Technical Writer to Fiction Writer – The Process

If anyone is vulnerable, you might not have a good product. Look familiar? What’s an awesome product? One that customers will use (examine) efficiently.

Note: As with each process, those stages depend on every other. Work them up and down to ensure they may be aligned earlier than you leap in. In all likelihood, you’ll make numerous passes through the method earlier than you have an appropriate product. Writing is an iterative process, no longer a waterfall (one-bypass) system.

If there is no need, why are you doing it? If you need to “attempt your hand” at fiction writing, forget about this procedure and begin. If you need to strive your hand and have a danger at achievement (that normal method human investing in your book or novel), you’d better comply with a procedure. Even an improper approach is higher than no process. The same element holds for a non-fiction undertaking. In your system, this phase is easy: A brand new product, launch, procedure, coverage, or whatever pops out, and you get elected to do the documentation. For fiction writing, you need to do a chunk of research.

As an impartial fiction/non-fiction writer, although you’ll higher see if there may be a need and want earlier than you spend time on How to Grow Prize-Winning Garden Snails in Your Bedroom Window or Howdy-Doody on Mars. This is style research. In any other article (Is it Within You?), you made numerous lists that narrowed your pastimes to some genres with some luck. Now, go to the nearby bookshop and notice the number of physical books on the shelves for your genres. Use Google and see what the demand is.

For the Sorcerer novels, my aim changed to make them available in print as Print on Demand and in numerous PDF formats. The unique booklet on StoriesOnline was driven through the entry requirements to get HTML output. I researched the available enter formats, picked the best (it simply labored out that way), and was given the whole specification.

You will generate most of your requirements. If you have a Print on Demand writer in mind, get their requirements. For an eBook reader or PDF, please ensure you have a perfect draw close of what they need as input. Establish your word processor (yes, you can do it in Notepad if you’re masochistic) and plan on doing much single-sourcing as possible.

Technical Writer

The design phase for fiction writing departs fairly extensively from our regular Tech Writer designing, although they do have some common factors. This is a much-debated phase among writers. The spectrum is the seat-of-the-pants or natural writer on one design stop, which starts with a blank page and begins writing. He’ll refine it with several full drafts and rewrites. The claim here is that there is no restriction on his creativity.

On the other side of the design spectrum is the define/blueprint method. This has the story, scenes, characters, and many others. Laid down to less than a page. After the author polishes the blueprint (tons of creativity), he starts offevolved the writing segment.

Confession: I did the four Sorcerer novels within the decrease of 0.33 of the range. I knew which and how every e-book ended, arranged many scenes where they belonged, kept the huge character and timeline lists, and let it rip. I observed a great deal of the Craft of Writing once I turned into the ultimate half of-of the closing novels (I was, in the beginning, doing them concurrently, on account that they have been concurrent).

Some editing is a part of the writing segment. You must do the first numerous yourself to install the scene transitions, restore the obvious continuity mistakes, and catch several typos and misspellings. It’ll be up to you whether or not or now not you’ve got an external editor. For the Sorcerer novels, I went via four volunteer editors before the first novel became published in StoriesOnline — they ran out of time, became sick, had Real Life issues, and so forth. After the ultimate one, I did a satisfactory job and permitted it to rip.

My brother got a Kindle final year and loved to play with it. So, I converted my display screen-optimized versions into the Kindle format and sent them to him. He had a perfect anal-retentive time using the Kindle to replicate mistakes, drop them into a notice document, then occur. I’ve finished the updates from those edits. The closing novel was pretty sloppy. Arg.

If you do not publish, you perish. In the tech writing world, if you don’t say, “Here’s the very last product,” you would possibly as nicely not have started. On the other hand, we commonly get paid for all the prior paintings if the bosses decide now not to complete the mission. As a programmer, system analyst, or other tech-type, if the product would not get out, it will sit around losing bits and bytes until it gets filed away on your data to die a lingering bit-rot dying. Maybe you can use elements of it in a later challenge.

As a fiction author, the idea is to get your novel out to others; in the requirements section, you set up the delivery media, right? The submit phase includes the last passes through the formatting and observed typos earlier than you assert, “Enough. It’s as equipped as it’s ever going to be.” You can sit and polish for years if you wish; it is as much as you. On the other hand, could you instead have something okay to read than nothing during your reports as a fiction reader? We’ll never get it best, so do not plan on trying.

As tech writers, this phase can be brief or long. When we have the product, we tell the boss, “It’s equipped.” We might also have to get IT to place it on the server or distribute it to the users. In any case, a person was given to inform the target audience (you set up the target market inside the necessities section, proper?) that the product is there, why they must get it, and how they can get it. At your task, you may also be doing a little personal education. In fiction writing, you’ve got to market your novel. You can do what I’m doing: jogging a blog and promoting on the Internet. You can use Amazon’s Print on Demand (CreateSpace) and market it on Amazon.