The Basics of Planning a Kick-Ass Novel

It can be hard to get a book written if you don’t know where to start. There's a lot of important elements to understand when writing a novel, starting with the planning. And there’s also a lot to planning - so let me break it down.

1. Brain Dump

Also known as a brain vomit, the brain dump is a process every writer goes through even if they're aware of it. The brain dump is the process of brainstorming your ideas for your book.

In this stage, you only have an idea of what your book will be and where it’s heading. It’s still a little baby idea. Over the next few weeks or even months, ideas will come to you out of the blue that progress your story concept. These will be world laws, character/s appearance, social structure, themes, setting, plot twists etc. WRITE THESE DOWN.

Make sure to log everything you think of. Create a mindmap or jot down ideas in your notes. This is where you think of your characters and the bare bones of your novel. Random pieces of dialogue or descriptions of locations within your book will come to mind in this stage - write these all down too. If you have a journal, this is where you start using it. Every single idea that comes to you, jot it down somewhere and file it. Trust me, you will thank me later.

*Side note* I knew a folder on my iPhone's notes app to log things that come to me when I'm not with my journal.

2. Post It Points

So after your brain dump is written out, you should have a mass of different ideas, people, places and things that you want in your novel. The next step is to through all the notes you've taken over the past couple of days or even weeks, and weave out the bad ideas. That one scene idea you had that won't benefit the story in any way? Get rid of it. That really cute date idea you had for those two irrelevant side characters? Goodbye! After you do that, start searching for major events that you've thought of - the inciting incident, any plot twists or the climax of your story.

Now all you need to do is place these major events in chronological order. Write a small summary of all these events on sticky notes (you can also do this digitally but I like paper). Stick all these sticky notes in the order you want them to play your in your book. You could use a big piece of cardboard, your bedroom wall or your desk to stick them down in order.

It's after you have everything layed out that you start to notice the plot holes. If after you stick all your sticky notes up and you still don’t know how the main character got from killing the bad guy to grabbing a Starbucks, you have a problem.

This system will help you get an idea about how long your novel will be, where small events fit into the bigger picture, and it will get you thinking about transitional events within your book. Whenever I see a plot hole in my sticky notes, I leave a gap in between the sticky notes so I know which areas I need to work on. I'll come back to these gaps later and fill them in with transitional events.

And don't worry, if you don't want to put sticky notes all around the house - you can do this on Google Docs, Microsoft Word or a note-taking programs like Bear and Evernote

3. Outline Time!

Yay! It's time to celebrate because you now have a coherent plotline! All there is left to do is expand it. For me, this is normally where I translate my sticky notes to a Google Doc or a Word Doc. After I do that, I grab my random pieces of dialogue and character descriptions and slap them under the corresponding post-it-point. Expand on your post-it-points until you have a detailed, chronologically ordered plan for your entire book. If you have a character description, place it under the post-it points that introduces that character. Sometimes I go as far as to include entire paragraphs that will go directly into the book. Some people have an outline that is 10 pages long, others have hundreds of pages. Do as much as you need to feel confident that you know exactly what will occur at every stage of your novel. This will prevent writer's block come writing time. When you go to write your first draft, you'll know exactly what event comes next.

Outlines can also help to motivate you to write a book in the first place. We all have those scenes that we're just not as excited about, like that one slightly less exciting conversation between two side characters. But then we look at our outlines and see that a fight scene is just after it (don't ask about what that transitional event is, I don't know either), you tend to push through that dull info dump conversation with the fury of a thousand suns because, hello? Fight scene!

*Side Note*

After you finished writing everything out, try to break it up into chapters. Make sure that when a chapter concludes, there's still at least one question that is left unanswered. This will make the reader want to turn the page. NEVER answer all questions in one chapter or end one without some kind of cliffhanger.

4. Start Writing

It's happy dance time because now you have successfully planned your future book! So sit down at that desk, bust out your laptop and get to writing. This is what creating a book is all about, so have fun with it. Remember, even though writing a book takes a lot of planning, it's still a creative experience, so go nuts! Well, not too nuts I hope.

Remember, you should be writing every day, even if it’s just 10 words. If you don’t, you will lose direction with your novel and your writing will be harder to edit. And please don't forget to read as many books as possible during your writing process. Getting fresh ideas and losing yourself in a world other than your own can help give your head a break - meaning when you get back to writing, you will always be viewing your work with a more knowledgable mind.

Thanks for reading! If you have a topic suggestion that you want me to cover in the future, then comment it below!