Growing up, “author” to me seemed synonymous with “astronaut.” It’s just something other people did, but not me. Technically possible, but completely unrealistic for the vast majority of people. I could barely turn in my school assignments on time, so I definitely didn’t have what it took to sit down and write an entire book!

Or at least that’s what I thought for years. In fact, even as someone who enjoys playing with words, I actively avoided all creative writing courses during high school and college on the grounds that it simply wasn’t “realistic” or practical. I was going to be an attorney. Creative writing was for the artsy people, not me!

Well, fast forward to the end of my college journey, and the whole law school thing (mercifully) didn’t work out. Unfortunately, I kind of didn’t have a plan B in place, and my chosen degree didn’t seem to lend itself to much other than being somewhat acceptable on a law school application. As an English Literature major, I definitely knew how to read books, and even write about what I read, but actually authoring my own book? Who did I think I was?

But there’s a saying about nature and vacuums. I was directionless, and more importantly, bored, following the breakdown of my traditional cookie cutter path. Despite my best efforts to find a similarly logical solution, I was hit with a sudden epiphany: I was going to write a book, and not just any book. An epic, high fantasy, large scale world with it’s own rules, customs, and of course, magic. Never mind that I had avoided any formal creative writing advice my entire life. This was my new destiny.

How did I do it? Well, as many epic fantasy writers like to say: read and find out.

Step 1: The Idea Phase

When you write a book, fiction or not, you need ideas. Not an idea. No, you need a decent handful, at least. Don’t believe me? Go open a word document and try to start a story with just one idea, say, a story about a mutant who is both a werewolf and a vampire at the same time. It’s not a bad idea, truthfully. But wait a minute. Where does this werepire live? What is the the vampwolf’s personality like? Who are his friends, who are his enemies, what does his world look like? What is his purpose, his destiny?

As you can see, an idea isn’t much on its own. By itself, it will only get you so far. But, there’s good news. As you might have noticed above, any idea, provided it’s intriguing enough, will automatically ask you questions about itself. It will implore you to explore more about it, to ponder the implications of its new existence in your mind. If it’s a truly good, unique, and rich idea, then you will find something that I realized early in the writing process: ideas beget other ideas.

For the novel I wrote, the first words that came to my mind were “The White Warlock.” At that moment, I didn’t have much besides that. But I was intrigued by the paradox I had spontaneously created with this particular contrast of words. “White” implies good, benevolent, while “Warlock” has darker, more occult undertones. How could something like this exist?

That very question was what began the fecundation of ideas that started to brew in my mind over the next several days. I asked myself what kind of world a “white warlock” would live in. I asked myself what made him so different from other warlocks. I pondered the implications of a world where some magicians were benevolent, while others were evil. What would the consequences of such a world look like? What would people that held magic want to do with it?

I realized that such a world would create people who were selfish, and who wouldn’t want to share their powerful secrets with others. Quickly my narrative started forming: I was creating a world where dark magicians had taken over a magical world, and to maximize their control, they lied in 1984-esque fashion to the society they governed that magic was nonexistent. My basic premise was formed: a magic world where magic was made illegal; its very existence suppressed to keep a naive public down.

But my work was not done. With the edges of my world becoming a little more defined, I started to invent backstories, characters, customs, and laws that would govern and populate this world. I realized that magic had to come from somewhere, and decided that in my world, it would come from the moons. And from this thought, I tied in my original idea of “The White Warlock,” weaving it into a magician endowed with power from the moons themselves, distinguished from other evil sorcerers who used dark magic only for selfish purposes.

And the ideas simply kept coming. Like multiplication, once I got going, it was almost hard to contain all the ideas I was having. Once you are at the point where the ideas are overwhelming you – and believe me, you will get to this point – it is time to begin selectively choosing which ones you want to keep and which ones to discard. After you have written down a substantial amount of these “good” ideas – I’m talking pages and pages worth – then it’s onto step two.

Step 2: Putting the Pieces Together

When you are comfortable with the quality and amount of details you have for your story, it’s time to start seeing how they fit together. Ideas, you see, are kind of like puzzle pieces. But they’re not super rigid and defined like a physical puzzle. They are malleable, flexible, and can go just about anywhere and fit next to mostly anything. Not only that, but because they often are formed from other ideas you’ve already created, they tend to fit together very neatly and compactly if you employ some strategic thinking when forming them together.

Indeed, in order to have a story, you do need to make sure that you are fitting your ideas together somehow. Like my example above, the idea of the “White Warlock” and the magical moons were two separate ideas, but they mended together quite auspiciously for my narrative. Similarly, the idea of a society where magic is kept forbidden and swept under the rug worked together with this concept as well. I decided that my protagonist initially would have no idea about his powers because society lied and told him there was no such thing. The ideas didn’t necessarily have to form in this way, and they were all separate initially, but you can quickly see how combining them together is a sure way to start seeing the beginnings of an actual narrative structure.

Initially, my skeleton of a story looked something like this: fantasy tyrants lie about the reality of magic; boy receives powers from the moons; boy discovers his own powers; boy resolves to expose the tyrants for their lies. While this has the makings of a real story, it is still very skeletal in nature, but from this you can build and expound even further. It’s exciting when you realize that the more you build your world, the more the gaps seem to fill themselves, and the ideas keep flowing.

As a matter of fact, “Step 1: The Idea Phase” doesn’t exactly ever end. It is the first step, don’t get me wrong – you cannot even begin a narrative without a few ideas. However, ideas are like the fuel for your story, and you will constantly need to come up with new ones in order to keep it going. With these ideas, you can begin seeing how they interact with one another, and once your story becomes a very well defined set of ideas, rules, people, and events, then you are ready for the next step.

Step 3: Creating a Roadmap

Once your ideas have started to fit together nicely, like a well-crafted puzzle or Lego set, then it’s time to decide exactly how these ideas will unfold in the perceived time and space continuum of your narrative. In other words, how quickly and in what order you choose to reveal these puzzle pieces, one at a time, until your readers will begin to see the larger picture that you already do.

What this looked like for me was a detailed outline of what would happen in my story, chapter by chapter, bullet by bullet, event by event. While it may sound daunting, almost like writing an entire story from scratch, I found at this point in my drafting process that the outline practically wrote itself. The reason why is because I had so many ideas to draw from, such a rich narrative filled with connections, characters, places, and rules, that moving the plot forward from one event to the next was simply a selection process of what I wanted unleash from my arsenal of unified ideas.

Now, there is an art to this. You do want to lead with some of your coolest ideas, but, you don’t want to front-load your story with everything good you’ve got. Ideally, you will sprinkle in the events and characters of your story like well-placed Easter eggs, allowing your readers to find them consistently, but not all at once, and not to early or too late. The idea is to keep them engaged throughout the entirety of the time, and one way to help with this is to put yourself in their shoes. Constantly think to yourself, “how would I react to what’s happening? Would I be overwhelmed and confused, or excited and curious?” By keeping your reader in mind, you will have a legend to orient your story towards.

As you can probably tell, this is the phase where things really start to come together. Your ideas aren’t just connected now – they are the individual working parts of a whole. Your story is really beginning to take shape at this point, and how defined you want it to be is up to you. I personally was very thorough in my outline, presenting even minute details that I thought interesting and necessary, and indeed, the length of my outline ended up being about 17% of the length of the book itself!

However, the thoroughness of your outline is up to you. If you are a “figure it out later” kind of a person, and trust yourself to think on your feet, then this can certainly work out for you. I found, though, that the more effort you put into one, the less effort you’ll need to put in the other. After I had a very thorough outline, I was seldom left wondering what to write about in a given chapter, what would happen next, how to make this plot device work, etc., when I finally began drafting my manuscript.

Step 4: Writing the Story

Once you have a concrete road map and general, “10,000 foot view” of what is going to happen in your story, you are well-prepared to start writing it. I don’t want to imply that it’s impossible to start with this step without completely going through the previous ones, but I will say that if you try to jump the gun too much, you are very likely to get stuck in your writing process. The reason is because if you do what has been mentioned already, you will have a very firm foundation for your characters, your world, your plot, and your overall themes and style to fall back on. If you improvise too much, you may run into a brick wall with either a lack of ideas, or a conflict between them: yes, the dreaded “plot hole” can arise if you don’t adequately prepare your story with a satisfying trajectory that follows its own rules and works together cohesively as a whole, which is what you have been building if you go through the process I’ve described.

But what does writing your story actually look like? This is the part where you really start envisioning your world, putting yourself inside the shoes of the characters you have created, using their minds as if you are in them, and describing what you’re seeing, hearing, feeling, and dreaming through their perspectives, guiding your readers along the roadmap you’ve created as if they are right beside you. You are in your world now. It’s like building a house and moving into it. You’re there – now, you just need to find a way to explain what it feels like in words with the resources you have.

What should you write first? The most palpable, crucial, vivid scenes that you already have in your head, that’s what. Start with these critical moments in your book because they will be anchors for you to point towards as you fill in the rest of the story. Chances are, if you have a good idea of what they feel like, these are going to be the most essential and impactful parts of your book, and you should definitely flesh them out while they’re still fresh and hot in your mind. It doesn’t matter where they are chronologically, whether it’s near the beginning, middle, or end, what matters is how real it feels to you. Not only are they the best to start with, they are also the easiest because of how clear they already are in your imagination.

Once you have these anchor scenes written, my recommendation would be to begin to write your story chronologically, chapter by chapter, starting with the beginning, and ending with the end. Doing this after writing your most pivotal scenes will be a relief because you know what’s coming, and can craft your prose in a way that foreshadows these prominent events, making your story more intriguing. If, during this process you are suddenly flooded with imagery of a particular scene later on in your book, don’t hesitate to write it! It’s coming to you for a reason, and it will serve you to put it down on paper while you still can. Otherwise, writing chronologically will ensure that there is a logical and stylistic continuity between chapters and scenes that will, hopefully, build momentum towards the most important parts of your book.

Step 5: Revise, Revise, Revise!

You thought we were done, didn’t you? Yeah, I did too. Until I realized that my “complete” first draft wasn’t complete at all. It will take humility for you to realize that your book, in it’s first draft at least, is not finished without the help of outside perspectives. The ideas you’ve created and weaved together are going to paint an interesting picture that many can appreciate, however, the reality is that some ideas simply don’t work, and need to be adjusted in order to better fit into your narrative, and sometimes as authors we have tunnel vision about what is going on inside our little worlds.

You need to go into this process with an open mind. Anything is subject to change. Your prose may need to be fine-tuned. One of your characters might need to be adjusted. A particular plot point may need to be reworked or done away with. And perhaps most difficultly, portions of your manuscript may simply need to be cut altogether, sometimes replaced with something else, and sometimes not.

For me, I had to do significant work on my main character, as well as the introduction portion of my novel, that is, the first 20-25% of the book. I scrapped about 85% of what I had written at the beginning and started over with scratch. It simply wasn’t working, and didn’t fit in with the rest of the novel. I also had to subtly adjust my main character to make him more likeable as well as heroic, because in my first draft, he was perceived as overly arrogant and spoiled. There were a few plot points that I had to do away with, or at least change in a significant way. I changed the names of one of my institutions as well, and fine-tuned my prose, dialogue, and other miscellaneous details to boot. This process sounds difficult, and it does come with some amount of effort, but it is more deeply satisfying than I originally thought it would be. This is the part of your story where something good is being refined into something great. Where the sculpture is simply having a few imperfections and issues turned from weaknesses into strengths.

Get as much feedback as you can, and look for patterns. Not every complaint means there is something wrong, and some people will like certain parts of your story that others find less appealing. You are the ultimate judge in this process, however, don’t let your ego get in the way of accepting and being grateful for suggestions for improvement. Anyone giving them is almost always doing so in an effort to help you, and if you listen, your manuscript will almost certainly be better off for it.

What Comes Next?

Once you are totally satisfied, and feel the manuscript is the best you can make it, it is time to explore the many options available to you for publishing your work, as well as getting professional intervention and perspective onto your book. This is the phase I now find myself, as most of my revising is behind me, and I look forward to sharing this part of my journey with you!

-Jaden Larson