Book Creating (Starting)

This is a picture of the main character from my book, Long, who is obsessed with money and getting rich. He is based off my cousin who is around the same age as me, and is the same age as me in the novel. His role in the novel is very important as he helps convey the moral lesson important to the book! - Green Success - Andrew T.

I am writing this post because I want to help people who want to do something useful in their lives. I hope that my words help you and don't hurt your writings, but I am also writing this to remind my self of how to write a book, or at least how I wrote my book, because I feel I am losing my creativity as I grow older, so I want to use my own creative ideas of the past to help me someday in the future, and to also help any one who reads this!

When I began writing my book believe it or not I originally intended it to just be a short video for film class. I was listening to music in my room and as usual I closed my eyes and began to imagine crazy and weird things as the music played. Well the idea was to make an action film with guns and shooting, but also a twist at the end. The video I imagined that night was simple, drug dealers have a shoot out with the cops they drug dealers are having a blast, friendship builds from this experience and they are all laughing and shooting cops. The Drug dealers are winning of course, but eventually the viewer notices that the Drug dealers are high and then soon after one of the drug dealers starts to lose his "high" and begins to see what really is happening. Well as you would expect, things aren't going so great, and as he looks around he realizes the people he was just talking to were just hallucinations and at the end the drug dealer dies.

So I wanted to make a film as our final project in film class (Freshmen year) but we decided on something else after discussing the "drug" problem. Anyways I liked the idea so I kept it well protected within the depths of my mind. Soon enough I decided that that was going to be the ending of my story. (Spoiler warning for anyone actually intending to read my book when it comes out)



So the main point I want to come across is decide on the ending of your story before you actually write it, that way every even you write in the story can lead to the end and also so you have a good idea your self where you want your story to go. Magically if every event points towards this possible end, (While the reader believes there could be a million ends to the story) then all your events will be related and it will make the story seem much more believably and that the ending wasn't just pulled out of the writers butt at the last second.

Ephesians 2:10 - For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Now a big problem I came across when writing this book was characters. I wanted realistic characters, I wanted them to be as lively as possible and I also wanted them to be convincing and precious to me. Well one day I decided, if I want realistic characters I should base them off real people, so that's what I did. I based one of the characters off my self, another off my cousin and the antagonist off everyone who hated me. This way when I base my characters off real people, the characters can then be as real and as lively as possible, giving each a different personality! So I'd recommended doing this, especially if it's your first book.

So next was the "hard" part, the part most people struggle with the most, THE MAIN CONCEPT. Before I could come up with a plot summary I needed to know first, what is the moral of my story? Now if your story doesn't have a moral then I suggest you stop right now, because there is no point in writing or reading a book with no moral lesson of any kind. I decided to pick a moral lesson that I felt would really be good, one that I HAD A LOT OF EXPERIENCE WITH, because I have observed it in our society for a long time now! The moral lesson I chose to convey could be considered two lessons, the first is don't waste your time with temporary pleasures and meaningless things such as spending your days socializing and what not. The second, "side" lesson was that your creativity is a gift and as easily as you obtained it, it can be taken away. With these two lessons in mind I decided it was time to make my plot line! Or at least attempt!

I really didn't have a clear cut idea of how my book's story line was going to go, but I knew where it was going to lead, because I had already decided upon an ending! So I decided I would just start by introducing the characters and settings first, as some of you have read from my previous posts (The first Chapter of my book) You should have noticed how I slowly revealed the setting and characters one at a time. I started by using my own home town as the setting. I know my home town so well so writing about it would be easy. Then I decided to start my book! I wrote about nature, and gave lots of beautiful imagery, then I transitioned to the school setting where I started my story and instantly I jumped the reader into the events without giving them any prior knowledge of what was going on. This is crucial in writing because it not only jumps the reader into the book quickly, but also sparks questions and interest which the reader will only find out by reading the book further! I genius idea is it not?

After that I quickly introduced all the characters at once, not by making special paragraphs to describe them, but by describing them through their actions in the story as they played out the events, nothings worse than a story that moves slowly and has interruptions because the writer need to clarify something or talk about the characters in the middle of an even. I decided I would go more in depth with all the characters later in the next chapter, after all the events of the first chapter were done and I felt I could slow down the pace of the book to talk about these characters.

So That's how I started my book, I will later go in depth of my actual writing of the story, but this section is titled (Starting) so I'll leave it at that! I hope everyone who reads this appreciates my advice and may someday benefit from it!

- Andrew T.