How to Write a Novel: A Step-by-Step Guide for First-Time Authors

1. Start with an idea worth 80,000 words

Most novels run between 70,000 and 100,000 words. Before you commit, ask yourself honestly: is this idea big enough to sustain that? A compelling premise typically combines a character, a want, and an obstacle. "A detective who can't forget anything must solve the one case she doesn't want to." That single sentence implies character, conflict, and stakes — enough to build a novel on.

If your idea is too thin, it will feel exhausted by chapter three. Spend time with it. Write a short paragraph describing what the book is about, who the protagonist is, and what they stand to lose. If you can't do that clearly, develop the idea further before you start drafting.

2. Know your genre

Genre is not a cage — it is a contract with your reader. Readers of thriller expect tension and a ticking clock. Romance readers expect a central love story with an emotionally satisfying resolution. Fantasy readers expect world-building and internal consistency. Knowing your genre helps you understand the conventions you are working within (or deliberately breaking).

Read widely in your genre before you write. Note the typical structure, the common character archetypes, the expected word count, and the pacing. You don't have to follow every convention, but you should know which ones you are breaking and why.

3. Develop your characters before you write

Characters — not plot — are what keep readers turning pages. Before you draft a single scene, spend time with your protagonist. Ask: What do they want on the surface? What do they need at a deeper level (often these are in conflict)? What are they afraid of? What are their greatest strengths — and how do those same strengths become weaknesses under pressure?

Write a brief character biography. Note their age, background, how they speak, what they notice when they walk into a room. You won't use all of this in the book, but knowing it makes your writing feel grounded.

Your antagonist deserves the same attention. A compelling villain believes they are the hero of their own story.

4. Outline your plot — even loosely

Writers divide into "plotters" (who outline in detail before they start) and "pantsers" (who discover the story as they write). Most professional writers land somewhere in between.

Even if you are a natural pantser, knowing your ending before you start is enormously helpful. If you know where your story lands, you can build toward it with purpose rather than wandering. A basic three-act structure — setup, confrontation, resolution — gives you enough scaffolding without constraining your creativity.

Try writing a one-page synopsis before you draft. Summarise the major plot points: how the story opens, the point of no return that launches your hero into the main conflict, the midpoint crisis, the all-is-lost moment, and the climax. If you can write that page, you have enough of a roadmap to start. See our guide on how to structure a novel for a deeper dive.

5. Choose a point of view

Point of view (POV) shapes everything about how a story feels. The most common choices are:

• First person ("I") — intimate and immediate. The reader is locked inside one character's head. Works beautifully for literary fiction and thrillers. Limited to what that character can observe and know.
• Third person limited ("he/she/they") — the most flexible choice. You follow one character closely but retain a little narrative distance. You can shift POV character between chapters. The default for most genre fiction.
• Third person omniscient — the narrator knows everything. Powerful but easy to misuse; can feel distant or confusing if multiple characters' thoughts bleed into the same scene.

Choose your POV and stick to it. Head-hopping — switching whose thoughts you are inside within a single scene — is one of the most common mistakes in first novels and is deeply disorienting for readers.

6. Set a writing habit you can keep

A novel is not written in a weekend; it is written in thousands of small sessions. The single biggest predictor of whether you will finish is whether you can build a sustainable daily habit.

Do not set an unrealistic target. 500 words a day is manageable for most people with jobs and families. At 500 words a day you will have a complete first draft in five months. 1,000 words a day — around 30 minutes of focused effort — halves that.

Write at the same time each day. Defend that time as you would a meeting. The best writing time is the one you will actually use — whether that means 6am before the house wakes up or midnight after everyone has gone to bed.

7. Write the first draft — imperfectly

The first draft is supposed to be bad. Its only job is to exist. Every writer who has ever finished a novel had a terrible first draft — Anne Lamott calls it the "shitty first draft" in her classic writing guide Bird by Bird.

Resist the urge to revise as you go. If you spend every session rewriting yesterday's pages, you will never move forward. Give yourself permission to write clunky dialogue, over-explained scenes, and placeholder descriptions ("[add description of the house here]"). You can fix all of it in revision.

Silence your internal editor for the duration of the first draft. The editor is for draft two.

8. How to push through the difficult middle

Most abandoned novels die in the middle — somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 words. The initial excitement has faded, the ending still feels impossibly far away, and you start to wonder if the whole thing was a mistake. This is normal. Every writer feels it.

Here are the strategies that work:

• Raise the stakes. Ask: what is the worst thing that could happen to my protagonist right now? Then make that happen. Conflict drives story forward.
• Introduce a complication. A new character, a secret revealed, an unexpected reversal — something that changes what your protagonist wants or needs.
• Reread your outline. If you outlined, look at what scenes you were excited about when you first planned the book. Write toward the next exciting moment, not the next chronological scene.
• Change your environment. Writing in a coffee shop, a library, or even a different room can break a psychological block.
• Lower your daily target temporarily. 200 words is better than zero. Keep the habit alive.

9. Revise with fresh eyes

Once you have a complete first draft, take at least two weeks away from it before you revise. You need distance to see it as a reader would. When you return, read the whole thing in as few sittings as possible, taking notes but not making changes yet.

Revision is not copyediting. At this stage you are looking at structure: does the plot arc work? Are the character arcs complete? Is the pacing too slow in the middle? Are there scenes that are doing nothing? Cut ruthlessly. A tighter, shorter book is almost always a better book.

Only once the structure is sound should you move to line editing — improving individual sentences, dialogue, and descriptions. After that: proofreading for spelling, grammar, and consistency.

10. Choose the right tools

Your writing tool should serve your process, not fight it. Many writers start in Microsoft Word and find it cumbersome once their manuscript grows. A dedicated book writing app lets you organise by chapters and scenes, keep notes alongside your text, and track your word count progress.

Fabwriter is a free online book writing app designed for exactly this. You can open it right now — no sign-up required — and start building your chapter structure before you write a single scene. Import an existing Word doc, track your daily word count, and export a finished manuscript when you're done. Registered users also get AI writing assistance to help when they get stuck.