The Easiest Way to Write Your Book!

We could drown in the hordes of articles, guides, and PDFs aimed at telling us how to write our book with the least energy.

Disclaimer: We should be leery of anyone telling us writing will be a breeze. As storytellers, we acknowledge we've signed up to toil the field in hopes of producing a crop we can be proud of. 

Therefore, as realists, we're not attacking effort. We're attacking inefficiency.

(The circular-work we all fall victim to when we "just didn't know any better".)

In one sentence, I'll share the easiest way I, and many other published authors, praise as the easiest way to write your book:

• LOVE THE BLUEPRINT

The best use of your sweat is establishing how the action in your story will progress -- BEFORE YOU BUILD THE HOUSE.

Since I too loathe inspiration without information, here's a strategy to address the all-important query of 'how'.

One, Helpful Tip:

Try to boil down the purpose of each chapter into one sentence. How does that chapter kick the story forward?

I like putting the chapter number + one sentence on a post-it. Then, sticking those post-its on a wall:

Do what works for your creative genius -- illustrations, chapter spreadsheets, bullet-points, writing the story as a song, whichever!

THE POINT IS...

Any editor worth their chops will tell you most authors 'get lost in the middle'. Somewhere in the second act, they lose the reader's interest (primarily) due to a lack of clarity. Clarity around how the action should best play out in relation to the previously established storyline and the eventual ending.

Loving the blueprint helps us better catch dead spots and glitches before they get to the editor, agent and/or reader.

Enjoy getting to know your story, your characters, your world, and how the drama all plays out!

Speaking for myself...I typically enjoy the process a little more without a nervous conniption. 

Happy world-building!

• Jesse

Note: I'm always here to kick around ideas, help strategize, or just talk through some troublesome spots in the story. I'm committed to this full-time and my aim is to make the resources/information around storytelling and story-selling available to everyone, for virtually nothing. 

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