By: Korinna Rossi
The first step in writing any successful novel is creating a plot.
While making plots may seem annoying at first, having the plot of your novel planned out can help your writing in many ways. Specifically, it can help you keep track of the way your story is supposed to go. A detailed plot can also help you follow the multiple story-lines happening throughout your novel without losing a story-line.
When I first started writing I never plotted my book, instead choosing to sit down and write whatever came to mind. Currently, about six years after I originally started writing my book, I almost always have to plot not only the entire novel, but also each individual chapter.
Personally, I would first create a general plot for your entire book, and then move on to plotting each individual chapter.
So how do you get started on making your plot. I would start with these simple two steps on making a basic plot.
Step 1: General Ideas
First, you need to have some idea of what’s going to happen in your novel.
This first step doesn’t need to be super detailed, in fact I would start off with just figuring out some basic beginning, middle, and end ideas.
Stick with only the important points that happen in your novel. If it doesn’t severely impact the plot, I would save it for later or simplify it to a general idea.
For example, in the image below, I have “Alias and Thia travel throughout the ordinary world to get back to the magical realm and clear Alias’s name” instead of specifying every one of their trials in that happen in the middle of the story.
After writing down your basic plot points, you should have some idea of what’s going to happen in your novel.
This is pretty simple information, but if you find that you’re missing something, don’t panic. It’s perfectly alright to have some blank spaces in the first version of your plot, but keep in mind that your going to have to fill in those blanks at some point.
Step 2: Working Out Smaller Details
The next step for creating your plot is to work out some of the smaller details in your book. This tutorial is specifically about making a simple plot for your novel, in a different article I will get into the finer details and how to weave story-lines throughout your novel.
For Step 2, I would explain each of your earlier plot points in more detail. For this example I just did the Beginning part of my plot, but it still gives you a good idea of what to do.
You could attempt to start on Step 2, skipping step 1, but if this is your first time creating a plot I would stick to the basics to make sure you don’t forget anything.
As you can see above, I still have all of my major plot points from Step 1, but have now added a little bit more explanation below each of them. Again, my explanations are quite broad, but for a basic plot, details aren’t necessary yet.
Now I only explained the points for the Beginning of my novel, in actuality you would want to do this for also the middle and the end. Try and stick with only major events right now, leaving the trials out for later.
(I will do an article explaining the difference between “trials” and “major events” later, but for now just fill in what you think is important)
After you’ve filled in those smaller details, you have successfully created a basic plot for your novel.
Keep in mind, this is not a detailed plot, which is better to follow when actually writing; But creating this simple plot is a good first step in learning how to successfully plot your novel.
If you are interested in continuing to work on your plot, stay tune for the next article in BookNewsie’s Plot Series:
Creating Chapter Plots For Your Novel
How to Create a Plot Grid