If You Want to Write a Novel in 2026, Read This
Aka How to Learn to Write Fiction, or how Bob Dugoni's binder was the hidden key to my fiction writing journey.
I published my eighth thriller novel on December 22, 2025. While it didn’t quite hit #1 Amazon best-seller status, it was a #1 new release and #3 in a category ahead of Dan Brown and Dean Koontz. For a few days. Ha ha.
Given it’s the first book in a new series, and that I released it just ahead of a major holiday, I’ll take it.
So You Want To Write a Novel
I assume that’s why you’re here.
Maybe you’ve read a few books on the topic, or watched a few YouTube videos. Hopefully, you’ve been writing.
Perhaps you’re stuck. It’s not coming together the way you envisioned.
Or maybe you’re just fiction-curious. It’s always been in the back of your head that getting your picture taken in a leather jacket with the collar up, looking all espionage-like would be fun.
Or perhaps, like me, you read a lot and are dissatisfied with what you’re reading. “I can do better than that.”
Whatever the reason you’re here, I’m going to give you a path towards LEARNING to write fiction.
I’m going to convince you that LEARNING to write fiction is more important than writing a novel.
Sounds like Hair-Splitting, What’s the difference?
In a word, mindset…
Many people show up to the task of writing their first novel with the end goal in mind, and I don’t blame them. You want to see that book on the new author shelf at Barnes & Noble. You want your friends to be impressed. You’re looking for the sense of accomplishment that comes from doing something difficult that few people can do, or at least do well. It might be a calling. Maybe you’re hoping for runaway financial success, or you want to escape cubicle hell into a life of story-weaving.
I get it.
Let me try to shift your mindset
Instead of thinking, “I want to write a novel.”
Go for: “I want to embark on a lifelong journey of learning to write really good stories.”
Probably feels daunting. And I get it.
Ten-plus years into my writing journey, and I’m still learning how to write.
To be a successful author, it’s far more important that you learn to write fiction than it is that you simply write a novel.
Indulge Me - Why Learn How to Write Fiction?
Feel free to skip straight down to the ten critical components of learning to write fiction. I won’t be offended.
Otherwise, indulge me in a story.
My Father Doesn’t Read my Books
He’s a veteran of the Vietnam War, and my stories are too tense, with too much action.
I am so grateful to my father. He worked hard to afford me opportunities, and he instilled value systems in me that made me who I am.
He likes British-style whodunit stories like Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Sherlock Holmes. The violence is off-stage. The tension is cerebral. The clues are there for the reader to find. It’s an intellectual pursuit instead of a thrill ride.
So, in 2026, I’m going to start writing a British whodunit-style novel for him. It’ll be a modern take on the genre, something I’ve never written.
Despite having written thrillers for ten-plus years, I need to learn how to write a British whodunit-style thriller.
Seems Easy
You might think it’s relatively easy for a thriller writer to write a British-style whodunit. Unfortunately for me, it’s like an English speaker learning how to speak Spanish. Yes, I know some Spanish vocabulary, and both use the Roman alphabet. But I still have to learn an entirely new vocabulary and sentence structure.
Like any genre, British whodunit stories have their own conventions, tropes, and standards. Readers come to expect these conventions, and when the author doesn’t deliver, readers get very grumpy and fire off steamer emails and leave bad Amazon reviews.
For good reason.
Here is an example of some conventions of British whodunit stories:
The detective has to solve a murder. No one is going to read a mystery about a convenience store robbery.
The murder happens offstage, and most violence is muted.
The puzzle comes first, as opposed to a cozy mystery, which is character-driven.
Fair play principle. This means the reader should have access to the same clues as the detective.
For context, here are a few conventions of thrillers (the genre I currently write in):
The clock is ticking.
A shadowy antagonist is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
High-stakes. The consequences are extreme, like life and death, world domination, or mass-casualty.
The tension builds in waves to a final crescendo, and lives are on the line.
My brain is conditioned to build tension and conflict in my writing; it’s not trained to create the conditions for an intellectual puzzle.
Anyone Can Write a Novel
Even AI has done it, sort of.
Some people can write a good novel (AI cannot, yet).
Almost no one, myself included, can write a great novel. That space is rarefied air reserved for the savants of the craft. Murakami, Morrison, and Melville come to mind.
The best that we mere mortals can aim for is to write a really good story that people enjoy reading. That’s what Stephen King does.
Writing a really good story requires mastery of a highly complicated craft. There is characterization, conflict, genre, prose, pacing, plot, premise, story, structure, scenes, sequences, tropes, viewpoint, Chicago Manual of Style, dialogue, self-editing, mindset, show don’t tell, managing an editor, and writing habits, among a few. And there is the special sauce required to combine it all into something that emotionally captivates the reader and transports them into a fictive dream.
If you’re not daunted, you should be.
So how to approach such a daunting task?
Don’t Do What I Did
I have wanted to be a novelist for as long as I can remember, but it took me a while to get going.
In 2002, in my early thirties, I started writing. I was living in India, and I wanted something to do during the 120-degree (F) days instead of just sprawling naked on the marble floor.
My first stuff was crap. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I threw it away and gave up for another eleven years.
In 2013, I picked up writing again. I was inspired by the independent publishing movement. I wanted to both write the fiction and run my own publishing business. It would be fun, they said.
Despite having read dozens of books on how to write a novel, I still didn’t know what I was doing. But I persevered.
I wrote three full-length novels (all crap) before I finally wrote a fourth that was ready to publish. That took three years. My first publishable novel came out in 2016. It was an Amazon bestseller.
What changed?
I Devised a How-to-Learn-to-Write-Fiction Game Plan, thanks to Bob Dugoni
During that struggle phase, where I wrote three crap novels, I attended Thriller Fest in NYC. I think it was 2015. It’s where thriller authors gather to learn craft, meet agents and publishers, and tip beers with fellow writers. I attended a session taught by Bob Dugoni. I don’t remember the session topic, but I recall Bob being extremely gracious and giving with his knowledge.
At the time, Bob was an up-and-coming writer who had published a few successful books, and he hadn’t yet “broken out.” But he was all-in. No day job. He was going to make writing work, or go down in flames trying.
He and I chatted a bit after the session. That’s when he told me about his binder, and he showed me pictures of it.
Bob’s binder was a thick three-ring folder that contained EVERYTHING he’d learned about writing fiction. It was dog-eared with sticky notes. There were printouts and hand-written pages. It was tactile, and there was a coffee stain on the cover. I remember thinking it probably smelled like a used bookstore.
He’d been compiling the binder for years, and he still made improvements and additions to it. It was Bob Dugoni’s fiction-writing bible. And he referred to it every time he wrote a novel.
More than 10 years later, Bob is a NYT and Amazon bestseller with over 12 million books sold and a variety of awards to his name. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
I knew then that I needed a game plan if I was going to learn how to write a novel. I needed a curriculum, a framework, a checklist of sorts. I needed to understand the breadth of the craft before I tried to go deep.
It was the a-ha moment that took me from struggling writer to a published Amazon best-seller with eight novels and almost two hundred thousand copies sold (unlike Bob, I kept my day job. For now).
Ten Critical Components of Learning How to Write Fiction
This is my version of Bob’s binder. Abridged for Substack's sake. Steal it and make it your own.
If I’ve learned anything about writing, it’s that no two writers’ processes are the same. Every writer needs to come to their own method through research, trying, and adjusting. Then learn more, try more, and adjust again. It’s a flywheel that takes time to gather momentum.
I can’t possibly cover the entire breadth of fiction writing in one post. Instead, I’ve focused on what I consider to be the ten most important curriculum sections for your fiction learning journey, and I provide additional reading. There is a bonus section at the end.
I’m not covering publishing, marketing, pitching agents, social media, or any of that hoo-ha. I can tell you that the single best way to market your book is to first write a really good story.
Once you’ve done that, write another really good story.
Word of mouth and shelf space are the first two critical aspects of book marketing.
Caveat
There is a lot more involved in writing fiction, including premise, voice, character development, the art of crafting a scene, stakes and conflict, the setup and the payoff, writing in a series, reader psychology, research, and writer decision making, among others. These will be the subjects of future posts.
These ten, however, are the foundation. There is also a bonus tip at the end.
Now, on with the curriculum.
How to learn to write a novel
1. Read Your Genre
This is common advice for new writers. But it stands the test of time for a reason. If you don’t read in your genre, you can’t write in your genre. Read the big-name authors, read the new writers, and read the mid-pack folks. Read a lot, even the bad stuff. As difficult as it is to get through the bad stuff (ahem, Patterson), you’ll learn a lot more from discovering what you don’t like than you will from the good stuff.
Example
Without calling out any specific authors …
Early on, I learned to write in the simple past tense, which is the current “now” of a story’s narrative.
“Max leaned against the bar and sipped from a glass of Bordeaux. Across the jazz club, his target whispered into a woman’s ear.”
Some authors let the past perfect tense creep in. This is often signaled by the overuse of the word “had”. Past perfect is used to tell readers what happened earlier in time.
“Max leaned against the bar and sipped from a glass of Bordeaux. Across the jazz club, his target had whispered into a woman’s ear.”
Past perfect is required occasionally, but overuse of it makes the narrative feel distant and clunky, like the sentence above. It’s way more exciting if Max (and the reader) witness the target whispering into the woman’s ear in real time, instead of being told that the target had already whispered in the woman’s ear at some point in the past.
One of my editing steps is to go through the manuscript and rewrite as many instances of the word “had” as possible. So much so that my editor often adds some back in where needed.
One author whom I consider a model for my writing business (his independent marketing is the best in the business) uses the past perfect tense to the point where I almost can’t read his prose. I read it anyway, but it’s a glaring example of something I pick up on by studying other writers.
To prepare to write a British whodunit, I’m re-reading a lot of the Nero Wolfe books, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and some of the Agatha Christie short stories. I’ve read Anthony Horowitz’s murder mysteries. I tried to read the Corwin Strike novels, but couldn’t get through them.
Read your genre. A lot.
Further reading:
2. Copy Another Author
You heard me right.
Austin Kleon said it best in Steal Like an Artist:
"The reason to copy your heroes and their style is so that you might somehow get a glimpse into their minds. That’s what you really want—to internalize their way of looking at the world."
I’ve outlined at least ten authors, including Mark Dawson, Russell Blake, Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, and Vince Flynn.
I like to use a spreadsheet. For each chapter, I note a summary of what happened, the story beats, the scenes, and any characterization. Pay attention to structure, pacing, and narrative. See if you can identify the midpoint story beat, and where the story moves from act to act. Note conflict and how the author builds and releases tension.
You could have AI do it, but don’t. The physical act of reading the book and making your notes will train your mind like AI can’t.
Be a little careful here. Some authors who have found success display poor habits in certain writing techniques (for example, the author I mentioned above, who overuses the perfect past tense, has sold millions of books).
As with learning any complex skill, the true art comes from knowing what to take and what to reject.
Copy other authors to learn their techniques, but write your own stuff.
A book called The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne, made a big difference in my learning-to-write journey. In it, Coyne breaks down Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris and discusses what makes that book such a classic.
Further reading:
Steal Like an Artist, by Kleon
The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne
3. Study your Genre
If you want to write literature, best of luck to you. I’m not going to be much help.
For the rest of us, I assume you want people to read your stuff. Maybe you want to be traditionally published. Perhaps you dream of quitting your job and being a full-time author. To do that, you’re going to have to sell a lot of books. Even if you don’t want to write full time, the whole point of writing is for people to read your stories.
The first step to selling a lot of books is to write in a genre. Trust me. It might be the single most important part of learning the craft.
Genre is a category. High fantasy, like Game of Thrones. Espionage, like John le Carré. Contemporary romance, gothic, western, vampire erotica. You get it.
Genre exists for a reason. Readers like to know what they’re getting themselves into. Readers are drawn to something in the category. Maybe they identify with the lonely stranger in a western, or they pine for the bare-chested ranch hand to sweep them off their feet. Readers choose books by genre.
Agents, editors, and publishers want authors who stay true to a genre. The professionals specialize in one or more genres, and they understand genre sells books. Confuse a genre, confuse a reader.
Pick a genre and read the shit out of that genre. Outline several books in your genre. Query AI for all the conventions and tropes in a genre.
Then write something that stays true to your genre. Honor the conventions.
Don’t fight me, just do it.
Later, when you blow up into a household name, you can experiment with genre.
Where I went wrong with genre
Growing up, I was fascinated by high fantasy. I read all the Lord of the Rings, all the Shannara stories, and the Dragonlance Chronicles. So when I set out to write thrillers, I decided to write an epic thriller trilogy with a three-book story arc that isn’t resolved until the end of book three.
My epic thriller series turned into six books.
And guess what? Thriller readers don’t love that. They much prefer individual novels where the story arcs are largely resolved from book to book.
Whoops. I got a lot of complaints via email, and my Amazon reviews suffered.
(It also makes it difficult to market my books because I can only market the first book in the series and hope readers like it enough to keep reading).
“But John, I want to be creative.”
Of course you do, and you will. But true creativity is staying inside the box.
Writing fiction is a balancing act between staying true to genre, but writing something fresh.
You can do it.
Then, once you have a few novels under your belt, you can experiment with genre. My seventh novel is a thriller set in Japan with a touch of mysticism. I get a lot of compliments on it, but I couldn’t have written it if I hadn’t first learned the thriller genre.
Further reading:
Anatomy of Genres, by Truby
The Story Grid, by Coyne
4. Find Your Structure
This is where I get accused of being “formulaic” if I haven’t already.
Hear me out. I assume you want to sell books.
Similar to genre, readers, agents, and editors are looking for something that makes sense, something repeatable, and something familiar. High fantasy can tend upwards of 120K words, romance gravitates to 70K words, and thrillers stay in the 80k-90k word territory. You’re going to have a hard time selling a 120K-word thriller; that genre’s readers will get grumpy.
Structure includes a variety of topics like story (three acts, eight sequences, snowflake, hero’s journey, save the cat, and so on) and the more physical structure of word count, number of chapters and scenes, etc.
My suggestion is that you devise a structure for writing that is based on genre conventions. This gives you a creative box to stay within, and will help you get to complete on your novel. And it will help you sell your books.
Example from Jack Arbor
My thriller novels follow this structure (feel free to steal this, then make it your own):
Three acts, with an inciting incident in the first, a turning point in the second, and a climax in the third.
Eight sequences of roughly 5-7 chapters (two in the first act, four in the second, and two in the third) where tension is built, then released in each sequence. Think of each sequence as a mini-story arc.
Save the Cat (borrowed from screenwriting) to ensure the main character grows and changes, and that each story has a premise, and that the premise is met.
80k - 90k words in total length, broken into 48 chapters of roughly 1.7k - 1.9k words each. Each chapter may have one-to-many scenes, depending on story requirements.
But John, my creativity can’t be contained by walls
Well, then you’re writing in the literature genre. And I wish you all the best.
Outline several of your favorite author’s books, and I guarantee you’ll find similar structures in all of them. Once you learn story structure, you’ll see it everywhere. In the next movie you watch, check the midpoint, and if you don’t find a major plot point or turning point in the story, I’ll buy you a sushi dinner.
Further Reading:
Save the Cat, by Snyder
The Writer’s Journey, by Vogler
5. Learn to tell a Story
Screenwriters get this. A lot of novelists don’t.
I read probably twenty books on “how to write a novel” before I started to write, and not one of them mentioned the concept of story. I didn’t get it until I started reading books on screenwriting. Eventually, I attended Robert McKee’s Story Seminar in New York, which is attended mostly by screenwriters. McKee himself has many screenwriting credits to his name and is credited with teaching many famous screenwriters.
McKee, who wrote the seminal treatise on the topic, aptly named Story, defines “story” as:
“… a series of acts that build to a climax which brings about absolute and irreversible change.”
This is also the essence of the Hero’s Journey (see Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey and Save the Cat by Snyder).
Simple, but not easy.
For example, in the film Casablanca (an example McKee references as close to storytelling perfection), Rick Blaine begins the film as selfish and neutral, unwilling to take a stand. By the end of the story, he sacrifices himself to help Ilsa and Laszlo escape. Rick’s personal values have changed throughout the course of the narrative, and it is that change that makes Casablanca a story.
The bottom line is that your main character must change, if only a little bit.
Another masterclass on story, that also contains a bit of satire, is the movie Adaptation with Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep. Highly recommended for any aspiring writer.
Further reading:
Story, by McKee (or better yet, attend one of his seminars before it’s too late).
The Writer’s Journey, by Vogler
6. Learn to Outline, and Make a Damn Outline
When I attend writing conferences, the most common question I hear new writers ask the best-selling authors on stage is, “Are you a pantser or a plotter?”
Meaning: Do you wing it, or do you outline your stories before you start writing?
This question drives me nuts. It’s like a new line cook asking Morimoto if he follows a recipe. The question is just contextually all wrong.
The bestselling author on that stage has likely been writing for decades and is probably at the same level of craft as Morimoto. They’ve put in their 10,000 hours, and they know more subconsciously about telling a story than the new writer knows consciously. Stephen King, a notorious “pantser” (he describes his writing process as unearthing a skeleton using archeology tools), knows intuitively how and when to insert the proper beats and story points into his narrative. He doesn’t need to outline.
Funnily enough, you can see the meandering result of King’s process in his work. Case in point: The Stand.
New writers don’t know what they don’t know. New writers are still learning how to tell a story. New writers need structure, and would benefit from outlining their story first to ensure they’re hitting all the beats.
Look, I get that free-writing, or “pantsing” might lead to more creativity. And I agree with you. There is something about your fingers on the keyboard or the pen scratching across a notebook that inspires the muse. I’m more creative when I free-write than when I outline.
But that doesn’t mean the story is better. A story without proper pacing and the right beats is a bad story, no matter how creative it is.
In Pure Transparency
I suck at outlining. It’s the hardest thing about writing for me. I used to bang away at the outline until frustration set in, and I gave up and started writing before the outline was fully baked.
That process led to a horrendous amount of re-writes.
So I made a deal with myself.
My Outlining Process
I use a spreadsheet for this process, and after eight novels and two novellas, I have a solid template.
I make a Save the Cat outline, which I force myself to finish. This hits many of the story beats that are critical for the lead character to go through the kind of change that makes a story.
I nail the ending and the twist. This means knowing the final beats of the second act (all is lost, dark night of the soul) and the finale. In some cases, I’ll go backwards. This helps eliminate a lot of re-writing.
This is hard for me. As much as I want to nail the ending, I’m champing at the bit to start writing. This is now a hard and fast rule for me.
Pro tip: I find outlining backwards, and sometimes even writing backwards (scenes, that is), to be super helpful.
Once I start writing, I alternate between outlining and writing. In other words, I do both as I go, hopping between Scrivener and the spreadsheet.
It’s not pretty, but it balances everything: optimizes creativity, limits re-writing, and most importantly, gets the story told as the story needs to be told.
Funnily enough, the bestselling fiction writer of all time, James Patterson, always uses an outline. His process is to write a ‘treatment’, which is a 5,000-word narrative of the story. Then he iterates on that treatment, adding to it, until it’s a full novel. I tried that process. It didn’t work for me.
Try a bunch of outlining processes until you find what works for you.
But make a damn outline. Trust me.
Further reading:
Save the Cat by Snyder
Plot & Structure by Bell
7. Pacing
There are two categories of thriller novels. Those that came before Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, and those that came after. Don’t believe me? Go read Follett’s Lie Down with Lions (1985), and then go read any of Greaney’s Gray Man series.
The Da Vinci Code changed pacing for everyone. Once Robert Langton and Sophie Neveu are summoned to view Saunière’s body, the story takes off and never lets up. There is little space for the characters to navel-gaze or reminisce, and the writer has to deploy advanced techniques to ensure the reader doesn’t get lost or fatigued.
Learning to pace is another reason to outline your favorite authors.
A few of my pacing secrets:
Give the reader just enough detail to keep the story moving, but not too much. Let the reader form their own fictive dream in their head. For example, if I describe a supporting character as “a man with a limp”, you will form your own picture of that man in your head. The only detail pertinent to the story is that he has a limp. If the reader envisions his hair black or blonde, or gives him a goatee, or puts him in a fedora, it matters not to the overall outcome of the story.
Avoid what my editor calls “info dumps.” An info dump is two characters sitting around talking and giving a bunch of background to the reader all at once, or worse, the narrator spewing tons of background information. Instead, work the necessary details into the narrative over the course of the story. Readers need a lot less background than you think. The art is in knowing how much to give and when to give it.
Modulate high-action and low-action scenes. In my outline spreadsheet, I have a column to note whether a scene is high-action or low-action. By interspersing some low-action scenes, you keep from exhausting your reader.
Calibrate your conflict and the release of the conflict. I try to adhere to a sequence of scenes, usually between six and eight, where tension builds and is then released. Again, keep pushing the pace, but give the reader a break from the conflict and tension.
Make an outline. :-)
Further reading:
Scene & Structure, by Bickham
The DaVinci Code by Brown
8. Show, Don’t Tell
Oh boy, this is a hot one. It took me several novels-worth of my editor berating me to show instead of tell, followed by a lot of research, before I finally got it, and it’s the single-most difficult fiction skill to master. In my opinion.
Let’s look at two examples.
Max snugged the scarf tighter around his neck as his boots squeaked on the snow-packed sidewalk. He blew on his hands before reaching into his pocket for the gun. This will teach him to leave his gloves at home.
versus
Max hastened along the sidewalk and caught a glimpse of the bank sign. Eighteen degrees out. He reached into his pocket for the gun, and when he pulled it out, his frozen hand had difficulty gripping the handle.
Which one evokes more emotion in the reader?
The first one shows how cold it is outside through the everyday movement of snugging a scarf and the sound effects of boots squeaking on snow, and it also creates a tiny bit of mystique in the reader’s mind. What will happen when Max pulls out the gun with frozen hands?
In the second one, I’m telling you it’s cold through the device of the bank sign, and I’m telling you that he has a hard time holding the gun. Kind of takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it?
Telling also comes in the form of invasive writerly phrases inserted by the author that do nothing more than tell the reader something. You can search for these kinds of phrases in your manuscript to see what I mean:
Max looked…
She saw…
He felt…
They realized…
He wondered…
She smelled…
Try to rewrite these phrases so the prose evokes feelings in the reader. You want the reader to conjure their own fictive-dream in their head.
Further reading:
The First Five Pages, by Lukeman (Chapter 11)
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Browne and King
9. Point of View (POV) and Narrative
I got this one wrong early on, and I’m pretty sure it cost me an editor. Although we’re still friends on Facebook.
Point of View (POV) is the lens through which the story is told, and it’s a powerful tool for controlling narrative. With great power comes great peril.
The first rule of fiction writing is never to head-hop in a scene.
Head-hopping is when you, the author, switch the POV in the middle of a scene. Let’s say Max and Kate are talking in a bar scene, and Max the spy is flirting with Kate the CIA agent to see how much information she knows about his background. Maybe he’s trying to determine whether Kate knows he’s a spy. If we tell the scene from Max’s POV, the reader won’t know the answer, and thus we can build tension. Will Max find out what she knows, and what does she actually know? If the author head-hops so the reader knows both what Max knows and what Kate knows, the tension is erased.
Head-hopping can also confuse the reader unless it’s done with great skill. If you’re reading this, you probably don’t have that skill. Don’t try it.
The second rule of fiction writing is to pick a POV style for your novel and stick with it.
There are four primary POVs to pick from: First Person (I, me, my), Second Person (You, Your), Third-Person Limited (He, she, they), and Third Person Omniscient (he, she, they).
Third-Person Limited only shows the internal thoughts and feelings of one specific character at a time, whereas Third Person Omniscient features an “all-knowing” narrator who can reveal the thoughts of any character and provide information unknown to the characters themselves. The omniscient narrator is above the story, so to speak.
Deep POV is an intimate version of Third-Person Limited where the narrator’s voice completely dissolves into the character’s voice. Using the example above, I changed the last sentence to be Deep POV:
Max snugged the scarf tighter around his neck as his boots squeaked on the snow-packed sidewalk. He blew on his hands before reaching into his pocket for the gun. Never leave your gloves at home.
My latest novels are all in Third-Person Limited with instances of Deep POV when I want that intimacy with the lead character. See The Japanese Assassin and how I use Deep POV to eliminate the narrator from showing Kira’s thoughts and mindset as she wakes up in a completely foreign world with no memory.*
If you’re writing your first novel, I strongly suggest you pick third-person limited and stick with it. While writing in first person offers powerful storytelling techniques, there is enough to learn to get your first book out without also having to master this skill. Dabble with Deep POV and see how it goes.
Once you become proficient with the rest of the fiction writing skills, go ahead and experiment with first-person, mixed POVs (i.e. one narrator who uses first-person and other narrators using third person), and unreliable narrators (i.e. narrators where the reader sees into their head, but information is hidden). They all offer various storytelling techniques, depending on what you’re trying to do.
Great examples of Third-Person Limited: A Song of Ice and Fire by Martin
Great examples of First-Person: The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver, The Hunger Games by Collins, The Killing Floor by Child.
Great examples of unreliable narrators: Gone Girl (Flynn) and The Girl on the Train by Hawkins
Further reading:
The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story by Castellani
The Power of Point of View: Make Your Story Come to Life by Rasley
The Japanese Assassin by Arbor*
*if you want a free copy of The Japanese Assassin, drop me an email and I’ll send you a copy
10. Editing
Aka where the magic happens.
Editing is writing. While the first draft is where the fun is, editing turns the raw material into something a reader wants to read.
Let me share with you my editing process, which, of course, will differ from every other writer’s editing process. Your job, dear writer, is to find your own editing process.
The Self-Edit
I follow a ten-step self-editing process:
First draft: get the story out of my head and into Scrivener. I gently edit as I go.
Story edit: get the story right. I read through the manuscript and use a legal pad to make story notes before re-writing.
Character edit: make sure the protagonist’s story arc resonates and add in any supporting character details I may have missed.
Voice edit: ensure the dialogue is unique to each character, so everyone doesn’t sound the same (probably the weakest part of my writing currently).
Show, Don’t Tell edit: yup, I devote an entire edit removing as much telling as possible.
At this point, I export the manuscript from Scrivener into Microsoft Word.
Line edit: this is mostly about making sure I have a variety of sentence structures.
The ProWritingAid (PWA) edit: this is a massive pain in the neck because PWA can’t handle an entire 90K word manuscript, so I break it up into six-chapter chunks and feed it into the tool.
The “Common Edit” edit: I keep a list of common edits my editors have made over the years, and I try not to repeat the same mistakes.
The “Common Word” edit: I maintain a list of over-used words in a spreadsheet and use MS Word’s “find” function to whittle them down. For example, the first draft of my novel Endgame had 87 instances of the word “some”, and after this edit, I narrowed it down to 19 instances. I have over 100 words on this checklist, and yes, it’s tedious, but quality is worth it.
Note: this is where I remove as many instances of past perfect tense (e.g. had) as possible.
Off to the editor it goes for a line, or copy edit. Here, she may point out minor story issues or make minor character suggestions, but this edit is primarily focused on the prose, show-don’t-tell, and any pacing issues I may have missed.
The proof: After I revise based on my editor’s comments, it’s time for a proof. At this point, the manuscript is very clean. I used to print the entire manuscript out and proof it myself before sending it to the proofreader. I could usually do it in a devoted weekend. Now, the AI tools like PWA are so good, I do more of a spot check before sending it to my professional (human) proofreader.
The Editor-Edit
Working with an editor is 1) absolutely necessary, and 2) a real adventure. It has enriched my life in ways I didn’t expect.
Generally, the types of editing services available include:
Story, or structural edit: get help crafting and structuring your story (most editors will require this step for new writers)
Line, or copy edit: grammar, sentence structure, etc.
Proof: final check before publishing
You’re going to be tempted to rely on AI tools instead of hiring a human editor, and permit me to dissuade you from that idea.
Over the course of eight published novels and one novella, I’ve worked with three live human editors. Two are fellow-writers and one had a long career in “big publishing” and now freelances. I love each of them, and each of them has made my writing and my life better.
Here are four reasons you want to work with a real editor:
You don’t know what you don’t know. I’ve learned more from these three editors about writing (and life) than I have from any book, website, course, or AI.
You want to get a second pair of human eyes on your stuff as soon as possible. You as the writer suffer from what I call ego-bias, which prevents you from seeing things as they truly are. Your editor will give it to you straight.
AI is fallible. Take the time to learn writing craft and writing skills yourself before you rely on the machine. I’m a technologist in my day job, and I can assure you AI is wrong more than they want you to think.
Industry relationships. Your success as an author will depend partly on your ability to build relationships in the writer, editor, agent, and publishing community. Hiring an editor is one vector into that community.
Tips for Finding and Working with Editors
You find editors through word of mouth. Make friends with other writers and authors and ask around. Don’t just post to a forum; make a real friend. Generally, authors will be hesitant to reveal who their editor is because, of course, we want our editor’s time to be all ours. Ha ha. But if you can pry a name from a fellow (successful) author, it’s going to be the best reference.
Lacking that opportunity, look for editors with experience in your genre. Tropes, genre, and pacing matter, and the editor should provide author references specific to the type of writing you’re doing. Posting and forums can be a fallback strategy.
With a new editor relationship, do a sample edit for your benefit and theirs. Send them a chapter or a couple of scenes. See what comes back, but more importantly, see how your relationship develops. Can you work with this person?
Have a phone call. Get to know the person. Exchange some ideas. Learn their pet’s name.
Your editor is correct 99% of the time, maybe more. Especially in the early days of your writing career, take the edit. By the time you reach your sixth novel (or 10,000 hours), you can occasionally debate your editor or make stylistic choices. I just published my eighth novel, and I still take 99% of my editor’s changes.
Take the time to learn why your editor is making a certain edit. Why does a comma go there? What is a dangling participle? What is “Deep POV” and why is she suggesting it there? You’ll be tempted to select large portions of prose and hit “Accept All”. Instead, take the time to review each change and learn why the change is being made. Then incorporate the learning into your writing and editing process. This is a rich source of education.
Be nice to your editor. They’re a human, and they are dealing with human things. I count both of my current editors as lifelong friends.
Keep a record of common changes. Nothing drives an editor crazier than when you, the writer, make the same mistake time and time again. I use a spreadsheet and have a devoted editing step to avoid repeating the same offenses in every manuscript.
Use MS Word with Track Changes. Learn how to use Track Changes. Make some keyboard shortcuts. Trust me and just do it.
But John, I Can’t Afford an Editor
I get it. A structural edit will run you $2K to $3K, and a good line edit for a 90K-word manuscript will be in the $3K - $4K range. Proofs are usually less, somewhere between $300-$500 in my experience. Plus tip and a holiday gift basket.
That’s a lot of cheddar, particularly if you’re just starting out and if you’re unsure if you’re going to recoup the expenditure.
All I can say is that it’s worth it. Save up, get a second job, start a go-fund me, sell some stuff on eBay, skip that vacation, sell plasma, raid the rainy day fund.
Nothing will stall your writing career faster than publishing crap. Hiring an editor and a proofreader is the single most important thing you can do to give yourself a chance of selling a lot of books or being picked up by an agent.
Recommended Reading:
The Last Draft, by Scofield
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Browne and King
Bonus tip #1: Learn, Test, and Revise your Process and Systems
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
~James Clear, Atomic Habits
If I’ve learned one thing in the last ten-plus years and eight novels of writing, it’s that long-term, sustained, good writing is a result of your writing process. How you learn, the habits you develop, the systems that you build and adhere to will determine what you produce.
With that in mind, let me offer this advice and insight into my systems:
When I started writing, I implemented the “rules”. Every Saturday, I had to be at the Basalt Library by 10:00 am when it opened. Every Sunday, I had to be at the same library at noon when it opened. It was me and the homeless guy waiting at the doors when the library opened. This built a habit and forced me to prioritize my writing. Everything else I wanted to do on a weekend—skiing, errands, fitness, time with Jill—had to fit around those rules.
I’ve always tracked my writing in a spreadsheet. Date, time, project, number of words, hours spent, and brief notes on what else I did that day. I have these spreadsheets going back to 2014.
I learned to use Scrivener for organizing and writing the first draft and the first five editing steps. Yes, the software is over-engineered, but it’s inexpensive and it’s indispensable.
I sank endless hours into trying, failing, iterating, and honing my outlining process and tools. Learn, test, revise.
I keep my tools simple. Scrivener for the first draft. MS Word for line editing. Vellum for formatting. Excel for tracking and outlining. ChatGPT for research. ProWritingAid for proofing. That’s it.
It never ends. I’m currently writing my ninth novel and my second novella. I’m still learning, testing, and revising my systems and processes.
I highly recommend that you consciously work on your habits and systems. It’s a lifelong journey, and it will impact your writing success.
Recommended Reading:
Atomic Habits by Clear
Afterword
Writing fiction is a lifestyle choice. It’s a journey with no end. It’s a calling to a dedication of time and a sacrifice of comfort.
You either have the calling, or you don’t.
If you don’t, I recommend some other form of art or entertainment. Go find your calling.
If you have the calling to write, dedicate yourself to a lifetime of learning how to write. Build the foundation, then get 1% better every day.
Now you’re a writer.
Consolidated List of Recommended Reading
This is the list of books on writing that have had the biggest impact on my writing journey:
On Writing by King
The First Five Pages by Lukeman
The Writer’s Journey by Vogler
Save the Cat by Snyder
Story by McKee
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King
The Story Grid by Coyne
The Last Draft by Scofield
Anatomy of Genres by Truby
The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story by Castellani
The Power of Point of View: Make Your Story Come to Life by Rasley
The Japanese Assassin by Arbor*
Atomic Habits by Clear
*if you want a free copy of The Japanese Assassin, drop me an email and I’ll send you a copy