I was sent an ask recently about how it is that I can keep turning out chapters of my novel on a regular, consistent basis, and asking if I had any tips to help others organize their thoughts onto paper. This is the answer to that ask.
You may remember my post How to Write a Novel. In that post I mostly glossed over the step of actually writing the draft - “The Grind”. But I thought I could go a little more detailed into the process I’ve worked out.
When you get right down to it, the basics of writing a scene are essentially the same as the basics of journalism. Before/as you write, you must consider these 5 things. The order is up to you.
Who, what, where, when, why?
From what POV are you writing the chapter? Consider your purpose in choosing that POV. It has generally been my opinion that a story should have a set and limited number of POVs (assuming you’re not going for, say, omniscient or something), but if you’re having trouble picking which of the characters to use, my rule of thumb is “whoever has the most interesting internal conflict in this chapter.”
What is your chapter about? “A chapter is like its own mini-story,” as the wisdom goes. A chapter has a beginning, middle, and end; it has a climax and denouement. Some character change or advancement of the plot must take place. Some point will be driven. Something’s going to happen. The only thing that generally doesn’t happen at the end of a chapter is a resolution, because it’s not the end of the book, but a denoument is a fancy way of saying “ending without really ending it”. If you’ve already made some form of plot structure as described in “How to Write a Novel”, you should at least have some idea of this.
Where is this scene set? A chapter may take place while traveling or over a number of locations, but you still need to have a solid sense of place before you can begin writing. Every chapter is more concrete and impactful when it’s placed in a relevant setting. It helps me sometimes to relate the scene to somewhere I’ve been in the past.
How much time has passed since the end of your last chapter? If you’re switching POVs, is there an objective frame of reference you can use to establish this? Consider how the character’s POV/thoughts pick up from where they left off in the last chapter, and how the amount of time elapsed affects this. If it’s a flashback, make sure the reader knows that it’s a flashback (unless you’re going for some vague avant-garde thing, in which case you do you, but I’m sorry).
What is the purpose of this chapter in the larger structure of the book? How does it contribute to the character development arc of the POV character? What is the character’s motivation in this chapter/why do they do the things that they do? This can be simple. I try to remember that petty/emotional motives are just as good as subtle complicated ones.
After you’ve answered these questions, you can write.
Now: this is where things start to get really subjective - this is just my process, I know it’s different for other people. After writing down some notes about the 5 W’s, I organize them into a bullet list in the order I want to talk about them.
Then, in the bullet list, fill out the events of the chapter. Make a note of any foreshadowing or establishing details that you have to include here and figure out where they’re going to go and what your pretext is for including them. Open your general story notes and dig out anything relevant to the chapter and dump it into the list. Straighten it up. Make sure it’s in order.
Before you know it, you have a whole writing plan ahead of you and no excuse for writer’s block.
Lazy Writing and the Hero of Destiny
Line-level Edits for Cleaner Writing
Using Video Games to Analyze Plot Structure
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