A first step for a lot of pilots is to start with Ground School. This is where you learn about how and why the airplane flies, the rules and regulations, navigation, weather… all sorts of really interesting things. It also helps prepare you for the written test. You don’t need to pass the written before you start your flight training, but you will need to before you can solo (fly without an instructor… but you also can’t take passengers at this point).
There are a lot of online sources with videos to help you through it, two of the most popular are kings and sporty’s. However you can save some money by reading some books. Two of the books you’ll want to start with are the Airplane Flying Handbook and the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge (PHAK). Both of these can be downloaded for free as PDFs from the FAA. If you prefer dead-tree versions, you can buy them at various places, including amazon.
Another option that a lot of schools will offer is an in-person ground school. I was originally going to try and sign up for the one offered by my local school but it was scheduled to be in April of 2020. Which if you are reading this way into the future, was the beginning of COVID-19 and I didn’t bother checking but I’m sure it was canceled. Instead, I was fortunate that a friend of mine told me that MIT was offering a free ground school. So they have their Private Pilot Ground School available on their OpenCourseWare platform but in addition to this, they were going to be doing a 1 hour zoom call to go over things as well for a week. There are also a lot of really great resources on YouTube.
As part of the ground school, they used King’s Free FAA Private Pilot Test and if you got a passing score and submitted the results page (which included all the questions and answers), Philip Greenspun would give you an endorsement to take the written test. In addition to all this, I also splurged and bought Sporty’s Study Buddy (Private Pilot) App to help me study in addition to an ASA study guide which basically just has a bunch of questions and answers with brief explanations of representative FAA test questions.
Once you pass your written test, it is good for 2 years. I haven’t taken my test yet because I wanted to start my practical flight training first so as to not start that countdown. (Though I hope I have my license in 2 years from now) I’m also going to need to go get my medical at some point before I solo. I’m not too worried about that though as I’m in relatively good health and am not on any medications and I don’t do drugs so I don’t think I’ll have any issues but we’ll see.