Planning a Novel: Each Story Needs A Different Type of Planning

I usually think of planning as a matter of personal preference. And I often see others asking “what kind of planner are you?” Or “Are you a plotter or a pantser?” But I’ve recently started to realize that the amount and type of planning I do for a novel is not dependent on me, it’s more dependent on the story itself. Planning a fantasy novel is significantly different from planning a sci-fi novel, for example. That much is obvious to me. But even within these different genres each individual story needs a different type of planning. I’ve written a few novels now, only one of which has been published so far, but I’d like to look at the type of planning I did for each one.

Children of the Dead City - Epic Fantasy (Published)

This novel takes place in the fantasy world I’d been building for about 15 years before I wrote it. It’s actually the second version of the same story. I wrote an entire novel that focused on the character Hawk (but his name wasn’t Hawk back then) and his journey up the Fire Mountain. And then years later I completely rewrote the story starting it off in a different place and focusing on other characters, starting with Dargoth. I started off this second version of the tale by planning the entire book out chapter by chapter. I would come up with a chapter title and then write down a couple of bullet points describing the main events that would happen in the chapter. As discussed in my post on Unplanned Plot Twists as soon as I started writing the novel into something very different and I expanded it way beyond what was in that plan. I let the characters and ideas lead the way and illuminate the story.

TLDR: Backed by 15 years of world-building. I had a chapter by chapter plan that only represents the bare bones of the story and was not followed closely.

Near Future Revolving around GMOs - Sci-Fi (Not Yet Published - Coming Soon-ish)

I spent a few years planning this novel out. I used what I'd learned in Uni about transgenics and came up with different genetically modified organisms that would be plausible to exist in the near future. I came up with characters and a plot points. I tried to massage them into some kind of plan that was never finished. I got busy and abandoned the idea. And then I got a job that involved a highway commute where I couldn’t stop thinking about this story as I drove in the lovely landscape. Eventually, this need was so strong that I just sat down and wrote the idea through as a novella just to get it out of my head. No plan, just sat in front of my computer and typed for a few days. It was pretty good and as with all stories, I shelved it for a while so I could get back to it later and see if it was any good.

But when I did re-read it a few months later I could not help wanting to expand it much more, to dig deeper into this world and show more POVs. So I made a very rudimentary plan splitting the book into four parts and outlining 5-ish major events that needed to happen in each part. I mined the original novella for side-character names and used them, but made them more prominent and decided on some key contributions each one would make to one of the major developments in the story. Using this very vague outline I got the first half of the novel done and then I sat down and worked out some important things/events by outlining the second half in a much more detailed chapter by chapter plan.

TLDR: Lots of world-building work for the GMOs & characters over a couple of years. Then wrote a Novella with no plan. Then expanded the novella into a novel by using a very vague outline for the first half of the novel, stopping in the middle, and making a detailed chapter by chapter outline for the second half.

The Historical Novel - Sci-Fi/Historical (Not Ready to be Published)

This novel. It started with an interesting premise. I wanted to see what six very different characters would do if I threw them together into an interesting situation. I also wanted to use their journey and their interactions to explore the history of said interesting situation/time period. (How’s that for revealing absolutely no information? LOL) I kept trying to outline this novel and I wanted to use timelines because of the historical nature of it. This wasn’t working. I only ever got like 3 little events into the timeline each time I tried it. Everything in my being wanted to just sit down and write the thing through with no plan - with only an idea of the personalities of each of the characters. Everything in my being really just wanted to throw them into this situation and see what happened. This sounded crazy, because it’s a HISTORICAL novel, it’s going to be need loads of research! But I eventually gave in and started writing.

This decision was pretty crazy and as a result of it this novel took years to finish. I would write a bit, pause to do research and get lost in a spiral of history research that reignited by history geekiness, then go back to writing with no plan other than the cool stuff I’d just learned floating around in my head. Reach a point where I needed to learn more stuff, repeat the process. It was so much fun, but at the same time it was so difficult to make any progress in the story and took years to finish instead of the usual few months. I even ended up taking a 2-year hiatus in the middle because work got too stressfull and it became impossible to do it - especially without a clearly defined plan.

Even now, I keep thinking I need to go back and expand the last bit, because I think I rushed the ending a bit. I’ll probably also need to split it into smaller installments, much as I hate to do that, because this thing is a monster. (Longer than Children of the Dead City, which is already pretty huge!)

Do I regret using this method, especially since it made it so hard to finish the damn thing? Absolutely not. I think this story needed this type of planning.

TLDR: Started by defining the characters and the initial situation I wanted to throw them into. Failed to make a detailed plan. Wrote without planning, stopping to do research every time I needed to. Still not sure if I’m done.

The Dystopia/Alien/Justice Novel - Near Future Sci-Fi (Current WIP)

This is my current WIP. I’ve just finished writing the first of four parts of the novel. I started with an idea, wrote all kinds of little notes filling half a notebook about it. Had no clue who any of the characters were, but was unable to make a more detailed plan. So, with just an idea and some key events planned I decided to start writing it. I wrote about half a chapter and realized I really needed more direction. So in the end I picked character names without planning the characters out any more than that I wrote a VERY detailed plan of only the first 7 chapters. I’m talking each scene was pre-planned as a bullet point/situation, but I have no clue who these people are in terms of personality and voice and no sweet clue how they’re going to feel about and react to this scene I’ve put them in.

For example, from the plan for chapter 2:

- Liz feels bad about it, gets involved in planning a protest

And from the plan for chapter 4:

- [Aliens] make their presence known in the universe through a video, give Earthlings an Ultimatum

I knew in a lot of detail what that video would say, how long the deadline on that ultimatum was, what they expected Earthlings to do, etc, it was all written out in little notes in a notebook - but I hadn’t decided, until I started writing the scene, through whose POV I wanted to write the scene, which character’s feelings I wanted to explore as this well-planned video played. When I wrote the scene I consulted my list of characters and looked at it for a few minutes, picked a character, and then checked the previous scene to make sure it wasn’t from the same POV.

It’s a very weird method of planning. And now I’m at the end of chapter 7, I’ve finished writing all the planned scenes. I’ve reached a very key turning point in the story. I know the characters a lot better than I did a few days ago - I learned about them as I wrote it - and their future, the entire rest of the novel, is a completely unknown adventure. All I know about it is a couple of super vague ideas of what the world overall will be like through a couple of main events.

My next step is to re-read these chapter I just wrote, flesh things out as I go along, and add a couple of little foreshadowing hints, and then sit down and make detailed plans for the next 5-ish chapters.

TLDR: Know main concept. Know a couple of turning point events. No idea who characters are as people and what the details are between the key events. Plan out 5-7 chapters, write them, plan out the next five. It’s like paving a road in a strange land you’ve never been to with materials you pick up along the way, only planning the next few steps in front of you before you build them.

The Sorcerer King Novel - Epic Fantasy (Early Planning Stages)

This is a novel I never thought I’d write. But as I continue to world-build in this world I’m becoming increasingly interested in the idea of exploring the story of the Sorcerer King - how he went from being the Mad Sorcerer mentioned in my Novella Nyarai: Traveler of the Circle and the twitter story following Iro Ironglove’s journey to being the evil Sorcerer King that takes over the Kingdom of Shining Waters in Childrenof the Dead City. None of those other stories I wrote were his stories. I haven’t really focused on the bad guys in my writing, and I certainly don’t intend to focus on him in the way that grimdark novels focus on the bad guys or the ways that certain novels try to make the readers understand them or anything. But I’d like to follow his steps a little more closely.

I’d like to follow how he treated the people around him. Show how he became known as the “Mad Sorcerer” and explore how his first experiments in sorcery affected his victims. I’d like to show the rise and fall of this evil sorcerer as he became increasingly powerful in different lands and gained more followers and moved from place to place in his attempt to avoid any constraints being put on his experiments, finally leading to the point where he got himself an entire Kingdom and made himself the unquestioned King. I’d like to look at some of his earliest friends and followers, some of the people who became discontented and disillusioned with his ways and tried to back out. And the people and things that weakened him and made him paranoid even as he gained more and more power.

Because of all these other stories I’ve already written in this world, some of which only tangentially touch on the effects of his magic, I know a lot about this story already. I know a lot of the main events, the wars, the laws, the times he fled and the times he went into hiding and the effects he had on major lands in my world. I’m super excited to put that all together into a single story that focuses more on the magic, the deep powers present in this world that he tries to harness, and the characters of him and the people around him. And because of all these other stories and events I know so well his story is already kind of narutally split into different periods - his first introduction to magic, his experiments in the Giant lands, his infiltration into the ruling circles of the High Kingdoms, etc, etc. (realizes I’m literally planning as I write this blog post and stops).

TLDR: Because this character and world are so well established already I think before I start writing this novel I’m going to have perhaps the most detailed plan and outline I’ve ever had for a novel. I’m sure I will then proceed to add more and go in different directions as inspiration leads me, but that’s only to be expected.

Any plan is only as good as it helps me tell the story, it’s never set in stone.

Well, that was long - and fun for me personally to reflect on my own planning methods. Hope some of these ramblings are at least remotely interesting to you unlucky souls who ended up here :P