Introduction

The Couch

How many times have you heard this?

“I’d like to write a book some day.”

Sitting at coffee with a friend:

“I’d like to write a book some day.”

Mingling at the office Christmas party:

“I want to write a book some day.”

Plenty of people are wannabe writers. They’ll tell you about the plot, all the world building they’ve done, the cool characters they’ve devised.

Very few actually do anything about it.

They sit on their nice, comfy couches and say, “I’d like to write a book some day.”

You’ve said it yourself, haven’t you?

The couch is very comfortable.

No one blames you. You work hard at your job. When you get home, you’re tired. The couch calls to you: Rest! You’ve earned it!

But do you ever wonder?

Do you ever wonder what it would be like?

To write that book that’s in your head.

To see it outside your head. Words on a screen.

Words on a page.

But words on a page don’t get there by themselves. Words on a page need a writer to write them.

Do you want to be a writer?

If so, there are two things you absolutely have to do.

1. Decide you want to be a writer.
2. Prove to yourself that you are a writer.

Do you want to be a writer?

Say it.

“I want to be a writer.”

Prove It

You want to be a writer?

Prove it.

Prove to yourself that you’re a writer.

What does a writer do?

A writer writes.

You must write.

It took me decades to figure this out. I thought of myself as a writer, but in my heart of hearts, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t write, or when I did write it was in fits and starts.

But now I’m writing. Regularly.

I’m a writer.

Look around on this page. These are my words.

Have I written any best-selling novels? Not yet.

I’ve written, I’ve published. I’ve sold a few copies and learned a thing or two.

I’m not commercially successful. Not yet.

But if I continue diligently to practice my craft, if I continue to write, it’s only a matter of time.

Any pro will tell you, the secret is perseverance. Writers write.

There’s no magic. There are some simple tricks.

(Simple tricks I wish I’d learned twenty years ago!)

Once I’d learned these tricks and seen how transformative they could be, I knew I had to share it with others.

I want to share it with you.

I’ve put together a plan for you. I call it “Couch to 50k (words)”.

It’s very easy on the knees and the shins. (If you’ve ever tried to become a runner, you might get the joke.)

The first phase of the plan takes nine to twelve weeks. You get Sundays off.

At the end of phase one, if you follow the plan, you’ll have written a novel’s worth of words: more than 50,000.

You will be a writer, with a writing habit. A habit that will take you places and build your career as an author.

Most importantly, you’ll have proven it to yourself: you can write like a professional.

This isn’t <abbr title=”National Novel Writing Month”>NaNoWriMo</abbr>. You’re not going to lock yourself away for a month, burn out in a blaze of glory, and vow to never do that again.

Instead, you’ll be a writer with a sustainable writing habit. It will be the simplest thing in the world to just keep going. You could have another 50k words in another six weeks.

Don’t worry about what to do with those words right now.

Focus on producing the words first.

I’m going to show you how.

Show Up

You’ve decided. You want to be a writer.

You’re going to be a writer.

Now it’s time to write.

But how do you start?

Writing is hard. Starting to write is even harder.

You have to overcome the inertia of not writing.

You have to find something to write about.

Once started, you have to keep writing, day after day. Or else you’ll stop. (Ask me how I know…)

Writers like to complain about “the tyranny of the blank page.”

The blank page can have a terrifying power over us writers.

Imagine that the blank page is Hitler.

Imagine that blank page with that toothbrush mustache and those beady little eyes.

Imagine how it gloats as writers around the world cower before it.

That little tyrant. That petty little tyrant.

He thinks he’s better than you.

He thinks he can control you.

I’m not from Virginia, but they have a saying there that I’m fond of: sic semper tyrannis. “Thus, always, the tyrant.”

As a proud ‘Murican, I stand with the Virginians: I don’t take kindly to tyrannies.

You shouldn’t either, whether you hail from Richmond or Mars.

So let me show you how to take that tyrant right down. Put your foot on his neck. Menace him with your sword if you like. (Try it! It’s fun!)

You see, it’s as simple as this: you don’t write a novel all at once.

You don’t build a writing habit all at once, either.

It takes about three weeks to establish a habit, and that tyrant will fight you every step of the way.

So what’s the trick?

Channel your inner Sun Tzu. Don’t fight. Not until you’re guaranteed to win.

How do you guarantee victory?

You prepare the battlefield ahead of time.

You stack the odds in your favor.

You start by doing the easiest, most absolute smallest amount of work possible.

Start by showing up.

Open your favorite writing tool. Set a timer. Write for two minutes. Then stop.

Do it again the next day. Show up. Write for two minutes. Stop.

These first three weeks of building your writing habit are about becoming consistent. Consistency means showing up.

Especially at first, showing up is much more important than word count.

Every time you show up, you’re proving to yourself that you’re a writer. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, calls this “casting a vote” for your new identity.

Don’t worry about word counts. Don’t worry about anything more than showing up and writing for at least two minutes.

“What do I write?” you may ask.

Easy. Write whatever comes to mind. Vomit onto the page. It’s called free writing. Don’t worry about structure, typos, or pretty words. Just write.

If nothing comes to mind, write “I’m writing because I’m a writer and that’s what writers do.” Write that over and over for two minutes if you have to.

(Spoiler alert: You won’t have to.)

By the end of the first week, you’re going to have a hard time stopping at two minutes.

If that’s the case, go ahead, add two more minutes to your timer. Keep adding two more minutes as needed.

But if it starts to get difficult, back off. Frankly, I wouldn’t recommend going beyond ten minutes. I find five works really well for me.

Do this for three weeks. Minimum.

Then don’t ever stop.

Congratulations. You’re writing.

This new habit of yours, free writing every day for at least two minutes, serves two purposes:

1. As you begin to add real word counts, this becomes your warm-up routine. A few minutes of free writing to shake the cobwebs out of your head.
2. It’s a placeholder, cheap maintenance for the habit that you will build your career on.

In the years to come, you’re going to have bad days, bad weeks, bad months even. Even if you do nothing else, you can find two minutes each day to fill with words.

“But what about the 50k? You can’t write 50k words in two minutes a day!”

Of course not. Two minutes is your beachhead against the blank page.

Next comes the long road to total victory.

The Long Road to Total Victory

Writing anything that pops into your head for two minutes (or more) works great as a warm-up. But a solid writing career it does not make.

(Unless you’re James Joyce, I guess… Don’t be James Joyce. There’s only room for one of him, and the position’s taken.)

Free-writing does make an excellent foundation.

The next phase of the Couch to 50k Plan builds on that foundation.

I recommended that you practice your two-minute warm-ups for at least three weeks, working up to five or ten minutes.

You can start phase two whenever you feel ready.

If you lack confidence, start by giving yourself a week of showing up.

Remember, you’re proving to yourself that you’re a writer. Cast that vote every day.

If you’re cocky and impatient, start phase two on Day One. (That’s what I’d do, for the record.)

Remember though, this isn’t NaNoWriMo. It isn’t a race. There’s no deadline. The goal is to build yourself a rock-solid writing habit and conquer the Tyranny of the Blank Page once and for all.

Before I explain phase two, let’s talk about why it works.

It’s called “Habit Shaping” (hat tip once again to James Clear).

You start by showing up.

Then you work your way to your goal incrementally.

Incrementally is the key word here. You master the first two minutes. Then you master the next two minutes. In the Plan, you master writing 100 words a day. Then you master the next 100.

Once you’re writing 200 words a day, 400 isn’t a stretch.

Writing 400 words a day? 800 isn’t much more.

Each step requires the smallest effort, but the end result is powerful.

How powerful?

You start by writing 100 words a day, and nine weeks later you’re writing 1,500 words per day, with a cumulative total of more than 50,000 words.

Now, if you follow my advice, you won’t start out writing a novel. Not at first. You’ll practice something else and build up to the novel.

But we’ll get to that.

If you do want to write novels, don’t worry: with a daily output of 1.5k words a day you’ll have plenty of words to fill a novel. In fact, it wouldn’t be hard at all for you to pump out a finished novel every quarter if you want.

Did you read that? Read it again. After only nine weeks of practice, you’ll have a foundational habit. You can use that habit to churn out four books a year without breaking a sweat.

Care to check my math?

1,500 words per day × 6 days per week × 52 weeks = 468k words per year.

Even if only half of those words end up in a final product, you have more than enough to fill four 50k-word novels.

Don’t think it’s possible? Consider Frederick Faust, the powerhouse behind the pen name Max Brand.

He churned out at least a million words of finished prose every year for a decade.

More than 500 novels of 30–50k words each, and even more short stories.

On a typewriter.

They were pretty good words, too.

Or how about Lester Dent? He wrote 159 Doc Savage novels over the course of 16 years. (Doc Savage was the proto-superhero who inspired both Batman and Superman.)

Even if we estimate low, at 30k words per “novel”, that means Dent wrote nearly 300k words of finished prose per year.

Again, this was on a typewriter. And Dent wasn’t cooped up in his attic. He was sailing around the Caribbean with his wife on their yacht, diving for sunken treasure.

(He wrote out on the deck in the evenings. Novel after novel. On a typewriter.)

Should you strive to emulate these titans of word count? That’s up to you. My goal here is to expand your worldview and show you what’s possible.

One book a year would be respectable. How many people write one book in a lifetime?

Let’s come back down to earth. I don’t want to scare you.

Remember, you don’t start out writing 1,500 words a day.

You start by writing for two minutes, and you build from there.

The Habitual Writer

Let this be your core tenet: a writer writes.

When I was pretending to be a writer, I only wrote when the mood struck me. I waited for inspiration to strike. No inspiration, no writing.

There’s a popular saying most commonly attributed to William Faulkner, but I’m most enamored with Peter DeVries’ formulation:

“I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.”

A serious writer “sees to it”. A serious writer writes regularly. Better yet, habitually. Writing becomes the default behavior, not the exceptional behavior.

I’m framing this book around what author James Clear identifies as the Four Laws of Behavior Change. These four laws answer the question: what conditions must adhere for a behavior to become habitual?

1. The behavior must have an obvious cue.
2. The behavior must be attractive.
3. The behavior must be easy.
4. The behavior must be satisfying.

This gives you our order of battle:

1. Make writing obvious.
2. Make writing attractive.
3. Make writing easy.
4. Make writing satisfying.

You’ve got the landscape and the strategy. Now you need a plan.

The Couch to 50k (words) Plan

You can use this plan as your jumping-off point into the rest of the book. Each pattern is designed to solve a problem you’ll encounter as you work your way through the plan, and beyond.

1. Start each writing session with a warm-up: free-write for at least two minutes but no longer than ten (Write for Two Minutes).
2. Writing will come easier if you have at least a rough plan. Generate ideas ahead of time (100:10:1) and use some sort of structure (The Dent) plan your writing sessions.
3. Brainstorming and planning both count toward your daily targets!

Patterns of Narrative Engineering

This is the first book in a series: Patterns of Narrative Engineering.

A narrative is a story, a tale with a beginning, middle, and end.

Stories do not happen by accident. Even if a story relates an accidental series of events, the story must be told. A storyteller must pick and choose what to tell, what to leave out. Furthermore, the storyteller must choose the how of the telling.

In a word, a narrative is engineered.

People have been engineering narratives for thousands of years. Over all that time, tried and true patterns have emerged for telling successful stories that engage the teller’s audience and leave them begging for more.

In this context, a pattern is a general solution to a specific problem, written out in a structured form.

This book is a pattern library.

In the pages to follow, you will find many patterns. Each one follows the same form.

The most important part of any pattern is the name. For instance, The Dent. This gives you a convenient handle to talk about the concept with anyone else familiar with it.

One goal of a pattern library is to codify and develop a jargon for a particular field.

If you know a software engineer, chances are he’s heard of the Observer Pattern, the Singleton, or the Proxy.

In writing and publishing, we have our own jargon, developed over centuries of bookmaking: outliners and pantsers, novels and novellas, recto and verso.

In my own small way, I’m hoping to contribute to this tradition.

What’s more though, for beginners in any field, the jargon can be pretty overwhelming. Not just figuring out the definitions, but figuring out the usage. When should you outline? When should you pants? Why write a novel instead of a novella? Why can’t I just say right and left?!

A pattern doesn’t just name a thing. A pattern describes it. What problem(s) give rise to the thing? Why? How does this thing solve the problem? What other things do I need to consider?

Go look at The Dent. See what I mean?

I’m using a particular structure of pattern called “Portland Form”.

(Yes, there are patterns for Patterns!)

As you’ll see in The Dent, it has these main sections:

The Problem—A description of the problem, with a little bit of context that leads up to it.

The Forces Involved—Why is this a problem? What are the components of the problem, the factors and forces that create it?

Therefore:—A little rhetorical flourish makes everything better.

The Solution—Usually the longest section. How to apply the pattern to the problem in general, along with any variations or divergencies.

Next Steps—This is where the pattern connects to other patterns, exercises, or outside sources.

Each pattern takes its place within a larger system.

Writing and publishing (and marketing and selling) form a very complex system. That’s what makes the field so tough for beginners. There’s a ton to figure out, and everything is connected to everything else.

Pattern languages are all about analyzing and decomposing systems, figuring out how the components fit together, in order to solve real problems.

The pattern library then presents the system one component at a time in a digestible format.

With some care, you can pick and choose from these patterns to fit them together into your own personal writing system.

For instance, you might use Write for Two Minutes and Shape Your Writing Time to generate words, The Dent to shape those words into stories, and 100:10:1 to generate creative ideas to inspire more words in your writing sessions, while Visualize Your Author Career provides the 30,000 foot vision.

Do you see how theses pattern fits into a larger system you might build?

You don’t have to use every pattern. You probably shouldn’t. Writers are individuals. You will find many things easy that I find hard, and vice versa.

You are building your own writing career, and nobody else’s. God has made you unique among all his manifold creation. Nobody else in all of time has walked the roads you’ve walked and seen the things you’ve seen, and nobody ever will again. Nobody else can write the books that you need to write, only you.

As you consider what to write and how to write it, let this book and the patterns within be one advisor among many. If you still don’t know what to do, or you ever feel overwhelmed, pray to God for wisdom.

And then Just Write. It doesn’t have to be good, it doesn’t have to be wise or pretty, it just has to be words on a page. You can always Revise Later.

Peace,

David Eyk

April 25, 2020