The Writing Blueprint ~ Week One

Writing Blueprint Lesson 1: Get Into an Author’s Head

If you want to make sure your manuscript is the best it can be, get into an author’s head, or rather, their books. Believe it or not, you’ve probably got TONS of textbooks sitting around! If you want to know how to structure and write your novel, use bestselling published books in your genre as your first guide. Those books have been through countless edits by top professionals in the business, and they’re marketable.

Grab 3-5 bestselling books, get your highlighter and notepad ready, and dig in. It’s note-taking time! Once you have the following questions answered for a few books, compare your notes to see what’s similar about the authors’ strategies and what’s different.

You’ll want to look for basic structure first:

How do the authors begin and end their chapters, scenes, and the book?

Within each chapter, how do the authors craft the beginning, middle, and end of each scene?

How and when do they change point of view (POV), or is the book in a single POV?

In hat tense is the book written (present, past), and in what person (1st, using I; or 3rd using he/she)?

Where, in each book, does the conflict hit its highest point and then how is it resolved?

After that, focus on characters:

Who are the main characters in each book and what makes them unique? Make a list of character traits.

What do they look like and how do the authors get that information across to you? Pay attention to the authors’ sentence structure.

What are their struggles, and at what spot in the book do you get information about those struggles? How do the authors build the story around those struggles?

Scene-setting is next:

How do the authors let you know where the story is taking place in the book and in each scene? What words do they use? What are they describing?

How many settings are in each book?

How do the settings relate to the story—why are they important?

Whenever you have writing questions, there are experts all around you, sitting right on your bookshelves! Let them guide you and instruct you. And follow our next two lessons—we’ll show you the structure exactly! Happy writing!

© Jenny Hale