First, do some research so you know what's out there. A great resource for this is patents.google.com. After you've researched, start writing a provisional patent, which doesn't require a specific format. As you write, describe everything about your invention in sufficient detail so someone skilled in that particular field could reproduce it. You can use general or field-specific terms, as long as all of the information you reference is accessible to the public domain. Then, submit a PDF description of your patent to the United States Patent Trademark Office as a provisional patent. A provisional patent gets you a year of coverage,