How I'm planning my current novel: a step-by-step guide for my work-in-progress model

 Preamble

I sometimes like to say that I've written "a couple of novels". More accurate would be to say that I've written three and a half unconnected, very rough first drafts, and that I'm stuck on all of them. Every single one of them needs at least one major rewrite before I'm willing to let it see the light of day, and until recently, I have had next to no idea of how to do that.

I've identified two problems with my process that are repeatedly causing me to get stuck after writing the hacked-together first draft:

First, I don't know how to edit. I know how to copy-edit--fix grammar and wording; maybe rewrite a scene or chapter here and there--but I do not know how to step back, look at the project as a whole, and fix the pervasive problems.

Second, my first drafts are much rougher than I'd like them to be, and often fail to capture some of the ideas, feelings, and themes that I was most excited about in early planning.

I think these problems share a solution: Learn how to plan. So that's what I'm doing.

I'm about to start the rewrite for The Roots We Grew and Severed, and since I am also going to be introducing the third POV in this run through, the rewrite should be a fairly even mix of editing, and adding brand new material.

I'm in the last stages of planning for this next iteration, and I think I've finally got a system that's going to work for me.

Let me show you what I'm doing.

Who is this guide for?

This guide might help you if you'd like to write from a more detailed plan, and ...

- You're hoping to reduce the editing/rewriting burden for a novel you're currently writing

- You have a rough plot summary or general idea that you want to turn into a novel plan

- You need to do a major rewrite and you don't know where to start

 

A note to keep in mind here is that this kind of planning is likely to lead to a long draft, which may need to be cut down later. If you're someone like me, who tends to rush through first drafts and end up with break-neck pacing and much room for expansion, this might be great for you. If, on the other hand, you're the type to churn out more prose than you know what to do with on a first run through, then you may not need this method.

How to make a plan

 

Step 1: Get a ring binder

 

Supplies:

- ring binder (thicker is better)

- 3 hole paper or loose leaf (these likely to tear out - you may want to use either reinforced paper, or hole protectors)

- sticky page markers, binder tabs, or another way to mark chapters

- pencils, pens, high-lighters

I like pen and paper for planning. I have tried a wide variety of tools and systems for writing up digital plans, but for me, nothing has ever beat the simplicity and ease of use of having a physical document in a physical binding.

 

I'm a software developer by trade, and I have seen a lot of cool digital systems for organizing information. You can absolutely use a digital organization system for this tutorial, however, I would highly recommend that you give the physical ring binder a try, if you are able. Why? Because the ring binder is simultaneously one of the simplest systems of organization you can get, and one of the least restrictive.

It is simple because it's just a list of documents, in a linear, easily modifiable order.

It is non-restrictive because anything you can figure out how to mount on a page can go in a binder. Think, a scene you printed off from your first draft; a notebook page you scribbled on on the train; a doodle; a floor plan; a cool leaf in a page protector--and all this without ever having to worry about wrangling file-formats.

Regardless of what organization system you choose for your planning process, you want to have one central place for all of your planning documents and notes, and it needs to be structured in such a way that you can quickly find whatever piece of information you need. In the end, that's what's important.

Step 2: Gather all the information and ideas you already have

Put all of your notes into your binder.

I like to organize these by giving a section to the setting, one to each of the characters, and then by putting any plot information into roughly chronological (or reading) order.

As I go through this process, I make a note any time my mind crosses over an idea that I haven't written down yet--be this a character detail, or a plot event, or a theme, or any little thing that I just don't want to get lost.

Your most important job at this stage, is to gather every single piece of your idea, and file it away for later use.

If you are planning for a rewrite, take particular care to note down any key ideas that didn't make their way into your first draft, or that weren't expressed the way you would have liked. Mark these so that you can find them later. They will come in handy a couple steps down the line.

 

Step 3: Make a plot summary

Write out a summary of your plot from beginning to end, reflecting on the ideas that you have just collected.

If you already have a plot summary, revisit it. Is the story you've outlined really the story you wanted to tell? It might be, but perhaps it needs a little tweaking here and there.

If you have a first draft, now might be a good time to reconsider your plot summary from scratch. It might help to summarize the story you actually wrote, and compare it with any plans you had from before the writing, and with any ideas you noted in the previous step. Are the correct points hit? Are the right points emphasized? How does your emphasis match or conflict with your intended themes? With your desired characterization of your characters and setting?

Step 4: Divide your plot into chapters

I'm not going to go into how to size your chapters in depth here. If you have a first draft, or if you've written novels before, you probably have a sense of how big your chapters are, and how much plot should fit into each. If not, a rule of thumb I personally use is that a novel chapter should have a structure a bit like a short story--that is to say, a chapter is structured primarily around one point of highest tension (excitement, suspense, stress, risk, etc.) There are times when a chapter can accommodate two big events, but for the most part you should aim for one.

 

Starting at the beginning of the story, I read through, and break the story up into chapters. I like to use index cards for this, for ease of reshuffling, addition, and removal. I write a one sentence summary of the chapter at the top of each index card. (If you can't easily summarise a chapter in one brief sentence, take the chapter back to the drawing board. Either you're trying to fit too much in, or you don't have a central, unifying idea of what the chapter is about).

 

I may make notes of key secondary events on the index cards as I work through them, rearranging until it starts to feel right.

When it does start to feel right, I make my chapter sections in the ring binder. I usually put these in after my more general notes.

A starting place for chapter notes is to glue your index card down onto a piece of three hole paper, and put it in the binder. I like to add a sticky-note tab with the chapter number to this page, for ease of reference. I rearrange and renumber chapters as I go. When I add a chapter between, I stick on a ".5" tab, so between chapters 22 and 23 is chapter 23.5. These numbers will be a mess by the end, but don't worry about it. You can straighten out the numbers when you're finished your draft, and in the mean time, you will have a system for quickly looking your chapters up and referencing them in your notes.

Once you have a page or section for each chapter in your binder, look back on your general notes. Sift through them carefully, and move or copy any information relevant to a specific chapter into that chapter's section.

 

Take some time here to go through each chapter, and rough in the events, making note of any new ideas you have pertaining to each.

Congratulations! You've got the start of a chapter by chapter plan.

 

Step 5: Collect and place key points

Now that you have an outline of your book, it's time to take a step back and think about what you are trying to say.

Some broad categories to think about for this are,

- Characters. Who are each of my characters? What do I want my audience to understand about them?

- Themes. What am I trying to say? How will I communicate that?

- Setting. What do I want my audience to understand about the world my characters exist in?

- Motifs & symbols. Are there any motifs or symbols I want to use in this story? What does each one mean, and when should it be used?

 

For each category, create a point form list of ideas to communicate.

 

For instance, for my character Petra, some of my points were:

( ) she plays social chess all the time

( ) she never knew her oldest brother until she reconnected with him as a teenager

( ) she values mentorship, both as a mentee, and a mentor

You can add to and remove from this list as you plan and write. The goal here is simply to get down all the little idea fragments that you want to make sure to get across.

If you have a first draft, these lists are a great place to note down any ideas you had that you didn't manage to communicate the way you wanted (we highlighted these in step 3).

When you have started to slow down on making these lists, you can start roughing in how you'd like to develop the items.

Pick a list, and start at the top. Look at each item, and think of how you would like to communicate it, given the plot structure you have to work with. When you notice a place in your plot where you have a chance to develop your idea, go in, and mark it down.

 

If you can't see how an idea is going to fit, leave it for now.

 

When you've given each list a once through, you will hopefully be ready to start on granular planning.

 

Step 6: Granular planning

Now comes the slow part of the work.

Start at your first chapter. Add a new page behind any that already exist. Take your concept for what happens in the chapter, and divide it into scenes. Briefly summarise each.

I didn't think this was going to be much work when I first tried it, but it was. It took me, on average, a little under an hour to write the scene plan for each chapter.

The reason it takes a while is because the transition from rough outline to scene plan is where a lot of the logistical problem solving for the story events has to happen.

"I roughed in that character G gets from point A to point B, but now I have to figure out how he actually did it. How does he get around the whatever-it-is? What's the sequence of events?"

I found the key here, for myself, was to be patient. I couldn't plan more than three chapters in a sitting before I was burnt out, most days. I could tell I was fading when I started to rush, or to gloss over problems rather than addressing them. Whenever that happened, I stood up and walked away. No one is served by me torturing myself to make a plan that's full of holes.

But eventually I got through it.

As I did, I found lots of opportunities to develop more of the ideas from my key points. Sometimes, they will just jump out at you if you keep a lookout for them.

 

Step 7: Editing the plan

It might be a good idea to take a short break before you jump into this. Clear your mind. See a friend. Do a hobby. Give it a week.

When you feel up to it, go back to your general notes. Review your summary. Do your chapters match the plan? Do your chapters emphasize the right things? What does your emphasis say about your themes?

Now is also the time to revisit your key points lists. Now that you have your scenes, did you accomplish any of these without knowing? Are there scenes that could be improved by the addition of one of your key ideas?

Do any of your chapters have way more scenes than the rest? Or way more notes? Might any of these chapters benefit from being split in two?

Are there any chapters that start more abruptly than you wish? Are there any chapters that feel particularly rushed toward the start or end? Are there sections of antecedent action that might benefit from being rewritten as actual scenes? Might some of these places benefit from having chapters inserted between?

 

Do you have any chapters where nothing happens? Are there chapters with abnormally few scenes, or few notes? Could these chapters be cut?

 

Deciding how long to stay here and how much work to put into it can be difficult. All I can say is that I stayed here until it felt right--until I was confident that if I followed the plan I'd made, I would end up with the novel I'd dreamed of making.

 

Parting words

I am about to start rewriting The Roots We Grew and Severed based on the plan I made. I will let you know how it goes, and in time, I'm sure I'll have revisions to make to this process. As always, I'll do my best to share my learnings.

Thank you for reading!

Progress update (experiments in planning an 8 book series)

It's been a while since I've given an update here, but rest assured, I have been hard at work.

I have made 2 demo chapters, the more recent of which is available here.

The audio sequencer is working exactly as intended, and I have made several improvements to the engine since the time of last writing, including the additions of full screen mode, and the ability to undo a page turn.

The most important piece of news I have is my realization that the project I have been calling "The Beast in the Ethos", is not one novel, but several--probably 8. I am pulling the "prologue" stories into the project proper, as novels in their own right. The first of these novels, titled, The Roots We Grew and Severed, has a prose first draft 70% complete at about 60000 words. I am currently making some high level revisions, and getting ready to power through the rest of the first draft, so I can start the next phase of the project.

I've had several issues with Roots, mostly relating to planning, and all stemming from the fact that at the outset, I believed this novel was a short story.

Because of this wrong assumption, I did not follow the planning process I laid out for the project proper, and instead worked from only a very loose, high level plan. As a result, my first draft so far is much messier than I would prefer for a project I plan to work up to releasing as a serial.

I'm not concerned yet, however. A large part of my intent with Roots has been to test out and perfect my process, so that by the time I finish it, I can maintain a steady release schedule without major disruptions for the rest of the process.

On the process note, let's talk about planning.

I started my planning process by planning what I believed was the main body of the story (what has become the second half of the series), from a high level, end to end. My intent was to end up with a fairly complete, scene-by-scene plan for the entire work, which would, in theory, assure that I could put out a first prose draft with a solid, well-constructed structure. It was ... not the funnest thing I ever did, and I did it much more clumsily than I thought I would, but over all, I believe it was a very good time investment.

I wish I'd done the same the first half of the series, particularly the book I'm writing now, The Roots We Grew and Severed.

I made a number of interesting (read: poor) decisions about how to approach Roots. The first, of course, was the lack of scene planning. Also fairly terrible, in retrospect, was my decision to write the three points of view, which took place over the same time, and would be interspersed throughout the final product, one at a time.

This decision seemed to make sense, because it would allow me to become fully immersed in the writing of each character. It did that, but it's also resulted in some structural weirdness for the book as a whole. Which brings me to where I am now.

When I say Roots' first draft is 70% complete, what I mean is, the stories of 2/3 of the POV characters have been told, from beginning to end, and I'm starting on the third. I've taken the opportunity to take a step back, and look at the work from a high level. I am going to do now what I wish I'd done from the start, and look at each chapter in order as I write the third character in. As in, I am going to work on revising chapters from the two existing characters in between writing new chapters.

Before I do that, however, it's time for a second round of planning.

I generally like to re-plan & revisit the existing plan as I begin the editing process, and this step becomes more crucial when the first draft was poorly planned to begin with.

It's always best, I find, to start this process from the very top level, and just note down the general ideas I want to convey with the characters, the setting, and the story. From there, I like to make a checklist of ideas I want to get across, and then map each of these ideas to events and scenes in the story. That creates a nice segue into scene-by-scene planning. The mapping can reveal which scenes are missing, through the ideas which don't come through, and which scenes may not be needed, by the scenes that don't have themes or developments associated to them.

I'm only hoping it goes as smoothly as what I've described. For me, planning is like pulling teeth. I'd always rather dive in and write prose or make illustrations, thank you very much.

Update on the concept chapter: Music

In my last post 2 weeks ago, I talked about making a test chapter for the multimedia book project. I anticipated being done a week ago, but sorting out music took me much longer than I thought.

The audio library I'd planned on using turned out to be not very suitable for my purposes, and I ended up deciding to work with the Web Audio API directly.

But after all my fiddling around, the audio system for my custom engine is basically complete. There are some little details left to work out, but the test chapter plays through, and it sounds beautiful.

My main frustration with other audio queueing systems I've used is transitioning to the next track when the current one is playing in a loop. The two typically available options are:

1. start the next track immediately, interrupting the current track

2. wait for the end of the current loop, then start the next track

Option 1 allows us to be very responsive, and update our music immediately for events in our game, but it interrupts the musical experience. Option 2 preserves the flow of the music, but introduces a delay in our responsiveness - and possibly quite a long one, depending on the length of our loop.

Neither of these options appealed to me. I wanted to do something more like

3. wait for the end of the current musical phrase, then start the next track

Of course, this necessitates having some different data.

I decided to save each phrase as a separate audio file, and sequence them dynamically.

Scheduling was my biggest roadblock with that approach. I spent a lot of hours banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to play the next phrase exactly at the end of the current one, with a seamless transition. Finally, just a few days ago, I found a wonderful article by Chris Wilson about using javascript timers to schedule sounds on the Web Audio clock.

After that, I was able to get my "phrase sequencer" working, and I spent my morning today composing music instead of struggling futilely to get sounds to line up properly.

The concept chapter is now very close to done. What's left is mostly engine tweaks.

After a week and a half of frustration, I feel like this is really coming together.

Planning is hard

 I've been struggling with the balance of planning since I started writing.

I am not a patient person. In some ways, that's a strength. I don't wait to start things, unless I have a very good reason to. When I decided I was ready to write my first book, I started that day. When I decided to get fit, same thing. Unfortunately, I've historically tended to grow impatient with the planning process, and jump into projects before I've fully thought them through.

Early on, I would throw together a plan in an evening, start writing the next day, and hammer out an 80'000 word first draft in a couple months. The trouble with that method, of course, is that you have to work from an ill thought-out, often vague plan, which means you're likely to need multiple full rewrites. The rewriting was often where I'd get stuck. The gap between that first pen-and-paper draft, and the second planned, polished, typed draft seemed too wide to cross at times.

And of course, this method is even worse for something heavily-illustrated, like a graphic novel, or a visual novel.

One of my last big writing projects was a complete rewrite of one of those six-month-thrown-together first drafts. I threw out almost everything but the character and the basic premise to move the story into a larger setting I'd been developing. All I really had left was a sense for the flavour of the story, and even that I didn't have properly nailed down. I worked from a very rough outline, and my idea for what the story was supposed to be changed as I went. Halfway through the draft, I'd changed my mind about the story's core themes and how to develop them several times. Writer's block was derailing me at least every other chapter.

It wasn't long after that that I realized the strategy I'd been experimenting with of "write it straight through, changing past events as necessary" was not working in the slightest. And it wasn't long after that that I realized the writer's block - or perhaps writer's confusion - that pervaded the project ran too deep, and finally decided to shelf it for a while.

Over all, it was a very good learning experience. I realized if I wasn't ready to plan something in detail, I likely wasn't ready to write it - unless I wanted to do a six-month-thrown-together first draft. (Come to think of it, that project might have benefited from a second first draft right about then.)

 For my current project, I'm leaning, perhaps, toward the opposite extreme of planning. I have a careful outline of every chapter, and even every scene at key points. I have files on all the characters and locations. I have outlines of all the subplots and character conflicts, and how they develop through the scenes and chapters.

My goal is to write a first draft that won't require major rewrites, since I want to publish this project as a web serial.

I'm trying to fight back against that impatience and take things slowly.

After my three week planning marathon, I decided to switch gears for a moment, and make a complete test chapter - illustrations, prose, music, code. I'm about halfway through it at the moment. Currently, I'm working on stringing the story together with the illustrations. It'll probably be done in about another week. It's coming together even better than I expected.

When the test chapter is done, I'll go back to the plan for a while. I've realized as I worked on the illustrations that I messed up on some of the logistics for where the characters were and when, so I'll fix that. I'll also take another wide look at the chapters, and the conflicts. I want to do at least one more test chapter as well, to see if I can streamline the process a bit more.

The current test chapter has some potential spoilers in it, so I probably won't be publishing it any time soon, but I'm leaning toward making the second test chapter into something of a teaser/short-story, so I may be able to show that soon.

OK. I guess that's all for now. I'll touch base soon.

Let's try again

I tried to start a blog here about 6 years ago, and it didn't really work.

I've grown a lot since then, but the original idea of this blog still appeals to me.

I'd like to talk about what I'm working on, and share what I'm learning as I go.

My current project is very different from the one back then.

I've always been pulled in a lot of different directions. I make art, and music. I write stories and code. Ever since I wrote my first novel, almost 10 years ago, I've been looking for ways to combine my media. The graphic novel I used to blog about was one of the my first serious attempts at this. Since then, I've worked on a number of projects.

A year or two ago, I got it in my head that I wanted to make something "halfway between a novel and a movie". I eventually realized that the thing I was imagining was, roughly, a visual novel, albeit sans many of the conventions of the medium.

So I experimented with making visual novels.

I used Ren'Py for my early attempts (wonderful software - would highly recommend it) but, since I wanted the final result to be web-based, I ended up hacking together a custom engine in javascript/HTML5.

For my illustration, I've shifted to physical media in the past year. I've been drawing a lot of comics in pen and paper, sometimes adding a bit of watercolor or marker. For one of my visual novel experiments, I decided, on a whim, to try wax crayon.

And I immediately knew that this was the medium for my next major project.

With this little epiphany, I was able to power through all the plot and character planning I'd been struggling with for a year and a half in a matter of weeks.

So now I have a bare bones engine for web-based static visual novels, an illustration style I'm happy with, and 14'000 words of detailed planning. Now I just need to turn it into a book!

I guess that part may be easier said than done.

How to Draw Background Characters

(Or, how to make your main characters stand out from the crowd)

Lately, I've had plenty of opportunity to draw crowds while working on my main project, because I've been following my character around the city. When I started drawing the scene, I hated drawing crowds. Now, I don't, mainly because I've started to figure out how. Today, I'd like to share some of what I learned with you.

This is Sarah. She's standing in a crowded place (perhaps a train station), and she's alone. She isn't talking to anyone, and there are no other major characters in the panel. Because I generally like to draw the foregrounds first--unless the background is an important and complicated scene which needs to be drawn separately--I drew Sarah first.

 Next, I started to sketch in the people around her. I started with basic shapes, and then started putting in details. It's important to be aware of how much space there is for people to stand in. The characters in the background usually don't need as much detail as the major characters in the scene. I didn't put faces on my crowd. You can if you like, but remember that the more detail you put into a character, the more the viewer's attention will be drawn to them. Also, if your main subject isn't at the front of the crowd, you may have to put a bit more detail into the members of the crowd standing closer to the viewer than they are, so that the level of detail on your major character makes more sense to the eye.
If you're having a hard time drawing the characters in the background, or your crowd just doesn't look believable, try giving your crowd something to do. Most people don't stand around doing nothing, just gazing into the air or staring to a wall (though some people do, myself included). Put your people in clusters, give them someone to talk to, something to read, or something to carry. Have them glance down at their watch, or talk on the phone; the possibilities are nearly endless.

Colour can also be helpful in distinguishing your important characters from the crowd. You can try giving you crowd a smaller colour pallet, just four or five colours, maybe fewer. If you're working digitally, try fiddling around with brightness, contrast, and saturation. Colour your crowd in muted shades, or in grey scale. When you think you've got it, step back, and take a look at what you've drawn. Where does your eye jump to? What details do you notice? Does the image make sense when you look at it? Perhaps you realize that one of your crowd members is inexplicably missing his legs. Go back, and touch it up until you're happy with it, and try to have fun.
Good luck with your crowd scene.

Planning: an Introduction to the Model

The model that I use for planning plots is roughly based on the Snowflake Method.

I start by distilling my idea of the story into a single sentence, which I call my 1S. Then, I expand it into a paragraph (1p, lowercase), a summary of the plot. Next, I expand it to one page (1P, capital) adding in more detail, then finally, to ten (10P.) For a novel, I might stop there (of course, I would also have notes on characters and setting), but a graphic novel requires more detail. I like to write one to four sentence summaries of all of the scenes (3Lsc) before I start on the script.

You may break this model a bit, especially if you're publishing as you go, in serials or online, in which case I would highly recommend having at least fifteen pages of plot summary and very good notes on your characters and setting before you start writing/drawing, and making sure that you script and storyboard your scenes before you draw them. 

I'll be elaborating on the individual steps of the model in the next few posts. Until then, so long.