Plan Your Novel in 3 Easy Steps

Note: this post originally appeared on the MetaStellar Writing Advice of the Week column.

A while back, I created a post about plotting vs pantsing your story. The truth is, no matter what type of style of writing you enjoy, you can plan the basics of your novel in three easy steps and have everything in order before you start writing.

When you start developing your novel, you don’t need to have everything figured out. Instead, you just need to develop three core pieces of your novel in order to get started. I’ve outlined below what those three things are and how you need to develop them to plan your novel.

Plan Your Plot

Of course, your plot involves a ton of different things. You don’t need to map out every story beat or even have every scene figured out, but it’s important that you begin planning your novel with a beginning, middle, and end in mind. Your plot should also follow a structure that you can map out so that the development of your characters and the tension in your plot come through.

So to follow up on what I said about beginning, middle, and end:

1. Your beginning – plan how you want to introduce your principal characters as well as the principal conflict. For your characters, this is all about understanding their personalities as well as the situation they’re in. Drop them in the first scene and plan out how you want them to react to it. On top of that, when you introduce your main conflict, work out what your character’s motivation or goal is. They have to have one if you want them to be a dynamic character! Then introduce the conflict that coincides with that, and have your characters start on their journey.
2. Your middle – this is where things start heating up. When you develop your middle, you need a structure. If you use something like a three-act structure, then each scene you include needs to be built up toward a climax. You do this by not only building tension but also upping the stakes for your characters. Make your characters more and more desperate to complete their mission and fulfill their motivation. Also, keep throwing more and more their way that tests their limits and leads to the final big decision, which also happens to be your climax.
3. Your end/conclusion – after you write your climax, start thinking of the ending. This includes how you want all your details and loose ends to wrap up. Think of the closing scenes where the conflict is eventually resolved, then think of a thrilling conclusion that ties everything together and potentially sets things up for your next book.

When it comes to planning your novel, writing things down is vital. These could be notes, maps, or a full-scale master document. In any case, plan the first step of your novel by mapping out the structure of your story, beginning, middle, and end. You can map out the scene or story beats later. Now it’s on to the next step.

Plan Your Characters

When you plan your novel, you need at least your main character, or protagonist, your antagonist, and a few side characters that will beef up your story. I mentioned earlier that your characters need a goal and motivation, but there are other things you can include that make your characters stand out when you first start planning your novel.

Your protagonist specifically needs the following:

1. Motivation or a goal of some kind – like I said, when your character has something they want to accomplish, especially something that ties into the central conflict, they make your readers want to root for them. On top of that, they also have a reason to move through the plot. As the tension increases with your plot, ask yourself what they plan to do when the situation gets worse. How do they become more desperate to achieve their goal?
2. A voice – you also need to nail down not only how they speak to other people, but their headspace as well. What emotions do they typically represent? How are they seen by others? They could be either more cautious or slightly adventurous, cheerful and optimistic, or more cynical and pessimistic. This all translates into how they think and how those emotions come across to the reader.

Now that you have your plot down, start mapping out your characters. This is the second step to planning your novel. Keep a chart if you have to, making notes of their voice and emotions. What are some of their personality quirks? What are some physical quirks, disabilities, orientations, etc.?

Plan Your Conflict

Lastly, your story needs conflict to kick off the plot and the start of your character’s journey. This is the third step when you’re planning your novel, since this helps tie everything together. Not only does your plot revolve around the conflict, but also your characters need to deal with it head-on or at least be affected by it in some way.

A little while back, I wrote an article about three things your story needs right away when you start writing. One of these things is a principal conflict. But how do you plan out what your conflict is going to be? You’re going to need the following:

1. A reason for the characters to start on their journey – conflict has to come from somewhere, and your characters should react to that. When planning your conflict, think of it as the reason why the story kicks off for both your readers and your characters. What is the problem they need to face, and what do the readers need to be aware of?
2. An outline of how the conflict builds – second, your conflict needs to build like the tension in your plot. The key is to 1) make your characters more desperate and have them make bigger choices, and 2) have the plot develop by adding to what you already have. This is done by upping the stakes, which in turn keeps the conflict interesting.

Once you have all three of these things outlined, whether in a doc or on paper or wherever, you have everything set up to write a novel. You can work out the details if you want to, or you can work them out now! Either way, these three steps set the foundations for your next project.

Happy writing!

Before you go, here’s the original YouTube video for this post.

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