Decide whether you are going to write fiction or nonfiction.

Decide what genre your story will be. Mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc

Decide who your target audience will be. Men, women, children, teens, etc.

Decide whether your story will be a short story, or a novel.

Decide whether your story will be literary or mainstream.

Research publishers to find out if there is a market for this type of story.

Obtain guidelines from each publisher you plan to submit to.

Decide whether this story will be a standalone, part of a trilogy, or part of a continuing series.

Before You Start Writing

Lay it out. Write individual ideas for your story on filing cards. Make sure you have a separate card for each character and each scene. As you come up with more details you can just add them to the cards. Personally, I create a flowchart with a separate text box for each of my characters. They can be expanded or moved as needed. They can also be color coded to show the relationship between characters, or their relation to the story. You can also use textboxes to write chapter outlines and notes, and then you can move them with you as you go.

Rearrange. If you write your book in chapters, or sections, it is much easier to rearrange parts of it if you need to. Something that happens in chapter 12 may have more impact if it happened in chapter 10, or you may have introduced a character in chapter 3 and then you realized you won’t need him until chapter 14.

Do character sketches. It will really help if you create a character chart for each of your characters. Each chart should contain as much information as possible about your character. Once the charts are complete, you can use them to write one-page descriptions to really help you get a "feel" for each of your characters.

Write as you speak. Okay, maybe you're not well educated, or you don't always use proper grammar when you speak, but don't worry about it. The first few drafts of a story are always rough. You can take care of correcting all the spelling and grammar mistakes after the story is finished. Getting it written is the hardest part. Just pretend you're sitting at the kitchen table having coffee with a friend and you're telling them a story.

Proofread and rewrite. Once your story is finished, the work really begins. You will probably have to proofread it and rewrite it several times before you finally decide it's good enough to submit to a publisher.

In the opening...

Show us your main characters, or at least foreshadow them: Show one or more characters under some kind of stress. Show us who the “good guy is,” who the “bad guy is,” and what’s at stake. (What does the hero stand to gain or lose? What will happen if the villain wins?)

Establish the setting—where and when the story takes place. Establish the conflict. Foreshadow the ending. Set the tone of the story: solemn or excited, humorous or tragic.

In the body of the story...

Tell your story in scenes that contain a purpose, an obstacle or conflict, and a resolution that tells us something new about the characters and their circumstances.

Develop your characters through action and dialogue. Give your characters adequate motivation for their actions and words. If the will die due to a blizzard, show a few flakes of snow falling early in the story. Develop the plot as a series of increasingly serious problems. Establish suspense by making the solutions to problems uncertain (How will the hero escape the avalanche and avoid freezing to death?) (How will the rock climber get back to the ground with a broken leg?)

Make solutions appropriate to the characters (Good thing each character took Outward Bound training earlier in the story).

In the conclusion...

Present a final, crucial conflict where everything could be lost by a single word or deed.

Throughout the story...

Remember that nothing happens at random. Why is the hero’s name Stephan? Why is he deaf? Why is his dog a German Shepard?

Use image, metaphor and simile with a conscious purpose, not just because a phrase “sounds good.”