How I Came Up with the Idea for My Novel

6:00:00 PM


Last month, I announced that I’m writing my first novel and I introduced a new writing challenge too. If you haven’t read that post yet, you can check it out here

I’ve been waiting a long time to get started on my first book and I can’t believe the time is finally here! Since this is so new to me, I thought I’d create a blog series about the process. This is the first post in the series after the introduction!

Before you can begin writing your novel, you must come up with an idea. As I mentioned in my post, Guess What! … I’m writing a Book! + Writng Challenge, I always thought my first book would be about my life. But when do things ever go as planned? Since my life is so busy, I had no idea where to start. 

It wasn’t until about a month or two ago that I got my big idea! I can’t even put it into words how excited I am over this novel. I wish I could just share everything with you guys now, but then you wouldn’t buy my book :)

I’m sure you guys are hoping that I’ll share with you some awesome formula to get your big book idea, but that’s just not the case. When my idea came to me it was completely unexpected!

I remember it was a couple months ago and I stayed up late to read a book in the living room. My husband had already gone to bed since he had to get up early the next day. It was close to one in the morning when I finally put the book down. Then all of a sudden it hit me, my big book idea.

After writing down the idea in the notes app on my iPhone, the rest just came naturally. Characters and plot points just started spewing out of my fingertips and onto the screen. I didn’t plan for any of it to happen, but I’m so glad that it did. 

A couple hours later, I could feel my eyelids fighting to stay open. I wanted to keep writing all of my ideas down, but I knew I’d fall asleep soon. I decided to take a break for the night. 
The next morning I woke up and thought I had dreamt the entire thing. I quickly grabbed my phone and  clicked on the notes app. I was relieved when I saw the notes were still there. I hadn’t realized it, but I had actually written the beginning and end of a three part series. 

I spent the next few days writing down random points that I’d like to include in the books. Little tidbits of information relating to the scenes or the characters backgrounds. I didn’t actually start planning or organizing my book ideas until much later. There will be more details on that in my next post of this series!

Are you interested in writing a novel? I’d love to hear what your big idea is in the comments!


Join the Perfectly Ambitious Newsletter!

Sign up for our latest content, products, and coupon codes!


Powered by ConvertKit

You Might Also Like

1 comments

  1. Yes!! That's so fun! Many fabulous ideas come in those late hours of the night.
    I have SOOOO many ideas for novels, I truly don't know where to start. I'm eager about the cozy mystery genre, but also mystery chapter books for kids. And the ideas are a mish-mosh in my head. Where to start??

    ReplyDelete