Daunting

Chester The Bear's decided he can write a book. It's something he's never done before, and frankly, the task is more than a little daunting.

It's one thing to have a great idea, but translating that idea into something worth reading takes planning, organisation, and attention to detail that may well be beyond the available talent.

So where does one start?

Observation tells me that the mistake most first timers make is that they just start writing. That might work in Finding Forrester, but this is the real world, and the result will lack structure, direction or cohesion.

Therefore, I think I need a system, and this is where the internet comes into its own. A quick Google search took me to Randy Ingermanson's advancedfictionwriting.com, where he introduces aspiring writers to "The Snowflake Method". It sounds reasonable, so I'm going to give it a try. Start with a single sentence that encapsulates the entire book. Fifteen words. The story, scenes, characters and catastrophes are planned out from that sentence by morphing just one step at a time. Don't write until you know what it is you're writing.

I've also found Shruti Chandra Gupta's "The Literary Zone", which seems to contain more useful advice, especially about things like creating what he calls a "breathing story world". When I think about books that I've really enjoyed, they all contain a coherent, plausible and contiguous world. Even Terry Pratchett's brilliant Discworld series is coherent... whacky, upside down, incredulous and magical, but still coherent. Once you're in Discworld, the story's environment takes on a comfortable predictability, and that's what makes Pratchett's characters so believable and his stories so enjoyable.

So that's where I've started. Snowflake... build a believable world... plan... write it later. I especially like the bit about writing it later. We'll see how far it gets me.