I have what I think is a great idea for my next attempt at writing a humorous fantasy/adventure novel for children and have roughly drafted the first two chapters. I want to go about drafting the rest in an orderly fashion, rather than the haphazard stringing together of scenes that I usually end up doing, tying myself in knots in the process. How do you writers go about planning your novel?
I've just had a big breakthrough in planning my novel, using this guide: http://www.livehacked.com/writing/learn-structure-novel-five-minutes/
While I still have a lot to work through in terms of detail and in making sure the story doesn't feel rigid and too locked into an inflexible structure; I now have all the major points of the story and a very solid foundation to build upon.
I will need to build it in terms of scenes and chapters and then decorate it properly, but this has been such an important step in the planning process and I'm suddenly much more excited about the story than I was a could of hours ago.
I get the characters and a vague idea of where they're going to go and then let it simmer for awhile before plotting it into various points
- end of 1st chapt
- end of 2nd chapt
- end of 3rd chapt
- middle
- everything going swimmingly
- disaster
- worse
- the fix
- the finale
and then I line up how each point gets to the next one through scenes before leaving it for months whilst finishing another project.
Then I start writing and the subplots write themselves and edge out some of my main points.
Hi Susan.
My first novel I didn't plan and ended up writing way too many words and am still editing it down. The ideas put forward above are useful and interesting, but look up the snowflake method. It contains much of what the above comments suggest and more. The only thing I would add, is to not edit spellcheck or second-guess yourself once you get going. Leave everything until the end, as you could spend a lot of time correcting and re-arranging something that you later discard.
Good luck
PabloJ.