Back to Basics

It's so simple to get lost in writing a book.


You forget the character's names, location, who's point of view you are writing it from, if you have a break from it, and that's exactly what happened to me.

It's sounds like common sense but on some books I have read from new authors in my field, it seems like they hadn't made a plan of their chapters as one minute there in England and the next they are using American slang.


I always make an outline for each chapter of any new book I start to remind me what I need to do, what characters need to be introduced and to keep me from going off on a tangent.


I then make a character plan by giving each character a name, a personality and purpose in the book.


This really helped me as if I didn't do this from the beginning my story would be all over the place which is really distracting to the reader and takes away some of the enjoyment.


I'm not saying I stick to these plans rigidly, as if I want to change some parts I will but it really helps me as a guide as I can half a million ideas and try to cram them into one page and forget about the ideas I had a day ago.