Novels need action. The type of action varies, but they certainly need some kind of action or your readers will fall asleep reading your book. Action is the core of your plot. Without action, there's no story. But just as important to the action is the pacing of your novel. These two elements make up the very basis of your general plot.
A Novel Needs Action
Your novel must have action at various points, but defining action can be a little problematic. Is action a car chase? Yes. Is action a standoff between your protagonist and your antagonist? Yes. Is action the thoughts running through the protagonist's head? Yes.
Action can be a lot of things, usually depending on genre and context. So let's define the action in a novel as anything that is important to the overall plot of the story. This could mean that the "action" in your novel includes your main character sitting at a bar thinking to himself. He might not be involved in a gunfight, but that doesn't mean something important isn't going on in his mind.
So, now that we've defined action, perhaps you can see how novels are built up of these little bits of plot. You don't need a gunfight or car chase on every page. But something needs to happens to further the plot.
Constantly throwing action at your audience, however, creates its own set of problems. You need to break the tension once in a while, but without letting the action stop completely. This is where pacing becomes important.
The Pacing of Your Novel
The pacing of your novel can be defined as the rate at which the action happens. This rate will be primarily determined by the type of book you're writing. A laid-back romance will have a slower pacing than an action-adventure novel, for example. But how do you convey this pace?
Start by classifying your scenes into two groups: tense and relaxed. If you're having trouble categorizing some of the scenes, create a third category: semi-tense. Once you've done this, space them out a bit. You probably don't want eight tense scenes back to back (unless you're writing a thriller or a horror). I write a lot of fantasy-adventure novels, but I'm careful not to pack too much tension into one section (except for the end). I vary the intensity of the scenes to keep the story moving.
Now that you've ordered your scenes, look at each tense scene and sharpen it up. You can add action, of course, or you could use the power of the written word. Short paragraphs. Sharp words. Tiny sentences. These help increase the tension in your story. Heighten the tension until its wound tight.
Then release it. Use longer sentences and larger words while increasing the size of the paragraphs. You'll be surprised at how this technique can increase or decrease the tension of a given scene. The words you use and their structure on the page should reflect the pace you're trying to convey.
Your novel should be like a roller coaster ride. Take the tension up and down as your story requires, giving your readers a break from the tension when required. Think about the feel you want to convey and work hard to make sure your take your readers on the journey with you.
Every book has a theme, sometimes more than one. As an author, I'm often asked what the themes of my various books are. This is sometimes a hard question to answer, and not just because I don't necessarily write a book with a theme in mind. What's really hard about answering the question is this: themes are open to interpretation. Knowing this, how important is theme and should you decide on a theme before you begin writing?
What is Theme?
When it comes to novels, the theme is the overriding point of the story. Stories are, at their core, about life, and each novel makes a statement. That statement is your theme. Sometimes this theme is also the lesson of the story, especially if you're writing children's fiction. But whatever genre you're writing, your story does have a message.
What might the message be? Well, look at your story and see if there's an overriding message. My second novel (Dragon's Tempest) had a lot of things in it. Dragons. A prince and his friends. Cute girl. A creepy nasty not-human guy. And a lot of stuff happens. Battles are fought. People fall in love. A few people die. But none of these things are the theme. Instead, the theme is that sons need to individuate themselves. They need to find out who they are not just as their parents' son, but as grown men. This is the theme.
Never confuse theme with the conflicts in your novel. Conflicts are the obstacles your protagonist encounters. In the case of Dragon's Tempest, there are a lot of conflicts. The principle one is the good guys battling the bad guys. This is in a lot of novels (and virtually all fantasy novels). But Dragon's Tempest isn't really about good vs. evil. That's the entertainment portion of the novel (though "good triumphs over evil" can be a theme). The theme, the thing we learn about human nature from the novel, is about the father-son relationship. Theme and conflict are not the same thing.
Should You Write a Novel With a Theme in Mind?
The answer to this question is maybe. It depends on your point. I haven't written any of my fantasy novels with a theme in mind. And if I had, I probably wouldn't have ended up with a fantasy novel at all. Think about it. If you were going to write a novel with a theme about the nature of the father-son relationship, would you write a fantasy? Probably not.
And yet the entire story of Dragon's Tempest flows from the difficulties between father and son. The rest of the story simply wouldn't have happened without that catalyst. So the overriding theme of the novel is important, but I had no idea what the theme was while I was writing the thing. I simply wrote the story that was crying out to be told.
If, on the other hand, you have a theme in mind, you might want to write from your theme. I'm doing this with a new series of books I'm working. It's a trilogy with one overwhelming theme: the ability to recover and learn from mistakes. That is the theme. That was the theme before I had a clear idea of who the main characters were. I fully intend to convey a certain message and every work of the three books is being crafted with that message in mind.
So you can choose whether or not you'll write with a theme in mind or whether you'll just write the story. A theme will eventually emerge and permeate the whole novel. But it's important to remember that different people will see different things in your novel. One person may say your theme is the enduring quality of the human spirit while another is convinced the theme must be the inevitability of change. A book can have more than one theme, and it can have different themes for different people. This is one of the best qualities of literature.
Outlines are important to most writers. They form a road map and become a guide for the author. You can use an outline to stay on track while still exploring the depths of creativity. And, most often, this outline takes the form of a story arc outline. But what if you know exactly how many chapters you were going to have? I knew I'd have forty chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue, when writing Dragon's Tempest and Thief's Heartache. I'd already established that the first book in The Imperial Series that the books would all have forty chapters. So a chapter-by-chapter outline would be the best decision for any book in this series.
To create a chapter-by-chapter outline, you'll have to have a general idea of what your story will be. Then you'll have to get specific. List your chapters and leave plenty of space to add details. Once you've decided how many chapters you're going to have, start filling in the details.
List each chapter's plot point, making sure you have an inciting incident within the first few chapters. Ensure you have enough chapters to successfully weave your way through the rising action and into your crisis, climax, and resolution. Remember that your crisis, climax, and resolution can either happen in a single chapter or over several. The choice is yours and should fit the particular book.
Now look back at each chapter and tweak them. Treat each chapter like a mini-novel. They should have a beginning and end and something (rising action) need to happen in between. Don't let any chapters exist simply because you told yourself you'd have forty chapters (or twenty, or whatever number you came up with). Don't be afraid to merge chapters or even cut whole sections during the outlining process.
A chapter-by-chapter outline is only a guide. It's not set in stone. Make sure you allow your outline to stay fluid. Never lock yourself in simply for the sake of your outline.
I've been getting a lot of e-mails lately, and one of the most common questions I've received revolves around creating an outline. I know I talk about outlines and their value, but I don't actually tell you how exactly you should create that outline. Every writer is different, so every outline will be unique, but there are two basic types of outlines -- the story arc outline and the chapter-by-chapter outline. If you're not sure about chapters, start with the story arc and see where it takes you.
To create a story arc outline, you'll need to be clear on a few basics of your plot. These include the inciting incident, the crisis, the climax, and the resolution. If you have these four things, you can create a basic outline and start writing that novel. The outline should have the following structure:
- Inciting Incident
- Rising Action
- Crisis
- Climax
- Resolution
Within each of these is room for great variety and you don't necessarily have to fill in the outline in the order I've indicated. In fact, many writers start with the resolution and work backwards, or even jump around until they've fleshed out the plot of the story. But for expediency's sake, I'll address each point in order.
The Inciting Incident
Every plot needs to start somewhere. I'm not referring to the first chapter (though your inciting incident may occur at the very beginning of your story). I'm referring to the moment in your story that sets everything in motion. That one thing that leads to the rest of the novel. When I wrote Arianna's Tale this incident happens in Chapter Three. With Dragon's Tempest it was in Chapter One. Thief's Heartache placed this incident in Chapter Two. So the incident does have to be near the beginning of your novel, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the first thing that happens. Decide what this incident is in your particular story and write it down.
Rising Action
Now you're on the road heading toward your crisis. But things can't just plod along. You need action of some kind that leads up to your final climax. You don't need to know every little detail right now, but you should have some idea of what might happen. Maybe you know that a certain character is going to die or that your protagonist is going to encounter a certain obstacle. Now is the time to write those things down. Number each incident and try to put them in order, but be prepared to reorder them as you nail things down. Don't worry about how many numbers you have. You can refine your action incidents later.
The Crisis
Most novels have a central problem. Maybe it's a relationship (if you're writing a romance). Maybe it's a big bad wizard out to destroy the world (if you're writing a fantasy). Maybe it's the serial killer slaughtering women in New York (if you're writing a thriller/crime novel). But there is something there. If there isn't, you should probably rethink your novel. Know what the crisis is early on and write it down. You can always change up later, but at least you'll have something to start with.
The Climax
Your novel has to come to an end at some point. The crisis has to eventually get resolved in some way. The relationship has to either stabilize or end. The big bad wizard has to either succeed or fail. The serial killer is either caught, killed, or perhaps even kills the protagonist. But it has to end. So plan out how everything is going to end and you're almost finished creating an outline for your novel.
The Resolution
In most cases, the climax doesn't actually resolve the story. Look back at your inciting incident and evaluate it carefully. Did the climax actually wrap up the story? Probably not. Now is the time to finish wrapping up the story. Dragon's Tempest, my second novel, pits a nineteen-year-old boy against a nasty and deformed creature. Boy wins. Yay! But since the inciting incident (what out the boy in the position of having to fight the creature) was actually the problems the boy was having with his own father, I had to wrap up that little nugget. I had to put the boy in a room with his father before I could call the story finished. You'll have to do a similar thing, so go over your plot and make sure you're not leaving anything out.
If you've filled in all these areas, you have a basic outline to work from. Start writing that novel.You'll be able to fill in the blanks as you go, but if you don't get started, you'll never finish. So take the excuses out of writing and put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).
I've read some really boring books lately. And they weren't boring because I didn't like the subject matter. They were boring because the entire novel just plodded along. Nothing happened. At all. There was no tension. No drama. And every book needs a little drama.
What is Drama?
Before you can add drama into your novel, you have to understand what drama actually is. Drama involves at least one of the following elements: tension, emotion, excitement, or an unexpected series of events. These can take many forms, but essentially, drama is conflict. Emotional conflict, physical conflict, whatever. But your novel needs something dramatic. Without drama, you're not writing a novel, you're writing a narrative. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if you're hoping for a novel, you need to find the drama.
This drama could be a large scale war, but this is certainly not your only option. Perhaps your character is driven by some internal conflict. This too can be drama if done right. The point is to get your readers engaged and caring about the characters, and you can do this by using the drama of your story to its fullest. But be careful not to go overboard.
Adding Drama to Your Novel
Drama is great. It creates conflict and adds sizzle to your novel. But you have to find the right balance. Too much drama and your novel suddenly reads like one of those old B-movies. Too little and it's just plain boring. How do you find this balance? Well, everyone is different, but I like to take a look at my work with a critical eye.
A first draft is just that -- your first attempt at the work. It won't be perfect, but it's a place to start examining the drama in your novel. Read through what you have and try to be a reader, not a writer. Where does the drama slow down or even stop? When does the tension fade away? Find these areas an inject drama into them. Yes, I know, there are quieter parts to any novel. But I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about the parts that really start to bore you. If you're bored with your own story ... let's just say it's not a good sign.
There are a couple of ways to introduce tension and drama into your story. The first is traditional and seen in almost every novel. Simply throw more obstacles into your protagonist's path. This creates frustration, which leads to tension, which is one form of drama. If each obstacle is more difficult to overcome than the last, you have rising tension. Just don't let your readers down with your climax.
The second way to create drama takes a little more skill. It involves shifting your point of view. Don't confuse this with head-hopping. Head hopping involves jumping from one perspective to another without cause and it drives readers nutty. Shifting the point of view can be done in short stints with great effect. The easiest and least invasive way to do this is using what's sometimes called an 'Interlude'. Sometimes this is used as the title of a chapter that's written from someone else's point of view.
A great way to use this tool is to slip into the mind of the antagonist. What is the bad guy thinking? What is he plotting? What does he have planned for the protagonist? Revealing these thoughts to the reader when the protagonist is still unaware can really introduce a level of tension to your novel. But do this sparingly or you'll spoil the entire story.
Pruning Back the Tension
You're writing a novel, not a soap-opera. What's the difference? Well, in a soap-opera, everything goes wrong. Think of a sudden plunge downward without ever coming back up. The obstacles never end and the good guys never get ahead. Even small victories are not really victories as they only lead to another conflict. And all conflicts are never ending.
Novels aren't like that. Think of a roller coaster with plenty of ups and downs. There has to be some kind of balance to the whole thing. Eventually, the good guys have to get ahead, at least once in a while. If you find yourself with endless conflict that's getting a bit ridiculous, trim it back. Let the good guys experience a little victory here and there. Not big victories, but enough to keep them inspired. They need to stay motivated. Think about it for a minute. If you were in your novel and you experienced nothing but setbacks, you'd probably give up. So would your protagonist.
You should also break up the tension with other scenes. I like to use tender moments between characters. This helps build character and relieves some of the ongoing tension. A love scene or a death scene introduce a different kind of tension (if your story isn't primarily about either of these things), giving the reader a little break and bringing some realism into your story.
Picture that roller coaster again in your mind and try to mimic it with the drama in your novel. But there is one thing you should never do -- don't ever bring the bad guy back to life. It's ridiculous and you're only creating artificial tension. Bad guy dies and -- ack, he's not dead yet! It's been done and it's never done well. He's either dead (or at least defeated) or he's not. The only time this comes even close to working is when the bad guy fakes his own death, but even this is dicey. Better just stick with the realm drama if you want your readers to come back for more.
Drama is an important component in any novel so it pays to focus your attention here for a period of time. Go through your story and make sure the drama is balanced and realistic. In this manner you'll be able to craft a story that pleases readers and brings them back for more.
Books have formats. All books. They don't necessary have the same format, but they all have a format. If they didn't, they'd be no more than a mishmash of words that make absolutely no sense. Novels have a specific basic format, but within that basic format is room for an astounding number of variations.
Still, it's important to adhere to certain rules when writing a novel. This is partly because your readers will expect a basic structure, but it's also about refinement. Stories have been told for as long as humans have been around. In that time, the art of storytelling has been honed and refined. It's now down to a science. So when creating the structure for your novel, stick with the basics, but don't be afraid to get creative.
Your Novel Must Have a Beginning
I know this sounds like a ridiculously obvious statement, but I really felt it had to be said. In all the flurry over starting your book with a hook, with action, or even in medias res (in the middle of things, for those unfamiliar with the term), authors tend to forget that the beginning of a novel has more than one purpose. Yes, the beginning should hook your readers, make them want to keep reading, but it must do other things as well.
The beginning of your novel must introduce your characters, and must do this effectively. Beginning a novel in medias res is no excuse for skipping this all-important part of writing a novel. You have to introduce at least one of the primary characters in your novel and you have to establish where the novel is taking place. You also have to get the plot moving.
These three things -- characters, setting, and plot -- should be bound together right from the beginning. You have to identify your characters, setting, and conflict almost immediately. It's okay if the conflict in Chapter 1 isn't necessarily the big conflict of the novel. It's even normal. But these things still need to be there if you want to get your novel off the ground.
Don't Ignore the Middle
I can't tell you how many books I've read in the last ten years have weak middles. It's almost as if authors are writing the beginnings, the endings, and then just throwing words at a page to come up with the easiest way to get from A to B. But the middle of a story deserves just as much attention as any other part of your novel.
Nothing between the beginning of your story and the end is random. Everything that happens should flow from the choices and actions of your characters. So it has to make sense. Consider an event that happens on one side of a mountain range. But your main character starts the story on the other side. Part of the middle of your story will be about your character crossing the mountains. But why? No one just wakes up one days and decides to cross a dangerous mountain range. Your protagonist must have a reason for crossing those mountains, and it must be a believable reason.
I've read books lately that ignore the plausibility factor. Characters do things purely because it will further the plot, but they have no real motivation for their actions. This is a result of ignore the middle part of the story.
The middle of the story should also be made up of conflict and confrontation. Not the final conflict, but the little things that lead up to the final conflict. Think of it as putting your protagonist in a vice (emotional of physical). You slowly tighten the vice, and the majority of this tightening happens in the middle of the story.
Pay attention to this tightening. In fact, spend most of your time refining this tightening. Each little confrontation should bring the protagonist closer to the climax of the story. This tightening should continue until you're ready to tackle the final climax.
The End of a Novel is Important
One of the greatest crimes a novelist can commit is to let the reader down, and this inevitably happens at the end of the novel. You've hooked the reader, you've kept their interest, you've ensured the middle of your novel shines. And then you ... lose it. You wrap up your story in the fastest way possible, just wanting to get it over with. This leads to sloppy writing and *gasp* scene stealing.
What is scene stealing? It's the thing that sometimes happens when you're in a rush to finish a story. A minor character (sometimes the villain) become convenient, and you use him or her to wrap up the story. They effectively steal the scene from your protagonist. This usually happens because it's sometimes easier to use another character to do what the protagonist is supposed to do. I've seen it a lot with newer writers.
But don't let this happen in your book. If it seems to be happening despite your best efforts, you've probably chosen the wrong protagonist. If you can correct it with relative ease, you were probably just being lazy in the first place. Either way, you don't want any scene stealing at the end of your novel.
Scenes are Miniature Novels
Each scene (or chapter, depending on how you've organized your novel) should also have a beginning, middle, and end. This doesn't mean you have to reintroduce you characters with every scene, but you should look at each scene as a story in itself. Does it make sense? Does it do its job? If not, can you fix it? What does it contribute to the overall story? Should that scene exist at all? Evaluate each scene as an individual, and as a greater whole. And don't be afraid to hit the 'delete' key.
You need a beginning, middle, and end. Don't confuse your readers, don't leave them hanging, and above all, don't let them down. Polish each part of your novel until it shines. Then go back and polish each individual chapter until it glistens.
A plot seems like a straightforward thing, even when that plot is complex. A leads to B which leads to C and so on. It’s kind of like driving a car down a road with no forks. The road may meander a little, but you don’t really get lost.
But that analogy only applies to a finished plot. Developing a plot is another story entirely. It’s more like climbing a mountain that changes constantly. You lose your footing and suddenly you’re back where you started and the path ahead has altered. Creating the entire arc of your story takes commitment and just a little bit of luck.
Starting the Arc of Your Plot
I, like many writers, have the most difficulty with that opening chapter, the very beginning of my plot, the very base of the mountain. It can be difficult to know exactly where to begin. You need to grab your readers, get them interested so they’ll keep reading, but without confusing them so much that they put the book down. Picking out your first plot point can be a frustrating experience.
There are many ways to engage the reader. You can (and usually should) start with some piece of action. This action could be physical, but it also could be an emotional, mental, or even spiritual conflict. You have to figure out where your story really beings so you can tell it well.
One problem that arises is that sometimes you really feel that you need to start your story in a spot that is almost devoid of action. This happens to me with distressing frequency. I often get the urge to start a story with exposition or just plain character development, which is contrary to what most authors do.
There are many ways to compensate for this little problem. My favorite is to simply add a prologue. This way, I can add some action that is relevant to the story without interrupting the arc of the story. This doesn’t work for every story. In fact, it rarely ever helps. Most of the time, you’ll still need to find that inciting incident to start with. Once you’ve got that, you can move on to the core of your story.
Building Suspense With Your Plot
A good book builds suspense. This is true regardless of the genre. You need to have a series of events that will eventually lead to the big crisis in the novel, a struggle to get to the top of the mountain. This can happen over a single chapter or it might be stretched out through 50,000 words. The point isn’t how long it takes for the characters in your novel to get there. It’s simply to get there.
For the most part, the suspense-building part of developing your plot is all about throwing up hurdles that your characters, and especially your protagonist, have to overcome. They don’t necessarily succeed. At least, not at this point in the story. And if they do succeed, be prepared to introduce a new complication, one that doesn’t get solved right away.
The Crisis of the Novel
Novels are based around conflict of some sort. You might find it difficult to really define the ultimate crisis of your story while you’re in the middle of developing your plot. Step back and remind yourself of your story arc. If we’re sticking with the mountain analogy, the crisis of the story would be the mountain itself. It’s the entire point of the story, the “big bad” as some people would say. The crisis will vary, of course, depending on the type of book you’re writing. If you’re writing sword and sorcery fantasy, the crisis might be an evil mage who captured the princess. Historical romance often involves a guy pursuing a girl, but the girl is … reluctant. Your crisis can be physical or emotional. It really depends on the type of story you’re creating.
Both of my examples sound a little cheesy and overdone, but in the hands of a talented author, they become a unique and interesting story. The trick to developing a plot that will engage and keep your readers is to never stray too far from the crisis, from the purpose of the story. One way to think about this stage of developing your plot is to come up with the absolutely worst thing that can happen to your characters. Put them in a situation that seems hopeless. This is crisis moment of your story.
The Climax of the Story
When you reach the top of the mountain, something has to happen. And that something had better be the climax of the story. If you’ve done your job as a writer, the climax of the story will happen quickly, not be drawn out over five or ten chapters (unless those chapters are relatively short).
This part of the novel can be described as the resolution of the crisis. Your protagonist can’t sit in that oubliette until the day he dies. Well, he can, but that wouldn’t make for much of a story unless the entire thing takes place in his head, which would make him just a little crazy. In almost all cases, you eventually have to let the story resolve.
The climax should be swift and logical. The protagonist can’t suddenly find the key in his pocket if it wasn’t there before. And if it was there, why didn’t he use it? Things have to make sense, especially the climax of your story. This is where you can turn readers off your work for good if you’re not careful.
Make sure that everything that happens here has been set up in some way, even if the reader didn’t realize it at the time. If a reader can look back through your book and pick out the clues that led to the climax, then you’ve developed your plot to the point where every piece of the puzzle makes sense at the end.
Resolving Your Story
You may have resolved the crisis, but in most cases, there will still be a little left to wrap up. You can’t leave your readers standing on the top of the mountain. You have to bring them down the other side and pull all the various parts of the story together.
This is where subplots and relationships can be resolved. If you had two characters that hated each other but grew close over the course of the story, here is where you can really make that point. Maybe all the confusion and action was really about a son’s need to separate himself from his overbearing mother. If that’s where the story started, you have to take it back there. Make your story come full circle and your readers will walk away satisfied.
If you’ve managed to navigate the intricacies of developing a cohesive plot, you should have a well-rounded story on your hands. Examine your plot and determine what approach you should use for writing the novel itself. If you’re the type of writer who likes to use a novel outline, the blueprint approach might be for you. Perhaps you’re more of a bits and pieces person. However you approach writing your story, keep the arc of your story in mind and you will soon have a finished product on your hands.
Short stories are unique creatures in their own right, and writing one takes a certain attention to the development of your plot. It's not novel, so you have limited space in which to get from beginning to end. Because of this, there are really only two kind of development you can indulge in while writing a short story, and you can't deviate from your story.
The two kinds of development you might choose to employ in your short story are rising action and progression toward a new understanding. These are very different, but can sometimes be found in the same short story.
Rising action is action taken to solve a problem. In this type of story, action is the result of obstacles which are encountered. The protagonist usually fails to resolve the problem immediately (it's not much of a story if everything just gets better). A good example of this is an infection running loose in a hospital. The protagonist must work quickly to contain the infection before it spreads to the general populace. A time limit helps to make the action rise faster. In a short story, this time limit is often necessary to avoid turning the short story into a novel.
Progression toward a new understanding involves the psychology of the characters. Conflict arises from the interaction of the characters, often enhanced by outside forces. The characters of the short story are pushed and prodded toward realizations, changes, or breakthroughs of a psychological nature. An example of this type of plot development might involve a mother grieving and depressed after the loss of her child. An unexpected visitor might arrive, jarring the mother out of her depression and allowing her to move on with her life. Not a lot of action, but a powerful story nonetheless.
These two can sometimes be combined, but if you're writing a short story, be wary of doing so. The traditional length of a short story is 3000 words, but never more than 10,000 words. With so few words to work with, you might find your short story quickly becoming a novella or even a novel. If you don't mind ending up with a longer story than you originally intended, then experiement with different approaches.
Without a plot, a novel just isn’t a novel. Something has to happen that will engage the readers and keep their attention, or a novel isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. In order to create an engaging plot, there are some elements that must not be overlooked.
Start the Story With Action
Start your story with some point of action or suspense. Your audience wants to be immersed into your novel within the first page, so get on with the story. There will be time later to provide your readers with all the background information they could possibly want. For now, get the attention of your readers by jumping right into the action.
Where are the Main Characters?
If you want a book that grabs the attention of your readers and doesn’t let them go, then you have to introduce your main characters. Within the first page or two, you’ll need to have at least one of your main characters make an appearance. You might have certain characters who, of necessity, do not make an appearance until later in the book, but you can’t start your book without at least one of them.
If you want to take a bit of a risk, try introducing your antagonist first. The hero can come later. However, if you’re going to do this, you’ll need to really hook your audience with suspense. Give them a reason to keep reading, to meet the hero (or heroes), or they’ll toss your book out the window.
Every Character in a Novel Needs a Motive
Like real people, the characters in your story shouldn’t do anything without a reason. If your hero goes to an inn and discovers a crucial piece of information, he’d better have a good reason for going to that inn. Even if that reason is as benign as needing a place to stay for the night. Just make sure he didn’t travel ten miles out of his way with no real motive. At least let him meet up with an old friend, or something along those lines. Your characters have to have believable motives, or your audience just won’t buy it.
Keep the Action Moving in Every Chapter
Your book started with a wonderful hook and now … somewhere along the way, you lost it. You started meandering, and while you eventually wrapped up your plot (along with the subplots you so carefully crafted), it’s taken so long and had so many boring bits that your readers became lost and confused. If you want to keep your readers, you need to keep the action going.
Reexamine your entire story. Do you have chapters, maybe several in a row, where nothing really happens? Bits of text that do absolutely nothing to advance your plot? Get rid of them. Don’t worry if it shortens your novel. I’d rather read a story of a mere 80,000 words that was cohesive and entertaining than one twice as long that seemed to forget the point halfway through.
Keep your plot moving forward, avoid common mistakes, and be aware of the basics of writing fiction, and you will find that your story slowly comes together. Write what you love, and soon you will have an end product that your readers will thank you for.
All novels have plots. Some are complex, some very simple, but every story you read has a plot of some kind. However, creating a plot for a novel is not simply the recounting of sequential events. To write a story with an engaging plot, you must be creative, descriptive, and decide what, exactly, needs to be a part of your plotline.
Don’t Tell the Same Old Story
As a reader, nothing annoys me more than going to the bookstore and finding three apparently different books with the same basic plotline lined up next to each other. Sure, the details are different, and there might be some twists that aren’t identical, but the stories are so similar, it just doesn’t make sense to spend my hard-earned money on all three. One is enough.
As a writer, I just don’t see the point of writing a book that’s essentially a carbon copy of something else that’s already out there. Taking someone else’s storyline and trying to manipulate it to come up with something semi-creative is just ridiculous. Instead, I try to sit down and come up with a story that I feel is at least a little unique.
If you don’t want to bore your readers, go to your local bookstore, check out what kinds of books are being written, and deliberately write something else. The same old story will only turn off any readers you’re hoping to attract.
Manipulate Your Plot for a More Creative Story
One thing that irritates me as a reader is a plot that just plods along. I want more out of a story than a simple list of events. I want something engaging, something that draws me in, and certainly something unexpected.
As a writer, accomplishing this is my primary task. There are several ways to manipulate your basic plot and keep your readers interested. While not all of these need to be used in a single novel, they should at least be considered as ways of enhancing your plot. Some of these techniques are:
- Try telling events out of order. Waiting before you fill in the gaps can keep readers curious.
- Pick the events that truly help to move your plot forward, and focus on those. Having too many "extras" can detract from the telling of your central story.
- Leave out a crucial detail and let your readers try to puzzle it out. This will keep your readers guessing, and hopefully keep them interested.
Do I Need a Plot Outline?
The answer to this question is "maybe." For some writers, such as myself, letting a plot flow naturally results in a better product. If you do choose to forgo an outline, just let your creativity take over. It’s a good idea to have a pad of paper beside you where you can jot down ideas that don’t fit into your current plotline. You might be able to use them in a different novel.
This method of writing can lead to some wonderfully creative and rich plots. However, the downside is that if you encounter the dreaded writer’s block, it can be difficult to find your focus again.
On the other hand, outlines are helpful to stay on track and get your characters from point A to point B. You can keep your focus on the main elements of your story, developing it to its fullest extent. Having a prepared outline, whether sketchy or full of details, can also help you to get through writer’s block, since you already know where your characters are heading.
While this method of writing is a little more orderly than working without an outline, for some writers, it can feel a little like writing while on a leash.
Knowing What to Leave Out
Sometimes, the most difficult part of any plot is deciding which information is not really necessary. It’s quite easy to end up with several chapters worth of information that isn’t really related to the plot. This can really hurt a novel.
As an example, if your main character takes a drive to a different state, meets some interesting people, has tea with a lady he’ll never see again, and returns home, all without anything happening that matters to the plot, you’ve probably just wasted paper. If, on the other hand, he discovers an important clue while on his little road trip, then perhaps his little journey, or at least a part of it, does belong in the story.
The point here is to eliminate anything that’s completely useless. Your readers probably don’t care about irrelevant details. They want substance, plot, and something engaging. If a piece of information isn’t any of these things, it can probably be ignored.
What you write about is up to you. Your plot, characters, and genre are up to you. However, if you want a novel that will grab the interest of your readers and keep them captive, try to keep your plot creatively moving forward. Keep in mind the above tips and the essential elements of plot, and always believe in your own story.
If you can do this, then getting started in the world of creative writing becomes just a little easier.
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