How To Get A Good Storyline For A Book

- Write what you know. The biggest mistake many people make when writing their first book is to try and write things that they have no idea about. It is okay to research a little bit and write about it, but do not complete your entire book based on research. Think about the path in which your life has taken you and implement this into your writing. A reader likes to read a convincing piece of writing, and this can be done when you write what you know.

- Widen your vocabulary and you will pick up ideas from certain words that may pan out into an entire story idea.

- Think about people that you know and the life they lead. Can you use some parts of their life as an interesting storyline for your book?

- Watch a movie, actually watch a few! Get some ideas from each one and mix it up, adding your own ideas along the way.

What is writers block?

Writers block is something that almost every author suffers from. It means that your mind simply goes blank and your flowing notion of words that spill into the book you are writing suddenly stop. They may take a few minutes, hours, days or even weeks to reappear!

Hows to avoid writers block.

It is possible to sidestep the problem of having writers block by following a few tips. These include:

- Keeping a notepad of descriptive words or images near you. This will boost your brain when you look at it and it will assist in keeping the ideas flowing.

- Write out a plan for your book before you complete it. This way, you know the direction it will take and you simply have to describe the direction.

- Always have a thesaurus near to keep your writing style interesting.

People around me, particularly those who know the story of my life, would unquestionably empathize with me and they would understand if I speak of my mother this way. After all, there is nothing good about her worth mentioning here. From the moment I have become totally aware of what was happening in our family, if truth be told, I dare say that there is no single good memory I have of my mom. To begin with, she was always nowhere to be found. We could only see her if she would be back home only to change clothes, but after that, she would leave home and enjoy herself as if she did not have any responsibility at all. She never performed her duties and obligations to us as a mother. In fact, we never grew up having her around. My grandmother who looked after us when my mom was always absent said that three days later after giving birth, she would leave home instantaneously, not even worrying for the poor children who were always left behind. My father at that time was overseas making both ends meet. So when he heard about all these occurrences back home, he just decided to fly home and assumed the responsibilities my mother failed to perform. We literally grew up without a mother around. She always came home late, hence there was never a chance we experienced being embraced by a mother. My father was the one who filled that emptiness in us. In spite of that, I still had the strongest desire of seeing my mother whenever she had the slightest bit of a possibility to come home.

As soon as my grandmother left for Australia about almost two decades ago – I was only 5 years old at that time – Mom also left home. We were so clueless as to where she would be going, after all, this was usual of her – to leave home for a mahjong session, or spend time in casinos or bars or discos with some friends. I started thinking then that our family was different from those of my friends and classmates. I often wondered why others have an incredibly beautiful family – a home which you could consider utopian – while our family had never even felt that “complete” happiness. Sometimes I asked God why life seemed so unfair. We grew up having our father to care for us, and supervise us in our studies and he never failed to introduce us to God. Every night before we had to go to bed, he would lead us five children to a short Bible study, and he always taught us to persevere against adversity, and especially the virtue of forgiveness. With the way he brought us up, I became matured in my feelings and thinking even at a young age. But as a child, I used to directly ask God why He never listened to our prayers. We were taught that the prayers of little children were most heeded, but why is it that He never answered our only plea – “Please, Lord, knock my mom’s heart and make her come home now.”

Months had passed, and still, she never came back home. Of course, she did once or twice for a year, but what? For like 15 minutes of her time, just to drop her presents (toys, clothes, etc.)? Did she ever realize that all the material things in this world were never important to us (as we were taught not to be too oriented with worldly things)? What we want from her was to come home, that’s all we wanted – nothing more. All her presents were just things that would soon be destroyed and vanished. What I wanted was a long-lasting happiness, something that would make me reminisce the good things when I grew older. My mother never realized that. It was just later we found out that she was having an affair. My dad was utterly shattered, for he remained faithful to her and kept on loving her despite her absence and imperfections, but this was what he got. He decided that it was time for him to finally let go of her, since this was what she needed. He gathered us all and he explained everything to us so we could at least understand what was happening or what would take place from then on.

When my mom decided to leave home and not come back anymore, she left us to our father’s care. She did not even take us with her, which really meant, that she wanted complete freedom – without obligations to pull off and responsibilities to think about. The five poor kids were absolutely abandoned by their uncaring, unconcerned mother. During those times when mom was not present in our lives, we still had found contentment with our father. He was able to nurture and educate us alone, devoid of the cooperation and support by what should be given by a loving and supportive wife. I used to think that maybe we really did not need a mother. Anyways, my father could provide our needs all by himself. We became accustomed to this family condition, where the father was the one who would prepare the meals for the children, wash and iron their clothes, drop and fetch them at school, guide them with their homework and studies, plan a family outing or picnic at the park, and do all the disciplining. I could see it was hard for him to accomplish all these things, because he still had to work for us to survive. All of us five children, my brother being the eldest was only 8 and the youngest was only 2 years old during the early 90’s, began to realize that the least we could do to help our dear father was help him with all the household chores. We should cooperate with him and, therefore, work together as a team. We decided to give out all the best just so we could at least please our father and make him very happy notwithstanding all his sufferings and difficulties in life. We told him he did not have to worry about us while he’s away, because we were already responsible and old enough to be left at home. So that’s what we did everyday. We cooked our food all by ourselves, tidied up the house, washed our clothes, did the dishes, etc. And every night, we would be waiting for our father to arrive home and we would be feeling excited to make our father the happiest person in the world for having us. He would notice that everything was in perfect order, the house was clean, his dinner would be ready in a while, and each one of us – from eldest to youngest – would kiss him on his cheek, one would take off his shoes, the other would remove the socks, the other would give him his slippers, and the other would make him his favorite drink – my coffee!!!

It was indeed apparent how much we loved our father. But don’t get me wrong, please. I also loved my mother (take note of the past tense). With her absence, even if we were contented just having only a father around, I still admit that I had been missing her. But whenever she would show up, she did nothing but beleaguer us through violence and harassment. We grew scared of her, not wanting to see her anymore. There was no way we could defend ourselves against her. She was stronger than us, even my father could not equal her ferocity, as he was not used to resorting to violent actions. For many times, we had witnessed the other side of our mother – the fierce and violent side of her.

Again, I would reiterate that my father was the total opposite of her. He still would talk about love and patience and forgiveness, despite everything that had occurred. He used to always tell us that even if our mother wronged us, we had to forgive her because she was our mother. Learn to forgive and we could have peace, the lesson we had to instill in our minds. However, what I have just stated was only some fragments of my life. There are still plenty of things which I would like to reveal and I am not even ashamed or reluctant to disclose the whole story and reasons behind feeling this way. But doing this would help me experience relief because I have released some emotions that were long kept hidden. Most of the time I would tell my friends that they were so blessed to have such wonderful mothers. I keep on reminding them that not all people are that lucky to have a mother like theirs, so they should treat them with utmost respect and give them the love that they deserve. Sometimes I envy them because they have what I don’t have, but then again, I would rather think that I am more blessed, for I was given the chance to experience the greatest love of a father which, I think, no one in this world could have ever felt in his or her entire life.

(written by Elizabeth Delos Reyes, August 22, 2006)

In Her Shoes

Based on Jennifer Weiner’s novel “In Her Shoes”, this is about two motherless grown-up sisters who had nothing in common but size 8 feet and had a history of conflict break off relations. The older sibling, Rose, was smart, an accomplished and successful lawyer but not as pretty as her little sister Maggie. However, Maggie was dyslexic, maybe the reason why she couldn’t finish her studies, and so she couldn’t get a high-paying job that would make her pay rents. As a result, she was always homeless and Rose would always be there to help her out with her needs. Until one day, the irresponsible Maggie slept with Rose’s boyfriend. Rose threw her out of the house, but they eventually reconciled with the help of their grandmother they never knew they had.

The Notebook

Based on the best selling novel by Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook is about an old man who regularly visits a woman, Allie, at a nursing home, and constantly reads to her from a faded notebook that brings to life the story about the two young couple separated by the Second World War who were then reunited fourteen years later after their lives have taken different paths.

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Talking about movies and books, my life is just like them: unrestrained, dramatic, full of intrigue, conflicts, sensational… such a happening life. Sometimes I really hate my life so much, but I always beam when I realize how my life is like a long narrative. Maybe I really should write my life story someday, it’ll surely by a smash hit. I’ve realized my life has been both simple and complicated though I’d like to keep it simple all the time. But sometimes I envy those people who have much more interesting lives like my friends, and at times they tell me that they also envy mine (I also realized that people could always get too discontented with their lives). Then sometimes I offer them to switch our lives, theirs become mine and mine becomes theirs, but I know I never really mean it. I love my simple yet difficult life, I will always do.

I wonder how I’ve been keeping the simplicity in my life (yes, with all its unfussiness). Every time I have problems, they’re never a big deal to me. Maybe at first they were, like at some points in my life, I regard them as major concerns that should be dealt with and settled before it could aggravate everything, but I learned that something happens for a good reason no matter how bad it seems. So, since it’ll lead to good things someday (I know that), problems will no longer matter to me at all. I’ll just have to take it easy and if I can’t solve it, someone will – it’s God! Simple. I should constantly think that it’s always been like that. You know, people may ditch me for no reasons (I don’t even care), and sometimes I think that even God has already deserted me… but actually, He never did. God has never forsaken me in any way. That’s the splendid part in my life’s astounding drama.

The best thing about this free service is that the books can be marketed on Amazon.com which is web site with lots of exposure and members to buy your book!

In this market, there is no one to answer to about what topic your book covers or their need for it. They simply allow everyone to publish their own book or CD for free.

Createspace earns money on the sales of your book and pays you royalties on the sales of your books.

This is a great way for a new author to get started or experience authors to avoid the stress of trying to get book companies to buy their book.

If you choose to create a book here, you can advertise it for sale on your blog, website, or non-spam classifieds. It also might be good to join Amazon’s affiliate program while you’re there to earn commision off the sale of any book listed there.

Another option is Cafepress, but they don’t have a listed option to sell at Amazon. However, you can buy your own create books there at wholesale and sell them yourself anywhere.

Whatever you choose, it’s up to you! Happy publishing!

From what I’ve been seeing, as well as others, e-book publishing is becoming a popular means of getting your words out into public, either for free or for a charge. There are a wide variety of individuals who are interested in seeing virtual print, just as much as they would see regular print.

If you are interested in publishing an e-book, it is so simple. You just have to format your book in Adobe Reader or Publisher. Of course, you want to make sure that you get the copyright taken care of first. The formatting should include not only the right page numbers on the right side of the book (odd on the right, even on the left), but should also include a title page, table of contents, credits and copyrights. For those who are interested in actually grabbing attention as well, make sure that you look into the possibilities for graphic design and arts.

So, many who are familiar with the internet can take this much and just sell the books themselves. The only key to this is making sure that secure settings are available in order to accept payments for those who want to download the book. If you want to give the book away for free, all you have to do is upload it on a website as a file. Everyone will have access to putting it in their computer once they click on the link.

Another option, which I strongly recommend, is to let an online publishing house take care of everything. There are places such as Lulu that will allow you to upload your formatted book. They will then allow for both downloads and publishing on demand, which will allow individuals to have the option to have a hard cover book without you doing anything except for the formatting of the book.

The idea with self-publishing an e-book is to give yourself options that will allow you to not only get your words into public, but also to enjoy the benefits that come with virtual options.