Starting a book can be a daunting experience.

Maybe you have an idea. But how on earth does an idea transform into an actual book?

It can become especially daunting when looking at other author's impressive plots, worlds, characters, words. It's very easy to imagine that these books just effortlessly spilled themselves onto paper, and that the author writing them knew from the start exactly what she was doing. Before I started writing myself, I thought this. I always thought that the difference between a first draft of a story, and the final, was basically just fixing any grammar errors / typos – and that ideas came out fully formed.

How wrong I was!

No-one's idea for a book comes out fully formed. And this is a great thing to know for us writers – because it makes the process feel slightly less intimidating.

So - how to go about turning an idea into a book?

When writing a book, writers fall somewhere on the Plotter to Pantser spectrum.

A Plotter is someone who outlines and plans their book before they write it (J. K. Rowling is apparently a plotter. You can see her detailed calendar of the events of 5th year Hogwarts if you do a Google search! It's very cool!)

A Pantser, on the other hand, is someone who 'writes by the seat of their pants'. Basically, a Pantser has no plan or outline to follow. They freestyle!

I've called it a Plotter/Pantser spectrum, because I think a lot of us, even if we favour one method more than another, tend to still borrow from the other camp from time to time (e.g. a plotter might not stick rigidly to a plan, or a Panstser may have some loose ideas jotted down before they start).

I, personally, lean toward the Pantser side. I like to discover and explore my world and characters as I'm writing.

Below - I'm going to outline my 8 steps to writing a novel as a Pantser!

Step 1. Have an idea

All books start with an idea!

If you're anything like me you'll probably have a bunch of ideas floating around your head at any one time! So how do you pick one?

I usually like to let my ideas brew in my mind for a little while before putting pen to paper. After a little while. usually one will start to stand out to me more than the others. And while it's brewing and maturing, I tend to create a playlist of music that fits the idea – and I listen to it. A lot!

Doing this usually brings to mind scenes, characters, and more ideas. Sometimes during this part of the process, I'll even realize that my main idea links with other ideas I've had.

Step 2. Determine your main conflict

When I've settled on an idea the first thing I want to do is determine a conflict. I'm not a plotter – but I still want to write down my conflict before I get started.

The conflict is essentially the backbone of your story. It's what the main character wants, what obstacle will be thrown in their path, and what the consequence of not overcoming this obstacle will be.

All stories have a conflict.

In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone the conflict is;

Harry must retrieve the Philosopher's Stone before Voldermort's agent does, otherwise the dark lord will return.

Your book will have other conflicts, but the main conflict is what you're going to be building your story on. It's your foundation. It will have some relation to every chapter you write and so you're making life a lot easier for yourself if you have it in the back of your mind while you're writing from the very start.

During this stage, to help me determine my conflict, I'll usually jot words, ideas, characters down on a scrap of paper.

Here's an example of what I scribbled down before I started Thorn :

Step 3: Write the first three chapters

Next, I will write the first three chapters. At this stage – even with my conflict and idea in mind, I don't really know where I'm going with the story yet.

Writing these first three chapters allows me to start discovering the world and the characters. I'll write, fairly aimlessly at first (although sticking to my conflict), just seeing where my writing naturally progresses to – and as I'm doing so, and things are starting to happen I'll be thinking: 

'Why is this happening?', 'Does it make sense for my character to do this?', 'Is this a problem?', 'What is the relationship between these people?' 'how would this character react?', 'why?', 'what would this place look like?' etc. And I'll be simultaneously fixing things, exploring things, building things.

I'll mess around with these three chapters until I'm fairly happy with them. At this point my world and characters will have become much more established in my mind. And because of this I usually start to see a somewhat disjointed path to the end of the book.

If – at this stage – scenes, and ideas for later on in the book aren't springing into my mind I will quite often shelve the idea for a bit. For me, personally, it means the idea is not fully matured, something is missing/wrong – and I don't want to force it out before it's ready. (however – this may not be the case for you so don't take my word for that).

Step 4: Join the dots

Next, for me, it's just about joining the dots!

As I mentioned in the previous stage, after I've written the first three chapters I'll start imagining scenes and points in the book. In this stage I'm just finding the words and scenes to link up these scenes on my journey to the end of the book.

Something that is helpful in enabling me to do this is not worrying about perfection. At this point, I just want to get the words down. This is only my first draft after all.

As said by Terry Pratchett:

"The first draft is just you telling yourself the story."​

As a Pantser – my characters are often not fully formed at this stage: there may be certain points in the plot that are a bit weird, I might be 'telling' more than 'showing' with my descriptions, there's probably going to be errors and odd grammar and plot holes – but at this point I don't care. I can fix all that later. I just want to get to the end.

"You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page." - Jodi Picoult

Step 5: Finish the first draft

Now I've finished the first draft! Time to party! Yay!

(Actually – weirdly – every time I finish a first draft, I always expect myself to be really excited! But it always feels a bit of an anti-climax. Does anyone else feel that way?!)

Step 6: Take a little break

When I've finished my first draft, I tend to let it sit in a metaphorical drawer for at least a month. I need some time away from it so that I can create a little distance between myself and the story. When I get to the next stage I want to be able to look at it with fresh eyes so I can more easily see any problems with it.

Step 7: Edit! Edit! Edit!

Now comes the hard work! This stage is all about editing the first draft. It's about determining problem points and fixing them, it's about further developing characters, it's about re-writing things that could be better, and being brutal by deleting things that don't work!

I'll start the editing process by printing off the manuscript – I find holding it in my hands as an actual physical thing helps me. Then I'll read it – maybe making a few notes, but mostly just getting a feel again for the story. At the end of reading through I'll think of any massive underlying problems that I think effect the whole feel of the book.

(e.g. in Cupid's Match the biggest issue I had with it when I'd read back the first draft was the main character came across too passive. I realised I needed to give her more motivation to be a part of the story).

This is a Cupid's Match draft!

Then I'll go through again, this time scribbling all over the story! Determining where to add scenes, what needs to be cut, what doesn't work, what should be re-written.

And I'll start fixing.

Up until now - all my editing is mostly around plot and character. My last part of the editing process tends to be fixing grammar / making sure the sentences flow properly etc.

Note: At some point during this process, you're probably going to want to get someone else's eyes on the story. Someone who can give you honest (and brutal) feedback about what's working and what isn't. For me, because I write online on Wattpad, I quite often have a lot of comments and feedback already from the first draft before I even start to edit, which really helps me during the editing stages.

Step 8: Finish (for now)!

Finally – I'll get the book to a stage that I'm happy with, a stage where I've personally done all I think I can do. And I'll realise I've finished the book (for now)! But – though I've done as much as I can personally do - there will be more work to come if I want to sell my book (working with professional editors, pitching to publishers etc.)!

What happens next really depends what you want to do with the story (traditionally publish, self-publish, post serially online)!

What is your story writing process? Let me know in the comments below!