How To Plan A Novel: Make Your Dream Come True

Wondering how to plan a novel that has the potential to launch you into your author dreams? While some writers start their novels with absolutely no plan (and those people are very brave), they often do not finish their books very quickly. This is due to having to plan their book as they go.

When it comes to how to plan a novel, you are the author and have full creative control. This means you can prepare as much or as little as you’d like. However, we’re going to go over seven items you can plan out in advance. This will teach you how to plan a novel prior to sitting down to write, in order to save you time in the long run.

How to plan a novel: what’s covered

• How do you structure a novel plan?
• What are the 7 steps to outline a novel?
• How do you start plotting a novel?

How do you structure a novel plan?

Structuring the plan for your novel can be as simple as pulling out a sheet of paper and jotting down ideas or opening a fresh Word document and building an in-depth list of plot points and sub-plot points. How to plan a novel is subjective.

Some writer love the sticky note method and use entire walls in their office or living space to plot out the structure of their novels. You can use a similar process with 3×5 cards and simply arrange these cards on your table (or even the floor!) as you learn how to plan a novel.

How to plan your novel in a way that works depends on your specific preferences and needs as a writer. However, there are seven steps you can take to help you effectively plan. Planning allows you to launch into writing your novel with focus, rather than take frequent breaks to plan as you go.

What are the 7 steps to outline a novel?

While there are a plethora of aspects to consider when learning how to plan your novel, the crucial points to include are: characters, world-building, your outline, research, writing schedule, budget, and finding a writing partner.

1. Characters

Having separate profile sheets for your characters is great for plotting character arcs, establishing backstories, and developing unique voices for each character. They’re also helpful during the drafting process. It’s much easier to forget things than you might think (in my novel’s first draft, I think every single character swapped eye color at least once).

What items might you include in a character sheet?

• Physical descriptions
• Development tracking (how should they change at what points in the story)
• Character story summaries (a paragraph or two about who they are, what they want, and where they’ll start and end)
• Background information

Knowing your characters is step one in how to plan a novel.

2. World-building

World-building is a crucial component of how to plan a novel. Most novels require research and world-building, especially if you’re writing historical, sci-fi, or fantasy. Getting the big chunk of your world-building out of the way before you begin drafting is helpful, because then you know the elements your characters have to work with/against.

Knowing the setting helps you make decisions concerning who your characters would be in that world (based on their upbringing and environment), their motivations and goals, their strengths and weaknesses, etc.

World-building is also helpful for plot development. Environmental elements, politics, religion, weather, and magic systems can all contribute to conflict. Throwing characters you know into a world you understand will nearly always generate its own plot points with low effort.

3. Outline

Any project is quicker and easier to finish with a plan! A novel’s plan is its outline. There are countless ways to structure a story outline. You can also start with the mind map! It can be as simple or as detailed as you’d like, but in most cases, the more detailed your outline, the easier drafting will be. You can edit an outline as you write to keep the process flexible.

An outline is simply a writing tool, so use it however you’d like. You might fully flesh your outline into a scene-by-scene summary of your novel, but if you don’t want an outline that detailed, you should at least have an idea of:

• Your story’s POV. Will you write in first, second, third limited, or third omniscient? Will you have multiple POV characters or just one? If you’re writing in third omniscient: what kind of voice will your narrator have, is the voice a character and if so, are they involved with the story?
• Your main characters. Whose story is it? Who is your protagonist? Who is your antagonist?
• Your setting. When and where does your story take place? Is your world set in realism, magic realism, or magic? What significant world-building elements will come into play?

And of course, remember to include at least a few plot points or an idea of what will happen in the story.

4. Research and learn

Besides doing pre-research on your novel itself, you might do some research on the art of writing! Here are some good resources if you don’t know where to start. If you’re looking to learn the main elements of writing, try these three books.

Plot & Structure

Plot & Structure deals with, shockingly, plot, and structure in novels. Knowing the technicalities of formulating a novel before you even start outlining makes the writing process much smoother.

The Elements of Style

If plot and structure are a story skeleton, prosaic style is the flesh. This book breaks down how to take your story idea and write it well.

I Should Be Writing: A Writer’s Workshop

This book by Mur Lafferty teaches about honing your craft, the creative process, and how to deal with your own self-critic. It also has in-book writing exercises and story prompts! Use this book to learn how to plan a novel effectively.

If you learn better with a teacher, here are a few Skillshare classes that might be helpful!

• Novel Writing 101: This class breaks down the absolute basics of writing a novel.
• Story Structure: 8 Essentials for Outlining Your Novel or Script: This class gets into the more specific steps of how to plan a novel by focusing on outlining a story.
• Plan Your Novel in 30 Days or Less!: This class holds your hand and guides you through planning each element of your story.
• Writing Flash Fiction: This class teaches how to write flash fiction, which is a great way to practice writing prose, which will make your novel better.

While many new writers like to jump straight into writing a novel, a novel is a massive undertaking! Planning a book, plot beats, developing characters, and building worlds are some of the easier things to figure out. What takes a while to learn (based on my experience in writing and teaching) is the actual art of prose.

Learning prose is much easier to do in shorter pieces like flash fiction, short stories, poetry, and creative essays. If you learn how to write before you try to write a novel, you will (surprise) write a much stronger novel.

5. Create a schedule

A common reason books don’t get finished is that they are often side projects for people with careers, families, and other obligations. Often, writers have no one waiting for them to finish the first draft.

If you don’t have an agent, a publishing company, and/or an audience demanding a finished product, there isn’t anything holding you accountable to making steady progress on your manuscript.

If this sounds like you, you need to master self-motivation! Whether you have an outside push or not, planning your novel timeline has many benefits.

How to schedule your novel

Knowing how to plan a novel involves learning how to create a good schedule. Take a look at your outline and estimate how many words/pages/chapters you expect it to be. With your estimation, decide how soon you’d like to finish your novel. On average, a traditional novelist will publish a new book every 1-3 years.

A lot of writers who self-publish tend to “churn,” which means they write lower quality novels with much quicker turnaround. They might produce a few books per year. Consider how much time and effort you’d like to expend, your expectations for your novel’s quality, and your lifestyle when you’re deciding on a timeline.

Once you know when you want to finish your novel, break that time into sections. How long for a self-edit? How long do you need for a professional editor, cover designer, illustrators, and anyone else you might hire? Write out specific deadlines for each piece of production.

Keep your schedule somewhere accessible. Make monthly, weekly, and daily goal lists to be sure you’re staying on track. If you fall significantly behind, adjust your schedule as needed.

Editors and other professionals need to be booked ahead of time, and everyone has a different window for how much notice they need and how much time they need to finish a project. Do your research when you’re planning your production timeline.

Sample novel schedule timeline

Here’s an example timeline for my next short story collection. I’ve input it into a Gannt chart so it’s more visual, but this shows about a year-long process, from drafting to release.

As you can see, most of the processes happen simultaneously. With a timeline, I know everything that should be happening and when. I made this with MS Excel’s default Gannt chart, but there are lots of different formats you can choose, even just within MS Excel, to structure and track your novel timeline. Charts help you learn how to plan a novel with detail.

How to plan an novel: sample writing schedule

Once you know your timeline for project completion and have broken it into specific durations, you can decide what your weekly and daily task lists should look like. My current phase of developing my short collection involves drafting, beta rounds, and self-revisions/edits.

For example, this month my tasks are:

• Turn in a new short story to critique group on the 10th, 20th, and 30th
• Revise (specific stories)
• Review beta feedback and make final edits on (specific stories)

Once I’m done with drafting, workshops, and self-edits, my tasks will shift to promotion and communication with the professionals I’ve hired. Timelines put you in control of how to plan a novel.

6. Calculate your budget

Along with a timeline, a vital aspect of learning how to plan a novel is the business side of producing a book. This is your budget. A budget will look very different between a self-published book and a traditionally published book.

If you’re traditionally published, most of the costs will be covered by your publisher. If you’re self-publishing, the responsibility of services, like a professional edit and cover design, falls to you.

Here’s an example of a book budget:

Again, I just input my information into a MS Excel budget template for a visual. These items are examples of most things you might want to purchase to produce a book. I’ve over-budgeted in every category, so I’ll spend less than what I’ve estimated, but it’s better to overshoot than underestimate and have to eat unexpected costs.

From publishing my first collection, I have a reference for how much everything costs, but I also know my expected income once it releases. Based on those past numbers, I made this budget. The first time around, I kept costs as low as possible because I wasn’t sure what kind of sales I’d make.

Now that I have an idea of how well my books sell, I’m freer to make more assumptions about where I can invest in higher quality production.

Note: Producing a novel will incur different costs than producing a short story collection. For example, I am only hiring a copy editor. For a novel, you’d do your best hiring a developmental editor as well. Depending on the type of edits needed, a professional edit on a novel typically runs between $1,000 and $3,000.

7. Find your writing partner

This is probably the most optional part of how to plan a novel. Some writers prefer to have their first drafts all to themselves, but eventually, you’d benefit from having a writing partner. How do you find a writing partner? Make writer friends!

A good writing partner is someone you can trust and get along with, so finding a writing partner amongst the friends you already have is a great option.

If you haven’t been able to make writing friends yet, you can reach out to other writers who have a similar skill level to you. X hashtags are a great way to get into the writing community. Try tags like #WritingCommunity and #AmWriting.

How do you start plotting a novel?

While we briefly covered plotting in how to plan a novel, you may want to consider a series when you start plotting. Some writers “pants” all the way through a series with no idea of how many books they’ll end up with or what will happen in each one. That can sometimes work, but it’s also a good way to confuse yourself into awkwardly stapling plot holes together.

A cleaner way is to have an idea of the number of books in your series and roughly outline each book before your first one is published. A method you might use to track your series is by creating a series bible. A series bible is a compilation of information about your series.

How to plan a novel’s plot may include info such as:

• Character profile sheets
• Plot arcs for the series and individual books
• Backstory and world-building 
• Rules about magical, religious, and political systems
• A lexicon of made-up words, creatures, concepts, etc.

As far as timelines, schedules, and budgets for a novel series, it’s essentially the same as what we covered for individual novels, just for multiple. You can use what you learned in how to plan a novel for series too.

Writing a novel can be as planned or unplanned as you like, but you can work out the above details beforehand to give yourself a creative and professional edge! This all plays into how to plan a novel well.

How do authors plan their books?

Finally, some writers plan their books as discussed above, while others do little to no planning. Now that you know the various steps of how to plan a novel, it’s important to consider two different types of writers: pantsers and hybrids.

This post focused on how to plan a novel, the very definition of the writing term plotter. Plotters plot out every part of their book before writing.

Pantsers, on the other hand, write by the seat of their pants. They put a fun character into an interesting setting and write. The story simply takes shape. Hybrid writers may want to learn how to plan a novel, but they will mix their planning with pantsing. Which type of writer do you most relate to? For you, what’s your ideal method for how to plan a novel?

How to plan a novel: take your next step

How to plan a novel is only the first step in the process of authorship. To help you achieve your dream, use our free Book Outline Generator below! You know how to plan a novel. Now it’s time to write it!