While Writing Mumeet, the third and final installment of my Sarim Trilogy, I learned about a new writing process which will hopefully deliver my best work to date. Here is my process, so you can take advantage of it to help you write as well.

Why This Blog

A lot of people reach out to me and tell me that they hope to write a book, or are currently writing one, or have just finished one. There’s a lot of advice about how to write novels on the internet, but I wanted to share my current process as an addition, and to help my audience.

Who does this work for?

This process is for you if you:

Are impulsiveLike to go with the flowGet tired of plansGet bored of writing if you know too much about the book

Basically, this is a writing process for pantsers.

What You Need to Know First

In order to take full advantage of this process, I recommend you get an understanding of a couple of writing frameworks such as:

The 23 Hero Actions: The book is really good, but you don’t need to memorize all of it.The Hero’s Journey: This gives you a solid framework, for most storiesThe Three Act Structure: This gives you a solid framework, for most storiesThe MICE Framework: A must have if you use my method. I recommend following Mary Robinson Kowal’s video here. This will be the bulk of our method.Try-Fail Cycles: A must have if you use my method. The Method

My current method takes advantage of my pantsing. I figure out what I sort of want to write, who the main character is, and I start!

Sounds simple, right? It is! The goal of my first draft is not to be perfect, nor to write fluid sentences that leave people in awe. My goal is to get to a completed first draft as quickly as possible. Normally, I don’t even know the main theme of the book until the first half is almost done.

So, Okay. Now my first draft is done. It is messy, the characters are inconsistent, and there isn’t a single beautiful paragraph in sight. However, I am now ready to start really writing. Here are the steps:

Draft Two: Theme: Before starting this draft, I figure out the main theme, and whether there are any sub-themes. I make sure that this is well-defined, and change the beginning of the book to reflect it. In Mumeet, this meant realizing that the book is all about freedom in terms of understanding the balance between emotions and rationality. In the beginning of the book, I made Mishal overly emotional, and his guiding motivation was to become a more rational person. This sent ripples throughout the book and gave Mumeet a coherent story.Draft Three: Book Structure: Great, your book has a consistant theme. Now, it’s time to look at the major arcs and story beats. Does this chapter need to be there? What if we add a training arc? This is where your 3-act structure comes in handy. What you’re essentially doing is planning/outlining a book. However, instead of doing it before writing, you do it AFTER writing. It is like hammering a piece of metal into shape. This will make the book immediately more interesting. In Mumeet, the biggest changes were removing a location, adding a magical library, and making Mishal go visit someone in the middle of the book.Draft Four: Characters: What do each of your characters want? Are they speaking in the right way? If you have POVs, what does their introspection sound like? How do they imagine the world? Through sight? Sound? Smell? How do they interact with one another? This draft is all about solidifying your characters, and giving them parts to play in the overarching theme of the book. Give them banter. Go wild. In Mumeet, I had a lot of fun with Asaad Al Nabhani’s inner monologues and in the banter between Eman and Salim. At this stage, I also gave the book to my beta reader so she could read it and tell me what she like and hates in terms of character, structure, and theme.Draft Five: Writing: This is the stage at which you start to agonize over similies, metaphors, word choice, and description. The goal here is to compel your reader to read your book through, and to create an exceptional line-by-line experience for them. This is a matter of taste, so you will need to ask people about their thoughts on the writing. I have my trusty editor for this.Draft Six: Final Proofreads: At this stage, you can hand the book over to a proofreader whose job it is to catch spelling and grammar errors.

If you follow the above, you will have a more detailed process which helps create value in the book. The reason for this is that you will be able to focus on each piece of the puzzle individually, giving it your all, rather than getting distracted by, say, typos during the main theme of the book.

Earlier, I described editing as a process of hammering a piece of metal into shape. To follow this metaphor to its conclusion: Editing the book properly will leave you with a beautiful sculpture which you can be proud of, and which others will love.

Honestly, I wish I knew all this before writing Sarim.

More about me and my books

I write fantasy novels about the magic of freedom. My latest series, the Sarim Trilogy, is available for purchase on this website. It’s all about jinn hunters living in Muscat, and a teenager who hates himself. If you find this kind of thing interesting, I’d be really happy if you can check the books out here.

Books

The post How My New Writing Process Will Help You Create Awesome Fantasy Novels first appeared on Ammar Al Naaimi Author Site.