How to write a novel

So, we’ve talked about how to write a chapter. And we’ve talked about how to write a trilogy. So the only sensible thing to do now is to go over how to write a novel.

There is a lot of overlap when writing a novel and writing a trilogy—a trilogy being a much larger and intricate novel (think of the fact that The Lord of the Rings was originally a single piece of fiction that was broken up for publishing).

Pantsing a novel vs. planning a novel

Admittedly, there are two main ways that you can write a novel. You can fly by the seat of your pants, or you can plan it out.

Because the process of pantsing a novel is fairly straightforward (sit down, start writing, hopefully finish), there isn’t a lot to go over in terms of planning. However, there are a handful of pointers that you can keep in mind, even if you’re pantsing.

Pantsing tips

There isn’t a lot to be said here, but there are a few really important things to try to keep in mind:

know the end of your story;
know your characters;
know where you are starting.

These three points, if nothing else, can give your novel a very strong foundation to write from. While pantsing generally means that you’re writing without planning out all the details, there’s a fine line between knowing what you’re going to write (fantasy, a story about intergenerational trauma, science fiction, etc.) and sitting in front of a blank page and just starting something.

The latter is possible, but it presents a lot of complications when it comes time to pulling together a novel.

Know the end of your story

This is very important to give yourself an actionable target to aim for. Without knowing where you’re going, how will you know when you’ve arrived? The writing process, in particular of writing a novel, isn’t an indefinite exercise. At some point, an author will want that story to be done.

You don’t necessarily need to know how your characters will get from Point A to Point B, but you really should know what points A and B actually are (or at least have some sense of what they are).

“Without knowing where you’re going, how will you know when you’ve arrived? The writing process, in particular of writing a novel, isn’t an indefinite exercise. At some point, an author will want that story to be done.”

Know your characters

Characters can undergo fairly radical changes throughout the writing process, and that’s fine, but having a sense of consistency for a character when you’re writing gives you guardrails to your story.

If you know how a character will react, writing that character in different (and at times random events that might pop into the author’s head) becomes much easier. This also makes the editing process much easier because characters will largely be consistent.

If a character is kind to people in one chapter and cruel in another, this can cause a novel to fall apart. These questions of consistency matter a lot, to the reader, but also to the author in the writing and editing stage.

Know where you are starting

In the same way that you need a goal to get to, you need a starting line to begin at. What is going on in the character’s life and where are they (and by extension the reader) starting from. This question can be a little bit more fuzzy than the “know the end of your story” bit.

Whether it’s a Monday or winter or in Spain might not be as necessary to the story as “and they solved the murder”.

Yet, having an idea of where you are starting from (are the characters in a low point, high point, etc.) can give you an initial foundation to the writing process. It lets you springboard into your book from a stable place.

Planning tips

Planning to write a novel can be a very very intricate process. Some people get so incredibly granular with backstories and characters and locations that there are hidden novels within the planning period.

There are lots of different ways that you can plan out a story, but my take is that there are a handful of simple things that you can do to ensure success in the writing process.

*“Some people get so incredibly granular with backstories and characters and locations that there are hidden novels within the planning period.”*

Understand your novel’s goals

Writing a novel and writing a trilogy can be similar. In my article on how to write a trilogy, we introduced these five goals and these are things that you novel should accomplish.

Introduce characters.
Introduce the setting.
Have an inciting incident.
Have a conflict of some kind.
Have a resolution of some kind.

Planning your novel

Because the planning stage can go on for a very long time (and even longer than necessary at times), I always recommend that you have a plan for your plan.

This might sound silly, but it is very helpful when planning a novel. The first thing you want to do is to set up three different things:

Story
Characters
Locations

Once you have these three elements hashed out, planning your novel in more detail is much easier.

Planning your story

We’ve already touched on this, but it bears repeating: What is your story about?

Defining the story for yourself lets you establish a number of important elements prior to writing. Where this becomes a little bit more complicated is in trying to define what exactly your story is. I re-read Save the Cat! Writes a Novel not long ago and it strikes me that it is a really easy way to view the type of story you’re telling.

What fascinates me about the Save the Cat! is that they use an atypical way of describing story structures. For example, The Hunger Games by Collins and Misery by King would, conventionally, be in different categories (dystopia YA and adult horror, respectively), but they fit into the same Save the Cat! genre of “Dude with a Problem”.

Once you have a rough idea of your story (for example, are you telling a story that is “person trying to solve issue” or “star-crossed lovers”), you can look at the story’s characters and define them a bit more.

Planning your characters

This can be a little bit of a tricky point, because you can get really granular with characters. Does your character eat yogurt for breakfast because their friend introduced it to them when they were 5 years old? Does this particular point never factor in to anything in your book? Yes?

Authors tend to have a really clear understanding of who characters are. Authors will often say that a “character lives and breathes on its own accord” and they will do things that surprise the author. Obviously this is a bit of a metaphorical way of identifying the spark of ingenuity, but from the point of view of the author in the writing process, how it is defined matters little.

How detailed you get is up to you, but here’s a pretty straightforward list of traits/information that I would generally consider “must know”:

Physical traits (height, weight, physical peculiarities, scars, etc.);
Psychological qualities (personality, phobias or fears, likes and dislikes, etc.);
Who are they internally vs. how are they with other people;

With these traits clearly understood by the author, writing character reactions becomes almost organic. It makes the writing of the story so much easier.

Planning your locations

As they say in real estate, “location, location, location”—it matters in writing as well. Having a sense of where your story takes place can help you to better situate your characters and make the world seem more real. People are very good at spotting inconsistencies, so saying that a place looks a certain way and then changing it can pull a reader out of the work.

Further to this, it’s one of the things that is easiest for an author to miss because location generally gets less attention than characters and plot.

Make sure that you pay attention to where you are.

While I don’t think that it is one of those “if you’ve never been there, don’t write about it” situations, I strongly urge all authors to make sure that they know locations inside-out and backwards.

Planning the writing process

Once you have these three things sorted out it’s time to begin the writing process.

While everyone has their own way to write, not everyone sets targets. I really think that setting achievable targets when you write is a great way to stay motivated. NaNoWriMo has a great idea (though the sort of breakneck pace of it all might be a bit much for a lot of people).

If you’re unfamiliar, the goal is to write a 50,000-word manuscript in the month of November. This works out to 1667 words needed per day in order to meet this target. I’m not saying that you need to write this much every day (and it’s a fair bit of writing), but it gives you a good place to start from. If you want to finish a novel in about 3 months, you can write a little over 500 words a day (this is far more manageable).

Set yourself a clear goal of reaching X number of words (out of Y total) and start moving towards that target. Now, this isn’t to say that you should know in advance exactly how many words your book should be, but you probably have a sense of whether or not you’re writing a massive epic or a quick and easy read.

Good luck with your writing.