Thread: Organizing a book

I am a newbie here who has been itching to write a book based on my personal experiences regarding spirituality, psychology, and science. I have been collecting notes and writings for years. I am a novice at writing a book and would like to know if there are some reference materials that outline the process.

Thanks,
Joe

Hey Joe =] Try this site, it looks like you have already got the random thoughts sorted. I'm using this method to create my own novel atm.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...vel.html?cat=4

x

You could do the kind of stuff I do at school when writing an essay. Plan what you'll do for each paragraph, (or chapter, if the writing is larger) and put jot notes down for what you want to get down.

Say you're planning to do a chapter about how a deep sea diver discovers a thousand-tentacled octopus. I would organize the chapter like:

-<protagonist> hears from a news report that a strange octopus is supposed to have been seen somewhere.
-He calls a friend who owns scuba gear, and tells him about it.
-The two meet up and travel to the ocean on a boat
-The protagonist dives under the sea, finds nothing, but just as the air is about to run out the octopus appears, drags down the guy.

etc. etc. Hope this method helps you out. :]

There seem to be a number of programs designed to help structure your writing. An example being yWriter. I use that for the bigger works and then for chapters I tend to lean towards bulleted lists of major events in each chapter. In some cases I have even used the bullets in the word document until I have finished writing that part of the scene. Hopes this helps. Good luck writing.

-William