Wednesday's Writer's Tip - More on Step 3 for Planning your Novel #MFRWauthor

Now you've collected all these pieces like characters, settings and incidents, what do you do with them. Combining them and establishing a time line for your story. I used to write this all down. I came upon an old plan for a story that may never been written where I had all these steps written down.

The characters were complete with physical descriptions and their goals. Why they wanted to reach the goal and what inside them might keep them from reaching that goal. I also had written how they reacted to each of the other major characters in the story,

There was a huge block of descriptions of the town, the various residences and the businesses. These descriptions included rooms I thought I might use, the gardens and for some reason the cars in each driveway or parking place.

There was a description of the time or year, month and what the days would be like. Though a month was mentioned, the descriptions were more of seasonal ones including the plants that might be seen.

From there I went to a chapter synopsis and this is how the various bits are collected together. Often when writing this, I would refer myself to one or other of the sketches I'd written. This chapter synopsis contained some dialogue. I'm not sure this would remain when the story was written but the words came to me so they went down.

I seldom do this much elaborate preparation these days but I've been at the game for a long time and often things are in my head and I go straight to the chapter synopsis. Something that can be changed when I'm writing the rough draft.

As a beginning writer, being this organized can be helpful. From First Draft to Finished Novel by Karen Wiesner is a good place to begin when you're putting your first steps on the road.