Choose a view point • Be in the scene • Find a voice • Give the reader questions
each chapter is a single scene. Each scene is used to progress the plot line, and to keep the reader turning pages.
take a story from your own life experience and write it down. To get you started, build a compelling scene by using your five senses. What do you see, hear, smell, taste and feel?
choose a chapter to write from multiple perspectives, experimenting with narrating the chapter in both first person and third person limited
How To write a character?
Who is your character?
What makes your character tick?
Make a complex hero
Make a complex villain
Make important secondary characters
Create reader intimacy
get some inpiration by checking out some of the best Characters in fictions
Make a list of your top five favorite characters and define five character traits for each.
John Snow — Strong, modest, loyal to the end, brave, irritable
With your list of characters and their attributes, choose your favorite trait in each and strike out the others.
find similarities between the characters
Write a few sentences explaining what it is about these traits that makes each protagonist/villain so memorable.
James Patterson ‘With respect to characters, you want things that really dig deep and say a lot very very quickly, to get us interested in the person.’ With that in mind, write a list of 20 traits for a new character. Then cross out 17 traits. Do the remaining traits still make for a compelling character?
Find this character in your book whithin these chapters
How To describe a location?
its fine if you cant travel to your location, use these two helpful resources for getting a lay of the land
Google Street View lets you explore world landmarks, discover natural wonders, and step inside locations such as museums, arenas, restaurants and small businesses with 360-degree images.
for cities arround the world if you’re looking for names of local restaurants or places of interest near your location, visit The New York Times 36 Hours
How To describe an event/plot?
Successful plots make readers say “Tell me more!”
James Patterson says the difference between a plot and a story by “The king died and then the queen died, is a story. The king died and then the queen died of grief is a plot.”
Condense your plot
Raise the stakes
Create conflict
Create worthy opponents
Build in surprises
Get your friend feedback and see if they ask for more.
Ideas and Notes
Read The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler if you Having trouble coming up with clever book ideas
Coming up with idea out of nowhere is very rare. Usually people put together varying ideas that nobody has put together before. These are few tools to help get your creativity flowing. Inspiration Finder What-if-inator An idea generator for possible historical outcomes. Eg. “What if human found aliens when they went to the Moon?”
"The more you know about, the more likely you are to combine things to make an idea that’s striking. —James Patterson"