Planning a Novel

[sunshinedaisieswindmills]

So, you've just been struck by an excellent plunny. You know you want to write it, and you know it's going to be EPIC. So you start with the first scene and then... you run out of ideas. You have an idea of where the story needs to go, but you don't know exactly where the end is or how to get there.

 

Anybody else have this problem?

 

Because it's a constant in my life. I've come to realize, that despite starting a lot of novels, I have no idea how to actually write a novel. I've done a lot of thinking on this, and, with many thanks to Maggie Stiefvater, realized I need to figure out the end of my stories before I really start writing them (turns out the ending is important. Who would've thought?) 

 

But figuring out how to end stories is kind of really difficult. How is your character different no than they were at the beginning? How did they get that way? What's changed? Who are your characters anyway? What's their deal?

 

I'm kind of at a loss. So, how do you plan a novel? How do you figure out he characters-- who they are at the beginning and who they are at the end? How do you figure out what has to happen to them to get there? How do you go from plunny to novel?

[mydearfoxy]

My very unhelpful response is: YES, THIS. I AGREE.

 

My ideas usually take the form of a premise, but what makes a great novel isn't the premise. I mean, I'm sure we've all read something and afterwards said, "it was a good premise, but the execution didn't do it justice."

 

I've often wished my ideas would come to me as climactic moments instead, but they just don't. This is why, when people interview writers and ask the cliche, "where do you get your ideas," I always wish they would ask instead: "In what order did you get these ideas?" Like, did JKR know

Harry was a Horcrux before she created Tom Riddle's diary,

or did that idea come later?

 

Also, putting this out there as the most mind-blowing climatic moment I've ever read: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

 

Anyways... maybe someone else has actual advice?

[Rhaenyra]

I'll answer for original fiction novels, since I've got a feeling I have done more than most people.

 

Start with the premise.  Always, always start with the premise and work your way from there. It is very possible that your premise will change from the initial concept to the story you end up with at the end of your planning.  Mine definitely did for the better.  It was a natural evolution though.

 

When you have the premise, you will know the kinds of characters involved to get the bare bones for.  A coming of age story needs a protagonist who is of school age, teachers, classmates, and parents (or a backstory of why they aren't involved).  They don't have to be very complex to start, just the basics of names and a couple personality traits.

 

If it's your own world and is based on history start doing basic research for the world.  For sci-fi or fantasy, you need to do some heavier world building.  Other stories, world building may be limited to buildings or a town.  Just get a feeling of where your story is set.

 

I find that building things up in parallel really helps.  It doesn't matter if you don't have all the answers for plot or character at the beginning.  You don't need to know why your murderer did what they did right off the bat.  Your character can be a lovely cliche to start.  Questions will build off each other.  If you have two kingdoms at war, this could be lots of things - resources, marriages or betrothals falling through, natural disasters, the personality of the king, whatever.  But I find once you start asking "why?" answers spill into all areas.

 

I have a very complicated world I'm dealing with in my main project, but I found it developed organically.  It took some time, but I feel like it works better than trying to force things.  Random sparks of inspiration have come from NOT pushing.

 

Also, don't be afraid to use luck to determine fairly irrelevant things.  I literally did drawing coloured markers for choosing magical traits for side characters where them having them was important but the exact nature was not.  Historical dates also went this way.  By fluke, 2 major events close together even resulted in an important historic event that ended up having impact on the greater story.

 

When it comes to actual plotting: index cards with different coloured pens for sub-plots.  You can do each part together than mix them together.  This is important because it is SO HARD to keep track of all your subplots.  I speak from experience, trust me when I say you will accidentally forget something if you don't plot the entire novel beforehand.

[scooterbug8515]

I 100% empathize with the starting of a novel story and having no end.  That was an issue that massively plagued me for years.  I've now made a rule that I can't really start something unless I have a start and an end and it is now even something that I'm not sure I can manage without now.

 

Now that I've said that I have to have a start and and an end, I don't make my ends solid.  I like to my end a goal, it is the direction and place where I want my character's to be by the end.  Sometimes the end changes and the how may change but I like to call the whole thing my road map.  I also like to pick out a few stopping points along the journey.  From there I kind of let the characters run the show as I tend to write very character driven stories.

[Mistress]

A short addition to the replies -

 

It will help immensely if you build the world before you get too far. Developing a culture will help you figure out how characters would react to certain situations and environments. I have a character in my book who has never seen an actual tree before, so I get to spend a lot of time with her reaction to that, for example.

 

Knowing where characters and people came from will help you figure out how they need to move forward.

[Penelope Inkwell]

I have two documents going at once - one which is my main writing document, and the other which is my timeline.  I start by just writing - the first ideas come about the character, their background, and I write in spurts, sometimes in whole scenes and sometimes in bullets like "Scene with wolf here". Then I go through and connect the dots. 

 

I think there can be a lot of pressure to do all your planning from the outset, but for me...I have to fall in love with the characters and the tone first.  Once I do, then the plot ideas come.  I have one document to play and experiment, and the other is full of firm bullet points that keep me organized.  I do find it important to have an ending, but I don't necessarily know it at the outset.  Instead I get started, discover my ending, and then go back and make certain everything I've written up to that point connects to it and that all the necessary hints are laid.  As has been said above, for me, the most important part of finding my ending is figuring out what my characters want and what their trajectory is, as well as how I want them to change.  That really guides the ending, but I don't know that until I know them.

 

I hope that makes sense!

[Guest Tanda]

Before I encoutered J.K.Rowling's books, I had no idea about writing fanfictions in English. And I found HP fanfictions on the Internet,  reading and writing fanfictions became my addiction. Though I know my writing skills are not good enough to readers, I can't stop exploring my own imagination world.

 

Haruki Murakami says 'once you starts your novel, finishing the story is important. '

I started my HP fanfic novel given hints from the story challenges hosted by wonderful people on the forums. I set the goal to finish 'Tengue and a Daughter of Ninja' as a NaNo project with a great help from my beta, Pixileanin last year. The last scene in my mind will be written during this July. If you have a vision in your mind, you can do it.

 

[Margaret]

The ending is actually one of the things I plan before I begin. I generally know how the story starts, how it will end and a couple of key scenes in the middle. BUT I don't go into the sort of detail about the ending that you seem to be thinking of. I don't necessarily consider who the character will be by the end of the story. Honestly, I feel that if the character really "comes to life", they'll sort of let me know that. In one original story I wrote, I was surprised by how mature the main character sounded at the end (having been previously surprised by how young she sounded).

 

This may depend on the writer, but I don't exactly plan that much about characters. They just sort of come to me. I have a general idea of where I want to go, for example in a mystery story, I would know who the villain of the piece is or in a story in which somebody is being abused, I might know they will be taken into care at the end (if they are a child) or that they will leave the abuser. But exactly how they will develop as a character is something I usually leave to happen as it will. For me at least, stuff like how the character is different from how they were at the beginning is more something for the interpretation of the story than the planning.

 

I do find an outline is necessary (again for me; I once attended a talk by a published writer who read what he had written so far of the book he was working on at the time. It ended with a character glancing across a crowded room and falling in love at first sight and the writer said, "now I just have to figure out who it is he's fallen in love with," so clearly not everybody works with outlines). However I don't need to know exactly who the character will be at the end. There are some exceptions. I have planned for a character to be traumatised at the end of year 3 of my series because I need them that way for year four.