can't edit anymore, check the story for flow and accuracy...and you're on your way.

What's in a Book Name?

I see new indie books literally every day. Because I move fast, I'm usually looking at one piece of information only: the title. I won't even look at the cover, I'm not worried about your name. I don't even care about the blurb. I make my decision after I read the title.

What will I be thinking when I read yours?

They say that names aren't important...and they're wrong. When it comes to books, the title is everything. And lately, I've been seeing all sorts of weird stuff in all kinds of titles. I think it's time we set a few guidelines for writing good ones.

Length: Too long is just too long. I've noticed all sorts of epic book titles lately, one or two that were just about as long as one of my opening chapters. If you're having trouble squeezing all the words onto a book cover, take that as a sign that your title is just too long. By the same token, you may want to re-consider all those really short titles, unless you have some way to distinguish them. One-word titles are perfect for books within a series. Otherwise, you might have trouble distinguishing your one-word title from all the others that are out there.

Proper Names: There's a rash of book titles containing proper names lately. It's tricky business, doing that. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is pretty good, there's a hook in there. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert sounds intriguing. Abby Got an E-Mail from Kate Winslet isn't such a great title, and I'm not even sure it's legal to write that book. Only use a proper name if it is what? Easy to spell and easy to remember, which is what your pen name should be also. Never forget that you are already asking readers to remember a name before you put one in the title: yours.

Weird Adjectives: Stuck on You is a clear metaphor that I immediately get. Coaxing Your Love is a little bit more obscure, but I'm still with you. Venerating Johnny, that's just too darn complicated. If I have to figure it out, it's just too much. The title is not the best place to trot out the four-syllable words or impress the world with your knowledge of little-known descriptors. Remember that simple language is usually the best.

If you look for these three things, and eliminate them, you'll have better book titles. You want something fairly simple, yet distinct. Something I can remember that's not too cumbersome, something unique. Try cutting proper names down to just one (The Curious Case of Benjamin?), simplify those adjectives and edit out any unnecessary length. Because by any other name, I might decide not to read that book.

Writing the Title

In some cases, writing the title can be the hardest part of writing the whole book. I know this to be true, because I worked on a book for about 10 months before giving it any sort of title at all (and I later rejected it). This is why I wait to announce my titles. So what should you do if you find yourself in a similar place...and can't seem to get around to writing the title?

The importance of the book title cannot be overestimated. It's the first (and sometimes only) thing readers notice. The title has to grab them and interest them, or they won't take a look at the blurb. If they don't read the blurb, you don't make the sale...and that all starts with the title.

It's okay to take a long time to figure out what the title of your book should be, though I've read some author tips where experts tell you to title your project right away. Don't do this unless you get struck by inspiration and you're certain this is the title for you. Some book titles don't reveal themselves until the very end of the book (which was the case with my current project) and that's fine because you can't publish before you're finished anyway.

But sometimes, inspiration doesn't strike. When a title just isn't coming to you, it might be necessary to jog your creativity a little.

Word list. Make a list of words that you might use to describe your book. Anything that comes to mind is okay -- nothing is off-limits when you brainstorm. Keep going until you run out of words, then sit back and look at your list. As you explore your words, something might leap out at you.

Expand. If you have a handful of good words that fit, but none that are really shouting at you, it's time to expand. Take the best words from your list and look them up in your favorite thesaurus (or two or three). Write down any new words that strike your fancy.

Name game. Using the words you've got, just start throwing dummy titles together. Come up with 5 or so and start playing with them. With some tweaking, you may write something perfect.

When all else fails, turn the title into a promotional event. Release a well-polished excerpt and your book blurb and stage a contest that allows fans to choose the title for your book. This is risky, but it can give you a decent marking boost and help you solve your titling problem, to boot. Include a note of thanks to the fans who named the book in the dedication or the Author's Note, and make it part of the book's history.

Writing the title can be one of the hardest parts of being an author. Keep working at it until you come up with something that you love, and don't rush the process. If you take your time, you'll craft the perfect title.

Ask Three Questions

Writing a book is incredibly difficult. Writing a great book is practically impossible. When you sit down to write yours, ask and answer three questions. If you break writing down to its simplest form, you'll find it's really not so difficult after all. Master the basics, and all the rest is just polish.

Every novel, no matter how thick or complicated, revolves around three specific questions. Ask them, and make sure you know the answers, when you're writing yours.

Who?

Every novel needs at least one main character. Juggling more than one main is hard, but it can create a very rich and engaging story. Make your main character(s) interesting and identifiable, and your readers will enjoy finding out about them.

Where?

Every book has a setting. Research yours to make it real and rich on the page. Readers want details. What's the weather like? What are the buildings like? What do the rooms look like? Good descriptive writing paints a picture without taking over the entire book -- remember that no one wants to read your rambles about the way the curtains hang. Strike a good balance, and use the detail to add to the story instead of allowing it to swamp the story.

What?

You don't have a book if you don't have a plot. Stuff needs to happen in your book. Allow the readers to get to know the characters through specific events. Readers want to be put inside the story; they don't want a story told to them. Use plot to make your book happy, funny, exciting, sad -- any emotion you want to evoke.

If you can answer three questions, you've got what you need to start writing a book. It's the idea and the imagination that matters. Mechanics will come later, after lots of editing and hard work. Once you've found your three answers, the really hard part is already over.

Comedy and Tragedy

There are dozens of different book genres, but when you get right down to it there are only two types of books: comedies and tragedies. Do you know which type of book you're writing, and what makes the difference between the two?

Dustin Hoffman explains the nature of book writing beautifully in Stranger Than Fiction, one of my favorite movies. In the flick, he tells Will Ferrell the difference between a comedy and a tragedy: Tragedy you die, comedy you get hitched. It's a pretty simple explanation, some might say trite, but it's also true. Every fiction book falls somewhere inside the comedy-tragedy spectrum. Sometimes, it's easy to tell which kind of book you're reading. Really clever writers keep you guessing until the very end. But when you're writing, you have to know which direction you're pursuing...because if you don't, no one else will be able to figure it out, either.

Comedies are funny, and generally they have relatively happy endings. There's a common misconception that comedy stories can't be serious. This is absolutely false. In fact, it's a great idea to blend humor into your dramatic scenes, because that makes them a whole lot easier for readers to take. When a book is too dramatic and too heavy, it's going to turn readers off. Life is already dramatic and heavy, so don't be afraid to lighten up a little when you're writing. People read to escape their reality. Don't make the world they're escaping into one sad, heavy event after the next. Some writers add specific, funny characters into their stories to lighten up the mood and provide some much-needed laugh lines. This is a device known as comic relief. Comedy always has a place in any story.

But if you're writing a story that can be identified as a comedy, your main character has to overcome their greatest obstacle and/or defeat their foe (the antagonist, or villain, of the story). In almost all cases, the main character is alive at the end of the comedy and the reader has a general sense that their life is going to work out okay. Some writers craft beautiful, tear-soaked tragedies, only to flip the audience on their heads at the end of the book and resolve the whole thing with a blissfully happy ending where the main character is alive and well. It can be an effective writing device, but it can also be a bit of a slap in the face to the reader. So if you're going to write a happy comedy ending, make sure it makes sense. The ending must fit the rest of the book, and shouldn't necessarily come too abruptly. It's also important to note that the hero, or protagonist, of any comedy story is likeable. The most well-known type of literary comedy is probably the romantic comedy, in which a couple comes together after several funny obstacles are put in their way.

Literary comedy examples: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, Bridget Jones's Diary, Freaky Friday

Tragedies go for tears, not laughter. In a tragedy, people are going to die. In many cases, the main character is going to die at the end of the book. Tragedies contain a lot of drama, and more than one very sad and heart-wrenching scene. Every good book contains some tragedy within it, and it's okay to add a little sadness even into a very funny comedy. It's never easy to make your reading audience laugh or cry, and the secret is to find a good balance. Don't just hit them constantly with sadness, but also don't lighten your tragedy with too much humor that might take away from the seriousness of the book.

In a tragedy, the villain of the book doesn't necessarily have to win. Many great tragedies have been written where the hero wins but still dies. In many tragic endings, however, the book ends quite sadly. Goodness, love, chivalry -- these things have not prevailed. One of the most famous, and well-known, examples of literary tragedy is Romeo and Juliet. Other examples include Bridge to Terabithia and The Shipping News. At the end of a tragedy, your readers ought to be in tears.

The greatest stories blend elements of comedy and tragedy together in the same book, allowing readers to experience a full gamut of emotion. When it's done well, it becomes a wonderful adventure of hope, sadness, laughter and loss. When it's done badly, it becomes a roller-coaster ride that jerks readers back and forth, excruciatingly so. Pay attention to how you're feeling when you're reading your work, and how much your feeling, and how many times your feelings are changing. You want to keep your audience engaged and involved...but you don't want to jerk them around.

The Diagram of a Story

I still remember the day I saw this diagram put up on the blackboard in English class. This is the formula of writing a story….or so they say. Is this what the diagram of a story looks like to you -- and every author in the world?

This diagram is actually known as Freytag's pyramid, and it represents the five parts (or acts) of a dramatic arc. You can find this pyramid in a lot of storytelling, from books to movies.

Exposition: The introduction. This is where you introduce your characters and lay out the setting. You also set up the conflict and action here.

Rising action: Stuff starts to happen. We know who the bad guy is now, and we know what obstacles we have to overcome.

Climax: Dramatic conclusion to the conflict!

Falling action: The aftermath of the drama.

Denouement: The end of the story.

The dramatic arc is pretty simple when you break it down into parts like this...but not all stories are this simple to tell. Not all stories follow this pattern, in fact. Some stories start off with the action in progress, then go back and tell you more about the characters later. Some stories are cliffhangers that end at the height of the drama -- at the climax.

Following a formula like this is a good way to get comfortable with storytelling, but there are no rules in writing. You don’t have to follow Freytag’s pyramid or anyone else’s diagram, either. When you’re writing, follow your own advice and develop your own patterns. Part of finding your own voice as a writer means finding your own way to tell a story. Maybe that means following this standard diagram...and maybe, it doesn’t.

Writing Logistics

If you think it takes a lot of time trying to write a novel, try putting one together after it's been torn into fifteen to thirty different pieces. There's a lot more to being an author than turning out purple prose until your fingers bleed. You also need to pay attention to your writing logistics with every chapter and every book. Otherwise, you're going to get sucked into an undertow of time-wasting document-opening. I know, because for a long time I lived there.

The few novels (and believe me, I'm using the term loosely here) that I ever wrote I completely screwed up. I gave each chapter a title, and wrote each one in a separate document. Naturally, I named those documents after the title of the chapter -- not by their numerical value. I'm sure you can imagine what sort of a nightmare this became any time I needed to access an element in the story, like if I wanted to re-read it in its actual order. I'm opening up documents, and getting frustrated....and wasting a ton of time I could've spent writing instead.

Don't let this happen to you. I had to learn writing logistics the hard way, but now that I have I've got a system that works. Use mine, or come up with your own, but make sure you get it worked out before you write. Then, you won't end up plowing through bizarrely-named documents at the center of a disorganized mess.

First, make a folder for each book -- I'm talking about a separate folder for each. The folder should be the name of the book, or a stand-in name if you haven't titled the work yet. I'll use the main character's name, or a certain word I've associated with the book, as a stand-in. If it's a series, make a folder for the entire series and put each associated book folder inside.

Write the entire manuscript in a single document. I like to name mine manuscript, that keeps things simple, but it makes more sense to name it after the title of the book. Always save a second copy of the manuscript elsewhere on your hard drive, and back it up on a flash drive as well.

Store all your resource materials for the book in the same folder. This might include your cast list, an outline, maps, notes, timelines, the blurb, whatever you've got. Give each one of these documents obvious names (like outline, map, notes, and so on) to make them easy to access. Back up a copy of the entire folder every time you make changes, so you don't run the risk of losing your work.

Find a simple, straightforward system for keeping your books stored on your hard drive. Writing logistics are pretty boring, but you need them to build a strong foundation for your craft...and to keep yourself from wasting a bunch of time you don't really have.

Staying Organized

Creativity is chaotic by nature. Inspiration may strike at any time, even when it's inconvenient, and you may think of the ending for a book long before you come up with a viable beginning. Sometimes, a setting might strike you first and you end up building a story around it. No matter what your process might be, staying organized is the only way you're going to write a book without making yourself completely crazy (or turning your book into a big mess).

Ideas don't arrive in a neat, orderly fashion, and all the pieces of a book probably aren't going to come together in order. That means you have to make notes as they come to you, and figure out how all of them come to together while you're writing. If you're unorganized, you're going to lose your great ideas. You're going to have trouble finding all your notes and remembering all your information, and wind up wasting a bunch of time looking back through your book to figure it all out. The more time you spend looking for some bit of information or note, the less time you spend writing. Organize your book materials neatly, and you'll end up with a much more cohesive story.

People, places and things. Before you ever start writing, it's a good idea to create separate files for your outline and character sheet. I'm a firm believer in the pre-plotted outline, but lots of authors like to fly by the seat of their pants. Whichever way you want to do it, create an outline anyway. Once you're done with a chapter, start filling in the outline with the main events. Why do this? If you need to know what happens when, it's a lot quicker to look at the outline than to scroll through your manuscript in an attempt to find it. The character sheet will help you keep track of everyone's names, likenesses and pertinent information -- and it's invaluable.

Filing. Where on your hard drive are you storing your book files? If they're spread out across different directories, you're just making more work for yourself. Put all your files together, both text- and image-based, in a single folder. The folder's title? The name of the book! It sounds simple, but lots of people store their text and image files separately. When it comes to your book, just keep everything together and save yourself a lot of stress and clicking around.

The manuscript. Don't store your manuscript in a bunch of different files. I used to open a new file for each and every chapter, and it was a horrifically bad idea. The first few books I wrote had titled chapters, so guess what I ended up with? That's right: a folder full of document files with delightfully random names. Searching for specific scenes was a nightmare. Use just one file for the whole manuscript; this will make ebook formatting and writing much, much easier.

Physical materials. Just in case you're not confined to your laptop like I am and you actually put together some physical items for your book, you're going to want to put your hands on them easily. You might have handwritten notes, printed images -- I don't know what you've got. But if it's attached to your book, you've got to keep it organized wisely where you can get to it. Where? In a folder, of course! They don't just exist electronically. Put all that stuff together in a folder or a binder, and keep it close to your writing space so you can access it any time. Don't keep anything else in the folder or binder but the stuff for your book. When you start a new book, get a new folder! Write the name of the book on the outside with marker (or use a label if you're fancy) and you're ready to write.

Time to write. Staying organized means making time to actually write the book, too. Lots of indie authors have families, full-time jobs, responsibilities and social lives. Squeezing time in to write can be difficult (and I struggle with it all the time). Set aside a couple of hours every day, or a full day each week, that's just for writing time. Organize your schedule to make it work, and try to pay attention to when you're feeling most creative and when you get your best writing done. Make writing one of your scheduled responsibilities.

Stay neat. Keep your writing area neat and