In this series, I will share how I released my first book, The Kaiser’s Machines: Panzerwanderer, in 90 days. That’s from concept to a published book. I will walk you through my process to help you think about how to approach this challenge if you want to hard charge through writing your first book.
My disclaimer…I am assuming that you are well read in the genre you want to write in, have writing experience, and understand the basics of storytelling. With that being said, if that’s not you, I will continue reading anyway, for you’ll walk away with plenty to think about once you get the fundamentals under your belt.
In this miniseries, I am going to break what I did down into four steps:
Plan
Write
Edit
Launch
The Plan and Edit phases were the shortest of these four phases. And during the editing phase, you’ll need to do things for the launch phase. It helps break up the monotony of editing but also, to get it out in 90 days, you’ll have to juggle these two things at the end to reach this goal.
While many would argue the editing phase is the longest, I personally have found the writing step is always the most laborious (which is why I recommend you devote more time to it). Hell, I worked on the lore for one of my unreleased fantasy books for multiple years before even writing a completed draft. But that’s not the purpose of this series. We are here to rip the excuse band-aid off and get you from start to finish with your first book. So, let’s do it!
Plan – Step One: What’s Your Story Idea?
The movement of creativity begins with an idea. For your story, I assume you have an idea, or several, hanging around. For me, my idea was simple—what if the German Empire developed mechs somehow during World War to win the war? From there, my first series, The Kaiser’s Machines, was born.
Next, what genre does this idea fit into? This will inform several things, such as:
What are the top books in that genre you’ll be competing against?
What’s the average length of this type of book?
What are the reader's expectations for that kind of story in that genre?
How will you differentiate yourself while meeting readers' expectations in this genre?
For me, my book fits into the sub-genre of science fiction called alternate history. But down to its core, it’s really a war story. Some books that came to mind when I was writing The Kaiser’s Machines were Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick and The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove. But I knew it was a war story and wanted to make it feel real rather than leaning too much into the science fiction realm (my way of differentiating).
Plan – Step Two: What Kind Of Story Are You Telling?
So why does any of this matter? All of this feeds into how you write your book. For my novels, I knew several things:
They needed to feel real and grounded in history (aside from the machines)
They needed to have lots of battles and action sequences
They needed to use typical war story tropes without being too cliché
For instance, one of the tropes I used was the nurse/soldier love story. The difference? My character, Sarah Anderson, was more like a Joan of Arc who had built emotional bonds with male soldiers, but they were always kept at arm’s length. I didn’t want to do the love story that we’ve seen countless times (Pearl Harbor (2001) or Passchendaele (2008), Enemy at the Gates (2001), for instance).
Understanding these things before you put pen to paper really helps you avoid cliché pitfalls while helping you find unique ways to approach them for your story. There’s a reason why they’ve been used time and time again. But you have to be mindful of how you use them so you don’t bore your reader.
In addition to these genre tropes, there are also common story archetypes that might come into play. For instance, a big influence of mine is J.R.R. Tolkien, who was known for writing stories that utilized “The Quest”—characters that go on a journey to accomplish a goal. For me, The Kaiser’s Machines story is an alternate history war story. But to go a layer down, it’s really a quest—my protagonists are on a quest to stop these new war machines.
As you can see, what’s your story idea? is a loaded question. There’s much to work out and nail down before you consider writing a draft. But if you are well-read (or watched) in the genre you aspire to write, you should have no problem figuring these out.
Plan – Step Three: Who’s Who, What’s The Plot, And How Will You Write It?
Next, let’s talk about characters. I had approached this lately with more detail than when I wrote The Kaiser’s Machines. Back then, all I did was come up with my characters’ names, figure out their roles (nurse, soldier, etc.), flesh out background information, and then started writing.
Today, I try to provide a little more detail ahead of time, like a full rundown of their background (where they came from, why they are where they are now) and how these things make them unique. However, the way I write is more organic, and I tend to let many of these things evolve or come onto the page as I write. Other writers like to get extremely granular in this phase, but if you want to complete a draft in 90 days, you must refrain from spending too much time on this and just run with it. You’ll inevitably flesh these problems out as you write a draft.
So, build out your main characters as detailed as possible (those that will have a perspective in your story) and then jot down some secondary characters (those that interact a lot with your primary characters but don’t have a perspective). Other minor characters will fall into place as needed (at least, that’s how it worked for me).
Now that you understand who your characters are (you should be able to visualize them in your head), you can start thinking about how you will move them across your plot. In most cases, the trilogy is what many indie authors do because that’s what a lot of readers come to expect these days. Some might even do up to six books or more. It depends on how long you think you can stretch the story out or if you’ll have multiple story arcs within your series.
For me, The Kaiser’s Machines became a trilogy because that seemed to be popular in the self-publishing world. It also suited my needs because I figured out this would only be one arch in a new timeline I was creating, which I knew would include other spin-off stories and future trilogies of books.
Before I started writing my first book, I knew how the trilogy would end. So, I wrote out how the plot would flow to get my characters from point A to point B. Luckily, I had history to lean on to help frame my story. But once I mapped that out and determined where the books would split up, I turned to how I would write it.
What do I mean by this? Well, you can write your characters into a story in many ways. This is called “perspective.” Are you going to have chapters where all characters are in each scene (much more linear like The Lord of the Rings until Tolkien splits the Fellowship)? Or will you have individual chapters geared toward a specific character’s perspective (thinking A Song of Ice and Fire)?
For my books, since I wanted to show multiple perspectives, I wrote with each chapter centered around a single character. I used third-person omniscient and the past tense since that has proven to be the strongest way to tell a story. My writing style is very much influenced by cinema, so I tend to write my chapters more like scenes (short and punchy, with some only two pages long). I often have to be able to visualize the scene in my head to overcome writer’s block, but you’ll figure out what your style is based on your influences and as you write.
From Planning to Writing
Alright, that was a lot to chew on. You could go down so many rabbit holes with just the planning phase but remember, we want to do this in 90 days. So that means you should only dedicate 10 to 14 days of planning. The same will go for the editing phase (the launch phase will be layered over the editing phase), which will leave roughly two months to write a draft.
These are ballpark numbers and they’re based on my experience, the writing phase is the part that takes the longest and is usually where people stumble, leading to an incomplete book. So that’s why you need to develop a writing plan. Although it’s technically part of the planning phase, I will cover it in the next blog.
If you have not already, please join my newsletter to receive updates when new blogs, like part 2 in this series, are published. Look to the resources below to help you plan your book. See you in part 2, where the hard work begins.
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