Four Part Blog Series: Beginning a Novel: Part 3: Beginning to Write the Plot

Alright, now that you have every thing you need to put together your plot, it’s time to slide it all together. Your characters, theme, character arc, plot, story, goal, motivations, message, snippets and epic scenes are ready to be set down into a time line.

1: Set it Down

To start, just…start. There isn’t much too it. Just slap down all the ideas you have into the places they are supposed to go. All your little ideas will slide into place. It’s a great feeling when you see all you things you’ve developed suddenly click together into the outline of a novel.

Even though you want to think hard about where the plot and characters are going to go, you can always go back and reconstruct your outline. So just have fun, and slide those pieces together. Sometimes you’ll come to a place that you know should have more story in it or more time in the book, so sometimes you’ll have to figure out how to extend what you already have. But it’s not very hard. I actually find making the outline for your novel one of the funnest parts of the whole writing craft!

2: The Perfections

When you are finished with your outline, then step away for a day or two, take a complete break from writing or write something else, and then come back too it. Now you will see the little places that the characters are inconsistent with their decisions and the tweaks you will have to make, but most of the time that doesn’t take very long. Keep working on it if you want, or you can step away from it. It is only your outline, so it doesn’t have to be perfect. When you are finished with your outline and have decided that it is good, then congratulations! Your outline, the skeleton of your novel, is complete!

3: More Outside Input

You totally don’t have to do this step, but if you want too (and I think it’s a good idea), you can go out with the skeleton of your novel and show it to some people. They can tell you what they like about the story, they can tell you what they think could be tweaked, and all of that. Even though this step isn’t necessary, it is a good thing if you want to have a great skeleton of your novel before you begin the actual writing.

So, if you do accept the help of the outside world, make the last final tweaks, and then your skeleton is officially complete.

Here are the steps to actually setting down your plot and characters, and finally having the complete layout of your novel, how many chapters it will have, and how it will go. Please keep up to date with my blog if you want to continue reading this blog series, and if you don’t want to miss a post again, receive writing updates from me, and get two exclusive short stories along the way, join my email list here!

Enjoy this post on how to set down your ideas into an outline of your novel? Helpful? Already knew them and finished this whole process? If you are, what stage are you at? Please talk, I would love to know how your story is going!

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Oh, and this has GOT to be my favorite picture of Marsh-Mella Man yet! 😉