How to Write a Book Manuscript

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Laura Turner and today I'm going to talk with you about how to write a book manuscript. When you are beginning to write your book you are going to be calling it the manuscript or the sort of compilation of everything that you put together for it. And you are going to want to take that manuscript and form it into a book. So I'll talk to you to you about today is how to sort of get to that end of the manuscript right before you make it into a book. First of all decide what you want to write about. And then read other books that are similar to what you are going to write and then of course add your own unique spin on the subject. And write every day until the manuscript is finished. Now what the nice thing about a manuscript is that it's not published yet so you can actually go back and rewrite it. So write everyday get everything you need in there and then go back and sort of pare down and say where does the book feel too fat, where does it feel like it can be you know sort of chopped away at. Little by little so that you can actually make it more streamlined and more interesting to the reader. You can also put it into the hands of someone else. Sometimes people don't like to give their manuscripts away because they are not finished and they don't want people to see their dirty laundry in effect. But if you really want to get better, you might ought to you know sort of become comfortable with the fact that people are going to be reading your dirty laundry sometimes and they are going to be giving you feedback on what they see in it. Which is very often dirtiness. So they are going to be helping you to clean it up. So go ahead and you know just take all personal judgment away from it. And say this is the thing that I'm giving to you to give me feedback on. And finally you can start writing your proposals for publishing houses even before you've finished your book. You can tell them how much you've finished of it and what the idea is behind it and try to get people interested in the book before you even finish it. So good luck with writing your manuscript."