How do you start writing a book?

Once upon a time… stick with the basics and you’ll have a bestseller. (or just start with that and change it later)

Learn to use correct spelling and punctuation. If you write a book with many run-on sentences, spelling “its” and “Im” without apostrophes and the like, even the junior editor it gets handed to (if it even manages to get past the very first and very lowest “reader” at the publisher’s) is going to reject it out of hand as “illiterate”. Editors don’t want to teach you basic writing; they need you to write, and they can help to tighten up the manuscript, but they don’t have time for 6th grade remedial English.

Start with an outline and other pre-writing measures to better develop your story, as these help you keep the rambling manuscript called your draft from straying off of the points trying to be made. However, the most useful piece of advise is to set deadlines. If you don’t force yourself to complete amount x in a set period of time, you will lose interest and the book will be pushed to the back burner.

Write

@CyanoticWasp GA!

What @CyanoticWasp is very true, and it is very important for your writing to be clear and correct if you want it to be published. Your question is about starting the writing process, and there are a number of ways you can attack it. What works for me is just to start at a scene that interests me the most and work backward or forward from there, playing connect-the-dots. I carry a notebook with me and write down lines of dialogue or action as they occur to me, then I find a way to fit them into my story.

You might be more organized, and make an outline of your plot points, then start writing your story at the beginning. It’s helpful if there’s an hour or two in your day that you can devote to writing- mine is when I take the train to work, but it might be your lunch break or after you get home. Whatever works for you. Good luck!

Start off by finding a clean sheet of paper and a pencil

There is an online writing course that you can access at www.winghill.com that is excellent.

With a strong mind.

Go ahead and launch into it. The main thing about getting started is just to start. The beginning you write now will probably be rewritten or discarded before you’re done, but you have to go from not writing to writing before you have anything to work with.

“Chapter one:”

An idea.

alright so say you have an idea and all that but do you just start writing then worry about editing and publishers and stuff later?

Pick the title and the price. The rest will take care of itself.

YES…write the book. Pray to God its good enough that an editor and a publisher will even take a look at it. Right now….just write. Or take the course mentioned above. It deals with the publisher and editor stuff, which comes way down the line.

You might also consider taking a writing class at a community college or joining a writer’s club in your area and attending meetings. Hearing from others about their approach to writing can help you start and keep going.

Publication is far, far down the line and, to be honest, is just a very faint possibility. But once you have a book written you may be able to fashion portions of it into magazine articles that will increase your chances of selling the book.

Write first. Just write.