How To Write The Novel You Have Been Wanting To But Never Dared

Writing a book is a very complicated thing to do. Not only do you need to have an excellent idea of how your story will begin and how this will end, but you will also need to have a good understanding of the characters that will make your story compelling. Sitting in front of a typewriter or computer for hours a day describing what their perfect landscape or scenario would be isn’t the most enjoyable experience for most people.

While writing a book can be something that needn’t be too hard if you have the right plan of action in place, for most of us the mere fact of coming up with an exciting storyline is already a daunting thing to do.

Here’s how to write the novel you have been wanting to but never dared to start writing.

Just sit down already!

Writing a novel won’t happen for as long as you are only thinking about it. Having a plan in place is an excellent starting point, but know that this won’t take shape until you actually decide to sit down and start typing away. Some of the best writers have said that your first draft needn’t be spectacular, but just something for you to work from. This is indeed the case with writing; you can only start from wherever your mind is willing to make your starting point. Inspiration is an art, and as such, this also arises when the time is right, and we don’t force it.

Come up with a smart way of structuring your plot

Writing a novel is sometimes hard, specially due to the fact that it often takes incredible effort to remember all the storyline points you want to make and be familiar with the exact timeline of events you would like your novel to follow. This might sometimes be what stops potential writers from writing a book: the fact that remembering what needs to happen in a story is hard work and difficult to track if no written strategy is in place. The Aeon Timeline app does exactly that for you; it helps you plan a story structure piece by piece and uses its time chart to track events and remind you of what part of the storyline comes next.

The going will get tough, just keep at it!

There will be days and even weeks when you will have no motivation to put pen to paper, and this is only normal. Very few writers can write all day every day, and one would even question if this was healthy altogether. As we discussed above, inspiration needs to come naturally, and it cannot be something that we force for it to make an appearance. As a result, don’t give up. The journey will get hard from time to time (specially when you cannot find the right words to describe your favourite character or cannot find the adjectives you are looking for to talk about a specific scene), but with a bit of determination and a lot of hard work and effort you will get to the finishing line with a smile on your face!