How to WRITE A BOOK in 2023: advice, steps, encouragement, & must-have resources

and today we're doing a three-part series all about writing a novel for beginners and I say for beginners because it's going to have a lot of writing 101 type stuff but I think you'll get a lot out of it if you've been writing for a while as well we're going to start with the idea and coming up with it and brainstorming and plotting all the way to writing editing and then even publishing your book we're going to cover that entire thing part two is going to be all about advice and encouragement and just everything that I wish I would have known and that helped me as I was getting started and also a bunch of other writers chime in as well in that video and then part three is about resources so I'm talking like everything that can help you get better at writing your book and finishing your book and that's going to include things like authortube and classes and books and nanowrimo and just like everything that I can think of paid and free all right let's do it there are pretty much five steps to writing a novel and that's way oversimplified but we'll dive much deeper into it the very first step is coming up with your idea and for a lot of you watching this this is probably right where you are right now like you have kind of a general idea or some like pieces of it floating around that you're just not sure how to string them together into an actual story but you have kind of a concept and if you don't have a concept just know that ideas are a dime a dozen you can brainstorm them all the time the best way to brainstorm ideas is just to make space for yourself to actually do that but just in case you need help coming up with the story idea I did want to touch on it really really quick and that is simply to say that it's easier than we think like we usually we get really freaked out about it we're like oh this is so hard what if it's not perfect let go of the perfectionism and just kind of brain dump whatever comes to you make a space and be really intentional about actually sitting down to brainstorm and more will come to you than you think just think what if this happened what if that happened that's one of the best things you can do is ask the question what if and ask the question how could this be even better how would this make me interested in the story just asking questions like that and brainstorming and making the space to brainstorm is really all you need and just know that ideas don't come out perfectly formed like that's probably the biggest thing that holds writers back is they expect the idea to just you know kind of pop out like an egg and it's just fully formed and it's done but really brainstorming is kind of putting the egg together you know you're like okay here's the shell I got kind of like a shell thing going on and here's the color of it and then here's kind of what's going to be on the inside the yolk I think and then this is going to be you know and you just keep going like that and and brainstorming is putting together something out of pieces so don't put that weight of perfectionism on yourself and try to like pop out the perfect idea all in one it will almost never happen that way although it does sometimes and if you're like in the shower or you're trying to fall asleep sometimes those are when the best ideas come to you so just be receptive to that and maybe have a notebook that you kind of dedicate to writing down ideas and let yourself brainstorm over time and put things together in that way so that's coming up with the story idea and the Very initial concept but pretty quickly after you get a concept that you like and you feel attached to you need to move to step two which is the planning stage and you notice that I did not say plotting because it's a little bit different than plotting although plotting can fall under this but there are usually two camps of writers they are the plotters who basically plot every single beat of the story to different extremes and then there are the Panthers who kind of fly by the seat of their pants and they just wing it and they see what happens however even pansers who are flying by the seat of their pants should have a general plan like a very very basic beginning middle and end it's really really helpful to know where you're going my favorite example of this and I can't remember where I heard it but it is the GPS analogy and so like I'm in Minnesota and if I'm here in the middle of the US and I know that the end of my novel is California and I plug it into my map I will start heading in that direction but if I don't plug in a destination I could very easily go the opposite direction and head towards like New York or something instead and so just knowing a general plan and where you're going is so so helpful now I have an entire video right here all about making a plan so I'm not gonna go super in detail here instead I'm just going to link it below for you to watch later but I really wanted to bring it up because whether you're a pantser or a plotter there is no wrong way and here's the most interesting part you can change over time so I have gone between panting and plotting back and forth depending on the book and what it needed and what I needed at that time and so right now I personally am a little bit of a mix of the two but I found that whenever you get stuck it's probably when you're doing the opposite of what you need so for people who are panting and they get stuck I always suggest try some plotting see if you can plot out where you need to go next and I do that for myself by doing things like bullet pointing or by using in the save the cat beat sheet which we will talk about a ton or maybe you get stuck when you've been plotting too much and you're kind of getting stuck in the planning process and you've just been living there then it can be really helpful to get unstuck by just panting it just like go for it and see what happens and let the story come to you and so I really think my favorite advice here is to just try things and don't lock yourself in and don't feel like there's any right way but instead be really honest with yourself and look at what is holding me back and should I try something else and give yourself that freedom to try things and just pay attention to what's working for you if you're brand new to writing and you're not even sure which Camp you fall under or if you're somewhere in the middle you'll probably realize pretty quickly which one is your preference alright so Panthers are pretty self-explanatory you're just winging it so you're literally gonna dive in and start writing but if you're a plotter there are so many amazing resources out there on all the different ways that you can plot your book there's so many techniques and ideas and strategies like the three act structure or the save the cat beat sheet which we will talk about all of these things in depth but I just want to encourage you don't lock yourself into anything and don't feel like there's any right way to plot your book honestly the best way to plot your book is the way that works for you so I'd encourage you I know I'm jumping the gun on the encouragement a little bit but I would encourage you guys to just really give yourself the freedom to explore and try things and see what works for you I have written uh 10 books now I think and I have found that every single book is a little bit different and I've had to do it differently and approach it differently sometimes I'm pantsing it like we talked about and sometimes I have to plot it hardcore and a lot of times I actually go back and forth between those two things throughout the entire writing process so just be encouraged that there's no one right way and that the best thing you can do for yourself is try things and pay attention to what works for you all right once you have come up with your story idea and then you have planned it out to whatever extent that you you wanted to plan it out the third step is actually writing or what is often called drafting your novel the very first draft oh my gosh this is probably the most important thing I'm going to say in this entire video and if you get nothing else out of this video I hope you'll hear me on this your first draft is not your finished book it's not done it's nowhere close to that I really really feel like I need to repeat that like it's it's not the final book when you write the end you're not done uh it's something that almost every single writer has run into they just assume that when you get from the beginning to the end the book is done and you're not alone at thinking that but it's not the case at all and I remember one time I said this in a video and I said every first draft is kind of garbage it's a little bit of a dumpster fire it's just how it is um I remember this person commented and they were all worked up about it they were like that's not true because such and such author um wrote their book in a day and then they were published and so I looked up this author actually and I found that they were published by one of the big five Publishers and so I guarantee you every single one of the big five Publishers has an editor that the author has to work with and they have to go through edits they go through developmental edits they go through copy and line edits and then they go through proofreading edits and so there's at least three rounds of edits if not many many more before a book is considered done in the publishing world and so I just want to really really Hammer that home that your book is not done as a first draft and that is because honestly nothing comes out perfect the first time like you might have a really nice sentence here and there but but even if you've been writing 20 books 30 books Etc you still need to edit because you will always find things that you could have said better and so it's not just for you to come across better you know for your own sake but it's also for your reader you want to make the book The Best that it can possibly be we'll talk about first drafts a lot more in part two but it's just probably the biggest area where writers struggle because especially with your very first book it can feel so frustrating when it's not coming out perfectly and you feel like it has to be perfect the first time but it does not have to be perfect the first time because my favorite analogy is that your first draft is kind of like a skeleton and so you're just getting the bare bones of the story out and it's literally just White Bones and it doesn't look like a person it is not done it's clearly not a fully formed person and we all know that right and so it gives you that freedom to be like I'm just writing the Bare Bones it's fine I'm just figuring out you know what the skull looks like and the rib cage and okay I'm getting kind of weird here but you get the idea and then when you come back to edit your story later on that's when you add things like the muscles and the Flesh and the organs and uh proofreading is like when you're putting the makeup on and that's just like my weird analogy I know it's kind of gross but that is the best way that I can think of to describe it that can give you that sense of Freedom when you're writing the first draft to not stress so much about making it perfect the first drafts again we're going to talk a lot a lot a lot a lot about first drafts because this is where most writers get stuck honestly a lot of writers will just keep writing the first chapter the first two chapters and they will never get to the end but you need to write that entire story beginning middle and end to truly understand how to write a novel how to create a fully formed story and how to understand how to write a climax and how to fix the saggy metal and all of these things are so important to learning how to write after you have a first draft that is when you get to step four which is editing and so I kind of touched on this already when I talked about the gross skeleton analogy where you're putting on you know the muscles and putting in the organs and by that I mean you are maybe making the characters a little more round you are fleshing out what the world looks like and maybe you're fixing a bunch of plot holes and oh my gosh this uh ending needs five more scenes or something like that those are the kind of things that you fix during edits I do have an older video on how I edit which I will link below but there's basically two types of editing there are self edits which are you obviously and then there are other people's edits but I prefer to call that other people's feedback because they are not actually doing the work for you you still need to take their feedback and decide if you want to make that edit or not I Want to Break these two things down even more because self edits are like the things that you are aware of like you read through your novel after you've got your first draft and you're like okay I don't know how to write a world I need to research World building I need to add in a lot more detail I need to add in more Scene setting everybody's in you know a blank room and I need to kind of help them picture it like the things that you're aware of or maybe you know you read through it and you're like okay there's a big plot hole here because this character's here and then they disappear and I never say where they go those are the kind of things that you're aware of and so you do self edits first and I always say do those first because you don't need other people to tell you about them so if you ask other people to read your work before you do the work then you're just wasting your time and theirs because you already know about it I like to do at least three passes on my own if not many more than that it's kind of hard to nail it down because sometimes you're editing really big picture and sometimes you're reading really detailed but I like to go through it a bunch and I can do more videos on editing if you want I'm going to put together an editing playlist because I have a lot of videos that can fall under this category such as my Show versus tell video and I'm also going to be doing videos soon on overwriting and on underwriting so definitely check check out my editing playlist if that's the stage you're in because I really think that those can be some amazing places to start when you're doing self edits especially the very first self edits to look at where you can add things and where you can delete and then to look at Show versus tell those can be really great places to start but really A lot of people edit differently so just be aware again that there's no right way you're not locked into doing this in any particular way some people like to edit for everything at once and other people like me like to edit for one thing at a time or at least I try to and it helps me to get more focused so again pay attention to what works for you kind of watch what is helping you edit better and do your research and learn all the things that you can edit in your story on your own but once you've done all the edits that you know how to do that's when you bring in other people's feedback and there are actually three types of feedback I'm gonna break this down even more because when it comes to feedback there are beta readers or sometimes people even call them Alpha readers and certain in cases we'll talk about that then there are critique partners and then there are editors so I'm going to dive into each of these three things because they're all a little bit different and they're all going to help you in very different ways let's start with beta readers because I again have a playlist all about this and it's because I love working with beta readers but it's actually one of the processes that I found the most confusing when I started out so I created a bunch of videos to help other people with all the questions that I had if you guys have heard of beta testing before it's literally just something you do with a group of people before a product is ready to find all the problems it has so that once you launch it you don't find out then so it's literally just working with a group of readers before you publish because you'd rather find out all the problems before publishing instead of in the reviews after publishing if you want to know more about beta reading I will link the videos below for you about how to find beta readers how to work with them and how to process their feedback after but really it's just a really fun process of figuring out all the issues with your story before publishing and fixing them so that you don't hear about them in the reviews later and so I personally like to do beta readers a little bit more towards the end like right before I work with an editor because I want to give them as polished a story as possible but you can also work with beta readers at the beginning at the middle at the end you can have multiple groups of beta readers you can have small groups big groups there's no one right way but the point is just to figure out the problems in your story this is not a fan group to go and Rave about how awesome you are now if they like things that's really good to know that can be really encouraging but you are working with them to find the problems and the thing that you guys need to realize is that if you're too scared to do beta readers now and get that feedback now you're just hurting yourself because you will get that feedback after publishing in public reviews so if you are scared about the beta reader process just ask yourself which is worse to hear about it privately from somebody that you trust and you can fix it or to hear about it publicly from an angry one star review on Amazon that should help you decide one other question I get asked all the time is when do I do beta readers and I kind of touched on this already but after you've done everything you know because again you're just wasting people's time if you ask them to tell you things that you already know so I personally like to do beta readers right before I work with an editor but after I work with my critique partners and so that leads to critique partners and again this is one that people kind of over complicate but it's really Right In The Name They critique your work and they are your partner which means that you are also critiquing their work so this is just implied in the name that it's another writer they are somebody who you swap stories with and usually they're somebody who writes the same genre and kind of is at the same writing level as you so that's one really big difference between critique partners and beta readers is that a beta reader can be literally anybody they're just a reader and a critique partner on the other hand is a writer somebody that you partner with and so more often somebody that you trust and work way more closely with and the other differences can be that they're going to be a lot more detailed just because they're a writer too so they understand story structure and dialogue and characters in World building and they're going to be able to hopefully hopefully Point these things out to you that beta readers might not see but then also hopefully help you figure out how to improve on them and so think of a critique partner as a much more personal relationship with somebody that you're going to trust a lot and so it's kind of like dating or finding a best friend where it doesn't happen overnight it's not like beta readers where you just kind of have a group of people it's like a more one-on-one relationship where you are also helping them and so everybody gives feedback differently and takes feedback differently and it might take a few tries to find a good fit you can have just one critique partner or a bunch of critique Partners but the reason they are so helpful is because again they have a lot more expertise than beta readers and they're going to be that person who can bounce ideas off of you can work with them at the beginning of the process the middle of the process the very end of the process they are going to be there for you and you are going to be there for them if you don't have a cushy partner and you want to start looking for one I would suggest that you start making writing friends and just get to know people that's the first step I'll talk a lot more about that in part three in the series but I would also just encourage you to look for people who are writing a similar genre to you because then they will understand genre expectations and be able to much better help you and I would also suggest looking for somebody who's in the same stage as you so if you're a brand new writer or if you've been writing a couple books or if you've written a lot of books I would look for somebody who is in kind of the same writing stage as you and who writes at the same speed even you don't necessarily want to pair up with somebody who's sending you chapters once a year and then you're sending them chapters every single week that's not always the best fit the more that you can be in the same place the better fit it's going to be and before I move on to editors I did mention Alpha readers which are kind of a mix between beta readers and critique Partners like they're going to come in sooner hence the alpha instead of beta kind of like critique Partners at that stage in the process but usually you're not swapping with them they're still just readers although they might also be writers last but not least is the editors and so I really want to touch on this and guess what I'm gonna break it down even more I'm talking about professionals professional editors who know the business who understand the Chicago style of style of editing style manual dang it I can't remember anyway whatever these are trained professionals who have studied story structure and sentence structure and writing in general they know grammar they know formatting these are the people that you need to go to when you want to make your book perfect and so I personally like to do editors after I work with critique partners and beta readers just a quick note if you are looking to traditionally publish then this is something your Publishing House does for you so please do not hire an editor you don't need to your publishing house will hire an editor for you you can focus on beta readers and critique partners and get so much value from that but if you are planning to self-publish this is absolutely crucial especially for your debut novel because you would be shocked how many rules and requirements there are for publishing that you just don't know nothing says this book is self-published more than something with terrible awkward formatting really bad grammar riddled with typos and all that jazz so please please please hire a professional to help you but with editors I have to break it down even more because there are three different types of editing or four depending on who you ask it is complicated especially because every editor kind of calls it a different thing and they all think that they are the one that is right so I'm going to tell you what I most often hear them called and give you an idea of what exactly that entails so that you can know what to ask for and what you need the first type of edit that an editor might do is call the developmental edit developmental edits are very very very big picture I'm talking about like story issues maybe this story structure or the plot has a problem character issues World building issues maybe big plot holes everything that's like very big picture they are not doing typos they're not doing sentence structure they're not even helping you with style usually they're just very big picture and they're helping you make the story a story and then the second one which can often be also a third depending on who you ask is copy editing slash line editing again if you Google copy editing and line editing you can see that it really varies depending on who you ask and so every single article that I read on Google was different and said it differently and that's the case with pretty much every editor that you talk to as well but here is kind of the general thing line edits are what they sound like it's going line by line and so it's a lot of style stuff it's a lot of making sure that each sentence is good it's much more detailed than the the developmental stuff so technically although a lot of editors are very helpful and they'll point out developmental issues they don't have to technically because line editing is more at the sentence level so technically it's also not typos but again if you have a good editor they're probably going to point out the typos because it's still an issue so you can probably already see what the problem is is that it's it's kind of there's a lot of overlap and so the copy edits are often seen as the same thing as line editing they kind of go interchangeably for a lot of editors and they're like that's the same thing don't worry about it it's all about you know style and getting the line by line right and doing that copy but certain people I have found it the hard way see copy editing almost the same as proofreading so the last but not least is proofreading which is your very last polishing of the story so you're not even worried about sentence structure anymore unless it's really obviously bad you're looking for things like typos and really awkward grammar and maybe formatting issues and then things that I've heard recently called Echoes so an echo is where you have a word and then you repeat that word later on down the page maybe multiple times if you're like me so very very very very very very detailed that's proofreading so if developmental edits are the big picture stuff towards the beginning of your editing process and proofreading is the very very detailed stuff at the very end of your editing process then that middle ambiguous area between the two is your copy edit slash line edits or sometimes copy edits overlap more with proofreading depending on who you ask and so obviously it's very complicated so the best advice is to do a ton of research and we're to be very very very clear on what they do just know that most editor editor it's totally normal for every single Editor to have a slightly different definition but as long as you are on the same page as them that is what counts there's also going to be a wide range of prices and expertise in this field and so my best advice to you is do a ton of research definitely make sure to talk to more than one editor talk to a wide range of editors and get an understanding for the different prices and the different levels of detail that they do and have them do sample edits which by the way is very very common in almost every editor that I've talked to is willing to do a sample edit so you can get a feel for how they actually edit last but not least I would just let you know that typically developmental edits are the most expensive copy Linus are really random in the middle again it depends on how much expertise and how much detail they do and then proofreading tends to be the cheapest of all the three options but what I would really recommend is look honestly at your work and ask yourself what do I need if you're a brand new writer you might need a developmental editor you might need somebody to tell you what is going on with the story you might need a professional to help you with that but if you are further on down the road and you understand writing more you might not need that you might need more of the line edits to help you so take a very honest look at your work and decide one quick note before we move on to the last step this should go without saying but between every edit that you do with other people the beta readers the critique Partners the editor you should be doing self-edit so your beta readers are not changing it for you you have to change it and usually you have to do multiple passes again and then your critique partner is not changing it for you you have to do the edits and even your editor I would really recommend although editors will offer to do that for you I would recommend that you make the changes because how else are you going to learn like if you just click accept all changes in Microsoft Word and let you know it happen on its own or you let them send you a you know edited document all clean and ready to go that's not helpful to you you need to learn from their editing notes and so I always suggest that you do self edits between every single round including even at the very end after your proofreader has read it you read it again and edit again because you'll probably find things that they miss because everybody is just human so the more passes you can make the more polished your story is going to be hard that leads to step five which is the last one but make sure you stay tuned until the end because I will share with you how I go through these steps in my particular timeline but step five is publishing and so of course you guys know this there are two routes there's traditional publishing or there is self-publishing and so I have friends who traditionally publish I'm going to talk a lot about that in our resources in part three but I also have a lot of knowledge about self-publishing because that's the route that I chose to go and so I will link below a few helpful videos on self-publishing such as how hard is it to self-publish I will link that below and I also have a playlist all about self-publishing if you want to check that out and watch it all the way through alright so that's the five step process just to review we've got number one is the story idea coming up with it number two is planning it out and figuring out how you're going to write it number three is actually writing that first draft number four is editing and all the many many many types of edits that go under that umbrella and last but not least number five is publishing your book in which ever way that you want so as promised the way that I go through these steps is that I go pretty quickly at first brainstorming is tricky to pin down because I usually have an idea for a while before I'm ready to start working on it but once I start the planning process and I start plotting out my story I typically take only one to two weeks to plot it out before I dive into the first draft and then once I do the first draft I like to do what's called Fast drafting which is something I picked up from National novel writing month in November again we'll talk about all of this in the resources but uh fast drafting is simply writing it as fast as you can you sit down and you just work on getting the words on the page and worrying about making it perfect later and so I typically can write a book between one to two months I can write that first draft in a month to two months depending on how long the book is and then editing is much much longer so typically from when I first start writing to publishing is about a year exactly and so I found that editing can be any anywhere from six to nine months I can take months off to do other things but typically I need a lot more time to edit because like you guys saw there's a lot that goes into that stage so I typically will edit for a month on my own and then I will edit for my critique partners and send to them then I will edit with their feedback another month then I will take a month or two to send to Beta readers depending on how much time they need then I will edit another month with the beta reader feedback followed by another month for sending to my editor and last but not least after I edit another month or so I will end up working on the last proofreading edit over the final month I lost track of how many months that was but it should be about a year if you guys want help making a publishing plan and timeline for yourself I have a video right here which I will link below for you that you can go watch next which is just all about how to set up each of these stages so that you can actually figure out how much time you need from starting your book all the way to publishing and you can even set a tentative release date today this video is just going to be packed with writing advice and I'm also going to share stuff I've gotten from books on writing craft and from other authortubers that I picked up just everything that I've really picked up in the last few years of writing seriously but I actually kind of want to start with Pinterest but I've got my computer here and I actually want to do a screen recording so we can just do this together and I am going to show you my Pinterest which the reason I'm starting with this is because that's where I started when I was a brand new writer looking for motivation and inspiration and I you know after I began reading some books and I began watching authortube but this is kind of where I started and so some of my favorite writing advice is actually here on Pinterest so I have a board I'm just going to zoom through this called when I write that's just what I named it like three years ago when I started I was like when I write this is what I want to remember and there's a lot of things I save on here I say random character names and I save how to do more specific things but I also save my favorite quotes so a lot of quotes on Pinterest are about the first draft such as this one every first draft is perfect because all a first draft has to do is exist I'm gonna actually scroll through these because there's so much about the first draft don't be afraid to write crap because crap makes great fertilizer I love that um there's actually a really good quote here by Anne lamotte very few writers really know what they are doing until they've done it but in chair Hands-On keyboard This is an acronym b-i-c-h-o-k that you'll see a lot it's just butt and chair Hands-On keyboard like the way that you get it done is to just do it and we're going to talk more about that because honestly the best way to learn is just by doing so many of us have learned this the hard way that the best way to learn how to write is to actually sit down and do it to have the butt and chair Hands-On keyboard mentality and just go for it and a lot of people said this in the Instagram polls but I think Ingrid said it my favorite she said how to learning by doing is for writing no matter how much you read and I will add to that no matter how much you research no matter how much you create Pinterest boards no matter how much you talk to writing friends and talk about being a writer no matter how much you do all this other stuff you just have to write to learn how to write like you just have to do it this is another great quote to emphasize that point start writing no matter what the water doesn't flow until the faucet is turned on or this one which is a little bit more encouraging than the first drafts are crap kind of stuff which is first drafts don't have to be perfect they just have to be written and one of the biggest uh Roblox I guess you could say to writing to just sitting down and writing is often we don't feel like it so just know that if you don't feel like writing you're actually not alone you're totally normal this is one of my favorite quotes that helped me with that feeling which is the desire to write actually grows with writing part of writing is actually a discipline and I'm getting a little ahead of myself here I'm trans positioning away from Pinterest already into my feelings but I just really want you guys to know that it's totally normal to not always feel like writing and if you wait for the Muse to come you will probably right like once or twice a year honestly because it's just not something you usually feel like doing before you're doing it and sometimes not even during the writing process in fact my favorite feeling is actually right when I've just finished writing that's probably how I feel the best because I've accomplished it and I can see how far I've come but prior to that it's hard and speaking of discipline this is another one of my favorite quotes here being a good writer is three percent hard work and 97 not getting distracted by the internet I wish that wasn't true but that is pretty accurate this is another quote that addresses first drafts you might not write well every day but you can always edit a bad page you can't edit a blank page and so this is again just more motivation for how we need to get words on the page before we can make them good words like we have to have something to work with some clay to form and that relates to this quote which I've seen tons of different times I have it saved on my Pinterest board and like another picture but it says I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into the box so that later I can build castles alright last one for Pinterest before we move on this one I just felt like we should touch on because it'll make everybody feel better every writer I know has trouble writing I feel like the theme of this video is you're not alone you are not alone it's going to be okay because we have all been in your shoes and what you're feeling right now when you go through the lows when you go through the highs we've been there it's normal Okay I lied one more um this is Anne Lamont again she is amazing the author of bird by bird she says almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts you need to start somewhere so um that reminds me of this thing called The Taste Gap this is a long one but it's worth hearing so just bear with me and really let this sink in nobody but he tells this to people who are beginners I wish someone had told me all of us who do creative work we get into it because we have good taste but there is this gap for the first couple years you make stuff it's just not that good it's trying to be good it has potential but it's not but your taste the thing that got you into the game is still killer and your taste is why your work disappoints you a lot of people never get past this phase they quit most people I know who do interesting creative work went through years of this we know our work doesn't have the special thing that we want it to have we all go through this and if you are starting out or you are still in this phase you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story it is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that Gap and your work will be as good as your Ambitions and I took longer to figure out how to to do this than anyone I have ever met it's gonna take a while it's normal to take a while you just gotta fight your way through go out and find quotes like these that speak to you personally things that address your fears and your doubts and your insecurities about writing and what I did personally is I would write those quotes and put them on my wall whether on a sticky or something nicer it really doesn't matter and I would again obviously save them on Pinterest if you want to go make a Pinterest board uh definitely do things like that that will remind you because sometimes we are just really forgetful and we'll be like yeah I know that the first draft is crap but then you sit down and you try to write something that's like absolute perfection because you forgot you forgot that the first draft is just you getting the words on the page you forgot that you're just trying to get something out that you can edit later so give yourself the reminders you would be surprised how much it helps to have those little reminders from front and center so if you need to have something that's like butt in chair Hands-On keyboards like along the top of your computer just to remind you like just sit down and do the work that's awesome like whatever works for you what works for me is I've shown you guys this many times before but I made this cute little like tiny picture frame and I keep this on my desk this has really just helped me because it's such a great reminder to me that nobody really knows what their novel is going to look like in the end Nobody Knows the full finish Perfect story they just know the next step what you can see in your headlights right ahead of you okay now I'm going to kind of go through advice for the different parts of the writing process and definitely don't tune out if you're not in that particular stage because you might find that something still applies to you even if you're in another stage but first is coming up with story ideas and brainstorming my first tip in this section is to ask questions and specifically to ask the question what if let's use the stolen Kingdom as an example for this one because I asked the question what if a lot when I was World building and so I asked you know what if the Jenny or you know the genie were like a race of people they were their own separate group or people group I guess not people but you get the idea and you know well then they would have to probably have their own land of some sort like their own Homeland and what would they look like and what would their goals be and how would they interact with people and uh you know like all these questions came into being and would they still have abilities like genius and Other Stories would they have different abilities what if some of them had some abilities and some had other abilities and you follow that Rabbit Trail and just keep going with it but then my second piece of advice that is really related to that and I learned this from an authortuber who's no longer on YouTube so I can't remember her name but she said that you need to not just go with the first idea don't even go with the second or third idea most of the time because those are going to be the most cliche then most expected she said keep brainstorming until you have four or five or more ideas because at that point you will typically have a lot more to choose from and you can kind of compare which is the most exciting and interesting to you and often that fourth and fifth idea that has kind of stretched you and stretched your brainstorming will be a lot more exciting and intriguing my third piece of advice is one that you hear everywhere and I don't know where it originated but it is simply that story ideas are a dime a dozen and what that means essentially is that there's so many writers who are freaked out that their idea is going to get stolen but nobody can write a story the way that you can it's not really an idea that makes a good book it's the execution of the idea and how you write it don't stress about if somebody else has the same idea honestly it's just an idea and it's how you write the story and how you share that idea your storytelling that makes the book a good book I can't tell you how many people have written to me where they're like I had this idea but then I saw this author already did it and so now I can't do it right and I'm like no it's just an idea don't stop writing your idea just because there's something similar out there just keep it in mind and make yours totally different because it's all about how you write it and nobody can write it quite like you and so just for an example I wrote Evelyn's number and then I found after publishing like six months after publishing that there is a very similar story out there with people having numbers uh but it's not tattooed on their neck and the world is totally different and it's more of a like a love story and it's it's just nothing like mine like I read the first few pages and I was like okay the synopsis makes them sound similar but their worlds apart they're nothing alike whatsoever and so I just I was like oh okay it's fine the only reason you should be worried is if you are actually directly intentionally copying somebody that's the only time I would be worried charity Bailey yet I hope I'm saying her name right said without conflict there isn't a story and I think that's fantastic advice Emma Woodham said write what you know and I love this because I mean it's not a requirement by the way especially if you're writing Science Fiction and Fantasy because you're probably not going to know technically a lot of the stuff you're making it up like totally creating new worlds but this idea of pulling ideas from what you already know definitely makes the writing process and coming up with ideas a lot easier so definitely give yourself permission to pull from your own history in your own wealth of knowledge let's talk about advice for plotting slash panting next kind of the planning stage in general quirky works I hope I'm saying that right says research multiple plotting styles to find a good fit don't just use the first one that you see Slash find and I kind of talked about this in part one in this series when we were talking about the writing process and I talked about like don't lock yourself into any one strategy or you know plotting plan give yourself that freedom to try new things because sometimes the best way to unlock your creativity is actually to try something new Sarah crevice and Lee says don't underestimate planning at the beginning even as a panther and JC scraba I hope I'm saying your name right uh says kind of the same thing I wish I knew how important it was to have an idea of the ending even vaguely vaguely however you say that word uh so you guys get the idea I don't need to repeat this because a lot of people said this but I personally am a firm believer in planning just enough to get excited and feel ready to write the story so I have a lot of people who have asked me how much detail is too much and it's not so much about like do you have two much or not enough because there's a lot that you might come up with that won't ever get actually included in the story and it's good for you to know but at some point you really do just have to move forward because it's very very very easy to get stuck in one stage so my biggest advice honestly is just get enough like that's gonna look different for everybody because some people are going to need to brainstorm more and other people are going to feel comfortable panting so just get enough for you to feel like I'm excited about this scene and I think I can write it that's the amount of detail that you need because otherwise it can be very easy like I said to get stuck in the brainstorming or stuck in that first draft that first chapter if you don't continue to try to push forward so my next bit of advice is to give yourself deadlines and time limits to kind of keep yourself moving forward go okay I have you know two weeks to brainstorm and after that I'm gonna start writing then it kind of not only does it put you on a sort of deadline which will make you kind of push harder honestly but then it also forces you to step into the next stage at a certain point obviously these deadlines are movable like if you don't feel ready you can push it back I'm not saying you know get really really really strict but I would say for example if you are writing your first draft and you've been writing over a year and you want to speed up and kind of keep yourself moving so that you can get into the next stage which is editing then what you could do is set yourself a deadline of you know I'm going to finish this draft in a month that plus writing prints are probably the two biggest things you need to finish your book to have the accountability and the goal that you're aiming towards those deadlines when it comes to first draft advice we really spent a lot of time on that in the beginning with those Pinterest quotes that I showed you but I think we should talk about it a little bit more I have a video on first draft hacks right here which I will link below and I have a playlist that's focused on nanowrimo which we'll talk about more but essentially nanowrimo National novel writing month is about writing your first draft so all of the tips in this playlist are really zeroed in on the first draft and right in the first draft so you can click on playlists on my channel and you can click on this nanowrimo series to find tons of tips on things like having a plan don't compare write what you're excited about uh form writing habits and rituals which will help you get in the zone faster how to manage your time how to overcome writer's block how to overcome doubt and imposter syndrome I talk about something called rewards which is essentially giving yourself something to look forward to and be excited about that you get once you complete a certain goal I talk about growing your word count and writing great chapters and how to do World building I try not to repeat myself on this channel too much so go and watch those videos if any of them calls to you I will link them all below which leads to the next bit of advice and that is finish your book I cannot tell you how many writers including myself have spent time just writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting the first couple chapters honestly it's very foolish and I've done it so I'm not like criticizing you guys because I've been there but the reason that this is an issue is because you cannot actually learn how to write a fully formed story and learn about character arcs and story arcs and how to write middles and endings and how to write a character that grows you can't learn all these essential things if you're only writing the first couple chapters and honestly I don't know about you guys but for me I don't even get to know my characters fully until I've seen their entire story I don't feel like I know them just from the beginning I'm like it's like a very surface level relationship at that point and so the best thing you can do for yourself is honestly to let the beginning be mediocre let it be good enough for now because you can edit it later that said I do want to mention that if you do feel the need to edit before you go back into writing that's it's okay too like there's no hard and fast Rule and a lot of Raiders do like to edit as they write but I would encourage you if you want to do this to set time limits and you know deadlines for yourself in that area so that you just don't get stuck there again as long as you have a set time limit or a set amount before you move on you should be okay like for example I know some writers who will edit for an hour before they write for an hour or others who will go back and look at just the previous day's work fix that up a little bit and then move on you get the idea there is no wrong way to do this you can move forward without looking back or you can look back occasionally but the idea is to just not get stuck in one place that is the goal when it comes to advice on the first draft I also think we need to talk about writing Sprints so if you've never heard of a writing Sprint or a word Sprint they're called lots of different things the reason these are so effective is because they push you to write as many words as possible in a very short amount of time so it's in the name again it's a word Sprint writing Sprint and the idea is to it frees you up to not like question every single word and slow down because you have to get as many words as you can in a short amount of time so it just makes you write faster and not delete and agonize and stress and perfectionize that's not a word but it is now and you get the idea different people actually prefer different lengths of writing Sprints so for example I prefer a little bit shorter because I start to zone out really fast so if I can do like a 15 minute ratings brand 10 minutes is a little bit too short for me to get in the zone 20 minutes is when I have already started fading out but other people prefer 20 minutes 25 minutes other people might prefer five minutes and when I am in a really big writing slump and I just don't feel like doing it sometimes I will do five minute Sprints because just telling myself I just have to write for five minutes that's not that hard I can do that it can really really help you so it's motivating it pushes you to not not be a perfectionist and it also is something you can do with writing friends and we'll talk more about that in part three when we talk about writing friends one last bit of writing advice for first drafts before we move on to editing is that you should really really save your work back up your work because I can speak from experience and I know many other writers who can as well it's very easy to lose your work and I have only lost up to I think 10 000 words was my worst instance but that is a big chunk of writing that you never get back so I would just recommend a few different things ever since I lost that 10 000 words I have started a habit of emailing the document to myself at the end of every writing day so after I finish a writing session I email it to myself and I just keep a little folder of all of my work emailed daily over time here's one from Instagram that I think we could all benefit from and that is placeholders so cup of Ray talks about how like they use it when maybe they can't picture the rest of the scene so they're just writing dialogue that's a great example but you can do this in any way shape or form so a lot of the time for me I will use placeholder names I'll put parentheses about something I'll be like you know figure out name for this place later in parentheses or in parentheses describe them later and what they look like or what else I'll put you know write this scene later even I've done that a few times where I'm like I really don't know what's supposed to happen here so I just write like a placeholder of they're going to talk to so and so and they're going to do this and then you move on because placeholders help you not get stuck again it's all about not getting stuck you guys Janine said trust the process and do what works best for you and that kind of goes along with what living in Natalie I hope I'm saying that right said be patient with yourself and enjoy the writing process and I actually want to jump over to what Hannah Johnson Wright said because she said something very similar find ways to enjoy the process every day instead of only looking forward to the end result and I think that's really important for all of us to just remember that we got into this because we loved it a lot of us can get really hard on ourselves and have that writer's guilt or we just keep looking toward the end and that end goal of whatever publishing that just takes away the joy of the journey that you're on so enjoy the moment enjoy what you're doing right now and I think this is a great place to add advice from Renee Dugan writing and she said fail faster absolutely like I keep saying don't get stuck in one place you're going to fail but fail faster because the faster you can mess something up the sooner you can figure out what it should be so you might have to write something wrong a few times before you figure out what's right but if you aren't willing to write it wrong first you won't figure out what's right and you do have to go through the failing process to find success it's just part of the process so like Renee said fail faster Alex rice and sing said write as if no one is watching because no one is watching but I think the most important thing to share with you guys is that we all have blind spots and weaknesses You are not alone so many of us get impossible syndrome when we see the things that we're not good at but the thing is that everybody has things that they're not good at so it's normal to feel that imposter syndrome every once in a while and feel like I'm not good enough and it's good actually because it means that you're aware that you have flaws if you weren't aware that you had flaws and you thought you were the best writer ever I could pretty much guarantee that you're not the best writer ever but if you are aware of your flaws then you are also capable of growing and working on them and so just know that number one you're not alone but also I mean just think this through logically like if everybody has blind spots and weaknesses nobody's perfect nobody's a perfect writer nobody's ever written a perfect book if you look up Amazon reviews of even your favorite book I guarantee you you'll find somebody who doesn't like it and so this is the number one hurdle we have to overcome when we are editing is there is this imposter syndrome that really comes along at least for me and probably for a lot of you where like I it's not good enough maybe I should just give up but don't let these weaknesses and blind spots make you feel less than because everybody has weaknesses You are not alone you are not different from anybody else don't let them stop you from growing and getting better instead use that as your fuel to be like I'm aware that I have flaws and weaknesses and now I can fix them because I'm going to learn how to get better at each of these things and I'm going to get more aware and I'm gonna figure out more of my weaknesses and it's kind of counter-intuitive but that's how you grow is by being willing to accept your own flaws and acknowledge them not let them hold you back honestly this is kind of a life lesson I I have to be real with you guys there are so many people who they get feedback negative criticism whatever and instead of growing from it and learning from it they go no that's not true you're judging me and it's not judgment it's helping you grow like if you are willing to acknowledge your weaknesses and accept them and actually see them as a good thing kind of like Renee said fail faster be willing to fail and not get in a funk about it but instead be like okay I just found out about this weakness and now that I know about it I can fix it and I can grow I'm gonna get off my soapbox now and we're gonna move on to the next tip which is to Simply learn the rules before you break them and another tip that I have for editing and this is just my particular process is I like to personally edit for one thing at a time so a lot of people might edit for a bunch of things all at once they might just read through the document and sometimes I do that and I can't help myself I need to just kind of hit everything especially towards the end when you've kind of hit a lot of stuff already and you're just looking for the leftover problems but in the beginning in particular I like to edit for you know just Show versus tell and then just character issues and then just World building issues and then focus on you know dialogue and then focus on on the story structure and plot holes and that kind of stuff and just kind of take it one thing at a time because I found that that particular way of focusing helps me to really catch a lot more than back when I would try to do everything at once and I just didn't catch as much so I'm not perfect at it no writer's perfect we just covered that but I really really try hard especially in this latest book The Curse Hunter to do one thing at a time and get really focused and that has been very beneficial to me if you want to try this technique but you have trouble just doing the one thing because you keep seeing other stuff on the side that you want to fix even just typos or the sentence structure you don't like I would also recommend that you leave a little note for yourself either in a notebook or if you're using Microsoft Word you can just put a comment you can use the comment feature we'll talk about that in a second and you can just leave a note for yourself to be like come back to this later I want to address this I want to write it this way I want to add more Scene setting you get the idea just leave yourself those notes because then it's out of your head and you can keep moving forward with the focus that you were currently on tip number 70 billion probably at this point is it is okay to use the delete button when you are first drafting a lot of writers are very focused on word count and growing the word count but when you get to editing you kind of want to do the opposite the delete button is your friend and I have found so many cases in my stories when I look back I'm like I could have tightened that up I could have said it with less words and less is more you guys less is more when it comes to good storytelling if you can tighten something up and say the same thing with less words readers really appreciate that and something that I'm working in my own writing is to really strip things down and tighten it up so that it says the same thing with less less is more enough said let's move on to some really cool features in Microsoft Word all right I'm going to show you three features in word that I use constantly that people are always asking me about they're like what program is that it's just Microsoft Word you guys the track features the comment feature and then navigation pane are your best friend but I have my word document pulled up for the curse Hunter so you guys are going to get to see the first page as of what day it's today March 11 2020 so it's a few months away from publishing it's not done but this is what I have right now so heavywing speed the hot air almost too soft to hear unless you were listening all right here's my first issue I'm gonna write this note for myself uh don't say you find another way to say it okay so that's just something I want to remember because I think that looks stupid in writing and I don't like it but I haven't figured out how to rewrite it yet okay and I'm just looking for another place to leave a comment this one's really easy um Feats are a real world measurement try to rewrite with a more fantasy measurement okay so I've got two notes for examples in here I'm gonna click through these little arrows and you can actually jump between your comments in here and so if you would had like 100 comments you can run through all of them let's pretend I'm misspelled dragon and this is like an M or something instead okay so an editor is going to come along and your editor will turn on this track changes feature so it has to be turned on for it to work first of all but then they're going to go in and rewrite it and you can see how it changes color and it puts up a little comment on the side just like the other comments but it's actually telling you what happened delete it this word replace it with this word and so once you have track changes on you can make a lot of unique changes you can replace words you can write in whole new sentence that's horrible and that's under all markup but what if you wanted to see like what if your editor has written a bunch of new stuff for you and you just want to kind of read it and see does this flow do I like it you can change it to simple markup you can even get rid of markup all together just to get a visual for what it looks like or to take an Instagram picture but I personally prefer to see all markup it gives me just an idea of what I'm working with and again track changes is more or what your editor is going to use than your critique partner so if your editor sends you back a document like this where you're like okay yeah I misspelled that word this is better whatever it is and you want to accept it you just click accept right there or if maybe they misunderstood your intentions and you plan to rewrite it differently you can click reject as well and then last but not least I wanted to show you guys Under The View tab in the navigation pane there's a bunch of cool things as well if you have your document formatted and I like to personally write in a formatted document which I will pop up my video on how to do that and Link it below for you go check it out if you want to do that but this allows me to pop between chapters really easily and quickly kind of like scrivener and then I also really enjoy being able to click on this one so you can actually scroll through the pages like this and you can find the page that you want easily and last but not least you can actually click this little tabby thing to see how many comments and track changes there are so if you're working with an editor you can pop this little box up on the side and you can see that right now I've worked through almost all my notes so there's only five comments and that one little deletion that we just made together and you can actually see everything here and this is gonna sound strange but I actually really enjoy knowing the number of things that I have left to work on because sometimes I can just be like I'm gonna do 10 today 10 tomorrow or 20 and 20. you know you get the idea I can help you kind of figure out how much you have to do when it comes to beta reader advice my favorite bit of advice is the rule of three and that's basically saying if one person has an opinion it's just an opinion even if two people have that opinion it's still just an opinion but if three or more people have that opinion generally that's going to be what most of your readers think and how they feel so for example if you have 10 beta readers and eight of them don't like a character because they do something sketchy then you might want to address that but out of the 10 beta readers maybe only one person doesn't like that character then you're probably fine especially if the other nine are like that character is amazing I love them so much that rule of three is going to help you decide what do I address and do I even address it or is it just their opinion and this can be especially helpful when beta readers give conflicting feedback which happens all the time so use the rule of three when you have a group of people giving you feedback and figure out what is the common consensus but one thing that I haven't put in a video yet because I am pretty new to it still is that I've started to use Google forms to do my beta reader feedback and the cool thing about Google forms is that it puts all the information and compiles it for you into one spreadsheet so in the past I had my Beta readers all sending me their individual Word documents after they finish reading with the question questions and answers and then I would have to take and copy paste copy paste copy paste and it would take me literally a week to get through all that information from all the different beta readers and it was just such a pain and so now when I use Google Docs I have them answered directly in Google Docs I just paste a link into the word document they click on it they answer my questions and then when everybody's done I just compile their feedback in that one spreadsheet and all I have to do really is tweak it a little bit to the way that I want it to look and print it that's it it saves me a ton of time and work and I think my Beta readers really like it as well alright next we have advice for publishing and so number one is do your research number two do your research and oh look at that number three is also do your research if you don't know something I can almost guarantee that you can find that information on the internet if you're willing to put in the time and energy it takes to find it and so I would go into that in detail but honestly I think if you guys are here watching this video then you probably already know that so kudos to you keep rocking and keep researching what you need to know number two self-publishing is not a backup plan and the reason I bring this up is because there are unfortunately a lot of people who think well maybe I'll just self-publish and see how it does and then I'll try traditional publishing because they want that speed of self-publishing but they don't really want to do all the work they really want the publisher in the end so go after the one that you actually want you guys I don't know how else to phrase that but self-publishing is not a good backup option for many many reasons but there's one in particular that I think you should know if you're self-publishing a book you're pretty much guaranteeing that it will never be traditionally published and I actually had a chance to listen to a bunch of Agents talk about this once at a conference and they were discussing you know generally what would make them even consider a self-published book because the fact is once you self-publish they can see your sales there is a very clear sales record and unless a book sells thousands and thousands of copies they're not going to be interested they were discussing like what number of sales would make them change their mind and consider not definitely but just consider a self-published book and the Very lowest number that I heard was 10 000 or more and I heard other agents say no I need it to be like 50 000 and just so you guys have like a idea of comparison the average traditionally published book sells roughly 2 000 to 3000 in its lifetime and I say average because there's more and there's less but those are the statistics that I've heard so we're talking like three to five times more than the average just to give you an idea number three is that self-publishing is a long game and this is true in both traditional publishing and self-publishing but in different ways traditional publishing it's very much a long game because there's a lot of waiting you have to query and then wait to hear your back and then if you get an agent you have to wait to hear from a publisher and then if you get a publishing deal you have to wait for it to get published a very long time and so there's a lot it's it's a very long game obviously and then for self-publishing it's a long game when it comes to making money because there's a lot that goes into self-publishing before you really learn what you need to know and that struggle is normal there's really no such thing as an overnight success in publishing it might look like it from a distance but if you get to know anybody's story you will find out very quickly that they're almost guaranteed to be years and years of hard work and persistence that they put in before they became that overnight success so just be aware of that and if you're in it for the money it's probably not the best choice if you are getting into publishing especially self-publishing for external validation it's also probably not the best choice neither of these external motivators or really any other external motivators are enough for you to truly success seed and thrive in publishing so just know that know that you need an internal motivation if this is going to be a good fit for you let's move on to other advice that I think is also important but that we haven't really had a chance to touch on yet number one is that writing friends are one of the absolute best resources for helping you finish your book they are a wonderful soundboard but they are also accountability and they are also people who are going through what you're going through and are going to understand it like nobody else we'll talk quite a bit more about writing friends in part three on writing resources because writing friends are one of the greatest resources you can possibly have and I want to really dig into how to find them but the short version the advice version is to simply be a friend I want to bring in a little bit more of that advice from the Instagram poll so author Brianna Rima said that the best advice is that writing should always come first before platform and the other extra stuff and I strongly agree I actually have a video called writing comes first when I just sort of had that as a revelation and I realized that I had been doing a lot of the more platform stuff and the things that are more instantly gratifying the things that you can finish in a day versus a book which can take a year and it it's very easy to do that because like I said it's that accomplishment I personally like to check things off a list and so I will often do the smallest things first because then check them off the list right and so I would do my Instagram posts and social media and fix my website and you name it in author newsletter but those things should come after the writing and so if you can really prioritize writing that is going to progress your book along quite a bit faster because there's always something that's going to not get done that's normal that's just like we we all have a limited amount of time but if you put your book first then you're much more likely to be guaranteed to get that done versus if you put it last which a lot of us do Emily Morgan says write for yourself first I completely agree with this one as well if you are getting a little too focused on what other people want to hear and what other stories are out there it can really take away that creativity and it can take away the joy of writing and so just remember the stuff that you wanted to write and why you got into writing part three resources this video is going to have five sections we're going to talk about books we're going to talk about something called authortube in case you've never heard of it you are watching it right now an author on YouTube we're going to talk about National novel writing month writing friends and hold on horses quick shout out to my patrons over on patreon for requesting this video so many times that I finally buckled down and decided to do it it took me honestly hours to plot out all these three videos for you guys to make sure I covered everything so I really hope you enjoyed them also right down there is this thumbs up button that you can use and a subscribe button but moving on from that let's get into the resources alright number one is books I had to grab this off my bookshelf this is my number one recommendation of all time I cannot promote this book enough you guys this is literally the best thing that I have ever read and I've read a lot of books on writing because I was a English major with a creative writing emphasis in college so I had a good chunk of books on my bookshelf but nothing helped me specifically with novel writing as much as this book here I have a whole save the cat playlist here on YouTube with my critique partner Brittany Wang where we actually used the beat sheet in this book there's 15 beats to plot out a novel and we plotted out a novel together live once a week for 10 weeks I'll make sure to link that series below and you can go watch the rest of them from there if you're interested in that but this book has a beat sheet of 15 beats to plot out your story and make sure that you're hitting all the really major plot points that books have you'd be surprised how almost every book I've ever read falls into the beat sheet but I will just say because there are people out there who are not plotters and that's totally okay that if you are a pantser and you prefer to just write your book by the seat of your pants this can also be very helpful for editing the first like three or four chapters are what you have to read to learn the concept and figure out plotting and then from there on there's about 10 or so chapters about actually breaking down the beats in different types of stories so that you can actually see this in progress and learn from it anyway I will link this book below for you along with all the other books that I mentioned in this video series but I just wanted to point out that Jessica Brody came on our YouTube channels and talked to Brittany and I over on our save the cat playlist and we also did this you YouTube video together which I'll link below as well my second favorite writing book of all time is Bird by bird encouragement type really gives you a fun like look inside a writer's head so you can feel like you're not alone and this is a book that I actually got during college otherwise I don't know if I would have ever heard of it just to give you an example from the content section she has getting started short assignments uh talk about perfectionism she talks a lot about how to really narrow in on story ideas and get ideas about that about character dialogue how to know when you're done jealousy even and we've moved a few times since I last read this but I used to have a ton of quotes in here you can see that it's like well loved there's a lot of comments in here and I used to write a lot of quotes out and put them on my wall just as encouragement to remind me that this is normal everything I'm going through is normal so this is just again huge on encouragement another one that I own that I think should be mentioned is on writing by Stephen King I've actually not finished reading this because it was along the lines of encouragement but I preferred Bird by bird writing style but some people will prefer Stephen King's writing style and so I just want to give this an honorable mention and another one on story structure that I also want to to give an honorable mention is the anatomy of Story by John truby I hope I'm saying that right and so this book is another one that I was recommended and I haven't really finished reading it just because I love save the cat so much but if you are a person who needs to kind of read multiple things I think this one talks more like 3x structure and stuff like that so anything on writing craft that you can get your hands on like this will also be very helpful and one last book that I want to mention is how to write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card he is the author of Ender's Game and a bunch of other novels that I can't think of at the moment but this is an awesome book specifically for like World building and things like that this can be really really interesting and I really enjoyed it this is one that I got in college during my last semester when I let my professor know I wanted to try novel writing and so this was the recommendation at the time because my professor didn't really know anything about novel writing and I definitely got a lot out of this book one other quick honorable mention is the notebooks that I make these are a lot like bullet journals so they're just gonna have different sections for Words Brands and to do this and right in the beginning there's a Tracker and like weekly spreads and things like that I made two versions of the planner they're exactly the same on the inside this is the darker cover and then there's a lighter cover of my favorite picture ever so if you're curious about this go check out my website I will link it below as well all right the second one is authortube authortube just stands for authors on YouTube and so it's just this little corner of the internet where a bunch of authors try to help each other out by giving advice or just sharing stories or whatever else related to writing so I'm gonna actually take you over to my computer screen right now and we're gonna look at my YouTube page and so here on YouTube you can see on the right side I have my favorite YouTubers now the trick here is that I have it on rotate because there's too many so at any point in time it can change so what I have to do to show you everybody is I actually have to go in to the customize and then I have to click on see it's on shuffle here it says it on the right and so you can see all and now it's changed a little little bit but I'm just going to click see all so that I can show you really quick all the people here and then you can go to my YouTube channel and click on any of their channels at any time is on the right sidebar there and you might have to rotate it and refresh a few times to see everybody you can see that I have a little bit of a balance because sometimes it can help to look outside of the writing community and I just wanted to mention that as well I just want to point out that you can pretty much find anything you need on YouTube if you want to search it you can probably find something to help you so I just encourage you guys to do that oh and I should probably also say if you enjoy YouTube videos you can always check out my channel right here this is me I have tons of great videos and I also make playlists as you can see on things like nanowrimo on beta readers on author life outlining a novel writing advice marketing your book how to self-publish Etc so definitely go ahead and check that out too the third resource that I want to bring up is courses but I'm actually not going to talk about this very much because honestly it's my personal opinion that you can get all most everything you need to know for free I have a lot of people ask me all the time do you need to have you know an English major or a college degree in general to be an author and the answer is no as long as you have willingness to learn and fingers to type and research on Google you'll be fine we talked about this during the writing advice video but honestly one of the absolute best ways to learn how to write is to just do it and so that is honestly the best teacher in my opinion and again like I said you can research and learn but if you want to jump start your learning and kind of skip a few steps and learn from somebody who's been where you are a course can be valuable as long as you make sure you do your research and check out two things number one is it a credible teacher and number two are they where you want to be because why would you learn from somebody who's not doing what you want to do so for example you could take college courses but I honestly learned very little about writing from my college classes and my professors because they were not doing the type of writing that I wanted to do they had not been where I wanted to go so they couldn't help me get there and then one other course that I have tried is skillshare and I honestly wasn't that impressed by it I just have to be totally honest with you guys I think that it can be very helpful for learning some things and there's some cool things about publishing on there and marketing and Instagram and other stuff like that but there wasn't a lot at the time that I was on it about writing I don't think there was really anything at the time that I was on there specific about writing but one class that I have heard a lot of people talk about and I've heard only good things so far is master class and I don't feel qualified to be a writing teacher I'm going to be straightforward with you but if you want to know more about self-publishing that I actually do have a course on now and I will link that below it's on udemy and also on writing Mastery Academy and I would highly recommend it because it's everything that I know about self-publishing number four is nanowrimo and I'll just clarify here that stands for National novel writing month and National novel writing month or nanowrimo which most people call it is actually in November so again let's go to my screen really quick so nanowrimo is something where you can Google and check it out and sign up for it if you want to but it is something where writers from around the world come together and write their books together and so it's really an accountability thing uh in this really fun push and so just so you guys know it's not like a competition where you get any reward besides you know I wrote a book that's a big reward a lot of people think you win something you don't win anything except the awesomeness of having written a book and so you can sign in like I am right here and you can see that right now it's in Camp because the official national novel writing month is every November and writers get together to specifically write 50 000 words that's the goal you don't obviously have to do it nobody's making you do anything but I also want to point out that there's actually something called Camp nanowrimo which happens in April and July and so in Camp nanowrimo it's the same feel you set up a project it's your book in this this case you can see I had one called too many projects all at once which was a whole other thing and I had a goal there but you can actually create specific goals for you so if you know that you actually don't want to write you want to be editing your novel you can have an editing month and you can still do and participate in nanowrimo and you can set a word count goal of your own as it says right here for any writing project so I would definitely encourage you guys to go check out the nanowrimo website and then go ahead and sign up for it because there's also this community tab here and forums that you can specifically ask questions and get to know people there are groups and you can even find Regions and go to your home region and find out about what are the writers in your specific area of the world doing and can you actually meet in person you can find out things like that right here and then of course they also have really cool resources like the pep talks here and ways to prep for the event and all these other cool resources I am definitely going to join the camp and I'm going to be working on the enchanted crown and I'm currently where working on prepping it but soon I will be in progress and the cool thing about Camp nanowrimo is you know the national novel writing month in November is focused on writing but in camps you can change it to editing like this and now I want to edit my 50 000 word novel and that is actually my goal so that's perfect last but not least is writing friends so I'm joking with Penny here but really I do mean human friends who can actually help you with your story and talk to you about story what's happening are you okay okay I kind of gave this away a little bit already how much they can help you in finishing your book but that accountability of having other people with you is amazing I cannot emphasize this enough it's really helpful to have other people you're so distracting other people are much less distracting than dogs hi thank you but I just want to encourage you guys if you're like I don't have any writing friends nobody has writing friends when they start out everybody starts out without writing friends the way that you get them is to be a friend and actually go out where other writers are so if that means going on the nanowrimo website and actually connecting with people in the forums it can take a while to find writing friends you connect with but you can also find them on social media on Instagram for example on Twitter there are writers everywhere so what you need to do to make writing friends is be a writing friend ask questions talk about stories talk about books you love not everybody's going to be a perfect fit and that's okay one other place that I'd really encourage you guys to go look for writing friends is actually on my patreon page and over on patreon we have what I call the writers club and this is just a private writing group that we have over on patreon you get access to the Discord group as soon as you join you just get a link that brings you over to Discord it's like a chat room for other writers and we get to know each other there's tons of cool channels on things like writing and your WIP and Drafting and editing and beta readers and CPS and what else publishing marketing authortube even if you're looking to meet writing friends and you want a great place to start definitely recommend that let me just angle this down so you can actually see what's happening here you little goof yeah you all right Penny we're almost done I promise we just want to say bye to everybody thank you guys for watching we really appreciate you give this video a thumbs up don't fall don't fall oh my gosh I got you okay you are so strange also don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and ring the notification Bell next to the Subscribe button if you want to get notified next time I have a video you are hanging off the chair what are you doing like this you have a lot of trust my girl thank you guys for watching and I will talk to you again very soon bye foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Bethany Atazadeh - YA Fantasy Author

Views: 19,773

Keywords: how to write a novel, bethany atazadeh, self publishing, how to write a book, writing advice, authortube, authortuber, writing a fantasy novel, writing fantasy

Id: 7Q7apgCFJ0Y

Length: 80min 3sec (4803 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2023