How do you start writing a book?

Question

i want to know how to get it published

Answer 1

Publishers wants stories people will read so they should have an exciting premise and the story should be well-told. Also, most publishers will not accept anything from you unless you go through an agent. Writer's Market, which you can buy at any bookstore, has a list of agents. But what is most essential is your story. Without a story well-told there's no use in searching for a publisher. So, put finding a publisher out of your mind for a while as you write your story. Then after you finish your story and write at least two drafts, start focusing on sending it to agents depending on their criteria. These are two separate processes.

Your question was how do you start writing a book but you qualified it in your description with a question on how to find a publisher, so while they're related, those are two separate questions.

Here is the answer on how to start writing a book:

I believe understanding what a story is will help you to begin and finish a story. When we experience a great story, we think, "that's what life is like". This is accomplished by creating a meaningful controlling idea that is conveyed by your story's events.

The controlling idea expresses your story's meaning. A single word is not a controlling idea. You can't have a controlling idea about "love" or "politics" or "horses". A controlling idea generates itself from your story. As you try to discover your controlling idea, you will also begin to understand the story that you want to tell, that says, "life is like this!".

The controlling idea is going to be a sentence that tells us how and why life changes from one condition of existence to another. This change will show up in the climax of the last act of your story.

Crime stories are made up of themes such as: "Crime pays when people are indifferent to the suffering around them" or "Justice triumphs when the protagonist takes the law into his or her own hands".

The theme (another word for 'controlling idea') of "Lord of the Rings" might be "Freedom prevails when we sacrifice ourselves". Of course we can find other themes but the controlling idea is a strong one if we can relate it throughout the entire story. For many writers, when they discover their controlling idea, they tape it to their computer and filter everything they write through it. It's an excellent strategy to create an excellent story with a lot of meaning.

So, how do you find your story's Controlling Idea? The controlling idea comes from your character's last action in the story climax. When you look at your ending, ask, "As a result of this climatic action, what value did your character introduce?" Then trace that and ask what is the chief cause by which that value came into his or her world? This sentence will become your theme. Your story dictates the meaning in the final climax.

So, how do you find it before you've even written your story? We have to come up with a premise by asking, "what if...?"

Consider a character who believes they are full of light, vigor, warmth, and love. What if you place that person into a situation where they have complete power and a powerful reward for abusing it? Will they abuse it? If you play this 'magic if' and begin to outline your story, you can outline until the climax and get a general idea of your theme.

So, by using that idea, let's have a character, let's say a female economics professor, an intelligent woman who minds her own business. But somehow she's in a situation where she has kidnapped another woman for ransom and keeps this woman in her bedroom while running an elaborat plot to extract money from the woman's family. If you explore this story to its conclusion you could find that she 1) let's the woman go free, 2) kills the woman accidently on the way to the ransom exchange!, 3) kills the woman on purpose, 4) gets raided and captured by the police, 5) successfully pulls off the ransom, makes a 100 million dollars, and gets away with it! Explaining how that happens would be fun. But depending on each of these outcomes, we're going to have a different theme. Let's say we take number two as our climax: kills the woman accidently on the way to the drop-off exchange. Our controlling idea (theme) might be "Greed can strike and bring out the worst in absolutely anyone" or "Greed ruins lives when one feeds it" or "Compassion is false and can only be disguised". All of these will take your story in a completely different direction but the process I provided will help you find the controlling idea and then everything you write should be filtered through it, including your cast, your subplots, etc...

Now you have a theme, a premise, the next thing you need is a setting, it could be anywhere or anything. If it was modern-day, then you could set this on a university campus. These two women could have known each other or not -- maybe she was the professor's secretary. Or you could set this in space and they're both different alien species. Or you could make one Elf and the other Beast and set it in Middle Earth. The setting accentuates your story but it's the controlling idea which makes it powerful and deeply meaningful.

This is also where you'll find that you actually have something to say about life.

There's a lot more to writing but I think that this general idea about what stories accomplish for us will help you to find a story where you'll actually have something to say and want to write it.

Answer 2

Sit down and start writing. Seriously- it's the best way. You can have an idea in your head before you start, and characters and all that, but you just need to get in front of your computer/piece of paper and start writing. Go ahead, start with "La la la la I don't know what to write. I'm bored. Um. Okay, well, let's say I have a guy named Harold, and he . . .". That's how books get started. You don't need anything monumental- as you start writing, things will jump out at you, Harold will become a real character and his actions will become obvious to you, or, if they don't, you can use some tricks to jump-start it (like a visitor suddenly arriving, etc.).

You should definitely read Chris Baty's "No Plot, No Problem", the best book for people who want to start writing without being intimidated.

Oh, and edit: Don't worry about getting published right now. Write the book first, then deal with that.

Answer 3

I always recommend starting to write a book by writing down odd thoughts or observations that pass through your mind.

Tolkien started "The Lord of The Rings" while he was in trench in WWI, when the phase ''Somewhere a Hobbit lives in a Hobbit hole" passed through his mind, and he decided to look into it further.

In a similar light, I developed an answer to someone who pompously offered to pray for me, "Pray For Me At Your Own Risk", into a published short story. I later developed the short story into a monologue in a stage play which was then produced, and I later adapted the stage play into a screenplay which is scheduled for production by an independent film maker. Eventually, I'll write a novel based on the short story.

With regard to getting published. There is no definite way to have your book accepted by a publisher regardless of how well written it is. However, I do recommend checking out Poets and Writers magazine's classified section at www.pw.org. This section always has publishers looking for new books.

Regardless of how difficult it is to getting a publisher to publish a book you can always resort to self-publication. Many well know authors have resorted to this technique. Further current technology makes this choice a far less costly and emotionally difficult course to take.

It used to be that if you published your own book, you paid for having 5,000 copies printed and tried to sell them. What usually happened is that you ended up giving them away as Christmas presents, funerals, etc., and having abut 4,900 copies left molding in the basement when you gave up writing.

Now, there is print on demand publishing, and anyone can have their book printed at essentially no financial or emotional cost.
In this light, I recommend taking a look at www.cafepress.com.

Cafepress is a print on demand company where you can offer everything from buttons to t-shirts to books that you write.

Each person doing business with cafepress is given a "store". If you offer a single item, such as a book, there is no charge to run your store. If you offer numerous items, it's about $5 per month to maintain your store.

Cafepress creates the button, book, t-shirt, greeting cards, etc. when an order is placed, ships it, bills it, and sends you a check for your sales. They have a set base price for an item, and you
charge above that for whatever profit you want to make. For a book, they have a base price of so many cents per page. Advertising your store is up to you.

My wife and I have a store at cafepress, and you're welcome to check it out at: www.cafepress.com. Our store is called earthmoonmars.

Answer 4

Start with a character. That character could be based off of yourself or totally fictional. Then write write write. I'm a creative writing major. Believe me, writing is hard, but it is so rewarding. If you are motivated to do it, don't worry. The story will materialize in time.

Answer 5

Read books on your favorite genre. And a lot of them!

That's the only way you're going to be able to start writing a book.

Answer 6

Buy a copy of the Writer's Market. It lists book publishers and agents.

You can buy "The Writer's Market" at large bookstores: Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc.

Answer 7

First you think of a storyline, write it down on a couple a pieces of paper, add a WHOOLLEEE bunch of adjectives to fill up the pages, walla! A perfect paperback.

Answer 8

Start at the beginning. And that is to read every book you can find about your subject. You might find that your book has already been written by someone else.

I hope for your sake that if so, it was done poorly, and you believe you can do it better. If so, then go for it.

Answer 9

Place a pen or pencil in contact with paper, think, THEN push... Or, get a computer... Revisions are MUCH easier...!! LOL

Answer 10

At the front