So, you want to write a book?
First of all, that’s awesome. It’s so much fun to have ideas swirling around in your head, thumping against your chest, begging to come out. The fact that you have the courage to even attempt bringing your ideas to life is impressive. Not everyone has those ideas, or that courage.
But now what?
I was asked to give advice specifically for a fourteen-year-old who wanted help getting started with her first book. Before I do that, though, I want to explain why I’m giving this advice to begin with. I myself was a teenage author once. I started writing my very first book when I was ten years old, in a notebook that I still keep in my desk. I don’t talk very often about that very first book. It has a similar plot to The Lion King, but the main characters were deer, and everything was very dramatic.
When I was thirteen, I moved on to bigger and brighter things, and I finished the rough draft of Where the Clouds Catch Fire just a few days before my fourteenth birthday. I edited it on and off until January of 2019, when I self-published it with Amazon. Its sequel, Where I Stand, was released a few months later. Where Arrows Fall was written while I was in college and published in 2023, when I was twenty-two. Now, I am twenty-five, and I am waiting on some feedback before finishing my first fantasy novel.
Am I successful? Not financially. If my books bring in more than $10 a month, I’m happy. In fact, that’s my first piece of advice to aspiring authors: publishing a book requires a completely different skillset from writing a book. Marketing is hard. Querying literary agents is hard. Trying to avoid scams and vanity presses is hard. If you want your book to be read by other people, if you want to make money off your books, or if you want to build a career as an author, talk to someone else. I have no idea what I’m doing. I can help you write your book, but that’s about it.
Which leads us to the question: how do you write a book?
Different writers answer that question in different ways. Generally speaking, there are two types of writers. Authors who make and follow outlines are called “Plotters.” I once had a writer friend who outlined every single chapter of her books before she sat down to write. I’m not like that. I’m more of what’s known as a “Pantser,” which comes from the phrase “flying by the seat of one’s pants,” which apparently means “making stuff up as you go along.”
The plotter-pantser divide is more of a spectrum than a binary. Some people will start writing a book without knowing how it ends. I could never do that. Personally, before I sit down to write a book, I know how it starts, how it ends, and a few key details in the middle. I know the main character and the villain. The rest, I come up with as I go. If you’re a new writer, experiment a bit. Figure out what works for you and run with it. If outlines help you stay focused, awesome! Otherwise, ignore them. They’re not a requirement for being a good writer.
The medium you write with is also important. Personally, I quickly switched from writing in a notebook to writing on a laptop because I prefer a digital format for editing. At first, I used Microsoft Word, but now I use a specialized writing software called yWriter and LibreOffice. Why these apps? They’re free and I hate spending money. Again, find whatever works for you. You might prefer using a pen and paper. I knew someone who wrote on her phone. Whatever medium you use, make sure to have backups if possible. There’s nothing worse than losing months’ worth of work.
There are, of course, a *lot* of other things to think about. Developing characters, plots, subplots, pacing, word choice, sentence length and structure—stories have a lot of moving parts. The good news about all of this is that all writers, regardless of how old they are, start out needing practice with all these things. I can tell you to read good books and, whether by consciously analyzing or subconsciously absorbing, determine what makes them good. Beyond that, certain aspects of writing can only be discovered by writing. You have to practice to get better.
And that’s sort of the bad news. You have to practice a lot.
Remember that very first book I wrote—the Lion King-but-with-deer book? It was something like 100,000 words long by the time I finished it. I also wrote countless short stories about the characters and (if I remember correctly) 70,000 words of a sequel to it. None of those words will ever see the light of day. I was practicing. I had to write something like 200,000 bad words before I could write Where the Clouds Catch Fire, which started life as 45,000 decent words and grew over the course of four years to 75,000 good words.
Maybe your first book will turn out great. Maybe you’ve already been practicing with short stories and you’re a more competent writer than I was. That’s great. Just don’t get discouraged if, after pouring years of work into your book, it’s still not great. Maybe you edit it. Maybe you can turn it from bad to decent or from decent to good. Or maybe you set it aside, take the lessons you’ve learned, and work on something else now. You’ll do a better job.
I’ve been rambling for almost a thousand words, so let me give the rest of my advice as quickly as possible:
1. You’ve probably already heard people talking about “voice” when writing, which is just the author’s style. Yes, you’ll settle into a style eventually. No, you won’t have the same style for everything you’ll ever write, especially if you write in first person.
2. Some authors “over-write” their rough drafts, meaning that they write too many things and need to trim down. Other authors “under-write” and have to flesh out their rough drafts with extra scenes. Personally, I under-write. Figure out what you do and adjust your drafts accordingly.
3. Speaking of which, the average novel is between 75,000 and 90,000 words, but it depends on genre. Fantasy and sci-fi books can be way longer.
4. You might sit down to write and find that your characters surprise you. For instance, I never intended for Caitriona from my historical fiction trilogy to be as nervous as she is, nor for Rys to love babies so much. Your characters are somewhat-autonomous people that you can’t 100% control. Roll with it.
5. If I could go back and change one thing about my historical fiction trilogy, I’d have researched more. Be specific when you research. Immerse yourself in the culture or time period you’re writing about. Do hands-on activities when possible.
6. There’s a fine balance between inspiration and discipline. Sometimes when you don’t feel like writing, you need to get up and Do Something. Take a walk, call a friend, cook a meal. Other times, you need to buckle down and write. Good luck finding that balance.
7. For the love of God, don’t assume you can make a career as an author. When you’re choosing you college major, pick something other than English and Creative Writing. That’s what I did, and I learned basically nothing other than how much I hate Ernest Hemingway. Luckily, I was able to slide into the nearby career of teaching English. You might not be so lucky. Focus your official college work on economic viability and your free time on perfecting your craft.
There are probably a billion other pieces of advice I could give, so comment below if you have any specific questions. Above all, enjoy yourself! I may have inadvertently depicted writing as something laborious, and I didn’t mean to. Is it hard work? Yes. Can it also be fun? Yes. In fact, it should be fun. Writing the book should be its own reward. I wish you blessings and the best of luck.