How to write a book, from idea to finished draft

The short answer

1. Pick an idea with a person in it who wants something and can't easily get it.
2. Write the premise in two sentences: who wants what, what stands in the way, what it costs to fail.
3. Choose a target length for your genre and a number of words a day you can keep.
4. Get to know your main character, the opposition and the places where the big scenes happen.
5. Plan the shape: at least the opening, the turns and a direction for the ending.
6. Write the first draft straight through. Note problems on a fix-later list instead of fixing them.
7. When the middle stalls, raise the cost, add a reversal or go back to what your character wants.
8. Rest the draft, then revise in passes: structure first, then scenes, then sentences.
9. Only then decide how to publish: query agents, or publish it yourself.

1. Find an idea that can carry a book

Most ideas arrive as a place, an image or a situation: a lighthouse, a stolen letter, a family that stops speaking. A book needs more than that. It needs a person who wants something badly, something in the way, and a reason the reader should care whether they get it.

Test an idea with four questions. If you can answer them, it can probably carry 80,000 words. If you can't, keep the idea in a notebook and let it grow.

Who

Whose story is it? One person the reader follows, even in a large cast.

Wants

What do they chase that we can see from outside: a person, a prize, an escape, the truth?

Against

Who or what stands in the way, and does it push back harder as the book goes on?

Cost

What do they lose if they fail? The higher and more personal, the longer the idea lasts.

2. Write the premise in two sentences

The premise is the book small enough to say out loud. It is the test you will hold every scene against, and later the core of your pitch. Write it before you write chapter one, and expect to rewrite it twice.

A miser who has shut out every human tie is shown his past, present and future in a single night. He must change before Christmas morning or die unmourned.

That is A Christmas Carol, which we take apart in the worked example below. Notice that it names a person, a flaw, a pressure, a deadline and a cost.

3. Choose a length and a daily target

A target turns "write a book" into a number you can finish. Most adult novels that agents take on run 80,000 to 100,000 words; fantasy and science fiction often run longer, middle grade much shorter. Our guide on how many words are in a novel has the ranges by genre and the lengths of 43 classics we counted.

Then pick a daily number small enough to keep on a bad day. Here is how long an 80,000 word first draft takes at a steady pace, writing six days a week:

Count as you go. Paste a chapter into our free word counter to see your total, the words you repeat most and how far you are from your target.

4. Get to know your people and places

You don't need a forty-question profile for everyone. You need to know a few things well about the people who drive the plot, and to be able to picture the handful of places where the big scenes happen.

Main character

What they want, what they need, what they are afraid of, and how they talk.

Opposition

A person, a group or a force with its own reasons. It should be right about something.

Places

Three or four settings, each with one sound, smell or light you can return to.

Names matter more than writers admit; a reader hears them hundreds of times. Our character name generator and fantasy name generator give you a shortlist to start from.

5. Plan the shape

Some novelists outline every scene; others discover the story by writing it. Both finish books. What helps almost everyone is knowing the opening, a few major turns, and the direction of the ending before you start:

If you want the full method, scene cards and all, read how to outline a novel, scene by scene. If you would rather discover, write the turns on one page and let the scenes surprise you.

6. Write the first draft

The first draft has one job: to exist. It will be uneven, and that is fine, because you can revise a bad page and you can't revise a blank one. What keeps most drafts moving:

• Write at the same time and place, so starting takes no decision.
• Stop mid-scene, when you know what happens next. Tomorrow starts easier.
• Don't reread more than the last page before you begin.
• Keep a fix-later list. "Make her brother older" goes on the list, and you keep going as if it were already true.
• Leave a marker such as TK for a fact or a name you don't have yet, and search for it later.
• Write the scenes out of order if one is pulling at you. Stitch them in during revision.

7. Get through the middle

Many drafts stall somewhere in the middle, when the opening's energy has run out and the ending is still far away. The cause is often the same: the character has stopped wanting anything new. Try one of these:

Raise the cost

Take something away: a friend, a hiding place, the money, the alibi.

Reverse it

Let your character get what they wanted, and make it the wrong thing.

Reveal

Bring forward a secret you were saving. Answering a question opens a better one.

Change the want

At the midpoint the goal often shifts from escaping the problem to facing it.

8. Rest the draft, then revise in passes

Put the finished draft away for at least two weeks. Then read it through in as few sittings as you can, taking notes but changing nothing. Revise from the largest problems to the smallest, so you don't polish a scene you later cut.

Structure

Cut, merge, move and add scenes. Check the turns land near where they should.

Scenes

Every scene should leave someone in a different place from where they came in.

Sentences

Repetition, dialogue, rhythm, point of view slips. Read the page out loud.

Then give it to two or three readers who read your genre, and ask them where they were bored, confused or didn't believe a character. Fix what more than one of them noticed.

9. Decide what happens next

For fiction, finish and revise the whole book before you approach anyone. Then there are two main paths. To publish traditionally, you query literary agents with a letter, a synopsis and sample pages; an agent who takes you on sells the book to a publisher, and you pay nothing up front. To self-publish, you hire your own editor and cover designer and publish through a platform such as Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing or IngramSpark, keeping control and the larger share of each sale. Be careful with any company that asks you to pay to be published.

Worked example: A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in December 1843. It is short, about 28,500 words by our count, so you can see the whole machine at once. Here is how each step above shows up in it.

Who

Ebenezer Scrooge, a rich, cold London man of business.

Want

To be left alone with his money. "I wish to be left alone," he tells the charity collectors.

Need

To let people back in before it is too late.

Against

Three spirits, and his own past, which they make him watch.

Cost

To die unmourned, and for Tiny Tim to die too.

The structure, stave by stave

Dickens called his five chapters staves, like the verses of a carol. We counted each one with the same rules as our word counter. The shape is the spine from step five.

The longest stave is the middle one, and the last is the shortest. Once the change has happened, Dickens shows it and gets out.

One scene, up close

The counting-house scene in Stave I does almost all the setting up the book needs, in a few pages. As a scene card it looks like this:

Every plant pays off. In Stave III the Ghost of Christmas Present throws Scrooge's own words back at him: "decrease the surplus population," about Tiny Tim, and "Are there no prisons?" about two starving children. In Stave V he accepts Fred's invitation, pledges money to the collector with "a great many back-payments" in it, and tells Bob to buy another coal-scuttle. A scene that plants what the ending pays off is a scene doing its job.

Free one-page book plan

The premise, the shape, the people, a writing schedule and a checklist from first idea to final pass. Copy it into whatever you write in, or download it as a Markdown file that opens in Word, Google Docs or Feldar.

Common mistakes

• Rewriting chapter one for months instead of writing chapter two.
• Researching or worldbuilding as a way of not drafting.
• A main character things happen to, who never makes a choice.
• Scenes where people talk, nothing changes, and nobody wants anything.
• Starting a new idea every time the current one gets hard.
• Querying or publishing the first draft.

Writing a book in Feldar

Feldar keeps the plan beside the draft. Each page of your book has an Outline of scenes you can type yourself or ask Generate scenes to propose. Your cast, places and plot beats live as cards on the Canvas. The words stay yours: anything Feldar suggests appears in blue and stays only if you accept it.

Scenes

STAVE I

1. 1

   The counting-house

   Scrooge refuses Fred, the collectors and Bob.

2. 2

   The knocker

   Marley's face, on his own front door.

Draft Page

Ebenezer Scrooge

Partner, Scrooge and Marley. Keeps the coal-box in his own room. Wants to be left alone.

Sources

All checked November 6, 2026.

A Christmas Carol

Project Gutenberg eBook #46; quotations and stave counts from this text

Word counts

Counted by us with the rules of our word counter; method and data in how many words are in a novel

Novel lengths

The Manuscript Academy, 2026, Writer's Digest

AI and awards

SFWA Nebula Awards rules

Questions