Stages of Planning Your Novel
A basic outline of the things you need to do before you start your novel
This is a break down of some of the things you need to consider before you start writing your novel. If you do these stages you’ll have a much richer understanding of your character and the world they move through, which will, in turn, give a more immersive experience to your reader. You may not use all the information you include, but it will help you when you need to work out a character’s motives, or when describing your world, or even what types of background characters you’ll need.
Story outline
When you have your concept you need to get down in rough form everything you know is going to happen. It may change in the course of the actual writing process, but if you ever get lost or turned around, it will have to have a short outline so you know where it is you’re going.
It will also give you a base for world-building. If you know a little something about the kind of world you need to build, and some of the main players who will be in the story, it’ll become a sort of reference sheet. If you’re writing an epic story this could be crucial for you. Keeping it up to date is also a must. In my experience when I have forgotten to update something in my notes that I need to look for later, it slows down the writing process more than if you just open up your documents and add a few notes.
Designing your characters
This is a complex process. You have to design a whole human. Not just looks and clothes, but likes and dislikes, words they like to use frequently. How they react to certain situations, family. Family can be where it gets even more complex because you’ll need to know what kind of dynamic your character has with their siblings and parents.
But the type of character you create will be heavily influenced by their world. Social dynamics won’t be the same in every culture, and that’s the same for hobbies. These days we can do any kind of hobby imaginable, but go back a few decades, or a few years, and hobbies are limited by transport, gender, and available materials. This will affect everything from family and friendships, to everyday activities.
In psychology there rages the nature vs nurture debate, and the consensus is that both have a role to play. You need to bear this in mind when you create your characters.
The type of world that you build will very much inform the type of character that you have. You can use character sheets to help you get to know your character, but no matter how well you plan them, once you get going your characters ‘will’ take over. Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with building your world to suit your character’s needs and wants a little better, as long as the two tally up believably.
Building your world
There are many things you need to know about what kind of world you want to create. Part of this will be determined by genre. For example, for sci-fi, you would set it on a different planet/ space ship(s)/ earth but with space tech, etc. Knowing the kind of world you will be building will give you a starting point for your research and will help you figure out the kind of people that will populate your world. i.e will you be writing about astronauts or farmers.
Just make sure that if you have a fantasy setting, where everyone has swords, you know where the metal comes from, and how your world gets it from the ground. You don’t have to use this information, but if you don’t know where it comes from, and your race doesn’t have any mining or metalworking abilities, you might come a little unstuck later down the line. The other advantage of knowing where the materials in your world come from, and how they are made, is you know what kind of people you’ll be likely to meet on your journey, and where you will find them. For instance, if you come across a village full of people just milling around, that could be quite bland, but if you have mill workers, and farmers, it’ll add a little depth to your world.
Creating a timeline
Once you have your character sheets and world-building down pat, you’ll want to know the sequence of events of your novel. This will make sure that you’ll always know what to write next, and if you get stuck on a scene you can hop ahead for a scene that you know what to write. Your outline might change as you go, but this will serve as a tether.
Keeping track
Once you actually get your novel underway things will change and keeping your notes straight to tally with your novel will become increasingly difficult. You could keep tweaking things as you go. Or you could update periodic points in your novel, i.e at the end of the completion of each chapter, or at the end of your novel, and then go through and make notes. Just make sure you try to keep abreast with all the details you add in at regular intervals. Easier said than done, I know, but I speak with some experience of being at the disorganized end.
Before you start
Before you start charting your stories and characters, think up a few tools that you could use to help you keep track. You might try scrivener, or numbers, or word, even pen and paper. When you've picked your method, have a brainstorm as to how your information would be best laid out. When I started I used excel, I tried to put everything into one spreadsheet and have it interlink. It didn’t work and quickly became unwieldy. Now I’ve moved over to numbers, where the fonts are much crisper, and I keep everything in separate documents, so I know when I need to add something to the information of a location, or character, exactly where I’m going.
Conclusion
World and character-building can seem like a lot of daunting footwork, and if you look at it as one great big mass of information you need to put down, it can be. Take it one step at a time. If you get stuck on something, don’t sweat it, move on. If you get really stuck, just try writing your story and see what happens. See what works, and when you have a voice and a world you like, even if it’s a sketchy concept, keep track of the notes so you don’t forget it later.
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