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How to Start Writing a Book

The blank page stares at you, the cursor flashing, and you don’t know where to begin. You have an idea of the narrative that you want to write, an idea of the overall shape of it. You even have an idea of where you’re going to begin, and yet you can’t write anything.

This is a common problem amongst writers, and there are a thousand and one things that people across the world do to combat it. Some of those things might work for you, some of them might not. But here are a few tips to combat the fear that comes with starting a book:

• Don’t start at the beginning. This might sound counterproductive, but sometimes it might be easier to start a little later in the narrative than the beginning. For example, rather than trying to think of an interesting start to the novel, it might be easier to simply bypass the beginning and just start writing. Then, when you’re finished, you might go back to the start and find you never really needed an interesting beginning in the first place. Or, perhaps, when writing your narrative, you are hit with inspiration for a beginning. Either way, your problem has been solved.
• Plan your book. It might help to know how to start your book if you plan it. Try sitting down and thinking about the arc of your narrative. Think about where it begins, where it will go, where it will end. When writing fiction, most people tend to think about the three-act structure: the Setup, the Confrontation, the Resolution. The titles are fairly self-explanatory: the Setup will establish primary characters, the Confrontation will introduce the problem, and the Resolution will end everything. For non-fiction, the three-act structure can work, but writers will often let things unfold as they have happened in real life, which is often messier than the three-act structure allows for.
• Read other books. This might sound a little simple, but it is sometimes a good idea to step back from your narrative to read other books. And they don’t necessarily have to be the same genre/style as the book you want to write. If you are writing fantasy, it might be good to read science-fiction. If you are writing non-fiction, it might be good to read fiction to spark some ideas. In any case, reading will flex your writing muscles, and provide an opportunity to be inspired by something.
• Consume content about your topic. As well as reading other books, it’s a good idea to begin consuming other content about what you’re writing on. There will no doubt be a TED Talk out there on writing (like this one from Elizabeth Gilbert), a podcast, a film, a TV show, an interview. There is a myriad of things out there that can help you start writing, just like this article, but be wary. Sometimes, it is easy to get sucked into spending hours reading, watching, and listening to things that are there to help you write, but in doing so, you’ll have less and less time to actually write.
• Just write. And, of course, the one piece of advice no article about how to start writing should be without: just write. However small it is, whether it is one page, one paragraph, one sentence. Just write.

You might find that all of these work for you. Or, perhaps, none of them work for you. But it’s important to remember that everyone goes through the same problem.

How to Write a Mental Health Memoir

Writing a book can be difficult. It’s hard to know where to place certain scenes, what is important enough to put in and not important enough to take out, or even where to start or end it. This becomes much harder when writing non-fiction. Do you start with your birth? Or maybe you start with your childhood, puberty, university, the first time you moved out of your parents’ home? The possibilities are endless, and every story is unique. What follows is a general guide to help you write a non-fiction narrative.

The first step is locating the important points in your narrative. If we take a general narrative about suffering from a mental health issue, then we can specify that the important points will be:

• Childhood
• The beginning of the mental breakdown
• The mental breakdown
• The diagnosis
• The recovery

However, we all know that not all narratives will fit into that, and that mental health narratives are far more complex. So perhaps your narrative will look something like this:

• Childhood
• The beginning of the mental breakdown
• A mental breakdown
• A recovery period
• Another breakdown
• A gap of time in which nothing happens
• Another breakdown
• Admittance to hospital
• The diagnosis
• The beginning of recovery

Whatever your story looks like, it is important to develop a chronological narrative in which the events unfold as they did in your life. In fictional narratives, writers sometimes use time as a plot device, in that they might perhaps jump forward in time or use flashbacks to make the plot more interesting. However, in non-fiction, plotting your events as they happened works far better. Some people might find that they want to start their narrative off with their admittance into hospital and then start their story, leading the reader along their journey. Another option would be opening a narrative with the narrator in conversation with their therapist about writing a book, and then from there getting into the details of the narrative. However you decide to structure the narrative, you need to make sure it’s clear and easy to understand to someone who doesn’t know your story.

Once the important points have been plotted out, it is now important to think about pacing. Pacing is incredibly important in narratives. After all, no one wants to watch a film in which non-important conversations are drawn out and important conversations happen too quickly.

One general mistake that people tend to make when writing is to go in as much detail as possible. On paper, this seems like the right choice to make. After all, more detail means that the reader is likely to feel as though they are there when reading. However, this has the opposite effect on the reader. When confronted with too much detail, the reader can switch off and stop paying attention. Which is why pacing is very important.

Pacing will vary slightly from book to book but the crux of it is this:

• Important events, such as the breakdown, the diagnosis, or the recovery, will need to be explored in-depth, as these are the crux of the narrative. As such, the pacing will need to be slow enough for the reader to understand what is happening, but fast enough not to bore the reader with too many details.
• Non-important events, such as exploration of family, friends, and work, that don’t result in breakdowns (but are still important to write about) will need fewer details. As such, the pacing will need to be faster, with fewer details.

For example, the scene in which a person is suffering a mental breakdown will need to be explored with detail. But it’s not important to talk about the surrounding area and describe the colour of the ambulance. The focus should be on the person, their feelings, and what happens. However, a scene where the reader is getting to know the person’s family should have very little detail and move faster.

Along with pacing and important plot points, another big thing is constructing emotional payoffs. When watching a film or reading a book, there are moments in there that have been constructed to have an emotional impact on the reader. Though it might feel odd to construct a non-fiction narrative as a fictional narrative, the narrative will still need emotional payoffs for the reader to feel connected with the author. Emotional payoffs can include:

• Being admitted to hospital for the first time
• Having your first breakdown
• An event, such as a close death, that might produce a breakdown
• Being diagnosed

It’s important to build these up, as they are important points of your narrative and need to be delivered as such. Generally, most authors like to distance themselves from these points, as they are the most emotional and can be quite distressing to revisit. However, this makes for a poor reading experience and can also make the book be less impactful. As such, building up to these points in the narrative is very important. This can be done in the following ways:

• Giving an emotional payoff its own chapter. By doing this, and utilising the correct pacing, it can be quite powerful.
• When dealing with a close death, building up the person in previous chapters so that when the event occurs, the reader can feel the same effect it had on the author

It is also important to consider that authors will feel a need to distance themselves from the narrative. As stated before, it can be quite distressing writing about certain events. Narratives can suffer from this, as the author will pull back from putting their voice and emotion into the book. This can make the narrative come across as cold and distant, which is not what the author or the reader wants. When writing the narrative, the author shouldn’t be afraid to put in any feelings that they think are important to the events, or their own voice.

There is also the case of the ending of the narrative. With a non-fiction narrative, it is hard to know when to end the narrative. Most authors tend to end their narratives at the diagnosis of the mental illness. However, mental illnesses don’t disappear when they have been diagnosed. There is the matter of recovering and learning how to deal with the illness. As such, the narrative should continue past the diagnosis and show the reader how the author has come to deal with their illness, and what steps they have taken to do so.

Though these are general points in constructing a narrative, they are important to consider and put into effect when writing.

Finding Your Writing Style

There is a tendency for new writers to think that they have to try their hardest at sounding poetic or brilliant. This can come across as very stilted and forced, and makes the reader switch off instantly. Think back to your favourite book: did the writing come across as though the writer was trying hard? The best writing is writing that feels natural. Here are a few tips to see if your writing style really is the best fit for you:

Get someone else to read your work. Before you begin to query agents and publishing houses, it’s a good thing to get someone else to read your work. When writing something, it can be quite hard to distance yourself from the work to see any problems with it. Besides, after having worked on it for so long, it can be difficult to see if there are any errors with it. Getting someone else to read it for you can highlight things that you might have missed.

Speak it out loud. If you don’t want to have someone else read your work yet, a good way to see if your writing is coming across as too stilted is to read it out loud. You’ll be able to hear whether the flow of the writing is natural or not, and highlight sections of the narrative that need work.

Read something else. It might sound counterproductive to read something else to find your own natural writing style, but it can help to see other styles of writing to feel what fits and what doesn’t. For example, some writers might find that they want to write in the same vein as Zadie Smith or Jonathan Franzen, whereas some might find themselves more aligned to that of Salman Rushdie. Others might go for a simpler telling of events, such as the writing found in The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, or perhaps a more easily-digestible style such as that of Nicholas Sparks. The only way to find out what style works for you is to read more books.

Take a step back. If you can’t figure out whether or not your writing style is the best fit for you, it’s always a good idea to distance yourself from the writing. It might be a good idea to leave the manuscript for a few days, to clear your head from it. When you return to it, it’ll be easier to see whether or not your style is working.

Considering that the writing style of your narrative will be one of the biggest factors in making a reader continue reading, it’s important to make sure that you know what works for you.

Top Tips

• Join the Society of Authors (SOA)
• Plan a writing routine and try to stick to it! This is especially important if you are fitting writing in around another job or other commitments.
• Aim to write 500 words a day.
• Attend a writing class.
• Try writing in different locations, such as in a café (quick access to coffee and cake, too!), or at a park.
• Keep a writing journal where you can scribble any ideas while inspiration hits.
• Join an online writing community.