Developing a New Book Idea
We’ve talked before about “Is my idea good enough?” - which is a concern every writer faces. When you do finally have an idea that won’t leave you alone - well, then what?
Ditch the Doubt
Don’t waste your time wondering if the book idea will sell. Is it marketable? Is it interesting enough? Am I talented enough to pull it off? Honestly, who knows! You can chase the hype train of whatever is popular these days, but at the end of the day - you deserve to write the story that you love, and only you can do that.
Focus on actually writing the story first. You can worry about how to sell the book later. One thing at a time!
Get Going
If you have your idea ready to go, the best thing you can do is get started. Chances are you are going to get stuck - and that’s okay! Get writing and do your best. Make a special note of what you love about this idea - that’ll be helpful down the line when it gets tough! Get as much down as you can. Once you get stuck, you’re on to the next step!
Dig Deeper
Maybe you want to outline, or you want to build up your characters. If you are writing in the sci-fi, fantasy, or dystopian genre, you might have to world build some more, or else you should probably research whatever else you are talking about (a setting, a character’s career, etc).
At this point, you want to make sure you have some semblance of a plot, including conflict, and some general characters including a protagonist and antagonist (in general).
Find out what is slowing you down or holding you back, and start making notes, plans, and outlines. Once you have the idea filled out a bit more, you’re ready to jump back in there!
Editing
The hardest part about “jump back in there”, in my experience, is that you probably already put a ton of work in just jotting down your idea to begin with. The “Get Going” step is exhausting, and now you are stuck. Do you go back and just start from scratch now that you have all these fancy new notes? Or do you pick up where you left off and hope things come together? My advice is always to save the editing for later. There is no point in editing your work if you don’t finish it. Finish writing first, then you can go back and edit the mess. A first draft is never going to be good, no matter how many times you pause writing to go over it. The best thing you can do is actually produce that first draft.
(You can find more on editing here).
The main point I want to emphasis is: Get that first draft. It’s okay if it’s not good yet. It’s okay if no one wants to buy it. The important thing is that once you have a first draft, you have a place to start.
Best of luck and happy writing!