"Hey, you should write a book!" someone said to me. I laughed. When I say I laughed, it was out loud. I said to them, "Do you realize what that all entails? First, an idea, a plot, character development, etc..." But say I did want to try my hand at "writing a book". Aside from the obvious, no omit that, from the beginning, from square one... Where would one start?
Here's the steps that I'd use to make it easier: 1. Start with a general conflict that will carry readers to the end. An example for LOTR would be: Frodo has to carry the magic ring to Mount Doom to destroy it. 2. You need a motivation for the character to act. (Frodo and friends try to destroy said ring to keep the evil wizards from controlling all of humankind.) 3. What types of obstacles will the character encounter along the way, and how does the character deal with the obstacles? This creates new conflicts, motivations and possibly subplots. Also, new antagonists will be created here. 4. Any motivation-changing points? 5. Any character growth.change points? Once you've got that mapped out -- and I always use a timeline-flowchart looking thing with paper and pens -- start writing. Character development will evolve on its own as you write.
Yeah, I'd go with an idea. My usual method is to think, "Oh I want to write about gay poets in some sort of fantasy almost Victorian setting" then I'll just grab a random character (literally just "The Poet" in the story I'm thinking of - very fleshed out and 3 dimensional character ) and shove him in a situation (standing on a bridge wanting to jump off it), then I start writing, mostly describing his feelings, the city, the river (I decided before I started writing the River would be very important because I've been thinking a lot about writing a river almost as a character for a long time). Then I just wrote and wrote and decided the Poet maybe felt bad because he was being controlled by some guy who had more money than him, so I sent him off to see him, and the more they talked and did stuff, the more I wanted to introduce stuff (other characters borrowed from poets I like) the more the story would move on. Mind you, this is my NaNoWriMo, so i've written about 30,000 words in the last week, and might not be the best way to approach it. In better novels I start with a longer thinking period, and sketch out a bit more lightly, and start plotting after I've written a scene or two and don't keep writing until I know what happens next. With a NaNoWriMo when you're pantsing it, you can't ever stop writing because you're in such a rush.
My advice is just sit with a basic concept and just write. Don't be too careful don't grow too attached to anything be prepared to start and restart a gazillion times and don't worry about boring or infodump bits etc. A first draft only needs to be seen by yourself and maybe some trusted people to bounce ideas off. It can all be tweaked, changed, edited etc later.
I ask questions. I take whatever my idea is and I pretend that I'm a 4 or 5 year old. I start asking why, what is, how come, all those annoying questions. I write them all down and as I think of answers I start answering them. then I think for a while. Then I start putting those answers into a story.
I'm an outline guy. I like to have at least a loose outline that gives me some idea how I am planning on getting from start to finish before I write. (Oh yeah, I like to know how I am going to start and how I think it will finish) The outline doesn't mean I can't change things as I guy, its just a guideline, a fallback position as it were.
