You are a writer and you have a killer book idea. When your project starts to take off you will find yourself managing a writhing tangle of ideas, possibilities and potential potholes. How do you turn your inspiration into a finished novel? Writing a User's Manual offers practical insight into the processes that go into writing a novel, from planning to story development, research to revision and, finally, delivery in a form which will catch the eye of an agent or publisher. David Hewson, a highly productive and successful writer of popular fiction with more than sixteen novels in print in twenty or so languages, shows how to manage the day to day process of writing. Writers will learn how to get the best out of software and novel writing packages such as Scrivener, which help you view your novel not as one piece of text, but as individual linked scenes, each with their own statistics, notes and place within the novel structure. As you write, you will need to assemble the main building blocks to underpin your artistry : story structure; genre - and how that affects what you write; point of view; past, present or future tense; software for keeping a book journal to manage your ideas, research and outlining; organization and more. The advice contained in this book could mean the difference between finishing your novel, and a never-ending work in progress. An essential tool for writers of all kinds. Foreword by Lee Child.