Work from an outline. Rather than just starting to write and seeing where it takes you, take the time to sketch out your story.
Pick your disaster -- earthquake, plane crash, alien invasion -- and set the scene so that the characters have no way to escape. Survival stories are never a choice; they are a response to a situation.
Develop your characters. Calculate if you are going to have one main character who survives in the wilderness on her own or if you are going to go with a larger cast, such as the 33 miners who survived 69 days in the San Jose Mine in Chile.
Use incidents and dialogue to let your reader know what these individuals are like as people. Build on their personalities until the reader starts to think he knows them.
Establish a setting for the survival story. Use descriptive words to let the reader know if the account is set on a desert island or if it is happening in the high Arctic. In some survival stories, the setting is more important than it is in others.
Check your word count if you are writing a survival story book. An acceptable book length is between 15,000 words for an e-book and 80,000 words for a science fiction thriller. Aim for about 50,000 words.
Create tension with your plot. Have the characters think out loud and plan how they are going to play it safe and keep their wits about them. Make it obvious that they are working against all odds.
Increase the stress and anxiety for the reader as the characters race against time to survive. Create a this-has-to-happen-soon-or-we-are-all-going-to-die conflict. With a clear timeline readers know that immediate action is imperative.
Wrap up the story with a resounding conclusion. Pull everything together and resolve the issue so that your protagonist is recognized as a hero. Whatever it was that the characters had to survive is over. Finish the book with an impressive punch-line and be careful not to bore your reader with too many details of cleaning up after the flood.