You’re inspired, ideas are rampaging about in your head. You’ve read a lot of books, you know what you like, and you know what a book is supposed to look like. How do you make that journey, from idea to creation? And more importantly, how do you keep making it?

Often writers find it more difficult to produce a second or third novel because they’ve drained the barrel dry. If you’ve been creating out of passion and vision alone you can write for some time, but there comes a point where that won’t reliably carry you. It takes many authors a number of attempts at writing books before they feel ready to put work in front of anyone else, so you can burn through your passion before you master your craft. Then what?

Writing a book is a little bit like making a cake. Knowing what a cake looks like and having all the raw ingredients isn’t enough – you need to know something about the methods for getting from one to the other. Trial and error is one way of learning, but that can be slow and frustrating. As with the cake making, practicing and developing skills helps, and knowing what those skills are makes it a good deal easier to develop them.

Most of us are literate, and we can tend to assume that, able to read, string words together and imagine plots, we can all write novels. No one suggests that everyone has an opera in them, or a mural... but the idea that we all have a book in us is all too common. Well, maybe we could all do any of those things if we had the tools and skills. A novel is no less complex and challenging than playing a musical instrument, if you’re planning on doing it well.

Compass Books now has published the complete set of how-to books for novelists. Building Your Story: A Guide to Structure and Plot by Kelly Michelle Lawrence; Creating Convincing Characters by Nicholas Corder and Creating Meaningful Dialogue by Suzanne Ruthven. These three titles will help to stimulate ideas and improve your craft.

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