How to Write a Book: from Idea to Outline to Finished Manuscript

1. At-a-Glance: Introduction to How to Write a Book: Okay. Hi, I'm Maly Swinski. I'm a published author, Indie publisher, graph designer, and a mom. By the end of this course, you'll have learned practical tactics on how to write the book you've always dreamed of writing. We're going to go over things like the logistics of writing, character development, setting development, research, and more. We're also going to do an overview on the editing process and deciding what publishing option might be right for you. I design this course for writers who need a blueprint on exactly how to get the book out of their head and onto paper. If you complete this course with me, you'll have your book on paper by the end of it. Your class project for this course will be a few screenshots of your width. You work in progress, and I can't wait to see them. Remember, I'll be with you every step of the way. It's time to write your book. Let's dive in. Okay. 2. What Do I Need to Begin ?: So what do you really need before you begin? Yes, you're going to need the supportive network, friends and family, you're going to need edits. You're going to need cover design. You're going to need a title for goodness sake. But all you really need to start is an idea and the commitment to yourself. And FYI. This course is staunchly anti AI creative writing. We will not be using any artificial intelligence in this tutorial and yes, I'm judging you, if you are. As a writer, you need to be a reader. You need to familiarize yourself with what you love to read, what you don't love to read. Reading will fuel that creative part of you. And beyond inspiration, it's important that it's also your responsibility to have a grasp of what's already out there. What's popular? You know, if you're write in a certain genre, you should know the most popular titles at any given moment more or less in your genre of choice. And just as a note before imposture syndrome kind of sneaks its way into your brain and tells you forget it's already been done. Even if your story is similar to something that's out there, you should still be writing it because I'll tell you what. You are unique and if you haven't written the story before, then it hasn't been written before because it hasn't been told from your perspective. Reading widely, we'll familiarize yourself with your comp titles and some common themes and tropes if they exist. So things you need to be aware of, when down the road, you're looking at your book in more of a commercial light, if you want to sell it, Truth Bom, let's be real. Your first book may not be the next Great American or Canadian or British or Australian masterpiece, and that's okay. What matters in book writing is the commitment that you make to yourself to tell your story. Now, before we even begin talking about your ideas or looking at character development or you know, avoiding predictability in your writing. You need to take a real look at your day to day schedule, your weekly calendar, your commitments, right? And you need to figure out when you can commit to writing this book. Look at your schedule and say, Okay, when can I speak a two hour chunk of writing time in. Can you write for an hour every day? Is that feasible? Maybe every other day. Maybe Tuesdays after my kids baseball practice. Okay. You need to find that time and you need to be realistic. If you're a busy mom like me, chances are you're not going to get the 2 hours of writing time every day. Would I love it? Absolutely. Is it realistic? No. I like to set realistic goals, you know, like a smart goal. Be realistic. Life is going to throw obstacles at you like it always does. It's not just going to stop because, you know, you have decided to write this book. If you are realistic about how much time you can dedicate to writing this book, prioritize the writing sessions, turn your phone off. You are more likely to actually progress at a pace that satisfies you and doesn't feed those demons in your head and tells you, you're not doing good enough, okay? So set that schedule. I'm serious. Look at you write down your schedule. Don't just try and squeeze it and make time for it. Okay. Remember, writing time time dedicated to your creative passions is not time wasted. I promise you. That is the time in your day that should fill your cut. You should finish a writing session, exhausted because you've been using a lot of brain power, but you should also feel exhilarated. Even if a block of writing time yielded nothing. It happens all the time. I say, I'm going to take 2 hours saying and I sit. The screen and we stare at each other. Okay. Even that is not time wasted because maybe you kind of thought about your plot, and you say, Okay, well, this doesn't work or I don't feel like working on this section right now. That's okay. No writing session is ever time wasted. It's like you're training a muscle and every time you sit down and you have that time with your manuscript, you're strengthening it. Next, we're going to talk about logistics. Okay. 3. Setting Up Your Writing Space: Okay. Where to write. Let's talk about setting yourself up for success, right? Get some good work done, me? This is where I write. In my office. I loathe writing in public. I cannot do it. I can't do it. I can't shut my brain off and it makes me want to hang a little sign off my laptop. T I swear you publish books sometimes. I'm not just here for attention. It works for so many people. It doesn't work for me, and I know that about myself. Sometimes now that being said, sometimes if I'm really struggling with writer's block or I'm just stuck on a scene, I will log my laptop to a public place just to shake it up, shake things up, change my perspective a little bit, and that has worked. But generally speaking, I'm ritualistic. I like to know where I am. I know it's going to be quiet, I can light a candle, you have coffee and water and gatorade, and whatever nearby. But if riders block hits or sometimes I'm trying to figure out a scene and I'm looking around, the carpets dirty needs vacuuming or Oh, there's so many dishes in the sink. If being home is distracting, then I need to figure something else out, right? Something else I do, and I recommend term for writing a book is settling on a playlist and maybe one scented candle per project. I literally have a different candle for each book that I've written. Like, that book smells like Palo Santo. I don't know. That's just how my brain works. I will play the ambience videos available on YouTube for free. They're like 6 hours long. There's 1 million of them. There's horror ones, there's jazz coffee shop ones. There's whales floating in outer space. Ever gets your creative engines running and kind of helps your brain tone down and focus. I know a lot of my writer friends will listen to brown noise, white noise. I can't listen to anything with words. I get too distracted and suddenly I'm typing the lyrics to the words. Just make sure that you are somewhere where you are totally comfortable and you can let your creative passion take over. I enjoy having my fuzzy slippers on. And I would definitely recommend turning your phone off unless you need to Google weird things because as writers, our Google history is sacred. Okay. Take a minute. So we've already looked at your schedule when you're going to do this and set yourself up for success and get yourself a little habitat in which to write your book. Okay. 4. Short Burst Writing Sessions: Paying attention? This is the big one. This is my super secret method, and all the other attention grabbing, click Batty words are for this video right here. My super secret, not really. Trick to getting your book started is what I call a loose plot short first writing session. This is an activity, a practice that you can return to as many times as you need throughout the process of writing your book. And it begins with this. What got you excited about this story? What story is in your mind that made you take this tutorial that you're like, You know what? I want to write a book. That is where you need to start with that enthusiasm. We can go back and we're going to clean everything up and organize and everything, but I promise you Letting that creative passion steer you, at least the first time you sit down to write is going to help you finish this book. Maybe your idea for the book isn't a complete gout. That's okay. It doesn't matter. You were excited about something. So whatever plot point. You're like, Oh, that would be a good book. Let's start there. It's important to tell yourself in your head, my story is worth telling. This is worth my time. And I'm not one for Mantras either, but this is going to be a long process. Writing your book is not going to take a month. Okay? I don't care if you read every day. So it won't take a month. You know, prep your psyche to be in this while. Start to talk positively to yourself in your head and say, you know, my story is worth it. My perspective is worth it. This is worth my time. Be an unstoppable force. Write with imaginary machete strapped to your thigh. This is not wishy washy, polite drinking tea with your pinky sticking out stuff. It's who you want to be, your most powerful self. Write your books, finish them, then make them better, find the way. No one will make this dream come true for you but you. One of my favorite authors is Lani Taylor. Not only do I love her books, she wrote the strange, the dreamer series, guys and monsters. But I've been writing workshops with her, she's very accessible to her readers. Now. She would cut your pearls, what I'm going to say, she would wear pearls, but she writes her books chronologically, right? She's amazing. Her books are amazing, but she will start with chapter one and go all the way through to the end until she finishes it. And a lot of underwriters will start with an outline. I also start with an outline. But this special way, these short verse sessions are a way to unlock the book from that spot in your brain and get it onto the screen in front of you. Okay, we can tear it apart later. We're going to organize it. That's literally the next section I'm going to talk about. But just start writing what you are most excited about. Okay. For now, when you are starting, don't stress about the plot twist that you need at the end. Don't stress about the full outline and how you're going to connect moment A to moment else is down the alphabet. Okay. Just let your creativity fly. Let that guide you. The point of the session is sustain enthusiastic and unbridled by not feeling like you have to do it a certain way. Just write. I hate to break it to writing a book requires writing. You will go back and edit your short processions, many times. You'll be able to recite your book by the time it's ready for the public. Just don't put intense pressure on yourself to get it right immediately, right out of the gate. Okay. That's the awesome thing about this practice is that you can visit anytime in the process of creating your book. So if you start with a short person and it goes great and then you're like, Okay, we move on to my next section outlining and so on and so forth. Then you hit a wall again or you're feeling like Okay. Kind of cramped up. Stop, do another short burst. Okay? You can do them at any point. Some things you do want to think about while you're doing your short burst session. Start thinking about your point of view. What I mean is are you going to say I am or she said, Okay? Okay. So are you going to use, you know, first person or third person. And along the same vein, are you going to use present tense or past tense? So are you going to say she is and continue your story in the moment and your reader is coming along with you in the moment. Or are you going to read she on where everything's already happened and your reader is kind of getting it. Present tense. Is more common in YA novels. There's nothing wrong with that, but generally speaking, past tense is more widely preferred. When you're doing your short first sessions, don't try to organize into chapters just yet. You don't need to organize into full paragraphs yet. You know, you can just put some spaces in between, you know, the chunks of writing around a certain flat point, and then we'll tidy them up later. But at least they're on the page and you can see them. They're no longer just in your brain. They're on the page for you to work with. Once you've exhausted your little burst of creativity for the moment, it's time to buckle up and create the outline using what you've written. 5. Creating the Outline: Creating the outline. All right. So a lot of writers insist in starting with an outline. Yeah. I do too. But like I said, I will start with the short first session? Because I like to give my creative spirit room to fly, room to grow. But at some point, you have enough and you need to start organizing it? Because stream of consciousness, books aren't going to do it for anyone. Okay. So an outline is for your own sanity. Okay. The promise. This isn't a new document. Okay? Not your original short burst, we're going to open a new document. That's going to be your outline. You can have your short burst session document open, and we're going to reference that, but your outline is its own special document. Okay. Now, when you first start, we're going to go in order here, okay? Organize your outline with vague descriptors of what is happening? I'm talking like one to two lines. Don't give yourself a whole bunch to read, okay? And don't just write Chapter one, and then go to Chapter two, you need the plot points. Okay? What you're doing is you're giving future you're throwing future U a bone. You're giving yourself some hints and a fighting chance to easily remember at a glance what each section covers. Because at some point, your outline and your words are going to get so long that you're going to need to be like what is happening here? When did that happen? You know, did she go ice skating it? Oh, no, no, that's over here. Your outline will be this amorphous working thing that you come back to an update each time you have a writing session. That way, it's going to be a tool for you to revisit. So you can pick up the pace the next time you sit and you're writing a different section. You can see real quick, where you left off, the kind of the vibe, who was saying what? Who is there, and then continue. So say you had your first short per session Awesome. Okay. Can you sum up the main ideas of that session into like one sentence or per idea, say your session covered five different plot points. Can you make one sentence for each of those plot points? Now, If you can, great. If you can't take a minute, figure it out. But once you have those summaries, place them relative to each other, roughly where in the plot they will occur. You don't need to number anything yet. We're not making exact chapters, but if you know that scene x happens after scene, organize it that way. Physically, put the little summary line there. Okay? This is where you're probably going to spend a good amount of time. Because as much as we all just want to start writing, and you're welcome to revisit the short burst practice method as many times as you want. However, you are going to have to get an outline together at some point. Once you have a lot of plot points and the main plot points, the meat of your book is kind of coming together, you need to kind of roll through and sketch in all the connecting moments. Okay. It might take a while. But if you put in the work now, you'll thank yourself later. Just because you had initially put something in Chapter two, it doesn't have to stay there. You are the boss. If you're not sure how to connect pivotal points in your story yet, that's okay. Just put a placeholder for now. My outlines are usually something like need something here to connect two moments. I get there eventually. Just remember, everything is fluid. You can revisit and you will revisit your outline and your main document again and again and again, you'll refine it until it's what you want. The more you can do this, add those connecting sections, You will see what you need to write to connect them. And the closer and closer to completion you will get. This is the hard part. This is the part where a lot of people will peel off and be like, Oh, this is too hard, but you can do it. What's cool about these connecting points is the deeper you get into your story and get to know your characters. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. The threads to connect them may become even more important and interesting than you initially thought. Maybe you'll see how to create that twist that you've been hoping for or an unexpected moment. I know this part is hard, but you can do it. Okay. Because I'm telling you, once you get your outline together, and you're like, Oh, I can have them do this, and that will connect those two moments or Oh, man. Well, she could just say this and that can go right into that. Or I don't even need a connecting moment. This can just happen next. It can be a jump scene, you know, to hear. Once you do that and you start to see your plot line, it's like this light bulb will go off. And then it's just a matter of writing what you've done. It's kind of like when you start a class and they give you a syllabus and you're like, Okay, here's everything that needs to happen, by the end of the semester. It seems like a lot at the beginning, but then, as you go through, you're like, Oh, I did that. Oh, I did that last month. And then at some point, you'd be like, I have one class left. Okay. And you're going to get to that point if you stick with this. So just stick with it. Just so you know. Okay. Because I'm all about transparency in my classes. If you've taken any other of my tutorials, you'll know this about me. I am a tough love instructor. What do I mean by that? Well, there is software that can help you keep your writing organized. A lot of people swear by it. Okay? You know that I teach in a vacuum of Trappist simplicity. Okay. We're using Microsoft Word to write your book. Okay. I mean if you're an apple, you can use Google doc, whatever you want. We're using a word processing document. Okay. So why do I teach my writing and self publishing concepts like this instead of using apps and websites. And I apologize, if you've taken another course and you've heard my explanation, but here's the deal. And this is where you can tell mom. I want to equip you with resiliency. Okay? I want you to be a resilient writer. What do I mean by that? Well? If you write and you are in charge of keeping everything organized, you know, keeping your ideas and the threads and the plot points, you know, mentally separated until you bring everything together on your own. You are going to be equipped to handle curveballs that life is going to throw you. Any setbacks that may come along. Writing a book takes a long time. There might be a lot of different things that happen. If you learn to outline and work through your book ideas, only using paid tools or different apps or systems that are available online. One day when your Internet connection is down or you know, you can't afford the subscription to the website anymore, or whatever happens. I don't want these outside factors hindering your writing ability. I'm not saying or forcing you to use pen paper to write your story. Although I do know a lot of writers who swear by that. But I am saying just like in formatting and in self publishing, if you go to that direction, if you know the skills and you build the skill set now without relying on outside help, You will be ready for anything and your book will get written no matter what. I'm not saying later on you can't you know, move everything over to one of these websites to help clean you up. But I'm going to tough love you through this because that's just who I am and I know that you can do it. Okay. 6. Creating Chapter Documents: Okay. Now we're going to revisit the outline, but it's time to make chapters and chapter documents. Now that your outline is developed, let's break this baby down into chapters. Okay? This is exciting. You can get their first glimpse of how you'll see your book organized in a real way. Okay? Okay. So what you want to do is go through your organized chaos and find the meaty scenes scenes where something a big pivotal thing happens in your story, and you want to start to break things apart into chapters. A few things to remember at this point, don't add chapter numbers until you're pretty solid on the chapter meat. That sounds disgusting. But it works. You know what I mean when I say it. For now, just put some space with the enter button just between ideas to break them up. Now, here's the thing. Every chapter should have a point and I know that that sounds obvious, but it won't be. Once you start going, you're going to be like, Oh, I need a little something here and you might write a little fluffy chapter. Don't do that. Okay. Everything should have a point. All of your writing should deliver some information, create some emotion, tell us some history, or backstory of what's going on. Everything should have a point in your writing. If you go through your outline and you come across an idea that you really like, but there's not really a point to it. I couldn't stand on its own as a chapter. See you can play around with a little bit and connect it to the chapter before or the chapter after or even move that whole chunk. There's some detail that you really like um, in my story, desperate creatures, I really enjoyed the certain pancakes from a certain restaurant in Lake George and I wanted it in my book and it ended up being the first line of that book. But that's not where it was originally because it didn't make sense where it was originally. I needed some other things to happen, I wouldn't just start talking about pancakes. I ended up moving it. And it was kind of a fun start because you get some internal monologue to start with and you get her personality real quick about how she feels about these pancakes. It's very I ended up working out. So once you've done the work of kind of dividing and you can number them. Okay. And you can always go back and add Chapter 9.5 in 9-10, you can you'll have to fix it eventually. But for now, don't stress about that stuff. If you're like, Oh, shoot, I'm not sure if I'm going to add something in here. You can always kind of play around. Here's the biggie. Okay? So once your chapters are numbered, create a new blank word document for each of those chapters and save them as Chapter one chapter two chapter. Each chapter you've mentioned in your outline is going to have its own word document. We're going to leave it in the outline as well. The outline is going to be our guide. It's our good friend for this whole process. But each chapter will have a document that we write that chapter in. Save each of those documents. Then we're going to highlight and copy from the outline. That chapters key points, and we're going to paste those points onto our chapter documents for that chapter. This way, when you sit for your scheduled writing sessions that you've already figured out, when in your schedule are going to happen. You can sit down and say, Okay, I'm working on Chapter eight today and you can open up the Chapter eight document. Read real quick. What's what needs to happen in this chapter and get it written. You don't need to worry about Chapter seven. You need to worry about Chapter nine. This is what happens in Chapter eight. This is what I'm doing today. It'll help to not overwhelm you with the whole book. You don't have to say I'm writing a book today It's like I'm writing Chapter eight today. You break these things down into smaller goals, we'll worry about claiming them all together later. Each time you sit with a chapter in one of your writing sessions, you want to develop the key points more fully. You may find that new information is needed to beef it up. I have so many meat references. Why does it why does it work so well? You might find, like I said a little earlier that some ideas might work better elsewhere in the plot, and that's fine. Move that sucker. So make sure when you move it from that chapter, you remove it from the original chapter in the outline, move it to the new chapter in the outline. Open up the document for that chapter, add it to the key information that needs to be in that chapter. Okay. Okay. Now, it's confusing. Here's an example. I'm writing a story about a woman returning to Key West for her grandfather's funeral. Originally, my idea was that when she returned to his house in Chapter two, she noted a window through which she used to spy on her handsome neighbor. However, as I was working in a session, expanding my ideas for Chapter five. She ends up spying on the handsome neighbor. Again, as an adult. And I realized that it read better if I hadn't mentioned that window earlier in the book. So I went back, I deleted it from the Chapter two document and from my notes on Chapter two and my main outline document. Then I added it to the notes for Chapter five, both in my main outline and in the separate Chapter five document. So once all your chapter documents are created, you know, and they have kind of the key points for each chapter listed on them, before you dive into any more expansion of your ideas, I want you to watch the following sections, okay? We're going to talk about character development, setting, research, and information dumping. These are all very important, and let's just get a good overview of these before we continue writing our book. Okay. 7. Character Development: Now that we've set up the bones of how you're logistically going to write your book. Let's get into your story a little bit. We're going to talk about character development. So once your outline is written, we need to get to know your characters. You need to get to know your characters. We all think we know them pretty well. We created them, but we need to go even deeper. I'm not talking just your main characters. We need to get to know your side dishes too. Once you get into your groove, you might be downright shocked Okay. And how these little creatures behave. What they do without your consent? Sometimes they they take things into their own hands. You're like, I didn't expect that to happen, okay? Sometimes they write themselves, but that can only happen if we have delved deep into who they are. The complexities of your characters and how they respond to each other and with the environment and what's going on. That is a treasure trove of interesting writing. This kind of detail the kind that draws the reader into actually caring about your characters only happens when we as the creator know them well enough to help them live and breathe on the page. Once you've done some work to get to know your characters more intimately, revisit your outline. We love the outline. Your characters are tools. You know what I mean? I hope. I'm sure they're not all tools. Maybe some of them are. Your characters are a vehicle to tell your story. Okay? Anything can happen to them. You are not obligated to keep them safe and happy. And I was funny. You know, I like to think I'm a nice person. And I remember realizing that how I could use my characters to tell my story to get emotion out of my reader. I was like the power. It felt strange, though, because it was like, I knew my character so well, I didn't want bad things to happen to them. But I mean, in most good books, or the books that we remember that stay with us, because something terrible happened to a character that we love. If we don't care about the character and then don't go through some hardship, why are we writing the story, right? I mean, I enjoy a cozy romance more than the next guy, but even in those stories, bad things happen. Okay. Think about, you know, what is the plot need? Are there any points in the narrative, where a character that you've gotten to know better through your character development work can be more interesting. Can you use a different character than the one you originally thought to enact a point in the narrative? Can there be some dialogue between two characters to help your reader catch up on what's going on or reiterate something or deliver new information? We're going to talk about information dumping and how to avoid writing a snooze fest with information dumping? But just start thinking of your characters as kind of like a vehicle to tell your story and not just some people that some things happen to you? They are helping you deliver the story to your reader. Okay. You can use them. 8. Setting as a Tool: Let's talk about setting as a tool. I'm the kind of descriptive fiction writer who really longs to draw my reader into my world. I use a lot of subtle details that evoke how a scene is laid, how how it smelled. That's probably the number one feedback I get about my writing is that my descriptors are so vivid that my reader can almost see it in their mind's eye. And I take that as a huge compliment because that's what I'm going for. And it all stems I'm sure you've heard it before, but from show don't tell. Much like character development, you really need to know your setting to deliver quality descriptive language. Whether or not it's imaginary or a real place, you need to know your setting as well as you know your characters for consistency's sake, as well as details, so you can draw your reader in. Okay. You are the creator. You have to be the expert on where your story is set. If you're writing fantasy, you need to subtly establish, you know, rules about the magic system, if there's magic in your book, or if there's unusual plants or animals, you know, why is the sky magenta? There are so many ways to kind of like show it without just saying the sky is magenta. There are magical creatures. There are better ways to deliver that information because that information is fascinating and it's interesting. Okay? Don't just tell the reader, kind of draw them in. Again, we're going to talk about the perils of info dumping, but I just want to say that for now, Be sure that you are clear on your setting details because if you aren't clear, your reader certainly won't be. An annoying flaw that I come across as a reader and an editor of other author's work is when an author doesn't know an area as well as I do and I come across a situation or something that's happening and they mention something that is a glaring error, and I'm immediately taken out of the story, and I hate that, especially the story is going great, and there's one little detail. I'm like, It's not. That's not how it is. You know, you don't want to be taken out of the magic of the story. If the mistake is not intentional, you know, sometimes there's an unreliable narrator, your main you know, your main character gets things wrong. And that's part of the story and that's what they do fine. However, if it's not intentional, The creator, the author, should have done more research. Remember, the setting is more than just the weather or the geographical location in the world. The setting also involves the cultural aspects of the area. Now, I will say that sometimes a character's awkward interaction with the environment can be intentional. But it still requires that the creator did their prep work. A great example for my favorite. I love to think of movie my cousin Vinnie. Okay. 99% of the humor in that movie is derived from Joe Pesh's interaction with his new temporary environment. All right. New Yorker plopped into a small southern town like the jokes write themselves. It's a great. And his interaction with his setting was also one of the main keys of the entire plot. You know, it's like, no, self respecting Southern uses instant grits, right? But he knew that because in the movie, his character learned about his environment. I just think it's great. It's a great study in setting research. If you're having trouble envisioning your setting, and it's a real world place, ask yourself if you truly know the area well enough to write about it. You may consider picking up your whole plot and moving it somewhere you're more comfortable with or more general and if you originally chosen, you know, a certain town in rural Kansas, but you don't really know that town very well. Maybe you can instead of pinpointing the name of the town, you can make a town up and just, you know, have a more general description of rural a rural town. Would you be more comfortable setting your story in a fictitious town or do you just need to do more research? 9. Research!: Okay. Let's talk about research? Yes, we're talking about writing fiction, but you still need to know your stuff, character development setting, super important. Also, consider the time period about which you're writing. What was popular then? What technology was available then? Are you going to reference specific songs and movies and TV shows that were on at the time, or are you going to keep your story more time less with just being generic. But either way, if you're going to mention things by name or not, you need to know what was happening in the world at that time. What was the atmosphere? The culture, the Lingo, general? Let's see. Are there other topics in your story that require a more thorough understanding to be told correctly? Okay. If you're writing fantasy, have you thought about your magic system if there's magic? Okay. You need to be the expert on that. You might as well you're the hyp prices of your magic system that you created because you created it. So you need to know this stuff. If you don't know it, how is your reader going to learn it. Okay, and understand how it works in your story. Do you know the rules of it, the dues and notes. And this all counts whether or not you are sharing them in the story. Even if it never makes it to the page, you need to know kind of the ins and outs of that. Sarah J Mas has a great job of that. She knows oh my gosh, all family history and connections And then later, seven books down the line, She blows away with some little bit of how some magic works, but she already knew it when she wrote the first book. So magic systems get very tricky. That's a very specific fantasy based advice, but you need to think about magic different creatures in your world, how do they behave? Are they similar to anything? Are they domesticated all those little nitty gritty things? Okay. Fiction writing in my relationship with the Google. So some things to think about. Does your story contain a medical situation or a diagnosis that you need to know about in detail, okay? You know, really common we, how is the poison used? You know, what are the length and severity of symptoms? How long til it kills you? Flip that. I swear I'm writing a book. Don't arrest me. How does a certain diagnosis present in different kind of people different ages? Try not to use Google MD or TikTok PHD from medical research. Call your doctor, call a doctor or at least look for websites end and or.gov. Along the same vein, Are you referencing, you know, a real historical event in your book? How did that event affect different groups of people? Different races, ethnicities, you know, ages, socioeconomic status. Are there religious connotations or references that you need to take note of? Yeah. Are you writing LGBTQIA or BipoC representation? What about autistic representation? Bottom line, if you are not part of the marginalized society about which you are writing, you need to do your homework and talk to people who are. Don't just guess how it feels. I'm telling you. Don't do that. It's disrespectful and it's going to be inaccurate. A simple conversation with a friend can give you perspective on these topics and so much more. If you couple that with reading more widely across your genre, You will develop a hold on sensitive topics and how you want to handle them. You don't always have to be politically correct in your book. If your characters are not politically correct. Like if you're writing about you know, the deep south back in the day and you have the KKs in it, there's going to be some painful scenes in there, right? I'm not saying you can't write those scenes because that's history, but it's your responsibility to understand the impact of moments in time like that. If you're writing anything that can be seen as social commentary, you shouldn't be shocked if you get some fiery feedback about it. Research will help ensure that you are releasing the book that you mean to without accidentally creating discomfort that you didn't intend. Again, some books are intentionally uncomfortable. I write or research as an author in a different way. If you're writing a story that is similar to another published work, you need to know that. I'm not saying you can't still write your story, like I said, you should, but we need to understand that People who read your book probably have read the other book, right? Because you're in the same. So they're going to make comparisons and just be ready for them. I'm not saying be ready for a fight, but just expect to say, Oh, well, people are going to say that this part of my book in reads like this that can work for you. It was easier to explain my book desperate creatures to potential readers by comparing it to two titles that, you know, together kind of form. So I always say my book desperate creatures is like the others meets PS I love you. Okay. And it was like instantly, people were like, Oh, okay, there's a vibe. It's my responsibility to know my comparative titles and do research in that kind of a way. So now that we've covered the importance of research, character development and setting development. Yes, one. It's time to go back to your outline. Okay. Take a minute we talk about information dumping and see where your story might need a little work. If there's some sections that are weak, you can make notes to yourself and say, Oh, ask, so and so about this, this political event or this war happened and the impact it had on this area of the country. Is it your outline? Make sure that it's strong before you are starting to write even more and expanding on the ideas that you've already were sitting there outline. 10. Just Say NO to Info Dumping: Just say no to information dumping. Please. If you take one thing from this tutorial, let it be that. Have you ever been bored to death reading something? Like you were enjoying the book so much. And then these chapters just started assaulting you and they're talking about logistical information or biographical information of someone and you're like, This epic fantasy is suddenly reading like a textbook. You've been hit by information dumping and that could have been handled better by the author? Yes. We as writers need to relay information. That is essentially what a book is. Okay. However, as creative people, we need to understand that we can deliver necessary information in interesting and entertaining ways. Remember, if it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. How can you relate information about what's happening on a scene? You need to deliver a block of information, but you need to keep it vibrant. Okay? There's a few ideas here. Okay. So remember the golden rule of fiction writing show don't tell. Okay. Subtle cues and details can have a big impact on the reader experience. You don't need to use a thesaurus for every other word. But you can add in some powerful adjectives, you know, when your character appears in the scene, and a little goes a long way. If enough description is added in kind of a subtle way, you won't need those extra boring sentences to relay the information. Okay? Here's an example. So I'm going to essentially tell the same information, but I'm going to do it in two different ways. Example A. Douglas made his way through the alien forest, the glowing leaves of the predatorial plants unfurling along the path as he drew near. They extended toward him, trying to deposit their toxic paralytic residue on his skin. He glared at them as he passed and gave them a wide berth. Passage B, Douglas walked through the Alien forest. It had toxic plants growing throughout. They glowed green and seeped poisonous residue that paralyzed their prey. Douglas knew this, though and avoided touching them. Douglas the poison plants. Douglas and the poison is a new kids book. Both of those passages essentially deliver the same information, right? Duy named Douglas is walking in the woods. There are poisonous plants that glow green and have goo that paralyzes you. Douglas knows this and does not like them. Okay? However, passage A delivers the information in a more lyrical way and more motive way, and it reads better. It's much more interesting. Okay? We're writing fiction. We're not writing a scientific informational booklet. Another tool for delivering information is dialogue. Okay. Dialogue is a very powerful method for information and delivery. Um, if there's an instance where your FMC needs to inform a partner about a certain circumstance, Person A learns something and person B needs to know, okay? In the dialogue where person A is telling person B, you are also telling your reader, but you're doing it in such a way that you're showing them. Remember, your characters are tools for your storytelling. So is there behavior in dialogue. Even if you're only talking to themselves, remember to respect your reader and avoid repetition where you can. For example, I hate this. As a reader. Person A delivers the information of person B. Great. Person C comes in and also needs the same information. If I had to sit through the same information, then I just read. Okay. I'm going to be annoyed as the reader. I'm going to be like, I just read this. Okay. And you start your mind starts wandering because you're like, I already know all this, okay? We as writers sometimes worry that our point didn't come across well enough. It's important to just trust yourself that you're not going to bury the information the first time you say it. You know, you have to trust your readers that they're smart they're going to get it. Okay? You don't need to say it at lunch time. If 200 pages passed since you mentioned this thing that everyone needs to know, you can bring it up again. But if it's in the same general ballpark of the first time you relayed this information, they're going to remember. Okay. So readers are smart people. Another way to use dialogue to deliver information is when a character learns something. So if they are in a public setting and they overhear a stranger talking or you know, there's information over the loud speaker, everyone's learning something at the same time. Also, you know, if they come across a journal and something's written or they know they catch a newspaper, you know, as they're walking through town, some old man's reading a newspaper and they glance at the headline, that's also helpful. While we're on the topic of information dumping, I think it's important to take a minute and sit back and be like, Do I need to impart this information. So what do I mean by that? I mean chilling out on physical logistics. Okay. Getting caught up in the logistics that you're scene can lead to some very boring passages for your reader. Especially if you're focusing on information, that just isn't necessary. You got to let go of the physical setup of a scene, even if you really have it in your head one particular way. Sometimes we see a scene in a certain way and we just really want our readers to see it the same way. But here's the deal. Here's what's special about our readers and reading in general. Everyone who reads your book is going to see it a little bit differently because everyone is unique, right? Even if they're reading the same words that you've put down, they're going to see it in their head a certain way? That's okay. It's a beautiful thing. And as the writer, hello I'm type A here. I'm speaking to myself also. But just because we see it a certain way, we shouldn't force our readers to see it that way too. Unless it's crucial to the plot, we sometimes need to let go a little and let our story breathe. So do we really need to note that Fred is standing to the right of Sophia? Okay. Does that matter? No. I mean, unless Fred got hit by a bus because he wasn't standing on the left of Sophia, then yeah, you need to mention the logistics of the scene. But you're looking at your writing and you're only mentioning things because that's how you want it to be seen, you should consider letting that go a little bit. Consider simplifying where you can just for the sake of your reader and keep their attention where it needs to be on your block. Okay. Let me give you another example. In this example, I'm going to impart the same information. I'm going to do it two different ways, okay? So passage A. His hand rested on my hip a moment and he gazed into my eyes. I slid further down my curves, and I shivered at his touch. Passage B. He stared at me, his face in front of mine. His right hand rested on my left hip. His fingers were still, but then they moved downward. He rested them there about 4 " above my butt. I was excited. So passage A was more exciting to read, right? We see that she or he is excited because she or he shivers. We didn't have to say it, right? We don't need to be told that out, right? Shiver in that particular setup generally means excitement, right? We don't care as readers, which hand moved on which hip. Okay. Our brains will automatically picture what makes the most sense. The reader's brain will take care of those little details. Okay. If you need to break from thinking about these sections or you're losing your writing fire, listening to all this advice, pause, like you can at any point and attack another short birth session if you need to. If you don't, let's keep going, but if you do, that's totally fine. If maybe you thought us some stuff, you jotted down some notes to say, Oh, Chapter two, I could add this or I think I'm inpo dumping in Chapter four. So fix it. I'll be here. I paused. Okay. There you go. You do you need to do? You fire back. Okay. All right. Let's keep going. Now, if you've added anything to any chapter, pop into your main outline and jot it down real quick. You don't need to go super specific. Make sure you changed it in your chapter document heading so you can add a glance, know what you've got. Now we're going to move on to avoiding cliches and predictability. 11. Avoiding Cliches & Predictability: Avoiding cliches and predictability in your writing. Avoiding cliches is tough. There are a lot of books in the world where stories have been told before. Some people enjoy predictability, at least a little bit, you don't have to totally follow it from soup to nuts. But if you write romance or cozy fiction, a lot of those readers will literally type in a trope that they like enemies to lovers, just one bit. Garvey Sunshine. People look for books with predictability for that comfort level, they know what to expect. If you're going to write using a trope or something that is a little bit predictable. Just make sure you're doing it intentionally. Just be aware that there is a difference between fulfilling a desired trope versus, you know, you're writing a thriller and the reader can guess the entire plot from page five. Okay, that's a problem. In my latest book. Do you have right here, six trouble seven sins. I wrote a short story. And as I was writing spoiler alert, I realized that my ending was probably predictable from page one. The murderer and the victim were too obvious. My story was interesting and motive, and I had kind originally been banking on the buildup and the tension. But as I started to get toward writing the finale scene, I knew I needed to change things up. I was like, Oh, this is really predictable beyond the point of entertaining. I'm like, I'm going to let my reader down if I leave it like this. I ended up completely changing what I had originally come up with and loved it even more. I've thrown in in a surprise twist who doesn't love a good twist, and I think I achieved an element of shock for the reader that wasn't in my original plan. Is there somewhere you can throw a believable red herring into your plot, so readers intrigued and really doesn't know what's going to happen next. You know, you can think deeper into natural human responses, and maybe there's a more complex emotional response from a character, an element that no one expects even you. And on the note of your character's emotional responses, don't shy away from searching deeper into those. That is such good writing material. And if you if something bad happens and your character is just sad, You have missed a moment because generally when a character is sad, they're also angry about something, right? You might be afraid of what comes next or what they've lost. What does that look like for their future life? It's part of them a little relieved. You know, maybe they feel guilty about being a little relieved. There is a treasure trove of emotions in any of your major plot points, and any of your characters can have any kind of response. You're the creator, but look into those deep emotional responses because the human brain is wonderfully chaotic. Okay. Getting into the habit of looking at it closer is a great way to avoid one dimensional characters and avoid those predictable plots. Okay. 12. Writing Time & Writer's Block: Hey, guess what comes next in writing your book. Writing your book. Yeah. Do you remember that schedule we talked about, all the dedicated hours you're going to put toward writing your book? It's time. Unfortunately, no one can dive in and write this for you. No amount of tutorials you're going to watch will end in a written book. You do have to put the time in if you need to re evaluate your schedule as you go. After a week or two weeks, if you decide I can't do three, two hour sessions a week. That's fine. Be honest with yourself and say, Okay, I can do two, two hour sessions. These are the days I'm going to do and hold yourself to that schedule. Eventually, if you do and if you sit down and put the work in, your book will come together a promise, but it won't if you don't write it. If you forget anything from this tutorial, anything I've rambled about character development, I think, you can come back to this point in the tutorial. Just remember, Impostor Syndrome is a liar. It is one of the worst parts of our brain and the time that you spend writing this book is not time wasted. It is time that fills your cup so that you can go about all your other responsibilities and all the things you have to do as an adult in the world, and you can say, at least I have writing time later. I'm going to work on this. Eventually, you will have your manuscript fy I guarantee you you will be so proud of yourself and so will I. Okay. So let's talk about some obstacles that are going to try and get in your way. Okay. Number one is going to be time, like I said, Okay? As I said, it's easy to brush away creative time as though it's a bonus to your day, it's just it's something I was going to do later and you realize you've spent your whole writing session scrolling TikTok. Don't do that. Phone down. Turn WiFi. Well, no, you need WiFi for Googling how to poison your main character. Leave your WiFi on, but don't go on social media. Save that for later. You are going to feel that other things take precedence. You're going to feel that more times than other. If you get to a part in your book that you are really not looking forward to writing. I had to kill a character in my book Desperate creatures. I love that character. I cried when I wrote it. That's how am I am. I avoided writing that scene for a week. Eventually I sat down, I'm like, I have to do it. I texted my friend after I was like, I killed him. I felt terrible. But I also felt good because I got this hugely important part of my plot done. Okay. I made the time for it. I made that commitment to myself. And now my book is available on Amazon and people read it and review it. It's a good feeling. So all that to say, keep the schedule you made for yourself and make that time. It does matter. Remember, it's okay to say no. No is a complete sentence. It is okay to say no, I'm writing this afternoon or no, I can't do that. I'm not available today. You don't have to tell them you're writing, to say no, I'm to see you this afternoon. Can we do this another day? You have plans with yourself, and I am so proud of you every time you prioritize yourself because I know how hard that is to do. Let's talk about riders block. It's going to happen. All right. So let's just talk about it. Elephant in the room. Okay. It will come. It's normal. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. I've talked to a lot of writer friends about this. I've had riders block many times myself. I'm going to run down a quick list of things you can do when riders block hits. Okay? Number one, take a break. Just not too long of a break. Okay. You should be visiting your manuscript at least once every three days. Okay? But forcing yourself to write when you are not interested, you had a terrible day or you don't feel well, or you didn't sleep, that's not going to lead to quality work. You will end up deleting half of what you wrote. Which is fine sometimes, but just don't force yourself, okay. Give yourself a break. You're not going to get in trouble with anyone. Your manuscript is not going to burst into flames just because you didn't work on it the day you said you would. You're still keeping that commitment to yourself, but you're also honoring how you feel. Okay. Just don't take too long of a break. Number two, that being said, after a break, write something. It doesn't have to be your book. If you don't want. Okay. If you look at your book and you're like, still not ready to dive back into that. You got to write something. You can write a quick side story featuring one of the characters from your book. You can plop your character down into a completely different setting and see what they do. Or you can hop on social media and do a hashtag writers prompt challenge. There's usually ones all over social media on Mondays and Fridays, but they're always floating around if you follow that hashtag. Some of them might really get your brain going and saw the writer's block ice just enough so that you want to return to your book. Okay. Tactic number three. Jump to a random section of your outline and just start writing. Doesn't matter where in your outline, as long as it's something you're in the mood to write. It's like the short first session except you are committing to a piece of your outline. If you're feeling annoyed, maybe you'd be good at writing an angry section right now. Go to see what you feel like writing, what you feel like working on, even if it's different than what you had planned. Tacking number four. Write somewhere else. If you always write at home, go to a cafe or go to a park. If there's a national park where you log your computer there and pop down somewhere and see if that changes. I may shake something loose. Number five. Eat something. No one writes well when they're hungry. Seriously. Trust me. Number six. Go for a walk. Go outside, touch grass, get up and dance, get off your th and move around a little bit to get energized. If that helps. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, get the blood comfortable. Okay. Tactic number seven, start reading a new book, maybe by a new author. Okay? You might find you're inspired by how an author expresses themselves. Reading a new author may be enough to shake the cow webs. Bottom line, just remember it may take a little while for writer's block to saw you may have to do two of these tactics, even three before you start feeling back into your book again. I just want to say, remember that published authors are the writers who didn't give up. Okay. 13. An Overview on Editing: Let's talk about edits. There are actually several kinds of editing that your book will go through before you're done. I just want to give you a super brief overview on this just so it's in your brain as you go and that you're well aware of the lingo that goes along with writing a book. Well, Editing generally refers to examining your written work and making it, more evocative and succinnc and spelled correctly. Here to you, grammar and punctuation and tense. The editing process could actually be broken into four distinct stages. They are developmental editing, line editing, copy editing and proofreading. And they kind of shrink down as you go. Okay? So you can self edit or preferably You can find someone to do it for you. Okay. You could pretty easily find editors for hire on social media. If you started building your network in Bookstogram or book talk, you probably already come across several editors, advertising, their services. You can hire freelance editors and proof readers on places like Upwork or Fiber. If you are paying someone to edit your work, just do your due diligence and check reviews. They should be able to say, I've done this, this and this. These are my certifications. Talk to AB and C, and they'll back me up with reviews or they should be able to show you reviews of previous work they've done. They just follow your gut and acknowledge any red flags you see before you pay anyone any of your hard earned money? The editing stage deserves its own separate tutorial, but let's just go through an overview of what each editing stage consists of. Okay. So what you start when your document is when your manuscript is mostly formed, okay? You have your outline, you've made your documents, you put in that writing time and it's starting to come together. Okay? And you have taken the time to then squish all your documents, your chapter documents together. Very exciting. You have to stay very organized. What I like to do is open all of my chapter documents which are numbered. Because that's the way to do it and you just copy whole thing, paste, copy whole thing, paste all into a new document. And then by the end, all of your chapter documents are preserved. But then you have this one mega document everything. You can see your final word count. It's very exciting. I love doing that. So once you have that, it's time for developmental editing. Developmental editing focuses on what's my story? Who's in it? Is this story interesting? Does it make sense? Um, Okay. Is it in the right order, the flow of the story? Do I drop the information in the right way? Am I am I saying, you know, something about Chapter nine before Chapter nine has even happened? Because it happens? You get so into your story that you forget what you shared with the reader already? Okay. So Organization of chapters? This is when you're kind of looking at the setting imagery and the explanation of, where are we? What is the setting? And how does the plot move forward? So it's a huge job for a developmental editor, right to kind of look at your whole story and say, okay, does this work? Can we move on from here and start to clean it up or do we need to pick up sections and plop them down? It's probably the most intimidating section to get through edits, but obviously, it's also the more important and you shouldn't move on until you have that move on the line editing. Think, am I telling the story the way I intended to? Okay? Does it flow well? Is the tone right is serious enough? Is there humor where I want it? This is also the point where you want to double check any reference for story points that are based on fact, you know, historical, medical, cultural, and things like that. And that also includes counting them against the rules of your fantasy system if you're not writing, you know, somewhere base in the real world. You've decided on what you want to say, but how do you want to say it? Is it more colloquial? Do you want to say it with dialogue? So just check the overall tone. How is the reader supposed to feel as they go through your story? Copy editing. So copy editing focuses more on the nitty gritty, the technical stuff. So is my story mechanically and technically sound? This is also the stage where we get serious about punctuation, grammar and spelling. Things are getting real now, you know, the story is pretty much written and we're just we're tighting up. We're checking, you know, our eyes are dotted or tees are cross sweeping the floors a little bit. Okay? And the last stage of editing is proof reading. So this is your final check. For errors in the typing of it Inconsistency. You know, miss words people miss and A and A. This is a great point in your editing process to use things like grammarly. Just to help you double check, I know said we use trap as simplicity. We do Grammarly is standard these days. Even Microsoft Word comes with its own grammar checker. It's not always correct, but it does draw your attention with a nice big red squiggly line where you might need to double check something. So as early as you like in your writing process, you can enlist the help of Beta readers. I recommend starting with trusted reader friends who are already enthusiastic about your story, already kind of your cheerleaders from the get go. Beta readers are important, and I've said this several times, But as writers, especially after all the time that we've poured into literal hours, probably literal sweat and tears, hopefully not blood. But at least sweat and tears, right? Frustration. We can get so into our story that we lose the thread of what we've shared and what we haven't. A trusted Beta reader will give you constructive feedback and not just it's good. I liked it. It was bad. You need specific like, on page 134. She says this, but she's never mentioned that before. Seems important. Conversely, they might let you know when you've been rambling. It's like on page 47 from page 47 to 53, you're talking about the dog. We get it. We get it about the dog. They're going to help you identify those places where you might need some rewrites. Beta readers are, I think, more helpful in earlier stages around the developmental editing stage. Because once you've hit proof reading, you don't really want to go back and start messing with things again because then you have to go back through, you know, copy editing or you have to go back through line edding copying editing, and proof reading again. If you go back, you have to go back through them all again because you could have made mistakes when you were fixing that. So, guess what? Okay. After you've gone through all of the stages of editing, whether or not you've used Beta readers. Okay. At some point, you're done. You've written a book. What? Yes. Congratulations. If you're at this point, if you're watching this and you have done all these stages, and you pause and worked on them as you go. You have written a book. Okay. Whatever happens now, this manuscript exists. You've done what so many others only dream about doing. You've written a book. So when you start to tell people that they go, Oh, I wanted to write a book or I was going to write a book. If that's what happens. When you tell people that you've written a book, they will tell you how they've written. Okay. But for now, I'm going to say to you, congratulations. I'm so excited for you and I'm so proud of you and you have done the hardest part because so many people want to do this, but there are just so many obstacles that you have battled through to get this done. I'm getting emotional. I'm just really excited for your accomplishments. And if you've gotten to the point where your manuscript is in good shape, even if you're about to hand it off to an editor just for some extra checks. Yeah, I'm proud of you and you should really celebrate. 14. The Book is Written! What Now?: Okay. So what now? Well, you gorgeous author. You have several options, okay? You'll like the first one. You can literally do nothing for a while. Yes. It's so relaxing. All right. You just been through it. You wrote a book. Chill out for a little while. Enjoy it that it exists. I actually recommend doing nothing for a little bit. Take a moment, take a breather and just acknowledge the hard work that you put in even if it's not available to the world yet. It doesn't matter. You need to celebrate these little successes along the way. This is not a little one. This is a big one. Just like anything else but I tell you, take a breather, put a time limit on your breather. Okay. I would say, give it a week without even looking at it. Just float around, have some champagne, if you drink if you don't have some chocolate or something. Okay. And then after a week, give it a speed read and do you still love the gist of it? Okay? The answer is yes, which I'm hoping it will be since you put so much work into it. Let's move forward and talk about some other options you have at this point. Before you move forward, whether you're decided to do traditional publishing, whether you're looking at self publishing or small d press, we're going to talk about all of those options, regardless of any of those, the first thing you need are a few promotional points about what you've just written. Okay? Number one, you need to know your genre. And I know that sounds really obvious, but it may have shifted while you were writing. Maybe you thought you were going to write horror and it ended up a little more thriller. Maybe you were writing a romance story, and it became like a paranormal romance. So just make sure you're nailing down the proper genre because that is going to be very important. Number two, you need your elevator pitch. What the heck is an elevator pitch. Or pitch. If you don't know what that is, is a one to two sentence synopsis slash teaser that you would get to someone if you only had the span of an elevator ride to convince them to read your book. Generally, in an elevator pitch. What I do is I will mention some comparable titles. We talked about that before, comparative titles, comfortable titles. I will usually say blank means blank in this adjective genre. Depending on who you're talking to you, you may have some different versions of your elevator pitch, and that's okay. I know you've just written a whole book, but you need to now get a little comfortable about how to sum it up without giving everything away. The main point is that you're not looking to give a summary. It's when you flip the book over Okay. Why should I pick up this book? Okay? It doesn't tell me all the twists, right? Why would I read it if I already know the twist, but it might hint at something, use a little interesting language on the back, we've all gone to a bookstore and been. And then if it's stunk, we were like, Okay. But if it's good, you're like, I have to have this Okay. That's what you want. You are working on zeroing in on the commercial value of what you've written. Because no reader or literary agent in the world is going to represent or pick up your book if it can't be labeled. If it can't be real quick, say, what is this? If it takes too long, if you're rambly about it, you need to work on that. And that might take some time. And I know that's frustrating, but it is worth your time, whichever way you move forward. Okay. Let's talk about querying literary agents, which is sending information about the book you've just written to agents to bring them to traditional publishing houses. Okay. The big traditional publishers will not accept your manuscript without representation from an agent. So you need to impress an agent first. Okay. In a blue moon, some of them have an open call, but it's really unlikely and they're only usually open for hours, not even like days. So you can start places like agent query.com. Find literary agents who read in your genre, right? Who are also open to submissions. Not every agent is always accepting things. And then tailor your query letter to exactly what they want. If they want a summary, don't give them the blurb, give them an actual summary. Your agent needs to actually know. They're not like a prospective reader. They're like, they want to know. Query letters are an art form unto themselves. You need to prepare for a lot of rejection. It's okay. It's normal and it is to be expected. I'm not saying you might get rejected. I'm saying you absolutely will. It's a very saturated market. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. I'm just saying get some steel on your spine and wrap yourself in some emotional armor because rejection will come. It's a natural part of this process. Try not to take it personally, don't let it crush you every time you open up your e mail and you see a rejection. Okay. And the rejections don't come with constructive feedback. They're very busy. They'll usually say something like, This isn't a good fit for me, but good luck on your journey. Okay. And that's normal and that's what they do. That's what you should. Once you start queering literary agents, I would definitely recommend keeping a Google spreadsheet available and just track who you've sent it to, what they wanted because some of them want three chapters. Some of them want ten pages, some of them want none of your book until they say we want more. And then I write a note that lets you know when you should have heard back from them by because not all of them will even get back to you with a rejection. And a lot of them will. But if it's been some if it's been some months and you're like, Oh, I never heard back from so and so, but it said that you should have heard back from, like, a month ago. It's a no. It was a no and you could just count it as a no. But good try. Okay. Let's talk about submitting to ID presses, independent publishers. Okay? These are smaller publishing houses that do often take submissions directly from the authors without agent representation. Okay? If you don't want to continue the quering process, totally get it, but you're not quite ready to tackle self publishing or you want some help. A smaller ID press might be a good fit for you. One of my warnings as in all things would be to do your due diligence. Check reviews, check with other authors they have published. You can DM or e mail any author who they published and say, Hey, how was your experience? Some of them won't be totally honest with you and some of them will tell you I was awful or I love them, they were great. You should definitely do it. You can look at their social media and see how much they actually promote their books. Some of them will say that they promote a ton and they'll get you on radio shows and they'll never do any of that. So just something to be cautious of. You also don't want to fall into the trap of a vanity press. A vanity press. Is any small publisher who requests money from you before publishing your book? They'll say something like, Oh, we'll split the cost with you of publishing and cover design, and then we'll figure out royalty royalties look a little different. You're better off self publishing to work with a vanity press, especially because certain someone has plenty of tutorials on how to self publish? Okay. So don't pay money against future royalties. There's no need for you to do that, okay? As a first time author. Let's talk about self publishing. If you want to skip other presses altogether, or you've tried it and it's not working, you've tried agent clearing and you just gotten your 200th rejection back and your billon You can self publish your book. It doesn't have the same reputation that used to. It still does a little bit and it gets complicated about where you want to sell your book in my tutorials about using Amazon KDP and formatting your book for self publishing. I talk a lot about using Ingram Spark versus using Amazon. The main things to keep in mind at this point are that once you self publish, most traditional publishers will not publish your book. Okay. So that's a decision that you're making when you choose to self publish. And that the odds of getting a publishing contract are pretty slim. And if you believe in your book, and you're ready to get into the hands of readers, self publishing is very gratifying. You keep so much more of the royalties. You have a hand in the decision making process literally every step of the way. It's a lot of work, but it has been the right choice for countless authors, Countless myself included. So don't look down on self publishing, that might be the right path for you. Just whatever you do, in all things, do your research. You have done so much work to get this book written. I'm getting emotional again. But you deserve to be happy with your final result. You deserve to be happy with the way you've written your characters and presented your story. You deserve to be happy with the contract that you're signing, the cover design for your book, baby. Just think how far you've come since you had that one idea in the shower last year or however many years ago, you started writing this book. So make sure the decisions that you make getting it out into the world are ones that will bring you joy and not fear or discomfort. Okay. So in conclusion, no matter what, I am so stinking proud of you. Not only for finishing my course and listening to me ramble, but writing a book is a huge accomplishment. I love it if you stuck with me so we can finish out, you know, the rest of the process, getting your book out into the world. This tutorial about writing your book flows wonderfully into my tutorials, about formatting, your manuscript. That tutorial flows right into how to publish on Amazon KP I could be with you literally every step of the way, getting your book available to the world. Um, you know, self publishing paperbacks and books is such a wonderful journey. So exciting. And I really hope that I get to be part of it with you. So I'm so excited. Congratulations. Lovely author you.