10 Critical Steps to Write and Publish a Novel
Did Athena really hatch, full-fledged, and ready to fight, from the head of Zeus?
If so, Athena was easier to produce than a novel!
It takes me 10 Steps to write a novel.
Am I ever tempted to skip a step?
Yes... yes, I am.
Do I always regret skipping a step and end up having to go back and do it anyway, usually wasting WAY more time than I would have spent on it if I had done it in order?
(Hangs head.)
(Small voice.) "...yes."
Of course, your mileage may differ. The EXACT way I do these steps is peculiar to me. Other authors have their own quirks. And you? Hey, you do you.
But if you're struggling to write, just maybe these steps will help.
The Critical Ten Steps:
1. Read.
Read in the specific sub-genre. And read outside your genre as well, but no so much it distracts you.
Do you want to break into a new genre but you're not quite sure how? Are you half-way into a wonderful WIP (work-in-progress) but running out of steam? Don't forget what made you want to write in the first place... reading. (If you want to be a writer but were never a reader, consider writing scripts instead! Or, just crack a book. It's never too late.) Seriously, you probably loved to read a kid, but in college or later life, just didn't have time anymore. Make time, read a book. If you're a professional author, or want to be, this is part of your job. It's also a fun break from your job. It's literally having your cake and eating it too.
2. Research.
Remember that annoying advice, "write what you know"? But what if you want to write something you know nothing about? It's not out of your reach. Someone else who knows about it already wrote about it. Do the research. Read non-fiction. Don't sound like an idiot.
3. Worldbuild.
For me, since I write Fantasy and Science Fiction, this is a crucial step. It's time-consuming. It's probably also the most fun. But no matter what genre you write, you should have a story-bible of People, Places and Events on the Calendar in your world.
If you're writing a series, you don't have to do this step in as much detail every time. But I wish I had started out keeping a calendar of Faearth (The Unfinished Song series about Dindi and Kavio) right from the start. Oh. My. Lordie. What troubles I would have saved myself! I had to go back, re-read all my own work, and fill out a Timeline when I was half-way through the series.
I learned from my mistake and I vowed for every series going forward, I'd keep a timeline. I usually use an Excel file.
4. Brainstorm
The amount of time I spend on this step depends on where I am in a series. Most of my research, world-building and brainstorming occurs before I ever write the first chapter of the first book of a new series.
One of the big decisions to be made starting a series is deciding not only the sub-genre of the series, but the "Rules" of the series. How long is each book going to be? Is it a single story arc (The Unfinished Song), a series of stand-alone books in a shared universe (Arcana Glen) or somewhere in between (STRAT)?
There are other things to decide too. What's the tone going to be? Gritty, hot, sweet, funny? Will your book have explicit sex, gore or cussing? Will it employ puns and a bit of self-mockery (breaking the fourth wall)?
With the Arcana Glen series, I had to decide whether there were going to be Twenty-Two Major Arcana novels or something else. I could have made each Major Arcane a main character and had "non-deck" character be the love interest. In the end, I decided to write eleven books pairing each of the Major Arcanes, or Guardians.
That was going to be it, but later I realized I needed one last book to wrap up the over-arching series plot about the Elven War and the mystery of who Massacred the original Guardians and why. To make "22" books, I added a second series, the Holiday novellas. These are independent books, and can be enjoyed all alone, but they also have little Easter Egg clues about the mystery in the Major Arcana series.
Since we're half-way through the year, this week I started brainstorming the Tarot Princesses of Arcana Glen series. This will be another independent but related series, featuring the Court Characters.
I had to make a similar decision about the Court Cards as the Major Arcana. Would I write sixteen books overall--one about each Court Card character? Or pair them up, as with the first series, and only write eight books? Would I write a separate series of four books at a time about each suit or about all the Kings?
I brainstormed. I played around with different possibilities. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to write sixteen stories in all, divided into four independent but related series, and that I would do all the Princesses, then all the Princes, and so on.
Great!
But brainstorming the series arc is only the first step!
Next, I need an idea of how each individual book would go. It was at this point that I used my new Little Odd Tarot deck to play with story arcs. I set out the cards in each suit into "Act I, Act II," etc and then jotted down ideas about how that might play out.
This stage is WAY TOO MUCH FUN.
Husband: (seeing cards all over the dining table) Are you playing a game?
Me: Who, me, playing? (snort) I'm hard at work!
Husband: (mutters about how his work involves tedious Zoom calls all day about IT and goes back to his office).
5. Outline
Next, I turn my crazy jotted notes from the brainstorming session into an actual outline. I use notecards, sticky-notes or my dotted-journal to write 1-2 lines for each entry in the outline. Sometimes, I use all three.
In theory, this should be a Scene-by-Scene outline, but sometimes I'm not quite ready to do that. Each may cover two to three scenes.
Keep in mind that a typical scene has a 1000 words.
Caveats: As always, it depends on the work. Scenes in The Unfinished Song range from a single paragraph to 3000 words. My fellow Misque Press writer, Mathiya Adams, nearly always has exactly 1000 word long scenes in her Cozy Mystery series, The Hot Dog Detective.
It makes it easier to estimate the word length of your book if you know how many scenes you'll have, total, and how many scenes you'll have in each book. Mathiya Adams plans for 70-75 scenes per book and her books always hit that sweet 70,000-75,000 word mark.
I'm trying to be better about doing this too. I plan on 30 scenes for an Arcana Glen novella (equals = thirty thousand words) and 50 scenes for an Arcana Glen novel (=fifty-thousand words). My books so far typically hit 32,000 average for the novellas and 54,000 for the novels. I'm happy with that.
One more secret...
I am an "Outliner" writer, but...
Not really.
I started as a "Pantser," and the truth is, I will often revert to the instinct to add, embellish or wildly veer away from my Outline once I start writing.
And that's okay.
It does mean that sometimes I have to go back and Re-Outline in the middle of writing a novel, because some "itsy-bitsy" "improvement" I've made (ike, say, introducing a totally new character I didn't know existed before) changes the outline I have from something logical to something that makes no sense anymore. I then have to make it Make Sense again.
Mirror, I'm looking at you. How many times did I re-write you?! Ugh!
Anyway, it was worth it. I get the best of both worlds. I outline so I don't get stuck (usually) and so I can produce books faster (usually). Nevertheless, I will always let myself abandon the outline if it will serve to make a Better Book in the end.
6. Dictate / Draft.
I learned how to do it. How did I learn?
Simple.
The same way I leaned the alphabet.
I practiced. I sucked. I practiced more until I sucked less.
Now I dictate my rough drafts. It's great. Not only is it faster, but it's healthier. I spend a good part of my day walking.
(I often dictate blog posts too. I should have dictated this one, but I didn't realize it was going to be this long!)
When I take a walk to dictate, I just need two things.
One, my smart phone, which has my "dictation program." (I just use the microphone on "Notes" on my iPhone)
Two, my outline to remind me what the heck I'm going to write. I will either carry a stack of index cards, a print out of my outline, or even, sometimes, just a photocopy of my notebook. Whatever.
7. Clean Draft
The big problem with dictation is that it creates a draft which not only has the usual problems of any Rough Draft, like typos and plot holes, but has a whole lot of errors introduced by the "smart" program trying to outthink me and changing what I said into whatever it thinks I should have said.
So, I'll dictate something like: "The Azir Princes raised one elegant hand and, with a flick of her fingers, transformed the impudent guard into a block of ice."
The dictation program, bless its heart, will write that perfectly... and then erase and replace it...!!!
The final result will be something like this: "Fear recess engraved elephant land and, with Blick Pen hamburgers, Trans lord the important yard into a sock of eyes."
Yeah, okay, maybe if I had a more sophisticated dictation program, it wouldn't do that. Or maybe if I had a LESS sophisticated dictation program, it wouldn't do that.
The point is that Best Practice is to edit my Rough scenes as soon as I get home from my walk. Otherwise, I take out the Rough Draft five weeks later and hit my own head with a hard book, asking myself, "What the heck did I mean by 'engraved elephand land with Blick Pen hamburgers'?
And then I add an elephant to the story, which ruins the whole plot, requiring me to go back and write a new, updated Outline.
I use Auto-Crit to find all the usual typos and homonyms and send the clean draft off to my Editor, certain that this time, she'll not find a single mistake!
(I looked everywhere for a picture of
a truly Clean Draft,
but it doesn't exist.
I considered taking a screenshot of
my Beta Readers comments but
decided to respect their privacy.)
8. Edit.
After I have deciphered whatever ungodly mess I made of my Rough Draft into a Clean Draft, I send a copy to my Editor. She prints it out, finds a thousand typos per page, marks them in Blood Red to protest my slaughter of the English language, and returns the whole thing to me. I punch holes and place the draft in a 3-ring binder.
Then I enter in all the edits.
Next, I send this Final Copy to my Beta Readers, if I have any. I'll roll Beta Readers into Step 8, because if you're brand new, you won't have any yet. But if you have them, share the novel with them at this time.
Now, sometimes, at this point, I realize that a sentence is not only awkward, but needs to be excised or re-written completely. Because of this, I should send back My Edited Draft back to my Editor, so she can point out all the misspellings and typos I managed to re-introduce.
I don't usually do this. That is why, if you find typos in my published books, they are entirely the fault of my last-minute edits, and not (usually) of my long-suffering Editor.
I'm a bad, bad author. Sorry.
Don't copy this. Get your WIP edited again. Do as I say, not as I do, kids.
So. Much. Red.
9. Cover & Format.
Now all the real work is done, I can relax, right?
Bwahahahahahaha!
...NO.
No, because now the whole thing needs Front Matter (About this Book), Back Matter (Author's Note) and any other thing that matters (Cast of Characters, Map, Glossary, Index...?)
It also needs to be formatted for all the sites where it will be published, including Paperback and Hard Cover, if you're doing that.
I make my own covers, because I enjoy it and I'm reasonably good at it. (I used to make Book Covers for money, so not just I think so. I stopped doing it for money, because Authors are too hard to work with! Sooooooo picky. Omg. Don't get me started. I'm just as bad, but if I yell at myself, I don't get fired. But, hey, if you're the exception, and you need a cover and will pay $500, email me.)
If you write for a publisher, you don't have to worry about the cover or the final formatting, but you still have to format your novel into the Publisher's preferred format.
For my own books, this step has been made SO MUCH EASIER by using Vellum. I love Vellum. I purchased it and never regretted it. It's paid for itself a million times over. I don't get any money for endorsing Vellum, but if they offer it, I will take it and tell you I have. I love this product.
10. Publish & Promote.
I suppose you could write a book and then use it as a footstool, but that's kind of pointless, isn't it?
Even if you're writing a Legolas-Spock-Aren harem love story for your Tolkien-Star Trek-Attack on Titan yaoi cross-over fan-fic, you want to share it with those who will love it for whatever the heck it is.
I publish on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and a bunch of other sites, which I reach through publishing one time on Draft 2 Digital.
I also upload a copy of the book to BookFunnel, which allows me to create give-aways, ARCs, and a Sales Page. All that good stuff.
It's good to do this step at the same time as Publishing, even if the book will go to Pre-Order and not be out for a while, because it is a similar kind of action. You upload the mss, the cover, the blurb, the keywords, all of that, pretty much the same way on a site like BookFunnel as on the publisher's website.
I order a print copy for myself as a reward for all my hard work.
I also eat ice cream.
That's not a reward for my hard-work. I also eat ice cream when I'm lazy and procrastinating. But my bad habits are neither here nor there.
After the book is published, the Terrible Temptation begins and I ask myself...
Should I sit at my computer refreshing the Sales Page on Amazon, obsessively checking if I've made another Sale?
The answer is always NO.
No, do not obsess over your sales. Release that book like a balloon into the ether and move on.
What should I do after I publish a book?
Go back to Step 1. Read another book.
Actually, I try to have at least 3 projects in the pipeline at all times. One will be just a glimmer of an idea in my head, fun to research and brainstorm, but not solid enough yet to write. Another will be an Outline. Another will be the book I'm actively writing. And another will the book I'm editing.
That's 4 projects. Okay, look, if I could count, I'd be in Zoom meetings all day discussing IT.
Comments