How do i get started writting a book???

Question

I already got everything down from main character down to the climax..
but do i start writing with some dialogue or explaining whats going to happen or giving some info about the main characters??

could i have some examples please?

thanks in advance

Answer 1

It depends on what you want to start out with. There is no true "start" for a novel--despite what the industry wants you to write. (It's all about *grabbing* the reader and then choking them to death with endless action--it seems.)

It's up to you to decide what will work the best.

For my Price of Freedom novel, I began things from my main heroine's perspective:

Kayla Sorenson looked out the window for the hundredth time, past its grime-covered edges, and into the wind-driven snow storm which howled and beat against the thick walls of their converted warehouse.

Veils of snow whipped to and fro, driven into a frenzied state by the wind itself, completely obscuring the young woman’s range of vision.

For my Starchild Duel novel, I added a little action:

Clouds of dust swirled around another distant impact site–as Isis McGowan finished feeling the ground’s relentless quaking beneath her subside–after taking Nemesis’s fist directly to the face. The savage hit sent her backwards towards the Earth below, chewing up deep furrows in the ground wherever she ultimately landed–like a skipping stone–before coming to rest half-buried, arms and legs splayed out.

From my Stories of the Dead Earth saga, I started with a diary-like introspective:

Thank the Lord Himself that the Esmeralda Jasmine could be salvaged at all.

In three days, we managed to repair the damage done to the vessel’s breached hull. Cosmetic repairs would have to wait until we reached Jasper. They alone had sufficient dock facilities to commence with a ship-wide refit.

Tiddus wasn’t angry with me as I had first thought–after I had told him what I had done to his precious forecastle.

“In a battle,” he had later confided in me. “There is always going to be a mess from which to clean up from. I am just glad that you came through this nightmare intact.”

Good luck with your book!

Answer 2

I read some place that u make a time line and then start writing the scenes. To start out I think do a single time line not one of those double ones where u have to keep switching back and forth.

Why not take a good story and take it apart this way....something like Nelson Demille's, "Plum Island"?
And then u could see exactly how an expert did it.

In other word try to extract the time line he created. That way u might see how he connected everything up so well. It falls apart a little at the end but it is one masterpiece of storytelling.

Answer 3

Try creating an outline - perhaps chapter by chapter. Or perhaps if there is a timeline, set it up like a tree - the trunk is the passing time, and the branches are the actions by the characters. Some of these actions overlap, how does that interaction happen - then write about it.

Just a thought.

Answer 4

The most gripping part comes first. You have to grab the attention of the reader.

You can even start in the middle... and then take the reader back to the beginning.

Answer 5

you can start writing when your character is in a heavy situation and then pause. and say like, "let me introduce myself. . ." and then tell about the character and their life. and then get back to the situation you started with in the beginning. i hope i helped. writing stories is a great experience, and they're a lot of fun, i hope i helped but if not, best of luck.

Answer 6

Read Read Read, Your examples are in the reading other
authors books!!!!!! Take a creative writing course, Go to the

library for books on such. Read Read Read---------------
Good luck, it's trial and error and lots of editing.

Answer 7

well, you usually want some sort of prologue, something that is a page or two...a hint on what is to happen later on, a way to catch someone's attention and make them want to read more and more

Answer 8

I would say "do NOT give info at the beginning"

Philip Pullman started his first Sally Lockhart book (The Ruby in the Smoke) with a foreshadowing technique - he said that "a blonde woman stepped out of a cab. In fifteen minutes, she was going to kill a man."
Now that's tension - action - mystery and suspense - powerful intro.

Dialogue is good but it has to be exciting. Like;

"I've heard he's dead."
"They killed him, I'm sure."
A third man joined them.
"Do you think it was Him?"
"Him?" said the first man; his names was George.
"You know..." began the third man, Jack. Then seeing the confusion on George's face, said, "you know... The Evremonde."
George drew breath quicker than he would have wished, as it pained his lungs. He clutched his chest with his free hand; his other hand was holding a newspaper headlined with the recent death report.
"The Evremonde?" he asked. "The Evremonde?"
He turned on the spot, checking for any eavesdroppers, stalkers or suspicious passers-by; nighteenth-century London was known for it's rude pedestrians. He beckoned them to the safe shadows of the nearby oaks.
"What news do you have of the Evremonde?" He was looking at Jack who in turn turned his gaze to the other fellow: Marcus.
"They say he's on the loose. At large and in power. The authorities can't find him."
"You know what they call him," said Jack in an undertone as a newspaper-boy slid past them. "The Whirlwind. He's fast on foot - nobody can seem to catch him."
Marcus nodded gravely.
"You know why that is, don't you?" said George, and again checked his surroundings. His companions both shrugged. He leaned closer.
"It's his secret," he whispered softly. "But I happen to know it."
The three men were closer than normal courtesy would allow, but this conversation was anything but normal. George watched them as they bated their breath.
"The Evremonde," he began, "is the current holder of Mercury's Map."
Jack and Marcus exchanged sudden glances, each face looking more shocked than the other; a sense of wonder mingled with a feeling of disbelief. For minutes they remained silent.
"So it's true," said Jack finally, straightening his spine and taking a step back.
"The ancient legend..." said Marcus, his voicing tailing away as his eyes moved toward the tall clock-tower, chiming for five in the afternoon.
"How did you learn of it?" asked Jack, raising a thin eyebrow.
George's eyes swept across the street once more. It was almost deserted - nobody was watching. Slowly and with care, George wrapped up his sleeve to his shoulder, revealing what was shaped uncannily like -
"The Death Brand!" gasped Marcus.
"You're branded?!" said Jack, struggling to keep his voice down.
"Hush! They'll hear you. Yes," said George, pulling the sleeve back down again. "I'm branded. He did it himself. The Evremonde. I was young and foolish. You know how it is."
He stared half-pleadingly at his friends.
"Still... I wonder how could you?"
"I came out of it Jack. The minute I had the chance."
Jack reached out and grabbed his shoulder.
"Good man," was all he said.
He looked up to the cloudless sky, now in shades of pink, staging the slow descent of the yellow sun.
"I have to leave," he said after a while. "I have a few letters to send to Paris. If I'm lucky , I might just catch the postman."
He wheeled round on his heel and marched away to the right.
"I better be going too," said Marcus darkly, also looking up to the sky. "Grandma would kill me if I miss another supper." He suppressed a grin as he too bid his friend farewell.
George watched them as his friends walked away in opposite directions, as the sky flushed in a deeper red, as the clock tower stood tall over the rooftops of nineteenth-century London.
He unfolded the newspaper in his hands and stared looking disgusted at the Headline. Somewhere out there, thought George, the Evremonde was planning his next attack.

OK, that's an introduction I just made up - I don't even have a story for it - but I think Dialogue can also be good. Hope I didn't bore you with the story.
Anyway, hope I could clear a few points. You can also start with action remember: a fight, a sword-duel, an escape, whatever.

Good Luck, and start writing!!!

Answer 9

Read Mr. King's "On Writing". It has great tips for new writers!

Answer 10

You should read the book The First Five Pages. They are the most important in your book. Very often, that is all a publisher or agent will give you before they make a decision about your work. You need a great first sentence. One that grabs the reader and literally pulls them into the story. William Faulkner was the master of that. Have you read any of his books? Nobody started books like he did. Nobody has ever come close to writing like he did.

Here are some famous first sentences...

(1.) There lived in Montmartre, on the third floor of No. 75 bis, Rue d'Orchamps, an excellant man named Dutilleul who possessed the singular gift of being able to walk through walls without experiencing any discomfort. He wore pince-nez and a little black beard, and he was a third-grade clerk in the Ministry of Registration.

(The Walker-Through-Walls, by Marcel Ayme)


(2.) It is doubtful whether the gift was innate. For my own part, I think it came to him suddenly.

(The Man Who Could Work Miracles, by H.G. Wells)


(3.) There once lived an economically disadvantaged tinker and his wife. His lack of material accomplishment is not meant to imply that all tinkers are economically marginalized, or that if they are, they deserve to be.

(Rapunzel, by James Finn Garner)


(4.) "We are two guys from the future." "Yeah, right. Now get the hell out of here!"

(Two Guys from the Future, by Terry Bisson)


(5.) When Rafiel began to wake from his designer dream he was very hungry (that was due to the eleven days he had been on intravenous feeding) and quite horny, too (that was the last of the designer dream).

(Outnumbering the Dead, by Frederik Pohl)


(6.) Late in September I told the crew at Phoenix Publishing Company that I had had it, I was taking off, I might never be heard from again and for them not to send the cops out looking for me.


(Naming the Flowers, by Kate Wilhelm)


(7.) It had been years since I'd had the dream. So many years that I thought I'd finally outgrown it, if there is such a thing as outgrowing a recurring dream.

(Naming Names, by Pat Cadigan)


(8.) When the train gets to the camp I'm scared out of my mind, but I'm trying to act smooth, you know?

(Protection, by Maureen F. McHugh)


(9.) The Invisible Bicycle hurned beneath me in the moonlight, its transparent wheels refracting the hard white light into rainbow colors that played across the blacktop. Beneath the road's surface the accelerator tunnel ran, where the SSC--the Superconducting Synchroton Collider--traced a circle 160 kilometers in circumference underneath the Texas plains.

(Gravity's Angel, by Tom Maddox)


(10.) The moment of total darkness was about to arrive. The Warder Diriente stepped forward onto the portico of the temple, as he had done every night for the past 30 years, to perform the evening invocation.

(A Long Night's Vigil at the Temple, by Robert Silverberg)


(11.) When the security buzzer sounded, Dr. Jesse Randall was playing go against his computer. Haruo Kaneko, his roommate at Downstate Medical, had taught him the game.

(The Mountain to Mohammed, by Nancy Kress)


(12.) Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a gold horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her.

(The Unicorn in the Garden, by James Thurber)


(13.) When I look back on the long line of servants my mother hired during the years I lived at home, I remember clearly ten or twelve of them (we had about a hundred and sixty two, all told, but few of them were memorable).

(A Sequence of Servants, by James Thurber)


(14.) The ghost that got into our house on the night of November 17, 1915, raised such a hullabaloo of misunderstandings that I am sorry I didn't just let it keep walking, and go to bed. Its advent caused my mother to throw a shoe through a window of the house next door and ended up with my grandfather shooting a patrolman.

(The Night the Ghost Got In, by James Thurber)


(15.) Mrs. Halloran had a nephew in the priesthood, but that didn't keep her away from the bottle.

(A Priest in the Family, by Leo Kennedy)


(16.) I am not a gloomy man by nature, nor am I easily depressed. I always say that, no matter how much it looks as if the sun were never going to stop shining and no matter how long the birds carry on their seemingly incessant chatter, there is always a good sleet storm just around the corner and a sniffy head cold in store for those who will only look for it.

(The Sunday Menace, by Robert Benchley)


(17.) When Elspeth woke on the last morning, she was visited by a feeling of extraordinary simplicity.

(Fireworks for Elspeth, by Rumer Godden)


(18.) A few days ago, under the heading MAN LEAPS OUT WINDOW AS DENTIST GETS FORCEPS, The New York Times reported the unusual case of a man who leaped out a window as the dentist got the forceps.

(Dental or Mental, I Say It's Spinach, by S.J. Perelman)


(19.) Dodging in from the rain-swept street, I exchanged a smile and a glance with Miss Blank in the bar of the Three Crows.

(The Brute, by Joseph Conrad)


(20.) The little Bouilloux girl was so lovely that even we children noticed it. It is unusual for small girls to recognize beauty in one of themselves and pay homage to it.

(The Little Bouilloux Girl, by Collette)


(21.) "The marvelous thing is that it's painless," he said. "That's how you know when it starts."

(The Snows of Kilimanjaro, by Earnest Hemingway)


(22.) Father was in the army all through the war--the first war, I mean--so, up to the age of five, I never saw much of him, and what I saw did not worry me.

(My Oedipus Complex, by Frank O' Connor)


(23.) One evening along about seven o'clock I am sitting in Mindy's restaurant putting on the gefilte fish, which is a dish I am very fond of, when in comes three parties from Brooklyn wearing caps as follows: Harry the Horse, Little Isadore, and Spanish John.

(Butch Minds the Baby, by Damon Runyon)


(24.) The conversation drifted smoothly and pleasantly along from weather to crops, from crops to literature, from literature to scandal, from scandal to religion; then took a random jump, and landed on the subject of burglar alarms.

(The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm, by Mark Twain)


(25.) There was a woman who was beautiful, who started wtih all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust.

(The Rocking-Horse Winner, by D. H. Lawrence)


(26.) The schoolmaster was watching the two men climb toward him.

(The Guest, by Albert Camus.


(27.) The pale young man eased himself carefully into the low chair, and rolled his head to the side, so that the cool chintz comforted his cheek and temple. "Oh, dear," he said. "Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. Oh."

(You Were Perfectly Fine, by Dorothy Parker)


(28.) "My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with me."

(The Open Window, by Saki [H.H. Munro])


(29.) The moment she came to the door she could smell it, not really rotten and not coming from any particular direction, but sweetish, faintly sickening, sourceless, filling the whole air the way a river's water can taste of weeds--the carrion smell of a whole country breathing out in the first warmth across hundreds of square miles.

(Carrion Spring, by Wallace Stegner)

(30.) None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them.

(The Open Boat, by Stephen Crane)


(31.) As the atmosphere of the railway carriage thickened with tobacco smoke, Mr. Mummery became increasingly aware that his breakfast had not agreed with him.

(Suspicion, by Dorothy Sayers)


(32.) On his way to the station William remembered with a fresh pang of disappointment that he was taking nothing down to the kiddies.

(Marriage a la Mode, by Katherine Mansfield)


(32.) Nine-year-old Vanka Zhukov, who was apprenticed three months ago to the shoemaker Alyakhin, did not go to bed on Christmas Eve. He waited till the master and mistress adn the more senior apprentices had gone to the early service, and then took a bottle of ink and a pen with a rusty nib from his master's cupboard, and began to write on a crumpled sheet of paper spread out in front of him.

(Vanka, by Anton Chekhov.)

33. Last night I dreamed I went to Manderlay again.

(Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier)

34. TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them.

The Telltale Heart - POE

35."It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

TALE OF TWO CITIES - DICKENS.

There are lots more - try this test ... http://www.constantreader.org/sentence.html

PAX - C