The Ultimate Cheat Sheet To Writing Your First Book.
Why it helps: First off, if you want to write a memoir, this three-sentence description will form the structure of your book.In effect, it's a supershort story of your life—a beginning, a middle and the now, if you will. Even if you have zero impulse to write another word, however, the exercise can show you how you view yourself, your past and your present, all of which can inform your future.
I am writing a story in first person POV and the main character uses a form of telepathy to “speak” to another character. I am thinking that italics for these thoughts formatted like speech might work best, since two characters are thinking back and forth to one another.
Write in your own voice. If the story is formal and too professional, it will make readers lose interest quickly because it will sound dry and pedantic. So, writing in your own voice is a great way to hold people’s interest. Write to reveal your personality; write in simple words as if you are narrating to your friend rather than to strangers.
I went to grad school, where I learned to read ten books at once and never finish one. Good thing Mark Twain didn’t write that way, or we might not have Life on the Mississippi. Twain was a diligent and conscientious writer with a memory like a bear trap, or at least that’s what he wanted us to think.
How To Write the Perfect First Line. From all these examples, I hope you’ve seen that perfect first lines take many shapes and forms. In fact, the title of this post is misleading because there is really no such thing as the perfect first line. There is only a perfect first line for your story. Be patient as you look for it.
The First Person. Many people believe that writing in the first person is the easiest way to write and perhaps they are right to a point. When you write in the first person, you can get very comfortable and sometimes overshare.
Books shelved as first-person-narrative: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bar. Home My Books.