The Book Writing Checklist We Give Our Own Authors

Before you write a word

Everything here takes an afternoon in total, and skipping it is what produces the abandoned draft at eleven thousand words.

• Write the premise in one sentence: who wants what, and what is in the way. For nonfiction, what the reader believes now and what they will believe at the end.
• Name the reader, specifically enough that you could say what else is on their shelf.
• List two or three comparable books, published recently, that sit near yours.
• Set a target word count inside the normal range for your category, and divide it into chapters so you know roughly how many you are writing.
• Decide the ending, or at least what has to be true by the end. It can change.
• Choose one tool and one file location, and stop evaluating software.

None of these are commitments. The premise will change, the ending will change, and the word count will be wrong. Writing them down anyway is what lets you notice the change when it happens, rather than drifting into a different book without deciding to.

Then the practical layer, which matters more than it sounds.

• Set up automatic backup to somewhere that is not your laptop, and check that it works by opening the backup once.
• Decide when you write, in the calendar, as a defended appointment rather than an intention.
• Do the amount of outlining that suits you. Our guide to outlining a book covers four methods, and the one page sketch is enough for most people.

While you are drafting

The drafting phase has almost no tasks. That is the point of it. The discipline is in what you do not do.

• Write on your schedule, at a daily target low enough that you can clear it on a bad day.
• Log the word count and the scene you stopped on, in the same file, every session.
• End each session mid-scene with one line about what comes next.
• Put unresolved problems in square brackets and keep going: [she cannot know this yet, fix].
• Keep a running notes file for continuity: names, dates, eye colours, who knows what and when.
• Do not reread from the beginning. Reread yesterday's last page only, to find the voice.
• Do not edit. Not this phase.

That last pair is the whole discipline of a first draft, and it is where most manuscripts are lost. Polishing chapter three for the fourth time feels like conscientiousness and is the most reliable way to never finish. Our free word count tool is enough to track progress without opening the manuscript to admire it.

The halfway checkpoint

This is also the point where most people quietly stop, usually without deciding to. The excitement is gone and the ending is not close enough to pull. Knowing that this happens to everyone, on almost every book, is most of the cure, and doing the checkpoint below is the rest.

Around the middle, stop for one session and do this. It is the cheapest hour in the whole process, and it catches the structural problem that would otherwise stop you at seventy percent.

• Write a reverse outline: one line per chapter saying what happens and what changes as a result.
• Read the list and mark any chapter where nothing changes.
• Mark any place where the same beat happens twice in different clothes.
• Check that the thing driving the story is still the thing you set up in chapter one.
• Compare your actual chapter lengths against each other.
• Update your outline to match the book you are now writing rather than the one you planned.

Our free chapter balance tool does the last of those from a paste of the manuscript, charting every chapter so a stalled middle shows up as a shape rather than a feeling. Fix the list, not the manuscript. Rearranging a page of sentences is quick; rearranging forty thousand words is not.

When the draft is finished

Finishing a first draft is genuinely an achievement, and the first item on this list is not a joke.

• Stop. Do not read it. Put it away for at least two weeks, and preferably four.
• Write down, before you forget, the three things you already know are wrong with it.
• Work on something else during the gap, so that you come back as a reader rather than as the author.

Then, when you return.

• Read the whole thing straight through without fixing anything, taking notes only.
• Do the structural pass first: cut, move and rewrite whole scenes and chapters before touching sentences.
• Only then do the line pass, and only then the copy pass.

The order matters commercially as well as artistically. Any sentence you polish in a chapter you later cut was time spent for nothing, and this is exactly the sequence a professional editor would follow. Our guide to self-editing your book works through each pass in detail.

Before you send it to anyone

Whether the next reader is a beta reader, an agent or an editor you are paying, this is the list that decides how useful their response will be.

• Run the mechanical checks: repeated words, adverbs, filter words, passive constructions, sentences over thirty words.
• Read at least one chapter aloud. Your ear catches what your eye has stopped seeing.
• Build a style sheet recording your spellings, names and house choices, and check the manuscript against it.
• Fix continuity against your notes file: dates, ages, names, timeline.
• Format it in standard manuscript form, in one file, chapters numbered, contact details on page one.
• Write the one paragraph summary you would say out loud if someone asked what it is about.
• Decide what you actually want from this reader, and tell them.

One thing worth saying about beta readers specifically: choose people who read your genre for pleasure, not people who love you. A reader who has finished forty books like yours in the last two years knows when the pace drops, even if they cannot name why. A supportive friend who does not read in your category will tell you it was great, which is kind and worth nothing.

Three of our free tools cover this phase directly: the line edit report runs the mechanical searches on a pasted chapter, the style sheet builder produces the record to hand over, and the manuscript formatter puts the file into the shape agents and editors expect to receive.

That last item is the one people skip, and it changes everything. A reader asked for general thoughts gives you general thoughts. A reader told that you are worried the middle sags and unsure whether the ending is earned gives you something you can act on.

Frequently asked questions