So, you’ve woken up after dreaming about a dragon who convinces a witch to transform them into a human, and you think wow, what a great idea for a novel. You leap out of bed and dart towards your laptop, eager to put the story forming in your head onto paper. But you need to STOP and take a deep breath because writing without any pre-planning rarely ends well.
Writing a novel is like running a marathon. If you don’t bother training for the marathon and simply show up on the day expecting your enthusiasm to push you through to the finish line, you’ll probably collapse after four kilometres and crawl away in defeat. Or, in your novel’s case, move it permanently into your Unfinished Folder after running out of things to write 10,000 words in.
But don’t worry, with a little pre-planning you can avoid your novel turning into a short story. Just follow these five steps:
Step 1. Establish the foundation of your story
1. Who is my protagonist and what is their primary goal?
2. What or who is preventing my protagonist from achieving their primary goal?
3. Where and when is my story set?
As an example, let’s apply these questions to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The answers would look something like this:
1. Harry Potter, an eleven-year-old wizard, wants to find and protect the Philosopher’s Stone.
2. Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard, who wants to steal the Philosopher’s Stone for himself.
3. Contemporary Surrey, England, and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Yes, it’s that simple, so grab a pen and start scribbling answers.
Step 2. Research
So how do you research? Well, it depends what you’re researching. If your novel is set in Medieval England, then I’d start with history books. If your novel is set in contemporary times, then you should visit the locations you plan to set scenes in, or look up pictures. If one of your characters is a teenager, then go somewhere that teenagers hang out and observe the way they talk and act—but try not to be creepy. No one likes a stalker.
Now maybe you’re reading this step with a smug smile planted on your face because you’re writing a fantasy novel set in a world created purely from your imagination. No research required. Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but you’ve probably got more research to do than anyone because you have to build your world from scratch. This means you have to work out everything from the different types of trees that grow (if any) to how the world’s inhabitants greet each other, which means doing research for inspiration. Some things to think about include: vegetation, customs, clothing, transportation, dialect, weather, calculation of time, technology, food, building materials etc.
Step 3. Write an outline
Step 4. Allocate time
Think of writing like this: the world you created has a wrought iron fence around it, and the only way to get through is to unlock the gate with the key your imagination has created for you. If you walk up to that gate every day, the key will slip into the lock and the gate will click open. But if you only show up from time to time, the key will work at first, but as more time passes between each visit, the lock will rust and your key won’t turn as smoothly as it once did. And then one day, the lock will snap your key, forcing you to walk away and never look back.
So if you want to maintain access to your world, allocate a daily time to write, and don’t worry about reaching a word goal. When I tried writing to a daily word goal, I started dreading writing because instead of letting the story flow through me at its own pace, I was forcing the words out, dragging them kicking and screaming from the back of my mind before they were ready to come out. And it honestly doesn’t matter if you write 2000 words a day or 200, as long as you’re writing.
Step 5. Write. Write. Write
And that’s it. You’re finished. Congratulations, you just wrote your first novel.
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