So, while I don’t have a “real” published novel (yet), I have completed a few novel-sized projects that I intend to get published (eventually).  “How to write a novel” has thousands of published books and blog posts written about it already.  Personally, I feel that everyone needs their own process and there is not one true cookie-cutter, step-by-step method for anything in life.  It doesn’t matter if you are writing a novel or coping with depression.  What works for me probably won’t work for you.  Feel free to follow along and then make up your own method.

Step 1: Write a scene.

Almost everything I’ve ever written starts with this. I haven’t really found many other people starting with this, but the closest novel writing method out there might be “Write from The Middle” by James Scott Bell.  The point is to just start writing.  For me, writing that first scene really immerses me in the basic details of the novel.  I have to tell you who is in the novel.  I have to give some details about the setting or relationships between the characters.  This initial scene ends up having a catchy hook that hints at the later story, so I usually end up introducing the main conflict or at least a very important conflict in the story.  I love starting with just writing a scene because I get to be creative and detailed without the nitty gritty of outlines or themes or any other literary nuances that I learned to pay attention to in high school literature classes.

You could also compare this first step to the multiple draft method where the writer writes their first draft and then just continues writing revised drafts until they are happy with the completed project.  Personally, I don’t like leading with that.  I don’t feel structured enough and it seems like more work to have to cut out scenes and move them and then cross-reference if that scene can really go there with any additional details or foreshadowing that might happen to be lying around.  Multiple drafts are good, and I use them, but it isn’t what I like to lead with.

Also, starting out this way leads me to write more interesting beginnings.  If I use this scene early on or for the beginning, my stories tend to jump right into the action, rather than having pages and pages of detailed backstory when the main character hasn’t even been mentioned yet.  Let me tell you about the main character first and then I’ll tell you about the world they live in.  Any super necessary details about the setting will come out in the main character introduction, but some of it can be left as a surprise later.

Optional Step: Make coffee and put in head phones.

At some point, you need to be writing every day and have a routine to put yourself in the working mindset.  For me, a cup of drinkable liquid within reach and just putting headphones in my ears is usually enough.  For particularly lengthy projects like a novel, I’ve started putting together a Spotify playlist of songs that I think the characters would like or relates to their story.  Or things that would make a good background song for the scene if it was in a movie. You’ll need to discover what works for you, so this is just an optional step that will manifest over time.

Step 2: Outlines

So now that I’ve written a little scene (or several pages of scenes), I am usually asking myself, “So what’s this story about?” or I already have some idea on how to answer that question.  Now is the time to write my outline.  This can be a super basic list of scenes.  Personally, I couldn’t write a novel without this step.  Even my first novel, which was a horribly naive story from high school, had an outline.  That story ended up being split up into three parts: Exposition, Journey, and Resolution.  Then I wrote the import details and steps along the way as a list underneath each of those sections.  An outline is critical for me so that I know where I’m going.  If I don’t know how to write a scene or I get writer’s block and don’t know what to write next, I refer to the outline.  Whatever I write next needs to get me from the last scene to the next scene.  It can be as lengthy or as barebones as possible.  This helps a lot to get that first rough draft written.  You can go back and improve it and flesh it out later, but the important part is to keep the story building.  I would have had a tough time doing that without an outline or timeline to reference and I do this for almost everything I write, from emails to this blog post to development features in programming to novels.  I also just really like writing lists for task management.

Step 3: The Snowflake Method

The Snowflake Method was created by Randy Ingermansen.  It relates writing a novel to drawing a digital snowflake by how a single idea tessellates and can grow into a larger work that still reflects that initial idea.  You can think about how a kaleidoscope image is created or looking at your self in two parallel facing mirrors.  Now I love this method, and not just because I’m a computer programmer. 

Now I put this step after my initial (and probably rough) outlines.  The first step of the snowflake method is to take an hour and create one sentence that sums up your entire story.  It’s harder than it sounds to get it down to one sentence, since there are details that I usually want to put in a second sentence. This step is a great way to come up with an elevator pitch for your story.  It’s a great answer to the “Oh, what’s your book about?” question you get from friends and family when you tell them you are writing a book.  The second step is to take another hour to expand this one sentence into a full paragraph about your story, including key plot points and the story ending.  If you haven’t decided this in an outline yet, do it right now.

Now with the Snowflake Methods, I usually try to make it through Step 5 or Step 6 (out of 10).  These steps have a ton of great story and character development steps to create your characters motivations and story details.  However, it’s also around this point that the ‘take a sentence and make a paragraph’ or ‘take a paragraph and expand into a page’ process of this method just gets too rigidly structure for me.  Typically, once I get step four or five, I know:

• Where my story is going and a general timeline
• Who may characters are and how my characters act (based on their motivations or my character development goals for them)

This is typically enough for me to write a first draft.

Option Step: Research

Now is a good time to do some research if you need to.  For my previous story-project, I needed to do a lot of research on PTSD and trauma and trauma recovery.  These were key to my character’s development and I am not an expert on these.  I needed to do some research to learn what would make my character’s actions believable and what was too farfetched.  Some of this was fighting mental health misconceptions that I already had.  This can also be a good time to do some extra research on your setting or time period you are using for your story.  It helps to dig into the look and feel of these things before you get too far into your novel.

Step 4: Just Write the Thing.

I like to have the above steps completed before I start this or start focusing on finishing the first draft.  National Novel Writing Month is a great time for this step.  If you don’t know where your story or characters are going, it can be difficult to meet your 1500-ish words per day on a regular basis. This step is the time to just sit down and write the draft, no matter good or bad, or you might not finish the project.  At this point, I just focus on going from scene to scene to tell the basic story.  It’s a little more detailed than a synopsis but is typically not much more than bare bones dialogue and scenes.  It’s not a particularly detailed story, but it is a complete story.

Optional Step: Take a break and then do some editing.

Typically, at this point in the process, I’ve put a lot of time and energy into the novel.  I am too close to this project and tend to skip over paragraphs while editing for typos.  At this point, putting the project away for a week or two and not thinking about it is great.  I can come back to it with fresh eyes.  Also, maybe finding some trusted beta readers.  They’ll pick out your typos and ask you lots of questions about your story which can help you with the next step.

Step 5: Multiple Drafts

I did this with my most recent project.  I probably had about three or four drafts after my initial rough draft.  I may do a bit of editing in between the first and second draft, but I really haven’t changed much in the story. 

For the second draft, I focus on story development and details. I’m looking for anything that doesn’t line up or was forgotten.  I’m making sure that there are not any plot holes in my overall story.  I’m not really focusing too much on character’s point of view or motivations in this draft.  It helps to make a detailed outline of your scenes and any notes on foreshadowing or important details you mentioned in the story. 

For the third draft, I go back through the story focus on my character’s motivations.  In this draft, I’m making sure that my character’s viewpoints and motivations are explained with detail.  I may have told that a character did something or was feeling a certain way, sometimes I don’t really explain why.  My beta readers have called out some of these scenes.  It’s a good time to double check that your characters are acting according to their development arc and motivations.  It’s also a good time to decide if you want to show a scene from a specific character’s viewpoint or to include multiple viewpoints.  This can also be a time to flesh out minor characters and to expand or minimize their involvement in the story if it is appropriate.

The next rewriting pass though the novel for me is world building.  At this point, I’ve made sure the skeletal structure of who does what in the story is sound, and I’ve fleshed the story out with my characters and their motivations.  However, I may have not given the most detailed descriptions or finer details of the setting of the story.  Since my last project was a futuristic science fiction setting with multiple species living together on different planets, this draft was the opportunity to put in descriptions of other species and to explore the interplanetary politics a little more.  It’s a good way to add in a lot of the extra details that come with world building without distracting from the main story too much.

You don’t have to stop here.  Maybe you need multiple drafts to explore the social, economic, and political structures in your world.  It never hurts to make one final pass for editing or further development, but you should be feeling pretty content with your novel at this point.  Congratulations!  Now you can find people to read it and decide if you want to pursue publishing your novel.

References and additional links:

Snowflake Method: https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/

Write From The Middle: https://www.jamesscottbell.com/styled-7/styled-35/index.html

Writing Methods: https://prowritingaid.com/art/387/Six-Tried-and-Tested-Methods-for-Writing-a-Novel.aspx

National Novel Writing Month: https://www.nanowrimo.org/