How to Write a Book Entirely from Notes

Well, I'm in the process of editing my book. (Yay!)

It's a parody of the various, repetitive elements in the Young Adult genre that have gotten ridiculously popular.

Anyway, I've gone through a lot of  frustration and stress in completing said project, and have learned a lot on this writing journey.

And it still isn't complete since I intend to write more books and stories.

One important tip I will impart on you dear reader is taking notes.

It seems simple enough, but those simple notes can be a powerful tool to finish your novel a whole lot faster.

Not many utilize the note to its greatest potential, at least that was the case for me. I had a few notes here and there, but I didn't see how it could make the writing process even easier to tackle, which can be pretty difficult at times.

I really wish I would've adopted this method sooner.

 

The things you'll need and the procedure:

 

Get a journal strictly for note-taking.

 

This journal will be entirely dedicated to notes and pieces of dialogue that might be of use later; you should roughly order the notes in how they will appear in your story, and their importance. So, try to put the most important notes for the plot first, and the less important notes can be designated for smaller scenes.

 

The notes in your journal will give you a quick sketch of how you'll craft your scenes and dialogue later, making it easier to do.

Sometimes when you're writing, at least for efficiency purposes, you want to quickly write the story down so you can edit it for the final draft; this can't easily be done if you're writing whole dialogues and description from the start, which will take longer without the guiding principle of notes since this can lead to getting stuck or having Writer's Block.

 

Once you have organized and quick notes about your characters, scenes, and the dialogue that would fit the characters and scenes the best, to ad nauseam, your chances of experiencing Writer's Block are reduced. Notes are the best way in simplifying the complexity of our fictional worlds and finding good ways to describe it.

 

Here is a good example of the method:

 

NOTE JOURNAL: NOTE #1 (IMPORTANT PLOT NOTE)-Emily hates her Mother-When she suddenly goes missing under nefarious circumstances, Emily takes the opportunity to replace her mother as the matriarch of their home.

 

WRITING JOURNAL, ENTRY#1: CHAPTER 1-'Mommy goes bye bye if you don't give us 50,000 in cash.' For a few minutes, Emily just stared at the note. No tears. No yelling. No worry. Emily's eyes spanned their living room and the adjacent kitchen not even a foot away, and a slow smile spread across her face. The tears that didn't come when reading the letter, came up upon realizing that the whole place was now hers. The best inheritance present ever, and all of it gotten by petty thieves and amateur kidnappers. The number 50,000 dollars disturbed her mind. They could've asked for more; whatever the amount, she wasn't willing to pay it. 

 

When you have digestible bites of information to work with, it's easy to expand on it, instead of writing dialogue and description and not knowing what to really do with them until the editing process occurs. With notes, it's easy to map your novel out, chunk by chunk.