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Starting a book can be a daunting experience.
Maybe you have an idea. But how on earth does an idea transform into an actual book?
It can become especially daunting when looking at other author's impressive plots, worlds, characters, words. It's very easy to imagine that these books just effortlessly spilled themselves onto paper, and that the author writing them knew from the start exactly what she was doing. Before I started writing myself, I thought this. I always thought that the difference between a first draft of a story, and the final, was basically just fixing any grammar errors / typos – and that ideas came out fully formed.
How wrong I was!
No-one's idea for a book comes out fully formed. And this is a great thing to know for us writers – because it makes the process feel slightly less intimidating.
So - how to go about turning an idea into a book?
When writing a book, writers fall somewhere on the Plotter to Pantser spectrum.
A Plotter is someone who outlines and plans their book before they write it (J. K. Rowling is apparently a plotter. You can see her detailed calendar of the events of 5th year Hogwarts if you do a Google search! It's very cool!)
A Pantser, on the other hand, is someone who 'writes by the seat of their pants'. Basically, a Pantser has no plan or outline to follow. They freestyle!
I've called it a Plotter/Pantser spectrum, because I think a lot of us, even if we favour one method more than another, tend to still borrow from the other camp from time to time (e.g. a plotter might not stick rigidly to a plan, or a Panstser may have some loose ideas jotted down before they start).
I, personally, lean toward the Pantser side. I like to discover and explore my world and characters as I'm writing.
Below - I'm going to outline my 8 steps to writing a novel as a Pantser!
Step 1. Have an idea
All books start with an idea!
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