Hey guys, it's Shaelin, and I'm here today with
another video. Today we're going to be talking about turning an idea into a book, so what do
you do when you have an idea? How do you turn that into a book that exists? Basically, how do
you develop an idea. This could be interpreted as a very long process, you know, are we talking
like idea to final draft? I'm gonna be focusing on basically taking that initial seed of an idea
and turning into something workable and actually developing it, I'm not gonna walk through like the
first draft and then the editing and everything. This has been such a requested topic and the only
reason I haven't made the video is honestly due to my own poor time management skills, fully to fault
of my own. Now I do want to be clear there's no one way to develop a book, there's no distinct
process step by step by step. You can develop your book in any order you want and you're going
to find that it's going to be kind of impossible to develop it in the same order every time because
every idea is going to naturally be a little different, every idea will have different starting
points and then branch off to different things. I very commonly get asked 'what should I develop
first: the characters of the plot?' You're gonna find it almost impossible to just sit down and
only develop the characters and then do all the plot or only develop the plot and then all the
characters, everything's gonna happen bit by bit, piece by piece, when it happens. You're just
gonna have realizations and insights about the story and you can't control them, but that's okay.
They're gonna happen the order they happen. Roll with that. I'm gonna talk about some different
things you can do, this doesn't need to happen in order. The first thing that I would recommend
doing would be to write literally everything down. There's something very powerful about the physical
process of taking notes so when you first get an idea, I think the most helpful thing to do is open
up a document or if you write by hand you know get out a notebook and start writing down everything,
anything that comes to mind. I like to name my characters very very early on because I struggle
to conceptualize them as people until they have names, so that's something that I do right away,
but just literally write down everything. A lot of it will later on have no bearing on your story and
that's totally okay. Just get it all down. I think that's a great first step. One question that
I find really useful to ask myself early on is whose story is it? You may find that it's a lot
of people's story, and you want to write your book from multiple points of view. Personally I
shy away from multi point of view novels because to me they just aren't my cup of tea, as a writer,
nothing against them as a reader. Just as a writer not my favorite thing, I like to have a more
intimate scope, so I'm usually asking myself who's gonna be my main character. However that
said, one of the first questions I usually end up asking myself is whose story is it? I had a
professor would always ask this about the story, and sometimes would have stories in workshop
and she'd be like 'I don't think it's the main character's story, like I think it's actually
someone else's story.' She's like I think it's actually the husband's story, I think it's
actually the sister's story. This is the main character that you chose, but are they actually
the main character? So I always try to start by asking myself who is going to be my narrator,
whose lens into the story are we going to get. So I'm going to use my novel Honey Vinegar as an
example of this because this book could have gone many different ways if I had chosen other
protagonists, and a lot of the time there are a lot of possible stories that you can explore
here with the same concept, you just have to pick the one you want to tell. So I had this initial
setup of a girl who got struck by lightning, right, and then I had some characters around the
girl. I had her half-sister, I had her mother, I had her--oh what would they be to each other?
I don't know what Teresa's relationship to Freyja would be--the sister's aunt, and then there's also
a boy who witnesses her gets struck by lightning. To be honest when I first conceptualized the
book I was going to write it in third person with multiple points of view. I was going to
have Freyja's point of view, who is the girl who gets struck by lightning, I was going to have
Sybil's point of view, who is my now narrator, Freyja's sister, I was going to have Sybil's aunt
Teresa, I was going to have their mother Eline, and I was going to have some point of views from
Whisper, this boy who witnesses the lightning strike. And then I realized actually, I think the
person whose story it is is Sybil, the sister of the girl who gets struck by lightning. With that
concept of a girl who gets struck by lightning the natural impulse is to make the one who
is struck by lightning the main character, naturally you'd think it's her story,
right? I felt that there was a more interesting way to access this narrative
from another point of view, and I thought that that was actually the more interesting
story because it was a bit less expected and the development that she was going to go
through was just more compelling. I'm glad I took the time to ask myself whose story is this because
we could have ended up with a very different book had I gone the initial obvious route and made
Freyja the main character. Still could have been a book, would have been a very different book.
So I think that's always a great place to start, is identifying whose story it is that you
want to tell. Sometimes there are multiple characters with interesting stories, you just have
to pick the one whose narrative you want to tell. Very early on I like to ask myself, how do I want
to tell this story in terms of form. Now I focus on this really early in the process because I'm
a big form nerd, for a lot of people probably form is an afterthought to storyline or plot,
for me form is like the bread and butter, like I need the form from the beginning. So I usually
identify the form very early, and so by the form I mean how I'm gonna tell the story in terms of
point of view and tense and narrative device, even style, style of scenes, style of chapters,
and honestly even like aesthetic style. This is all very important for me as someone who's a
very form-based writer, other people are not so form-based as me u and it's not because it's the
better way to write it's just how my brain works, to be honest logically I don't even think
it makes the most sense to write this way, it's just literally my brain is like: forms! But
it's something I like to ask myself early on. It does impact how the story is going to evolve. The
way I'm going to write the story on the page is related to how I feel and interpret the story in
my brain, so I need to know these things early on, like I need to know, am I hearing a first person
voice or a third person voice? Or a second person voice? And what tense is it in? This is an issue I
had with Holding a Ghost, the novel I'm currently writing. It's in a weird point of view, but it's
in present tense, but originally I was actually writing it in past tense and I knew something was
wrong. There was a disconnect there because when I would hear passages and lines in my head they
were always in present tense and then I was trying to write it in past tense, I wasn't listening to
my intuition, how I felt and saw and experienced the story in my mind. It was creating issues for
me and I wish I had just listened to that voice and the writing became much easier. So that's
what I need to know form right away, because it's like downloading a file and not knowing what
file format it is. Maybe you don't have the right program to open it right? So that's kind of why
I need to know the form, because that's how I'm gonna see the story. I do in somewhat concrete and
kind of an abstract way see and feel my stories in my mind the same way that they are written, kind
of yes and no, either I see and hear them the way that they are in my mind or I see and hear them
in a way that translates to how they're written, if that makes sense. This might be something you
come back to quite a bit later if you don't care about it like me. Another really good place
to start is just knowing what core scenes you imagine. I am a discovery writer so I don't plan
out my whole book, but usually there are kind of like core scenes that you know, it's like buy this
concept get these six scenes for free. The rest you have to work for, the rest will come later,
but usually there are a couple scenes that feel inherently connected to the concept. I pick up
the concept off the shelf and these scenes all start rolling around on the floor. Those scenes
are so important. If you find your ideas can tend to come with these core scenes, that's like your
base blueprint right. Some of them might end up not being relevant, you're gonna think of a lot
of things in the brainstorming phase that gets chucked later, and that is okay, that's the nature
of brainstorming. Not all of it's going to be useful to you. But those core scenes, either for
now or entirely, are like the base building blocks and they can give you really important insights
into the trajectory of your plot. I get a lot of questions from people who are like 'I have this
concept, I don't know how to develop the plot.' I relate to the struggle also because I'm terrible
at developing plot too, so same, but one thing I found helped as someone for who that's not a
natural thing, for me plot is like the least natural aspect of storytelling, for me it's what
doesn't come naturally to me. That's why i need to discovery write, because it only becomes natural
when I actually start writing. But I do find that you can learn a lot about the story from those
scenes. A lot of developing an idea is getting pieces that I actually don't know what they mean
yet and then having to figure out what they mean, so I'm being given these scenes, I don't know what
these scenes mean, but I can figure out what they mean in relation to the story by looking at them
carefully. You know, if I see a scene of something happening, well, that tells me a lot of things.
That tells me that the story is gonna go a way that's gonna allow for this thing to happen, and
for it to be important. Literally just blocking out any aspect of the story that you know, like
these are my characters. Blocking out who your main characters are going to be, this is the
setting, figuring out where the setting is going to be, like just asking yourself these basic
core questions. Using those as launching points. Some people tend to start with a big global idea
and then they get little ideas from there, which is what you think would be normal. Other people,
like myself, tend to get little ideas and then we have to figure out how those fit together into
the big global idea. So other people will be like, this is where my book is set and then they'll
start getting individual world building details based on that setting. Whereas people like me
will get random little world building ideas and then the setting. Some people work inwards
and some people work outwards. I very much work inwards, so that's why for me a lot of the time
my notes start with very specific things like random little details, lines of dialogue, images,
like random stuff, and then I'm like okay what is this pointing to? So based on these images this is
probably my setting, stuff like that. Some people might find that they want to start from the
general point, they want to be like this is where I want my story to be set and then you'll
get individual ideas from there. A lot of the time it'll be a mixture of the two. It's certainly
not one or the other. There's no wrong way to do it but I do think it helps to know, like ask
yourself, how do I normally think of ideas? What's my normal thought process? When you can think
about your own patterns of thinking it'll help you know what to expect and build a brainstorming
process that builds off of your natural way of brainstorming. There's a term I really like that
a fiction professor of mine used to talk about that she called oxygen moments. She actually meant
it in a different way, but when people would ask how do you get ideas, she would say think of the
oxygen moments of your life. They're the moments that when you think of them, you hold a bit of
oxygen in your chest because they--and this is her phrasing and I love i--it was they shimmer with
importance. She was like 'find the moments of your life that are shimmery with importance, those are
the things that are worth writing about.' Now me, as someone who doesn't write about my own
life at all in fact I actively avoid it, I think that this applies similarly to ideas
themselves. Like there are going to be pieces of a story that shimmer with importance and you know
that they're important. I'd say listen to that instinct. Even as a discovery writer, so someone
who doesn't plan out my plots in advance, if I have these few scenes it can help to just like put
them in what I think the order is. That can kind of give me an idea of what the overarching plot
will be even if I'm going to then work to discover he book as I write it. One thing that I think can
help develop an idea maybe more than anything else is figuring out your core character relationship.
As you start to sketch out your characters, figuring out the relationships between them will
really translate to a lot of plot development sometimes a single character on their own isn't
going to give you a lot of plot, but a character and another character and their relationship
will give you a lot of plot. That'll give you interpersonal conflict, relationship development,
and then also personal development for each of the individual characters. So I always try and
identify what I think the core relationships I'm exploring in the story are. Usually novels
will have many relationships, obviously every time you have two or more characters they have
a relationship, but usually a novel will have one or two main relationships that's primarily
being explored and identifying those core relationships can be super helpful. Now when you
have a lot of material to work with, you have some events, some characters, one thing that
I think a lot of us are gonna deal with, at least I do, is you have this initial rush
of brainstorming and then it kind of halts. It kind of just skids to a stop. Now other people
probably don't struggle with this as much as I do, there are some people who naturally produce
content a lot quicker than I do. I produce plot content extremely slowly when I'm not actively
working on a book, this is why when I used to be an outliner it would literally take me years
to outline a book, because I don't develop plots quickly, it just takes me a really long time.
Some people have the gift where they can develop a whole book and its whole plot in a couple weeks.
I don't have that gift. In becoming a discovery writer I also learned something about myself
which was if I'm actively working on a project I will actively get ideas. Brainstorming will
sometimes stop if I'm not actively working on it. If you get stuck I think setting aside time to
actively brainstorm can be super beneficial, and you don't need to know what you're doing,
like okay today I'm gonna do some brainstorming work--you don't need to know where you're
going with it or what you're doing with it. Open up your notes document, write down anything
that comes to mind, start fleshing things out. You can start really simple, like okay I have a
character, let's do some loose character profiles. Just write down information you already know:
their age, brief physical description, and the more you actively work on it you'll find that you
start naturally developing ideas and you can make a good amount of progress, at least I find I can
make a good amount of progress developing a book if I'm actively in the document writing things
down. And sometimes I start with really basic things and the more you work on it kind of just
like warms up the idea and it'll start working. One technique I find really helpful for myself is
to identify the questions that I have. Sometimes you have this big amorphous blob of plot and idea
and character. There's certain things that you just don't have figured out and so I often write
down in my notes document, like I have a tangible section called 'questions I have for myself' where
I just write down things I don't understand yet about the story. For example like, what is this
character's backstory? Or what does this character want? Or how does this work in this world? You
know, they can be questions about anything but identifying the questions you have for yourself
and then actively working to answer them can also be super helpful in developing that idea. For one
of my final tips I really just want to emphasize that sometimes you have to give it time and that's
okay. Ideas can take patience. Some people can do a whole book development in just a couple
weeks, good for them! If that's you good for you, you're blessed with this gift. For a lot of
people it's just not that quick and that's okay. It's natural to feel a bit of impatience if
you get an idea and you want it to progress, but it's okay to just give it time. Sometimes the idea
just needs to slow cook for a little while longer. I have had ideas that it has taken me years before
I got around to writing them and there's nothing wrong with that, sometimes that time fermenting
will do the idea a lot of good. So if you feel like you're not making progress there's no rush,
unless you literally have a deadline or something, which then just start writing it. That's the
quickest way to brainstorm is to just start writing. Anyways if you're not on deadline there's
literally no rush, the idea will always be there for you and it's okay to know to give a time. If
you have an idea that's two months old and you're worried that you don't have everything figured
out that's totally normal. Just give it more time. And my final tip is know that it's okay to roll
with the changes. Things are gonna change and your intention might change and something
might come up that completely changes what your initial intention was and that's not
a bad thing. The goal of writing a novel is not to produce something that is as close to your
initial intention as possible. A lot of the time, the more you develop a book you'll explore your
intention, you'll find a new intention and that's totally okay. There's a quote that I want to read
to you--it's going to get me demonetized--and it's from Gerald Stem and it's: "If you
start out to write a poem about two dogs [__] and you write a poem about two dogs [___] then
you wrote a poem about two dogs [ __ ]." Probably the most interesting version of the story is
actually not what you were initially planning. I kind of believe that it's actually rare that
our conscious brain is the smartest part of us, usually it's the unconscious part of us, it's
whatever emerges through the story that you then lift up that's often the most interesting. It's
actually rare that your initial plan is the best thing, and so I think it's okay to embrace the
flexibility of an idea let it evolve if it wants to evolve let it evolve, you don't have to try
and wrangle it back and be like, no stay here! Let it evolve, see where it takes you, sometimes
it can be scary. I had an idea for a project I'm planning the other day that really changes
things and I'm struggling to commit to it because I don't know what I want, but the more
I sit with it the more I think it's the right decision and I think you'll find that when you're
at these crossroads where you could do a or b, giving it a bit of time will often make it
clear which is the right path for you. So it's okay for things to change! In fact I would
embrace the fact that your ideas will change. I've never written anything that's really that close to
my initial intention and if anything it's kind of fun to compare and like look back and be like,
what was I originally planning for this book? Wow it's so different. But I'm never disappointed
that it didn't end up there, it's just part of the idea's natural growth. So that's some things to
say on developing an idea. I know this wasn't the most concrete video but also it's not the most
concrete process, it's pretty fluffy, like this is gonna just happen how it happens, you know?
But those are some things that I find helpful, so I hope that it helps if you're stuck at
that idea phase. I will also redirect you, if you want more on this, last year I did a
really detailed series on this on the Reedsy channel called How to Develop a Book, it's like a
five part series with templates and exercises and everything, so if you want a more
guided walkthrough on this process I will leave a link to that as well. Thank
you guys so much for watching, if you have any questions you can always send me an ask
on tumblr and I'll see you in another video! bye
