Your kids are grown and flown, you finally have a little more time, and that book you’ve been thinking about writing for years keeps coming back to you.

But where do you actually start?

Once you tell people you’re going to write a book, everyone has advice. Your family, friends, people at church, other writers—everybody wants to help. And that’s a good thing.

But getting advice and talking to other writers is not writing your book.

In this episode of Novel Writing for Christians, I’m sharing five practical things you can do to move from thinking about your book to actually getting ready to write it.

We’ll talk about:

• How to create your main character and get those ideas out of your head
• Why you need to know what your character wants—and what’s standing in their way
• How to create a backstory using mind mapping and character interviews
• Why your story needs a blackest moment and how to start figuring out what it is
• Why even a pantser needs some sort of outline before writing a first novel
• How studying books in your genre can help you understand what readers expect
• Why you don’t need to stop writing while you learn the craft
• How to schedule your writing time so the book actually gets written

I’ll also share some of what I learned when I started writing cozy mysteries after writing thrillers, why I still study the books I’m reading, and why research can be helpful—but you can’t let research take your writing time.

You don’t have to know everything about writing a novel before you begin.

Do some pre-writing. Create your character. Figure out what they want. Give them an obstacle. Create their backstory. Decide on their blackest moment. Make some sort of outline.

And then write.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Middle Grade Magic Workbook — Use the character interview, mind mapping, and other exercises to start developing your characters and story.

https://kgauthor.myflodesk.com/middlegrademagic

How to Write a Cozy Mystery by Natasha C. Sass

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody

Sponsored by Winter Wedding Murder -https://www.amazon.com/Winter-Wedding-Murder-Maplewood-Goldendoodle-ebook/dp/B0FSK57NJV

You finally have the time to write your book. Now it’s time to start.