How to Write a Novel

Chapter Two - Planning

So you have an idea burning a hole in your mind — a story that must be told and if you don't get it out, you might just explode.

But you don't know where to start. Perhaps your ideas are flooding in faster than you know what to do with them, like trying to drink through a firehouse, it's just this explosion of just...well, you get the point.

You decided to write a novel and need some help planning. As a professional writer of over ten years, I'll tell you how I go about writing a novel. I'll go over my planning process and hopefully some of it will resonate with you and give you an idea of how to create your own plan.

While it's possible to write a novel without planning, it isn't advised. For one, you may encounter the dreaded writer's block — you dive in full of enthusiasm and good intentions, and get a few chapters in before you hit a wall. You step back and ponder how your story will unfold. You reach a place in the story and then ask yourself that fateful question, "What happens next?"

If you don't have an outline, you may waste a lot of time mulling over all the possible scenarios. In the end, you may become discouraged and give up with your idea all together faulting the idea and not your own habits. You may convince yourself that your idea is flawed and the next one will be different. But, chances are, it's not the idea that is flawed, it's the lack of preparation.

Look, I get it, it's exciting to write and create art, but we need to set ourselves up for success. If we try a bunch of times and fail, we may feel we are not cut out for being a writer and quit.

Also, without charting your course in advance, you are liable to get lost along the way and may end up 'writing yourself into a corner' so to speak. In other words, you write in a way that doesn't leave open a lot of possibilities. You're forcing the story down a particular path – one that you may not have envisioned from the start, and one that no longer aligns with the ending you had planned.

So, I recommend spending time before hand to get an idea of where you want to take the story. A good analogy would be an artist would roughly penciling in their drawing before making it more permanent with ink or paint. It's the same technique that we writers use. We want to roughly pencil in the basic form or structure, before we put hard lines down on the page.

All writers have different styles when it comes to planning a novel—some like to write their ideas on flashcards and organize them like a puzzle, while others meticulously plot out every detail in their head. Do whatever works for you. My approach involves the following four steps:

1. Notes

2. Character profiles

3. Outline

4. Storyboard

***

Step 1. MAKE NOTES

For me, when I come up with an idea, I usually wait a few months before even writing a single word of the story.

In those preceding months, I immerse myself in the story and make a lot of notes. Whether I'm walking, working out, or dreaming at night, I'm thinking about the story, the characters, and the conflicts.

I write notes on my phone notes app and email them to myself, or I speak into my Dragon Dictation app, which transcribes my voice into text, then I email the notes to myself.

I compile all those notes into a master file, something like: The title of the book + notes (e.g. The Art of the Hustle Notes).

***