My name is Roger and I work in the healthcare industry in the great state of New Jersey :) When I am not pushing paperwork from one side of my desk to the other I take an interest in writing short stories and novella's. I have always had an interest in books since a young age and was always encouraged to read by my parents and grandparents. As a teen in England I started to write my masterpiece! That went down in a fiery crash pretty quick being that I was attempting to write something equivalent to Stephen King's "The Stand" off the top of my head. Not smart.
Fast forward a few years and I now live in the United States. With plenty of free time due to immigration restraints I started to dabble again. This time with a plan. I cannot say enough how this is the most important step you will take. My first recommendation would be to decide what is this book going to be? Is it something you want to write for you and a small number of family and friends, or is this something you might want to make a few dollars on? If it is the latter do a quick online search and make sure that the topic is not over saturated already. I recently was thumbing through my stack of inspiration and came across the Nika Riots of 532AD.
From Wikipedia: The Nika riots, or Nika revolt, took place over the course of a week in Constantinople in AD 532. It was the most violent riot in the history of Constantinople, with nearly half the city being burned or destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed.
This sounded like a fascinating topic to write a fictional component to go along with. Well quite frankly it is! From books, ebooks, fiction, non-fiction, and movies this has been covered a lot. Again, if you are looking to write something for yourself and have your heart set on this topic, it would be a great time period and event to use.
Back to the planning stage. In my opinion don't stray from a very broad storyline at this stage. Plan each character one at a time and make a folder full of notes on each one. The more descriptive your notes are the easier it is to develop the character when and if you find yourself stuck. If you think your main character is a bit grumpy write down the reasons why he is this way. It seems so simple but just checking back to this periodically can add so many layers to a story.
Keep up this process for any major events you want to happen in your story. Maybe you know that the hero is going to swing from his ship to board a pirate ship and rescue the heroine. However, do you know anything about ships or pirates? This is where your ethos is important. If I were to tell you that healthcare in NJ is convoluted and mostly led by insurance coverage you would probably believe me. It says in the first paragraph I work in healthcare in NJ. If I told you that the easiest way to diversify and balance your stock portfolio was to invest in New Zealand oil you would be much more skeptical. Writing is the same thing. To engage the reader you have to at least sound like you know what you are talking about. By doing a little research into pirate ships I can tell you that the hero sailed his sloop after the pirate galley and once along side he boarded the vessel by swinging on a rope from the main sail mast. This one sounds a bit clunky but hopefully you get the idea. It is never a bad idea to simply head to a library and look through lots of non-fiction books to gain the knowledge you need on the historical event you are using for a background story. After all that part of the book has to be accurate.
Once you have all of this planning done start to create ideas for what is actually going to happen. Often I have a good idea of how a story is going to end, by the end of the planning stage I know my characters and how the story is going to begin. From there it is simply being creative and finding a way to get from A to B while making sure there is enough going on to make it an interesting and entertaining read.
I will post tips next time on how to find ways to keep it interesting and entertaining for the duration of the story.
For anyone wondering about the house? The king of lit himself - William Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.
Check out my Historical Fiction Novella at: http://store.payloadz.com/details/1941573-ebooks-fiction-a-franks-tale-roger-thornton.html
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