You can plan your novel even if you’re a pantser
by Beth Barany
Even as an experienced novelist, I still need a roadmap to follow when I’m starting a new novel. When I was a beginner, I really needed a roadmap that worked for me. Which is why I created these tools, especially designed for busy people who want to write a novel and don’t know where to begin.
Whether you’re juggling 10 other responsibilities and your brain is full, or you’re ready to write that first book and all the writing books out there are so confusing, these 7 essential steps will help you plan your novel like a pro and gain clarity and to be able to write your story with confidence.
Essential Step #1: Start to Plan Your Novel with Your Elevator Pitch
An elevator pitch is another name for a book blurb, i.e., what you see on the back of books and online as the “Book Description” or “Overview.” At this stage, this exercise isn’t for marketing; it’s for brainstorming your story’s key elements.
To start the brainstorm, think about your genre and its expectations. Each genre has an expected ending, i.e., romance ends in a happily ever after or happily for now; fantasy ends with the balance of the world restored; mystery ends with the culprit being caught by the investigators; etc. What’s your genre’s expected ending?
Elevator Pitch Formula
With that in mind, brainstorm your elevator pitch. Aim for ~75-100 words.
- Situation: (Also called the Initial Action or Premise, this is the beginning of the story.)
- Main Character(s): (Self-explanatory)
- Primary Objective: (At first, what does your main character want?)
- Antagonist Or Opponent: (or Central Conflict. Who or what is keeping your main characters from getting what they want?)
- Disaster That Could Happen: (What’s the worst that could happen? And/or what does your character want next?)
Example:
- Abandoned on his relatives’ doorstep as an infant,
- Harry Potter
- longs to understand where he came from and why he feels different.
- He discovers that he is a wizard and that his parents were killed by Voldemort, a powerful and evil wizard,
- who has been hunting for Harry, to kill him.
My rough draft for a work-in-progress sci-fi mystery novel, Book 5 in the series:
Janey McCallister’s grandparents died to save the planet 70 years ago. Yet when Janey takes a job to investigate four seemingly random murders on a rogue space station far from Earth, everything points to a planetary conspiracy connected to the topmost seats of power. What she thought she knew about her grandparents and the world’s glorious past upends. Can she trust anyone anymore, including her lover, Orlando Valdez, who works for the very world government that was formed out of her grandparents’ tragedy?
Essential Step #2: Brainstorm Your Story Synopsis
A synopsis is a short summary of your book. In the planning stages, a synopsis can help you think through the beginning, middle, and end of your story, as well as brainstorm the inner and outer changes your main character goes through.
For this step, use the online plug-and-play tool, Plot Spinner. Designed by the award-winning romance author, Patricia Simpson, based on an exercise by writing teacher, Alicia Rasley, this tool is set up for romance writers. You can use it for only one character’s arc too.
Action: Go here to use the Plot Spinner.
Example for my WIP:
Issue characters are dealing with: Trust
Premise of story: Sometimes trust is about a leap of faith rather than having all the answers.
Janey ignores the request to connect with someone who said she knew her grandparents. She doesn’t believe that someone has new information about her grandmother, yet she needs to know the truth, even if her heart might break.
When she finally investigates the seemingly interconnected deaths, the clues have run cold because she didn’t act on the request soon enough. What she uncovers guts her. She doesn’t know what’s real about who she is and how the world works anymore.
Since not everything is as it seems, Janey finally puts the pieces of the murders together and discovers the chilling truth that changes everything.
Essential Step #3: Prepare Your Characters
Characters are the heart of story. Brainstorm these essential elements to get to know your main characters:
- Goal, motivation, and conflict, for both the inner life and outer life
- Strengths, inherent and learned
- Important relationships
- Appearance, especially key characteristic
- Backstory as it relates to the story problem
- The things in their pockets, or backpack, or car, or satchel, etc.
- Habits, mannerisms, ticks
Essential Step #4: Build Your Story World
Explore your unique story world by interviewing your main character and other characters that are part of it. A partial list.
World Building Brainstorming Topics
Origin Tales — How did the world come to be?
Folklore – What is your favorite childhood folktale or fairytale?
Jobs/professions — Do men and women divide work, share it? What kind of training do people receive? How are they trained and by whom?
Gender roles – What are people’s attitudes about gender roles?
Clothing/Costumes — How do people dress? What do people wear and why? Where does fabric come from?
Flora & Fauna – What are some of the important or relevant animals and plants where you live?
Food — How is it planted/harvested/hunted/gathered? What do people eat? When? How is it cooked? Who cooks?
Geography – What are the variations in the geographical regions?
Annual Rituals — How do you celebrate weddings, funerals, birthdays, puberty, etc.?
Technology – What kind of technology exists? How is it powered? Who creates it?
Religion/Spirituality – What are your beliefs? How might they create conflict with others and why?
Magic (if any) – What are the rules and boundaries around magic?
Politics/Power – Who is in power and why? How is power transferred to the next generation?
Essential Step #5: Explore Your Plot and Story Using High Concept & Genre Expectations
High Concept
To create your story’s High Concept, put two well-known movies, books, TV shows, or concepts to evoke the main problems in your story.
For example:
The Jewish version of The Da Vinci Code
Lara Croft meets Lord of the Rings
Snakes on a Plane
Die Hard on a Ship
Genre Expectations
Make a list of all the events that your readers most likely expect in your genre and type of story. Then explore how you can twist the events to surprise your readers within the genre. (Thanks to Shawn Coyne’s Story Grid.)
Essential Step #6: Discover Your Characters’ Worst Fears
A unique way to develop conflict in your story for pantsers – people who write by the seat of the pants, this exercise will help you brainstorm your main character’s worst fears. Be prepared — you might freak yourself out. And that’s okay. You may be surprised at what you discover.
Uncover Your Character’s Worst Fears to Discover Your Story Conflicts
Exercise: “List of 20”
- On a piece of paper or on your computer/digital device, number down from 1 to 20.
- Set the timer for 15 minutes.
- Brainstorm your character’s 20 worst fears, starting with what occurs to you first.
- Then ask, “What’s worse than that?” Write that down.
- Keep moving your hand across the page to uncover even more worse possibilities. Keep going until you get to at least 20.
Review your work and, if need be, organize the fears from bad to worse. Note: Your character’s fears can build the external challenges of your story.
Essential Step #7: Plot Using the Problem-Solution Tool
(Thanks to The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray.)
Here’s how it works:
- Write the starting problem of your story.
- What’s the solution to this immediate problem?
- What problem is caused by this solution?
- Create a new solution,
- which creates a new problem.
- This leads to a new solution,
- new problem…
- until you get to your story resolution.
Bonus1 Essential Step #8: Outline Your Story Scene-by-Scene
I want you to feel confident and ready to start writing your first draft. With a scene-by-scene outline, you can start writing your novel with a road map, as detailed or loose as you’d like.
Start Scene-by-Scene Outline
- Write the scene number and who the point of view character is for the scene.
- Draft the external and internal problems in relation to the character’s goal.
- Add what makes these problems worse.
- List the hard choice the character faces.
- Add sensory details, location, time, and who else is in the scene.
Move to the next scene. Write dialogue as it arises. Keep going until you have mapped out your entire story.
Your turn! Let me know how your story planning goes!
* * *
by Beth Barany (@BethBarany) June 5, 2022
Adapted from Plan Your Novel Like A Pro: And Have Fun Doing It by Beth Barany and Ezra Barany and their annual 60-Day Novel course.
What about you, scriveners? Have you tried to plan your your novel using tools like this? Or are you totally a pantser? If you’re a pantser, would you be willing to try this kind of planning? Do you think it would make your writing go more quickly?
ABOUT BETH BARANY
Beth Barany is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist, master neuro-linguistic programming practitioner, and certified creativity coach for writers. She specializes in helping writers experience clarity, so they can write, revise, and proudly publish their novels to the delight of their readers. Her courses are packed with useful hands-on information that you can implement right away.
She runs an online school for fiction writers and a 12-month group coaching program to help them get published. More resources on publishing, book marketing, and novel writing are on her blog, Writer’s Fun Zone.
When she’s not helping writers, Beth writes magical tales of romance, mystery, and adventure that empower women and girls to be the heroes of their own lives.
And here’s a link to Beth’s 60-Day Course!
BOOK OF THE WEEK
Plan Your Novel Like a Pro–And Have Fun Doing It!
“I can honestly say this book saved a manuscript that was headed for the shredder!” — Ann W. Shannon
“Beth’s book is like plotting for pantsers!”—Tess Rider, Science Fantasy Romance Author
This book will help you get excited to plan your novel. The tools shared here are designed to spark your muse and give you confidence when you sit down to write your story. Plan Your Novel Like A Pro: And Have Fun Doing It! is for organic writers and pantsers who want a roadmap to follow, so that they can let their creativity loose.
This 168-page book comes with 20 chapters, lots of exercises, and a free bonus workbook.
Beth—Thanks for the excellent, well-thought-out post! Step-by-step, here’s a great breakdown of how to plan—and then write—your novel. Thanks, too, for the helpful links.
As a pantser, doing this before writing would kill the story before I even started it (having hard much practice with that, doing what everyone else said I was supposed to). I do all my world building as I write the story, done through the character’s opinions about the world. Characterization is an under-utilized method of world-building (sadly because of the advice “if it doesn’t move the plot forward, eliminate it.”).
Great tips, Beth, and good day to Anne and Ruth. Okay, you asked how my story planning goes so here goes. I started out as a total planner. My debut was detailed like the Invasion of Normandy, and it worked well. Then I started a series and worked from a general outline with scene highlights. After a while, I became a total pantster and got hooked on Writing Into The Dark ala Dean Wesley Smith. It was great to flow in the zone!
Having said that, I’m now into a new, multi-episode series designed for the film industry which has taken me back to the planning mode. I have the overall story arc outlined and will be developing each episode according to the scenes – leaving it open for dialogue unfolding as it should and the odd unexpected character showing up and demanding to be let in. My overall experience – experiment and find out what’s best for the project. There is no total right or wrong way to tell a story.
Garry, thanks for sharing your process with us. I agree that there is no total right or wrong way to tell a story, and to experiment and find out what’s best for the project, and I’d add, the writer. We evolve as we gain experience, as it sounds like you have.
I’ll check out Dean Wesley Smith’s Writing Into The Dark method. I love learning new approaches to writing fiction. You never know what you might discover that will enhance your own process.
Fascinating stuff.
I’m pantser by nature, but after producing a steaming heap of novel-length manuscripts that wouldn’t sell, a dear friend & mentor convinced me that perhaps I needed more structure. Since then, I’ve been working with an amalgamation of planning tools, & though I haven’t yet sold a novel, I’m confident the manuscripts I’m writing are stronger because of the structure.
Ruth–Thank you for your kind remarks! I’m glad you enjoyed the links too.
I totally get where you’re coming from, Linda, and would never ask you to change what works for you. This advice is meant for people who have never written a novel before and don’t know where to begin or who have gotten stuck repeatedly trying to write a novel and want to try something new. I agree with you that characterization is an under-utilized method of world-building. I actually advise interviewing your main characters and other characters to get the world from their perspective. Those insights lend deep insights into the world and make it feel lived in, and not just some description out of an encyclopedia.
CS, So awesome that you are working with an amalgamation of planning tools to lend structure to your stories. I am a big fan of story structure and even teach a class on comparing 5 story structures. The more we understand about structure, then more we can expand our story telling skills. Thanks for stopping by!
Thank you, Beth, for this informative post. I believe I can put your “essential tips” to work for me.
I’m a hybrid plotter/pantser — a little heavier on the pantser side. I think of it as iterative writing. I start a book with a general idea and put a character into a situation to see what they will do. Then I’ll back up and reassess where the story is going. I continue to iterate along these lines until I write “The End.” Then I look at the story as a whole to see if it works.
These essential steps should be very helpful. Thanks!
I’m so glad to hear that you’ll be able to put these tips to some use, Kay! thanks for stopping by!
Thank you Beth! These are wonderful tips. I started as a pantser and am now a plantser. I like to write a rough draft, or at least the start of one, just to see what I’m working with. From there, I can determine what needs to happen. I like discovery writing, and now I’m finding happiness in the planning stages. This is a happy place for me, where I can allow the story to unfold while still having trail markers along the way.
You’re welcome, JM! I love that “trail markers.” Thanks for sharing your process. We all have such unique approaches, yet share some similarities. I think of the planning stage as planting mile markers to help me find my way when I write the first draft.
Hi Anne,
What a great article! I am working on a story too, and I am halfway through my book. I have learned several great things from your blog. All the tips you shared about writing in your previous blogs were very helpful. I think I have come a long way, but in the initial stages, I did struggle with the plan. I will definitely use these tips if I write another novel. I think it will help me stay on track from the start. Thanks a lot for such a helpful share!
John–This post was written by Beth Barany, co-author of the book “Plan Your Novel”. Other posts on this blog are written by my blog partner, Ruth Harris, and our monthly guests as well as the two posts a month I write myself. I’m glad you find them all useful.
Hi John, Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I’m glad the tips were helpful, and that you will definitely use these tips if you write another novel. I hope you do. So glad these tips will help you stay on track from the start. Yes, this blog has such useful content. Ruth Harris and Anne R. Allen do a great job.
I am a natural pantser but when a mentor told me: ‘You don’t really have a story here,’ I realized that needed to learn A LOT more about structure and plot. I wish I’d come across your post at the time! However, I found very helpful advice at K.M. Weiland’s site, Helping Writers Become Authors. She really broke down the ‘how-to’s’ of building a story in a way I’ve never encountered before.
As a result, I now lay out my story on a cork board and a spreadsheet before I write in kind of a loose map, and re-arrange/tighten up as I go. I honour my pantser side by scribbling out ideas and plot notes under chapter headings as I’m writing, then integrate the ones that work out into the cork board and spreadsheet.
During revisions, I expand the spreadsheet into a revision grid by adding categories like pacing and timeline. A Key Events category makes it easy to check plot points, which I use to write my synopsis. (This is never easy!)
Loose mapping lets me remain open to new ideas while cork boards and spreadsheets help me to stay on track during writing and revisions. I’ve also used a pitch to test out a story idea before writing. It’s very effective.
Wow. It’s an amazing tip. My goal in life is to write a novel, so this post was very helpful to me. I look forward to reading the next article