How to Write a Book

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
– William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream


HOW TO WRITE?

There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.

-Somerset Maugham.



We are sorry to disappoint you, but we cannot tell you how to write a book. Because you know it much better than us. Remember, it is authors that make publishers, and not vice versa. Find here some advice from famous authors. If not advice, treat it as inspiration.



“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft



Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list,
a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.
– Jane Yolen



Write it. Just write it. Write it on receipts in the car while you wait for your kid to finish their piano lessons, scribble on napkins at lunch with friends. Type on crappy typewriters or borrow computers if you have to. Fill notebooks with ink. Write inside your head while you’re in traffic and when you’re sitting in the doctor’s office. Write the truth, write lies. Write the perfect spouse. Write your dreams. Write your nightmares. Write while you cry about what you’re writing, write while you laugh out loud at your own words. Write until your fingers hurt, then keep writing more. Don’t ever stop writing. Don’t ever give up on your story, no matter what “they” say. Don’t ever let anybody take away your voice. You have something to say, your soul has a story to tell. Write it. There is never any reason to be afraid. Just write it and then put it out there for the world. Shove it up a flag pole and see who salutes it. Somebody will say it’s crap. So what? Somebody else will love it. And that’s what writing’s about. Love. Love of the art, love of the story, and love for and from the people who really understand your work. Nobody else matters. Love yourself. Love your work. Be brave. Just write.

― Melodie Ramone



If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
– Edgar Rice Burroughs



“The first draft of anything is shit.”
― Ernest Hemingway



If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
– Somerset Maugham



I think memory is the most important asset of human beings. It’s a kind of fuel; it burns and it warms you. My memory is like a chest: There are so many drawers in that chest, and when I want to be a fifteen-year-old boy, I open up a certain drawer and I find the scenery I saw when I was a boy in Kobe. I can smell the air, and I can touch the ground, and I can see the green of the trees. That’s why I want to write a book.
― Haruki Murakami



First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!
– Ray Bradbury



Great characters- They are pivotal for a great plot. THEN a solid plot: Why then? If you do not have great characters it is impossible to create a good plot, nonetheless a solid one. Once you have built great characters for the scenes, there you have it. It’s just like the movies, you cannot have a great film if the characters are frail and their lines are weak as well. I guess great world-building comes along with a good plot. If there is something that will work fine in a novel is how you will develop from the theme. You’ve got to establish a good timeline, and from there it comes a world. You see the technical matters don’t match or matter as much to me. Even a poorly written story, if there is a good plot and great characters on it will make a divine combination.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, How to Make a Book



Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
– Henry David Thoreau



Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.
– Ayn Rand



The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
― Mark Twain, The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain



All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary—it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
– Somerset Maugham



All the information you need can be given in dialogue.
– Elmore Leonard



Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.
– Jean-Paul Sartre



Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
– Alice Munro



Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
― Anton Chekhov



No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
– E. B. White



The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
― Stephen King



Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow



It is so hard to put an end to the magic of words. For the moment, let's give it a grand finale.

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just begins
to live that day.
– Emily Dickinson