Writing a book

[Killswitch]

First of all, I'm a keen reader, especially fantasy fiction and sci-fi. I read Lord of the Rings before I started school (true story!) and I've got quite a few bookshelves full of Banks, Stross, Eddings, Hobb, Tolkien, Hamilton, Jordan, Martin, Pratchett, Irvine and so on.

I had a bit of a knack for writing when I was at school...won a couple of awards for short stories and poems and the like. Since I left school though, I've never really had any desire to have a proper crack at it.

I often come up with ideas for books/stories/characters but I don't generally bother to write them down or think them through too much. This morning though, basically a whole sort of "world concept" popped fully-formed into my head and it's got me thinking.

My main worry is that I've never tried to write anything before. I wouldn't know where to start! I'm looking to any Freddies who might have some experience in this area to share it. I've got a vague idea that I should probably do the stuff no-one will ever see first, so things like;

• Maps of the required locations and surrounding areas
• Basic history of the regions involved
• Timeline of the events that would happen through the book
• Environment - stuff like units of measurement and currency
• Basic characters

I'm quite excited by the idea, but also pretty daunted at the same time. On a different point, I'm also wondering whether it's even worth going through the pain and eventual heartbreak of trying to get something published or whether I should just go Creative Commons all the way and self-publish online. That assumes I ever start (unlikely) and finish (more unlikely!) this thing.

"By your powers combined, I am Captain Freddy!" Or something...possibly "Help me Freddys House Kenobi, you're my only hope!".

 

[Ormorof]

you should post this in General and see if you can get hold of Damini as she is our in-house published author and winner of a BBC writing award

and by General i mean; https://forums.freddyshouse.com/general-2/

 

[Killswitch]

Sounds like a plan...I *could* ask a Mod to move it, but life is too short

 

[Ormorof]

hehe maybe keep this page open as your OT Inspiration area

i once thought about writing a book but realised i can barely write my own name so i stopped

 

[Killswitch]

hehe maybe keep this page open as your OT Inspiration area

i once thought about writing a book but realised i can barely write my own name so i stopped

Well I can easily write 600 pages of IT policy, ISMS compliancy documentation, very very bad bash scripts or drunken emo-style rants on Facebook...how hard can a novel be?

 

[Cerb]

Good luck with it mate I hope it goes well and keep us updated

Oh and your idea about fleshing out the world properly before starting the actual story is a great one I think.

I heard somewhere that when writing a book you should set a target, say for example something like 15 pages a week or 5000 words or something like that. Then you stick to this rigidly writing at least this much. It doesn't matter if a lot of what you are writing isn't good enough to go in a book, even if you realize this as you are writing. Your book is going to be heavily edited by you and any potential publisher so as long as you are writing you are going to get some good stuff. I know you wouldn't think the throwing mud at a wall approach would work but it will defiantly help at the start to get you going.

 

[Vasconcelos]

Well, you could throw us some themes and we can come up with some brainstorming.

That might help you.

I.e: you are looking for an scenario for that precise part of the book, or a posible conversation and so on so forth.

 

[Killswitch]

Well, you could throw us some themes and we can come up with some brainstorming.

That might help you.

I.e: you are looking for an scenario for that precise part of the book, or a posible conversation and so on so forth.

Was thinking about that, but I'd quite like to keep the key concepts to myself until I've fleshed them out a bit.

Essentially though, it's a fantasy-fiction style thing but instead of magic in the traditional sense, it deals with the discovery of a modern technology by a primitive culture. Imagine if in Lord of the Rings Frodo Baggins had found an Uzi and a few dozen grenades hidden on Weathertop

Obviously it's more subtle (and less f'kin stupid) than that example. Well I hope it's less stupid anyway!

Thanks for all the good wishes everyone! Let's see if can channel some "bothered" into the project

 

[Syri]

I've just done a creative writing unit for my college course, so I'll share a bit of what I picked up from that.
First of all, plan out how you want the story to start, and importantly, how you want it to end. Knowing the ending should make sure that the middle will pretty much write itself.
Make sure that characters are well presented. It's not too important to describe all of their physical details, if you can describe their attitude and their reactions, then the reader will start to develop their own idea what they should look like. Because some of that is left to the reader's imagination, it can make them create a closer bond to the character.
Make sure that it starts interesting. Give the reader something early on to keep them going, some hint of what's to come. A good way to do this would be to start in the middle, and have a recollection of what led to that point, or to have the character hear about something early on that would interest them.
Include some form of conflict. Even if it's got a really happy ending, with marriage and smiles all round, it's a lot more satisfying if the reader feels that the protagonist(s) had to really work and fight to get there.

That's pretty much summing up what we were told before writing our stories. We were doing short story writing, but a lot of that applies to any kind of fiction. Hope it's of some help.