Hi y’all! Today I’m excited to bring you a post written by Lucia Tang, a contributor at Reedsy. She talks about different methods to decide which idea to pursue for your next writing project. I’ll be starting a new series following along as I start writing a new novel, so I thought this would be a great foundation as I dive deeper into the book writing process!
Some writers are lucky: each idea emerges fully formed inside their heads. They’ll close their eyes and see the shape of it, shimmering in the air. All they have to do is follow, like sailors tracking a guiding constellation. And at the end of their writing journey, they’ll have a manuscript.
But maybe your writing process isn’t such a well-charted voyage — it’s a much dicier expedition, like flailing around in waters unknown. Maybe you want to write a book, but you don’t know what kind of book to work on.
Fiction or nonfiction? Short story collection or full-length novel? What genre are we talking, and does genre even matter? I mean, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Fifty Shades of Grey are technically both romance novels, right?
If your brain buzzes with these kinds of questions every time you sit down to write, you won’t get much more than a keyboard smash of frustration. But don’t worry. Try out the following four methods of nailing down what kind of book you should work on, and you’ll be able to move onto the fun part — writing.
The fanfic method: Think about what you like to read — and watch, and listen to
E.L. James made her fortune with repurposed Twilight fanfic, turning sparkly vampire Edward Cullen into billionaire bondage enthusiast Christian Grey. You could borrow her approach, playing with someone else’s universe and filing off the serial numbers so you won’t get sued. But this method isn’t really about that. It is about writing as a fan in a more general way, with an eye to the kind of stories that get you excited.
Writing a book means making a temporary home in a certain textual universe: it helps to settle down somewhere you like. So think about the stories you tend to consume, and reflect on what draws you to them.
Maybe you’re addicted to mysteries because cracking them alongside the sleuth feeds the puzzle-solving part of your brain. Or maybe you keep picking up romance novels for your commute because you find their over-the-top love scenes totally hilarious.
Don’t limit yourself to books, either. Think about your favorite podcasts, the TV shows you binge, even the kind of music that fills up your Spotify playlists. Look for inspiration across all media, and you’ll get a nuanced, three-dimensional sense of your own tastes. That way, you can develop an idea for a book that you’d love to read — and hopefully, to write.
The resume method: Consider your strengths — and weaknesses — as a writer
This approach is a little more mechanical, but it’ll help you treat writing like a job — useful if you want to turn “author” into your full-time gig someday. Think about your strengths and weaknesses as a writer: not just on the level of craft, but in terms of your temperament.
Say you get bored easily. You download a new exercise app every week, and you’ve Duolingo-ed eight different languages — but only up to lesson four. If that sounds like you, you probably shouldn’t tackle a novel right way. Instead, start with a short story. Maybe even write one for a contest, if you need a little external motivation to keep you typing away at your desk. Polish off a few of those, and you’ll have a short story collection.
If your world-building skills are scanty but your dialogue rings true, you’re better suited to literary fiction than to fantasy. If you feel anxious when you plot out a story but find yourself revisiting an incident from your own past again and again, take that as a sign to try writing a memoir. Whatever your niche, tap into it early to determine your book’s path.
The hatemail method: Respond to a book that bugged you
In some ways, this one’s the opposite of the fanfic method. But the end result is the same — a book that you, the writer, would love to read.
Just to be clear, you shouldn’t actually pen a novel-length screen about some author you hate (although something of that nature might be both highly cathartic and widely appreciated on certain corners of the internet). Instead, just think of a book that makes your blood boil. Everything it gets wrong? You’ll make sure that you do it right.
Say you’re an occasional romance reader who likes the idea of following two strangers as they fall enough. But every time you dip into the genre, you see nothing but troubling relationship dynamics, one-note supporting characters, and bizarrely unrealistic treatments of the protagonists’ jobs.
Try writing the romance you wish existed. It’s fully within your power to sketch out an affirming relationship between equals. You can give them quirky and dynamic friends — and nemeses. You can even make sure your heroine’s hotshop job as a corporate lawyer leaves her realistically busy, frazzled, and saddled with student debt.
The Costco method: Try a little bit of everything before you commit
Say you’ve run through the mental list of your all-time favorite stories, weighed your writerly skills and deficiencies, and even hate-read some truly terrible prose. But you still have no idea what you should write. Or, you’ve got too many ideas, and no way to choose between them.
Enter the Costco method. Named for the grand cathedral of the free sample, this strategy is all about trying before you buy. There’s no reason you have to pick an idea and immediately grind out several hundred pages. You can take a few of them out for a spin, in a low-stress, low-stakes way.
A full-length manuscript is about 80,000 words long. You don’t know exactly what yours should be about, but you’ve got a few contenders. So write 200 words for each of those ideas.
They don’t have to be the first 200 — beginning a story can be stressful, and this exercise is about keeping it low-key. But you also shouldn’t take them from a scene you’re dying to write. Try to pick a fairly basic bread-and-butter passage, something you know will have to be in the manuscript if you follow it through to the end.
Each 200-word chunk is only 1/400 of a whole manuscript. It won’t take you very long, but it will give you a foretaste of the other 399. Once you figure out which project you should see through to the end, you can reward yourself — write the fun parts first!
Lucia Tang is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the world’s best editors, designers, and marketers. Reedsy also provides tools to help authors write and format their books, as well as free courses and webinars on publishing. In Lucia’s spare time, she enjoys drinking cold brew and planning her historical fantasy novel.
Follow Reedsy on Twitter and Instagram.
How do you decide what to write next? Do you have a method not mentioned here? Let me know in the comments!
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Featured image by Patrick Tomasso
thanks for the information