How To Write a Book

                                                     Writing Action/War/Adventure


When writing about war or adventure, if it is to be historical, you don't want to write a story of history that provides the same stuff that you read in high school that many students hate. Instead, you want to give a good historical story that is not fully well known. For example, how many Americans know that many men from their nation fought in North Africa and the Atlantic, not just Europe and the Pacific? How many Americans know that the allies landed on the beaches of  Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword, and not just Omaha Beach during the battle of  Normandy? When you come down to it, you realize that most Americans don't know much about history.When a lot of people go to a historical site, they are not always appreciative to the fact that they can walk where thousands of people walked before them. Too often, they are thinking about how they want to get back to the hotel and watch a sports game.

Try to write a historical story in a fictional way, but without twisting history. I would advise your story having no more than four men or women that have an important role in your story, in most books you write.When writing a good war story, I think it is often good to take a few people from one or more armies so that both forces have a voice of their own.You don't usually want all your characters to do the same thing; you want your people to be the commanders, who make the decisions, and the infantry soldiers on the field confronting the enemy and experiencing the action.You also want your people that you write about to be real and to get an idea of how you think they are by reading letters that were written by them. If they were religious, let them be so; if they were weak, let them be so. If they were cruel, let them be so. Keep your characters very accurate to how you feel they were, and don't make them a certain way just because Hollywood turned them out to be that way; bring them back to life in your interpretation of them. If you keep your story historical, don't worry about accepting criticism for it. If people don't like your story, it may just be that they don't like the history you write about, not how you write. Unless you twist history---which I don't like---never expect your book to leap to the New York Times Bestseller list.

Michael Shaara worked on The Killer Angels for seven years since he was so inspired to write about the three day battle of Gettysburg; however, nothing he wrote, including his seventy short stories, did well in his life-time. Dr.Seuss wrote four hundred books in two years, and would write a thousand page book, only to keep sixty pages of it. It took J.R.R.Tolkien sixteen years to write The Lord of  the Rings.Tolkien also wrote seventeen volumes to the history of  Middle Earth, and made up his own languages. A possible new theory is that C.S.Lewis had a code behind his Narnia books, and that each book of The Chronicles of Narnia symbolized a different planet in the solar system. As you can see, some writers really get into their work and re-word and plan out everything carefully to make it a good book. I also think it is often good when writing historical fiction not to throw out your personal views on every character in the book, but let the reader make some choices for himself or herself.



                                                        Writing Science Fiction


When writing about space in science fiction, you don't want to write something without human life, but you still  want to make it very different.What's very strange to me is that this was one of the first subjects I ever wrote about. I don't enjoy writing science fiction much anymore, and when I write it I think I'm often in a strange mood.When writing this subject, I would suggest studying the universe first and trying to think deeply and about things that perhaps only your imagination has covered, but you feel that you must write down. I'm sorry, I don't think I can help you out much with this subject.


                                                             Writing Fantasy


 This was actually one of  the first subjects I ever wrote about. Like Science Fiction, I don't write it much anymore, but, like many of my old stories that I don't mention much anymore, I am still proud of them because without them there would be no such thing as Kings and Crusaders.I hadn't read many stories and my first story,originally called The Fast Car, was only three pages long. The only books I had read befere this were probably only no longer than a hundred pages. I continued on in The Burnwheel Stories,as they were called, and then The Fight For Life, The Stories of Kabok, and some other works including some that have been thrown away; by 2008, through some advice from Seth and Samuel Shipley, I wrote The Robbit, which was sort of my first book.The Stories of Kabok and The Robbit, along with The Lord of the Cornbreads were all fantasy and are perhaps my best known old works.I think it is good to study history and to sort of tie it together with your fantasy work. I also think that in fantasy it is good to put a Christian-underlying message behind it; otherwise, it is a waste of time.


                                                         Writing Anything Non-Fiction


In the past and now, I write theology, church history, and military history.When writing non-fiction, to make a good book, you want to definitely know what you are writing about, and to get your information from not just one source.You want to back up your feelings with historical evidence.One of my books, .When writing non-fiction, you might want to first take notes of what you're writing about, and then write them in a good way, as you put it in your book.