3 Essential Tips to Write Your First Book

March 15, 2022      Sabrina K. Marshall

If you’re thinking of writing your first book, you’re probably wondering, “How do I start?” Well, I may be able to help. 

I’ve loved writing from a very young age. I used to hand write stories about my friends and give them out between classes. My first fiction piece, The Young and Almost Teens, by yours truly circulated around my junior high school like a video going viral. But it wasn’t until many years later that I rekindled my love for writing and began writing stories for more than just my circle of friends. It took a bit of procrastinating to start because I really didn't know where to begin. I know first hand how hard it can be to start writing a book, (or a paper, or a blog), so I thought I’d share some tips that have helped me through my journey as a first time author. 

Sharing from my own personal experience, there are 3 main areas you’d want to nail down to help you start. 

• Choose an Idea
• Outline Your Story
• Start Writing
  

In this post, you’ll learn details about what these main areas entail, and how they’ll help you to get started on writing your first book.

1. Choose an Idea

Make the idea big and unique so that you’re carving out a niche in the market for this book and your future books to succeed. Think of things that happened to you or someone you know, something you saw in the news, a childhood friend, a dream you had, or just use your vivid imagination and build a story from there. I often wonder where George Lucas or Stephen King’s stories originated from…their imaginations are literally out of this world. 

To get started, ask yourself: 

• Why are you telling this story?
• Is it compelling enough to keep your reader's attention?
• How will it stand out in a sea of fiction and nonfiction books?
• Who's your target audience?
  

2. Outline Your Story 

If you’re anything like me, it’s hard to actually start writing, but once you start, you’ll begin to feel a flow. It helps to write down high level notes on how you envision the story progressing. If you have this fully thought out then it will be easier when you begin writing your first draft. Think of the following 5 key elements then write a brief description for each of these in your outline. 

• Characters
• Setting
• Plot
• Conflicts
• Theme
  

Characters

Your characters can be animals, people, creatures, or even beings that help move your story forward in a compelling and captivating way. They’re your main character, sidekick, love interest, villain, or supporting characters who could all be as equally as important as your main character.

Who is your main character, or protagonist? 

This is the central character to your story. The person who's taking us, the readers, on this journey with them while conveying their experiences and emotions through their point of view. They're essentially the one who the story is mostly about. For example Alice was the main character in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol, or you could even have more than one main character like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares that followed the journeys of four best friends.

Ask yourself:

• Who is the one your readers will be following throughout the whole story? The one they'll care about the most?
• What is their biggest goal, desire, or threat? 
• What’s preventing them from achieving that goal, desire, or threat?
• What will be their sense of urgency? Creating that sense of urgency while reaching their goal helps to keep readers on the edge of their seat. 
  

Let’s use Bella from Stephanie Myer’s Twilight series as an example:

• Who was the protagonist? Bella Swan
• What was her biggest desire? To be with Edward Cullen…forever
• What was preventing her from achieving her desire? She had to become a vampire in order to truly be with him for eternity, but Edward didn't want to change her to a vampire...yet. Although soon he'd be forced to change her or risk putting the whole Cullen family in danger.
  

Those are pretty big consequences. 

Who is your villain, or antagonist?

Have you noticed how most stories have a good guy and a bad guy? It creates conflict and conflict creates excitement. Wouldn’t it be kind of boring if you had two good guys? The good guy bad guy formula works. Examples are Luke and Darth Vader from Star Wars, Woody and Sid from Toy Story, and Simba and his uncle Scar from The Lion King. The list is endless. 

Think of who your “bad guy” is, or the character(s) in your story who make it more difficult for your protagonist to reach their goal. Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be a human, it can be an animal like the shark in Jaws and the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, or an act of nature like a tornado or a tsunami. ‍

Who are your supporting characters? 

• Jot down descriptions summarizing what each character's traits and personalities are. Are they funny, socially charming, serious, sheltered, evil?
• Are they supporting characters, or deuteragonists, like Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley in Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling? While they weren’t the most important characters in the story they were a very close second to most important.
  ‍
• Does the character just weave in and out of the story helping to fill gaps, like the town of characters in the Simpsons, or Mr. Potato head and Wheezy in Toy Story?‍
• Do they provide wisdom or advice to the main character, like Yoda in Star Wars, Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter, or Gandalf in The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I enjoyed creating my main characters Tunda & Onyx who were based on my dogs in real life. They inspired me to write my first two children's books Tunda on The Rock followed by Onyx and The Blue Mountain Mistery. I created multiple supporting characters, enemies, and advisors around Tunda & Onyx as my foundation.

‍Everyone’s role should have a purpose. Identify your main characters and build your supporting characters around them. Make sure that each one is dynamic and unique in a clear and distinct way. You want to be able to clearly tell them apart, even if it’s the way they speak or in the way you describe their physical traits.

Setting

Where and when does your story take place? 

The setting of your story could take place anywhere; a train, car, hotel, spaceship, school yard, haunted house, castle, or undersea to name a few. This will help you to build your world. 

For example, I knew I wanted my first book, Tunda on The Rock, to take place on the tropical island of Jamaica. With that came various settings to my story that involved waterfalls, sunny beaches, a golf course, and elements that could draw the reader into those island vibes. For my second book, I chose the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, which has the perfect chilling mystic energy I wanted for my mystery book, Onyx and The Blue Mountain Mistery.

The when, or time period the story takes place, could be for example futuristic, prehistoric, the victorian era, modern day, or even bouncing through time across various time periods. Establish this in your outline since your story needs to have elements of a place and time. 

Be sure to use your words to create a description for this environment so that your reader can see it in their imagination in the same way you visualize it.

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What’s the conflict?

This is the part of your story that really makes it interesting. Conflict, tension, road blocks, things that go wrong that get in the way of your main character reaching their goal. You’ll need a few of these, but not too many that would frustrate the reader and cause them to lose interest altogether. The conflict could be against other characters, nature, self, society, technology, or supernatural.  

What’s the theme?

In other words, what’s the moral of the story? What’s the message you want to convey? This is a more abstract element than the others; setting, plot, characters, and conflict. Ideally, the reader will come away with insight to the message you want to ultimately get across, which could be good vs. evil, love, or friendship to name a few. 

Examples are power as conveyed in The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, survival as conveyed in Life of Pi by Yann Martel, or death as conveyed in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowlings. There are a multitude of themes to choose from. 

3. Start Writing

Now that you have your outline with all of your key elements, it’s time for you to start putting it altogether. Don’t worry about making it perfect, just start writing, you’ll be able to edit and revise later. As you're writing, you want to make sure you have a story arc, which includes a beginning, a middle, a twist, and an end. It helps to write in that order, although sometimes it helps even more to start with your ending. This way you know exactly where you're going with the story, and you're just writing how you get there.

Beginning 

This is an incredibly important part of the story. Readers need an immediate connection within the first few pages so you have to make it compelling and captivating. Introduce the reader to this new world that you’ve created along with your main characters, and identify the inciting incident or conflict. That’s the event that sets your main character’s actions in motion, which will be their journey throughout the book. 

Be sure to "Show, don't tell" as much as possible. Meaning, describe what's happening through actions or emotion rather than just stating it. Here's an example.

Tell: “She noticed her hair was falling out.” 

Show: “Copious strains of her strawberry blonde locks were visible on her satin white pillow.”

In other words, don’t take the shortcut in telling your story. Use the “Show, don’t tell” technique to create a reading experience that will allow your readers to feel the character’s emotions.

Middle

This is where the story builds up to the climax, the point at which everything comes to light. Create the journey of your hero making their way to their goal and all the obstacles that are getting in the way that makes it harder to triumph. Increase the intensity, build tension, and raise the consequences while making your way toward the conclusion.  

The Twist 

This is the fun part. Just when your character is about to get what they desire, something happens to throw them off completely…the twist. Make it complicated and frustrating for your hero to make it to their goal. Something happens that changes their course, maybe a friend is actually an enemy, or a minor character is now a big game changer. There could even be multiple twists, but be careful not to lose your reader’s interest. 

A great example is Professor Snape in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. (Who actually saw that coming)? Professor Quirrel’s twist from The Sorcerer’s Stone, also in the same Harry Potter series. Or, The Maze Runner by James Dashner when they found out what the Maze was all about.

There should be small hints and clues leading toward the plot twist. Have you ever reread a book or rewatched a movie and realized all the hints and clues the author had given you? It's intentional. The twist should be carefully grounded throughout the story.

Ending

Make sure you tie up all your loose ends, answer any open questions and resolve the storyline in an engaging and satisfactory manner. Ensure it’s a memorable ending, something that’s unpredictable that will leave your reader with lingering thoughts and emotions that have a lasting impact. If it’s a series, tease your way into the next book with a cliffhanger and a strong desire for more.

Just remember, this is your first draft. The ideas will evolve and details will change, but it will all come together in time. Just start putting words on paper and make sure that your story has a story arc, that it’s interesting, and all the key elements you need are incorporated. You could read your story over a dozen times and change something each time you read it. It will feel like it’s never ending, but eventually you’ll get to a point where you say to yourself, “I’m done!”