 We're shaken. My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. I've been gone a little while, but I'm back new home news setup but um Who cares about that? I recently got a comment on YouTube that reads as follows So obviously because I am a highly acclaimed author with Plenty of successful titles on the shelves. I thought I would share my wisdom jokes aside I do actually have a book coming out later this year So of course, I'd love to talk to you about how I got from there to here It was actually planned to come out in october like just before halloween, but apparently 2020 is a dystopian fever dream. So Who knows? So yeah, this video it's my writing process. It doesn't have to be yours I want to stress that this is just what I do and I don't know maybe it'll help There's obviously not a lot I can say for how to come up with the actual idea for your story It could come to you in a dream. It could come to you while you're dropping a fat daddy dump truck load What I will say though Hopefully quickly is that if you haven't given brainstorming a try Should give it a go. I never gave much credit to brainstorming in the past when it comes to writing I always thought it was like one of those You know bullshit pseudo science things But while I was coming up with ideas for my anthology of short stories I actually had quite a lot of light bulb moments Light bulb moments that I had in setting aside some actual time to just sit without distractions Like just giving myself a theme and letting my imagination wander What I mean by just having one theme is quite literally like having just one building block of the story and going from there See that building block is that you want to write a story in a futuristic Cloud city from there. I would start by asking myself questions. What unique technology do they have in this city? What is the social power structure? Who is at the top and who is at the bottom? Is the city crime ridden and run by gangs or is it under martial law? Or could it maybe just be a normal city in a futuristic setting but maybe with a dark underbelly Where in all of these questions is the most interesting place to tell a story? And once you've got all that who would be an interesting protagonist for the reader to project themselves into? Look, you probably already have the idea for your story But waiting for all of the pieces to just come to you might not be such a good idea All I'm saying is if you haven't tried it before get yourself a coffee sit back And just let that big fat brain do the work Okay, so at first it's gonna seem like I'm a big planner like I plan everything down to the minute detail That's not true. I promise you that's not the case. Just hear me out with that said once I have an idea for a story I will outline pretty meticulously Outlining for me takes quite a bit of time and that's because I go through and I will write out descriptions for every character that I currently have in mind And you know what actually I'm going to show some examples here Just these aren't actual characters from any story I'm doing But I'll give you an example so you can see what I'm talking about the character profiles will outline their appearance Quirks personality everything I can get down This helps me when I'm writing so that I can gauge how these characters would react to certain situations If the character has a short temper, then I know they will probably React explosively to high conflict sections of the story doing this is actually really good as well for Consistency and that's something that a lot of readers will nitpick at you for consistency is good So that your side character's eye color doesn't change like 10 times throughout the story It happens before I actually started outlining like this some of my Side characters eye colors read like they were a light show at some kind of basement rave So next up in the outline, I'll give this story a working title Then I'll give it a brief one paragraph summary of the entire story that paragraph can have spoilers It's only for you. It's for your eyes only consider this your 2am Incognito tab. I know that you know what I mean So after that is the part that's really going to take quite some time and let me stress. Hey, let me Stress this document is going to change Nothing in it. Nothing is set in stone. In fact, I guarantee it'll change So don't overthink it what I'll do is I will write one paragraph summaries for every single chapter in the story Right from the start of the story all the way to the end now This won't work for a lot of people Of course, but it has been Invaluable for me. It gives me a good pencil drawn guide for the structure of the story I can get a general idea of where the build-up is the climaxes and the resolutions I'll play with this part of my outlining for days or weeks And as I'm writing the story, I'll be going back all the time to update it. It's a rough guideline Only this outline is kind of like when artists draw that circle with the cross on it before they go over it again And detail the actual head. They know where the eyes and the mouth should line up Even though they may not know exactly what those things will actually look like just yet. So yeah, that's the outline I'll keep it up the entire time as I'm writing I'll always have it on my second screen and I'll go back and update it as I go Bippity boppity. I'd be outlining sloppily. All right Obviously, this is the longest most soul-sucking ego-crushing emotional rollercoaster having anxiety inducing stage of the Of the process. It's pretty awesome. There is a world of advice out there for the specifics of writing your story That's not what we're going to go into in this video But I think the most valuable tip that you could keep in mind while you're writing a first draft would probably be this chicken is a lean meat. So Technically kfc is healthy, right? It's it's science. No, this is it. Just write the story Don't edit as you go. Don't get hung up on making it perfect Just do it I can tell you right now if you nitpick at your story as you go as you're writing it You can have a real really hard time finishing it. You'll end up procrastinating if you stomp your own progress So don't just let the story go wherever it feels naturally It doesn't matter if it steers away from the outline or what you had originally planned look I know it's super cliche. Just trust me. Just go with the flow, man. Like Let the story write you We finished our story We did it after countless hours of blood sweat tears and going fetal in the shower We have typed the best three words in the english dictionary the end The this is End next up is a step that I actually really enjoy I know I'm an agonizingly sarcastic person, but I mean that so after finishing draft one I'll usually take a week or so off to just relax to just Chill for a bit take some time to enjoy some work Well done and also to allow some emotional space to form between me and what I just wrote I usually take a week. You can take longer. It doesn't really matter. I'm not your papa Then what I will do is I will go back and I will reread through the entire thing and make any changes Any story changes that I feel make it better This can range anywhere from just changing a section of dialogue all the way to maybe Removing a whole chapter entirely in the book that I kind of just finished. I actually had to Completely rewrite and really plan Two entire chapters because they just didn't mesh well with the rest of the story. The pacing was entirely off I had to completely redo them. Just do what you feel is right for the story But don't get hung up on grammar and spelling. I mean you can correct those errors if you see them, of course But don't actively search for them at this point. That's absolutely not what you should be looking for That's just attention that you're drawing away from other more important things in this step My main job in this step of my writing process is to Try to approach the story as a reader so that I can notice if things maybe don't make as much sense as they should Maybe they don't flow as well as they should And I also want to make sure that the story is rising and falling in the correct places I've always found this to be the easiest and most exciting step because once you're rereading it You'll realize something you will realize You've written a book. It may not be done and polished yet, but you did it you literally wrote a book That is a dopamine rush that you cannot get from a lot of other things. Well, except maybe So I've just done my second draft as far as I can tell the narrative of the story is done What's next is to get a second opinion. Maybe a third fourth Fifth sixth a whole bunch of different opinions how you find beta readers will depend on what platform you have already or maybe You're in a writing group or something like that I know there's heaps of great videos on youtube that can help you with actually finding beta readers if if that's not easy In your position reading a full book by anyone other than an author that you already really like Is a massive commitment and not many people are going to jump at that opportunity in most cases What is important is that you choose people that will be completely honest with you You're a sweet old grand maybe really sweet and sharp as a steak knife But unless she is as savage as church duty, you'll need to go with people who won't be as worried about Hurting your feelings the job of a beta reader isn't to tell you what a great writer you are It's to tell you how you can be a better one So once you have your beta readers, you need to be super clear about what you expect from them It might be a good idea to give them a list of prompts So they know exactly where to dig their heels in maybe something like this I'll show it on the screen for a little bit This is just maybe a rough example of what I would use as a beta reader template So once you have all of the feedback from your beta readers, you're going to need to sit down And you're going to need to really consider the things they're saying with a really open mind You got to open it up open that bad boy up my guy Just don't get defensive unless the beta reader is Literally outright insulting you in that case. I don't know go ahead and key their car or something egg their kids I don't know do it. You don't need to incorporate all of the beta readers Feedback and changes of course just at the very least try to see where those comments May be coming from this is why you are the author the artistic choices are yours and yours alone So the third draft to me is quite literally just rereading my story and more importantly making the beta reader changes that I think are going to make it better With this read through I'll usually put a little bit more focus into correcting any grammar or spelling mistakes that I see But again having a well paced entertaining and well written story is my top priority I'm uh, I'm not going to go into detail about the publishing and marketing side of things here because that is a really Complex and long thing to go through. That's another whole long video in itself This is actually probably a really good place to wrap up the video as well because everything up to now Is what I would personally do regardless of whether I wanted to pursue traditional or self publishing But from here depending on which of those two things you go with What you do is going to deviate wildly. So that's it. That's my writing process It may not be much But it's honest work. Maybe it'll work for you. Maybe not. Maybe you leave a nice comment Maybe you don't maybe you subscribe Maybe you wake up one night Find your family covered in egg. Thanks for watching catch you