DIY: Project book for authors – creative story writing
A project book for authors supports creative story writing! Perhaps you have heard or read about it before… Perhaps it is new to you… In this blog post, I would like to introduce you to a method that will help you advance your writing project and stay in a creative and inspired flow.
All you need is a love of creative writing and design, a notebook and a head full of ideas and imagination. Feel free to check out my blog post on creative writing – methods and creative tricks, where I introduce you to other methods you can use to boost your imagination and find inspiration quickly without having to search for it for ages. 😇
Preparation before writing stories
If you would like to write stories, it is definitely a good idea to record your ideas, inspirations and creative impulses. Many authors write their plots on a computer and develop their characters digitally. Some also record their ideas in a Word document. The computer is a very practical and easy place to record everything important at a glance.
However, there is also an analogue way to record inspiration and ideas. For this, I prefer classic notebooks or sketchbooks, for example. The size of the individual book formats varies depending on your own preferences.
Advantage of a project book
A project book has the advantage in the creative writing process that it fits in any bag. ?
You can use it as an everyday companion and the pages are ideal for spontaneous ideas and brainstorming, characterising your characters and perhaps even sketching them.
Another advantage is that you can follow and deepen your thoughts on your writing project at any time. You also have the opportunity to delve deeper into the subject matter when you visualise your ideas.
How can a project book for authors be structured?
Creative story writing begins with developing ideas, finding a book theme and constructing an initial plot.
You can, of course, structure your project book individually and personally. In the following, I would like to give you some inspiration on how I structure the content of my project books. 📖
Theme ideas
If you don’t have any ideas for your book theme yet, you can start developing a theme for your story right away in your project book.
Think about what you want to write about and what you want to convey to the world with your story. What topics move you or people around you? What topics have always interested you when reading books?
Use your project book to structure your theme before writing a story.
Goal, target audience and intention of the story
In order for your story to have the potential to be successful and for you to make a name for yourself as an author, you should be clear about the intention behind your story. What do you want to convey? How do you want to help your readers, whether on a factual or fictional level?
A project book for authors is also ideal for defining your goals and target audience, both in writing and perhaps also visually.
What is your goal? Who is your target audience for your story?
Characterisation of the main characters
For example, I also use my project books to characterise the main characters and write down exactly how I imagine them. That is, what they look like, how they talk, how they behave, what their dreams and inner conflicts are, and so on.
In order to immerse yourself more deeply in the emotional worlds of the characters later on in the creative writing process, it can also be very helpful to sketch the characters according to your own ideas. For example, I illustrated my characters in portraits so that I always had their appearance in mind while writing the book. Character development is a very important step in writing a novel.
Plot lines and scene design
Plot lines and ideas for individual scenes can also be optimally recorded in a project book. For example, before I write a scene, I think about what the overall goal of the scene should be and what goals the individual characters in the scene are pursuing. Creating an overview of these goals and individual storylines can be very helpful when it comes to plotting a story.
Brainstorming for the book title
Be sure to keep a few pages in your notebook free for brainstorming. Brainstorming has the positive effect of quickly and relatively spontaneously developing new ideas or further developing existing ones. Brainstorming can be very helpful, especially when it comes to the book title. Give it a try!
Motivation and inspiration
A project book is also a great way to regularly reflect on and analyse yourself as an author and your own creative writing process, what went well and what didn’t go so well. Writing down your own motivations has the great positive effect of not giving up and continuing to believe in your own dreams and goals in order to achieve them.
Authors of various specialist literature also provide good food for thought, which you can write down in your notebook immediately after reading a passage of text, so that you are reminded of it again and again when leafing through your project book and receive a new boost of motivation. 🌞
Planning and research
Because a project book helps me a lot as an author when writing stories, I also fill it with interesting research on topics such as editing, marketing, publishing programmes, agencies, or exciting articles and books that I would like to read in this context.
In order to always be structured in your own creative writing, it can also be very helpful to set goals in your project book and create a schedule so that you can write and reflect in a focused manner. This allows you to quickly uncover any difficulties or gaps in the story.
Checklists for revision
If you love checklists and to-do lists, write them down in your project book!
You can also jot down thoughts on revision notes or stumbling blocks in your notebook so that you can refer back to them later when your first draft is ready.
Illustrations and mood boards
If you not only want to write creatively, but also want to illustrate your story, then mood boards, initial sketches and illustrations that inspire you may also be very helpful. They are part of the creative process and can also be integrated into a project book.
Conclusion: Writing creative stories with the help of a project book
As you can see, a project book can only be beneficial and help you write your story. Provided you fill your project book, that is. ?
Everyone has their own approach, and you are welcome to try out my suggestions for structuring a project book and use them as inspiration. I’m sure you have lots of other great ideas to fill your book with.
A project book for authors can perhaps be compared to a second brain. It is your personal and completely individual collection of ideas, where anything is possible and you can give your creativity as an author free rein!
Have you already created a project book? If so, please write me a comment about what fascinates you so much about it. Do you have any questions or need more tips? Then please let me know! 🖋
