How to write a book in 15 days – Day 6

I’m on my way. Very few words on the page, going is very slow, but I’m persevering.

One key lesson I learned – before beginning writing, divide the book into scenes and write 2-3 lines describing that scene. Then, organize those scenes into chapters. Then put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

It makes for much more efficient writing. Clarity of plot leads to clarity of thought while writing. At least it works for me. Keeps me from going off on an unnecessary tangent.

That’s it for today.

How to write a book in 15 days – Day 5

Hmmm…where did two days disappear in the middle? I didn’t write an itsy bitsy word, that’s why.

Need to look after my business too. I run an ePublishing firm and there were some long pending projects that needed to be completed. Pressures are still on but today I’m writing, no matter what.

I guess that’s a lesson for all of us – whether you want to write a book, or make some music, or start a business or renew a relationship – just do that little bit everyday, no matter what.

We all have pressures, we all have responsibilities, we all keep putting important things off for a later time…hell, no one’s perfect. Not me. Not you.  But we’ve got to keep pushing, keep trying.

Everyday jump a little. Get your feet off the ground. You’re not going to start flying with a little jump but you’ll be airborne for a second or two. For the teeniest of moments, you would have escaped gravity. You would no longer be stuck to the ground.

Keep jumping a little everyday, and the day will come when you’re just going to get wings and fly away. That’s how us humans attain escape velocity. No fancy shmancy booster rockets to punch a hole through the sky, just the human spirit is enough.

Go jump!

How to write a book in 15 days – Day 2

I woke up quite late today.

Slept well but had an amazing dreamtime. Stunning villain – cruel, all-powerful, nearly invincible. Of course, I was the hero of the piece (aren’t we all in our dreams?) and – in the end – managed to kill the guy in a very gruesome manner.

Of course, just before I woke up, I think I saw his  highly mutilated remains stir….

Creepy.

On to my book. Last evening – after I finished writing my blog entry – I sat down with a bunch of loose sheets of paper and proceeded to write down some ideas on paper. Getting away from the computer helped me a lot and ideas started dancing left, right and center.

After about an hour of brainstorming on paper, I had drastically changed my story concept. This is how it came about.

If you’ve been reading my posts carefully, you’ll know that on the first day I came up with a concept that involved a worldwide crisis.  Well, yesterday I just completely ruled it out and instead am going ahead with a plot that involves very few people, is located in one small city and yet still connects to my chosen idea of a supernatural epidemic.

When I was scribbling some ideas yesterday, I decided to try writing some blurbs. You know – the tiny synopsis that’s printed on the back covers of books. It’s this synopsis that people generally base their buying decision on (unless they buy everything written by a fave author).

To get a few examples, I randomly picked up three novels from my bedside table (none of which I’ve read so far). One was by my favourite author Dean Koontz (Dark Rivers of the Heart) and the other two were by John Saul (Guardian) and Stephen Coonts (Saucer).

As I read and tried to deconstruct the blurbs of all three, it suddenly hit me that they all were focused on one or two main characters and even if the action involved a large group of people (like in Coonts’ Saucer), the focus of the story remained on the core characters.

Also, this is the first book I’m hell bent on completing. By keeping the action on a global scale, I’m going to spread myself too thin. There will be many more characters (even if secondary) and my plot might get too stretched and eventually lead to confusion.

So I’m going to keep the story simple. I’m going to place the story in a location I know very well – Panjim, Goa – instead of keeping some fancy-schmancy location I have no clue about. (Important lesson)

By narrowing down the horror to a small city, by focusing only on a few characters, and by not diluting the horror, I think I’ll be able to make the story more terrifying. I have the basic story down and now I’m going to first write a short back-cover blurb for the book.  This concise synopsis will help me keep the plot tight – and help me sell the book much more easily later.

Then I’ll make a list of all my characters and write down detailed bios of the main characters (about 4 of them) and work on their motivations.

I’ll then write a more detailed synopsis of the book.

I’ll follow this up by breaking the story into about 15-20 chapters and give each chapter a short, descriptive title (the chapter titles won’t be used in the final book but they’ll help me in my writing, keep me focused).

I’ll then break each chapter down in scenes. So it’ll look like:

Chapter 1 – The Bottle with a Message reaches the Goan shores
Scene 1: A tourist discovers on the beach a corked bottle with a message inside warning of coming death.
Scene 2: Next day, a massive storm destroyes an entire fishing village located next to that beach
Scene 3:The scared tourist leaves the bottle in a church. It’s found by the priest.

And so on. This is not part of my book. I just invented this on the spot to give you an idea of how I’m going to break this up to help me write with focus as well as to give me direction.

I’m off to write.

PS: Do give your suggestions on what I would have to do on camera if I don’t complete the challenge. I’ll choose the best (or worst, depends how you see it) suggestion.

How to write a book in 15 days – Day 1 (Part 3)

Here’s the initial mind map I created for my book.

Just brainstorming without any set notions is really helpful in getting a deluge of ideas. Most will be discarded but some always stick out.

I’m continuing to brainstorm and will be developing some of the ideas this mind map has thrown up. Will not be publishing the entire mind map any time soon or you won’t feel the need to buy my book Must keep some surprises.

Still have no clue about the characters. But will soon sit down with and come up with character ideas/bios using another method.

Will be back soon.

How to write a book in 15 days – Day 1 (Part 2)

It’s 10 in the morning and I’m back.

I did not wake up with any ideas in the morning. So right now I just have the concept down and still not even the faintest idea of who the main characters would be.

I got to the concept through simple word play using a thesaurus.

Now I’ll force myself to expand the theme using a technique called mind mapping. (No, I didn’t invent mind mapping). I use either software (there are both free and paid ones available) or a big whiteboard to create my mind maps (or sometimes just an A4 sheet).

In a mind map, you start with the central idea/theme/word in the center of the page (I find that positioning better) and then just start free-associating other ideas/themes/words to this central idea. Connections between words are represented using lines.

As you keep associating new ideas/words to other ideas/words, you start building a mind map.

For a visual representation, I’ll post the mind map in a little while on this blog (or at least a part of it).

During the mind mapping process I might come up with some ideas about the characters. Might. Else, I’ll use another process.

How to write a book in 15 days – Day 1

It’s a little past midnight on October 1st and I’m on my way.

The challenge is to write the book from scratch so I’m not going to be using any of my earlier ideas for the book. It’s going to be idea to complete book in 15 days.

I will be posting the method I’m following to write the book but I will not be posting the entire book for obvious reasons. But I would like to post maybe a chapter or two for those interested in the process of book creation. Of course, once my book is published, I would publish my entire notes for the benefit of other struggling writers.

Ok, lets begin.

I am going to start with choosing a genre. I love reading horror, fantasy, sci-fi and suspense thrillers so I’m going to choose from among them. I don’t have the time to do proper research for sci-fi so I think I’ll go with fantasy/horror.

So, genre = fantasy/horror

Now I’ll play around with words to get the main concept/idea for the book.

I’ll open my desktop thesaurus and I’ll type in … I’ll start with the word “horror”…

Hmmm…meaning is “Intense and profound fear”… I’ll start playing with that….

Fear… terror… scourge (that’s a good term – Something causing misery or death)

- what if I write about something that is “causing misery”…no, “spreading misery” in a community….

- maybe this misery is infectious…it spreads like contagion as it spreads from person to person…an epidemic of fear and misery…

…The Last Epidemic…. working title….

hmm…hmmm… HMMMMM….

I think I’m on to a good idea stream….

I think I’ve got it and how!

Last year I was trying to write a book based on a thin storyline I had developed. Because the concept wasn’t very well developed,  I couldn’t complete the book. The plot went completely haywire in the middle. I had come up with that storyline based on the title of the book – which I won’t reveal right now.

I think that title would be a perfect fit for the basic concept I’ve just come up with….and it seems a more promising idea. I’ll work on the other story after these 15 days and complete it using another title.

So, my title is ready.

The working title would be “The End”

The concept is or to put it more clearly, the main obstacle faced by the main protaganist/s in the book is a supernatural epidemic – either global or local – that is spreading like wildfire and threatens the very existence of our species.

Actually, it’ll have to be a worldwide crisis if I’m going to talk about danger to our species.

What is the epidemic about? Where does it come from? Why is it infecting humans? Is it infecting other life as well? If yes, how? If no, why? What are the symptoms of infection? What happens after infection? Do people die? If they live, what becomes of them?

These are the kind of questions you must ask once you come up with your main obstacle. Keep digging deeper and deeper, till you come up with answers that tell your gut you’re on to a winner of a story.

The bigger and more terrifying the obstacle, the better and more intense the conflict. My main protaganist/s must battle by calling upon strengths even they didn’t know existed within themselves.

Also, the obstacle must be unique (especially in genres like horror in which most people expect to battle ghosts/fiends in one form or the other) to arouse interest in readers who’ll pick up the book to browse (in a shop or online) and decide to buy the book after reading just the first two pages plus the back cover blurb.

It’s 1:15 am now and I’m feeling sleepy. Will tell my subconscious to provide the answers to my key questions as well as come up with a few main characters who’ll be pitted against this obstacle.

I’ll be back after a few hours to log my progress.

Till then…..

The writing begins October 1st

The Write-a-Book-in-15-days Challenge begins October 1st.

My aim is to complete a full length novel (approx. 250 regular novel sized pages) in 15 days.

Along with regular updates on the blog about my progress, I’ll also be sharing some of the things about the writing method I’ve developed. I’ll be using this method to complete my novel in 15 days flat.

The completed book might need to go through a couple of rounds of edits, but I’m going to try to complete as polished a book as is possible.

After October 15, this blog will continue to document how I’m editing the book and will eventually document the final sale of the book to a real publisher.