When you start a new story/novel where do you usually begin? Mapping out the plot, making the characters, the setting...? I have an idea but I’m not sure where to start.
I honestly usually sit on an idea for a few months before I do anything else. if it fades away, it wasn’t interesting enough to sustain a whole book writing process anyway. if it only gets stronger...well, then it’s planning time.
I am actually intending on doing a series of planning posts for my current book to show how I schemed it up, but I can summarise it here. I’m a really plot focused author, so what usually arrives with the og idea is a sketch of the plot and maybe an idea of the main characters. the ‘sitting on the idea’ phase usually fleshes these out to the extent I can write them down, so I tend to move right onto:
sketching out the plot. this changes for every novel, last time it was indepth descriptions of every scene, this time it was just a brief idea of what has to happen in each one to carry the plot and character development forward, plus a chart of the subplots I wanted to focus on
naming all the characters and figuring out their relationships
character arcs. these are something I’ve really struggled at weaving into the plot in the past, so this time I made sure to include it as a stage in the planning
worldbuilding. I hate worldbuilding, so my worldbuilding planning is the bear minimum: plot relevant stuff (magic etc), swearwords, and religion
my planning document for this novel currently stands at 6 pages! it’s not a lot, but it’s all I needed to crack on with the first draft, so it’s performing it’s job as an outline. I also add to it if any important worldbuilding/plot changes/new characters crop up that’ll need to remember in future
I’m not really great at giving general advice, but this is what I do 💚 hope it helps!
