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How to Write a Novel (Without Fail): The Ultimate 20-Step Guide

by Joe Bunting | 0 comments

Want to Become a Published Author? In 100 Day Book, you’ll finish your book guaranteed. Learn more and sign up here.

What if you could learn how to write a novel without fail? What if you had a process so foolproof, you knew you would finish no matter what writer's block throws at you? The zombie apocalypse could finally strike and you’d still face the blank page to finish your novel.

Every day I talk to writers who don’t know how to write a novel. They worry they don’t have what it takes, and honestly, they’re right to worry.

Writing a novel, especially for the first time, is hard work, and the desk drawers and hard drives of many a great writer are filled with the skeletons of incomplete and failed books.

The good news is you don't have to be one of those failed writers.

You can be a writer that writes to the end.

You can be the kind of writer who masters how to write a novel.

Table of Contents

Looking for something specific? Jump straight to it here:

1. Get a great idea 2. Write your idea as a premise 3. Set a deadline 4. Set smaller deadlines building to the final deadline 5. Create a consequence 6. Strive for “good enough” and embrace imperfection 7. Figure out what kind of story you’re trying to tell 8. Read novels and watch films that are similar to yours 9. Structure, structure, structure! 10. Find the climactic moment in your novel 11. Consider the conventions 12. Set your intention 13. Picture your reader 14. Build your team 15. Plan the publishing process 16. Write (with low expectations) 17. Trust the process and don’t quit 118. Keep going, even when it hurts 19. Finish Draft One . . . then onward to the next 20. Draft 2, 3, 4, 5 Writers’ Best Tips on How to Write a Novel FAQ

My Journey to Learn How to Write a Novel

My name is Joe Bunting .

I used to worry I would never write a novel. Growing up, I dreamed about becoming a great novelist, writing books like the ones I loved to read. I had even tried writing novels, but I failed again and again.

So I decided to study creative writing in college. I wrote poems and short stories. I read books on writing. I earned an expensive degree.

But still, I didn’t know how to write a novel.

After college I started blogging, which led to a few gigs at a local newspaper and then a national magazine. I got a chance to ghostwrite a nonfiction book (and get paid for it!). I became a full-time, professional writer.

But even after writing a few books, I worried I didn’t have what it takes to write a novel. Novels just seemed different, harder somehow. No writing advice seemed to make it less daunting. 

Maybe it was because they were so precious to me, but while writing a nonfiction book no longer intimidated me—writing a novel terrified me.

Write a novel? I didn’t know how to do it.

Until, one year later, I decided it was time. I needed to stop stalling and finally take on the process.

I crafted a plan to finish a novel using everything I’d ever learned about the book writing process. Every trick, hack, and technique I knew.

And the process worked.

I finished my novel in 100 days.

Today, I’m a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of thirteen books, and I'm passionate about teaching writers how to write and finish their books. (FINISH being the key word here.)

I’ve taught this process to hundreds of other writers who have used it to draft and complete their novels.

And today, I'm going to teach my “how to write a novel” process to you, too. In twenty manageable steps !

As I do this, I’ll share the single best novel writing tips from thirty-seven other fiction writers that you can use in your novel writing journey—

All of which is now compiled and constructed into The Write Planner : our tangible planning guide for writers that gives you this entire process in a clear, actionable, and manageable way.

If you’ve ever felt discouraged about not finishing your novel, like I did, or afraid that you don’t have what it takes to build a writing career, I’m here to tell you that you can.

There's a way to make your writing easier.

Smarter, even.

You just need to have the “write” process.

How to Write a Novel: The Foolproof, 20-Step Plan

Below, I’m going to share a foolproof process that anyone can use to write a novel, the same process I used to write my novels and books, and that hundreds of other writers have used to finish their novels too.

1. Get a Great Idea

Maybe you have a novel idea already. Maybe you have twenty ideas.

If you do, that’s awesome. Now, do this for me: Pat yourself on the back, and then forget any feeling of joy or accomplishment you have.

Here’s the thing: an idea alone, even a great idea, is just the first baby step in writing your book. There are nineteen more steps, and almost all of them are more difficult than coming up with your initial idea.

I love what George R.R. Martin said:

“Ideas are useless. Execution is everything.”

You have an idea. Now learn how to execute, starting with step two.

(And if you don’t have a novel idea yet, here’s a list of 100 story ideas that will help, or you can view our genre specific lists here: sci-fi ideas , thriller ideas , mystery ideas , romance ideas , and fantasy ideas . You can also look at the Ten Best Novel Ideas here . Check those out, then choose an idea or make up one of your own, When you're ready, come back for step two.)

2. Write Your Idea As a Premise

Now that you have a novel idea , write it out as a single-sentence premise.

What is a premise, and why do you need one?

A premise distills your novel idea down to a single sentence. This sentence will guide your entire writing and publishing process from beginning to end. It hooks the reader and captures the high stakes (and other major details) that advance and challenge the protagonist and plot.

It can also be a bit like an elevator pitch for your book. If someone asks you what your novel is about, you can share your premise to explain your story—you don't need a lengthy description.

Also, a premise is the most important part of a query letter or book proposal, so a good premise can actually help you get published.

What’s an example of a novel premise ?

Here’s an example from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum:

A young girl is swept away to a magical land by a tornado and must embark on a quest to see the wizard who can help her return home.

Do you see the hooks? Young girl, magical land, embark on a quest (to see the wizard)—and don't forget her goal to return home.

This premise example very clearly contains the three elements every premise needs in order to stand out:

• A protagonist described in two words, e.g. a young girl or a world-weary witch.
• A goal. What the protagonist wants or needs.
• A situation or crisis the protagonist must face.

Ready to write your premise? We have a free worksheet that will guide you through writing a publishable premise: Download the worksheet here.

3. Set a Deadline

Before you do anything else, you need to set a deadline for when you’re going to finish the first draft of your novel.

Stephen King said a first draft should be written in no more than a season, so ninety days. National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, exists to encourage people to write a book in just thirty days.

In our 100 Day Book Program, we give people a little longer than that, 100 days, which seems like a good length of time for most people (me included!).

I recommend setting your deadline no longer than four months. If it’s longer than that, you’ll procrastinate. A good length of time to write a book is something that makes you a little nervous, but not outright terrified.

Mark the deadline date in your calendar, kneel on the floor, close your eyes, and make a vow to yourself and your book idea that you will write the first draft novel by then, no matter what.

4. Set Smaller Deadlines Building to the Final Deadline

A novel can’t be written in a day. There’s no way to “cram” for a novel. The key to writing (and finishing) a novel is to make a little progress every day.

If you write a thousand words a day, something most people are capable of doing in an hour or two, for 100 days , by the end you’ll have a 100,000 word novel—which is a pretty long novel!

So set smaller, weekly deadlines that break up your book into pieces. I recommend trying to write 5,000 to 6,000 words per week by each Friday or Sunday, whichever works best for you. Your writing routine can be as flexible as you like, as long as you are hitting those smaller deadlines. 

If you can hit all of your weekly deadlines, you know you’ll make your final deadline at the end.

As long as you hold yourself accountable to your smaller, feasible, and prioritized writing benchmarks.

5. Create a Consequence

You might think, “Setting a deadline is fine, but how do I actually hit my deadline?” Here’s a secret I learned from my friend Tim Grahl :

You need to create a consequence.

Try by taking these steps:

• Set your deadline.
• Write a check to an organization or nonprofit you hate (I did this during the 2016 U.S. presidential election by writing a check to the campaign of the candidate I liked least, whom shall remain nameless).
• Think of two other, minor consequences (like giving up your favorite TV show for a month or having to buy ice cream for everyone at work).
• Give your check, plus your list of two minor consequences, to a friend you trust with firm instructions to hold you to your consequences if you don’t meet your deadlines.
• If you miss one of your weekly deadlines, suffer one of your minor consequences (e.g. give up your favorite TV show).
• If you miss THREE weekly deadlines OR if you miss the final deadline, send your check to that organization you hate.
• Finally, write! I promise that if you complete steps one through six, you'll be incredibly focused.

When I took these steps while writing my seventh book, I finished it in sixty-three days. Sixty-three days!

It was the most focused I’ve ever been in my life.

Writing a book is hard work. Setting reasonable consequences make it harder to NOT finish than to finish.

Watch me walk a Wattpad famous writer through this process:

6. Strive for “Good Enough” and Embrace Imperfection

The next few points are all about how to write a good story.

The reason we set a deadline before we consider how to write a story that stands out is because we could spend our entire lives learning how write a great story, but never actually write the actual story (and it’s in the writing process that you learn how to make your story great).

So learn how to make it great between writing sessions, but only good enough for the draft you’re currently writing. If you focus too much on this, it will ruin everything and you’ll never finish.

Writing a perfect novel, a novel like the one you have in your imagination, is an exercise in futility.

First drafts are inevitably horrible. Second drafts are a little better. Third drafts are better still.

But I'd bet none of these drafts approach the perfection that you built up in your head when you first considered your novel idea.

And yet, even if you know that, you’ll still try to write a perfect novel.

So remind yourself constantly, “This first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be good enough for now.”

And good enough for now, when you’re starting your first draft, just means you have words on a page that faintly resemble a story.

Writing is an iterative process. The purpose of your first draft is to have something you can improve in your second draft. Don’t overthink. Just do. (I’ll remind you of this later, in case you forget, and if you’re like me, you probably will.)

Ready to look at what makes a good story? Let’s jump into the next few points—but don’t forget your goal: to get your whole book, the complete story, on the page, no matter how messy your first draft reads.

7. Figure Out What Kind of Story You’re Trying to Tell

Now that you have a deadline, you can start to think more deeply about what your protagonist really wants.

A good story focuses primarily on just one core thing that the protagonist wants or needs, and the place where your protagonist’s want or need meets the reader’s expectations dictates your story's genre.

Plot type is a big subject, and for the purposes of this post, we don’t have time to fully explore it (check out my book The Write Structure here ).

But story type is about more than what shelf your book sits on at the bookstore.

The book type gets to the heart, the foundational values, of what your story is about. In my book The Write Structure , I define ten plot types, which correspond to six value scales. I’ll give an abbreviated version below:

External Values (What Your Protagonist Wants)

• Life vs. Death: Action, Adventure
• Life vs. a Fate Worse Than Death: Horror, Thriller, Mystery
• Love vs. Hate: Love, Romance
• Esteem: Performance, Sports

Internal Values (What Your Protagonist Needs)

Internal plot types work slightly different than external plot types. These are essential for your character's transformation from page one to the end and deal with either a character's shift in their black-and-white view, a character's moral compass, or a character's rise or fall in social status.

For more, check out The Write Structure .

The most common internal plot types are bulleted quickly below.

• Maturity/Sophistication vs. Immaturity/Naiveté: Coming of Age
• Good/Sacrifice vs. Evil/Selfishness: Morality, Temptation/Testing

Choosing Your External and Internal Plot Types Will Set You Up for Success

You can mix and match these genres to some extent. For your book to be commercially successful, you must have an external genre.

For your book to be considered more “character driven”—or a story that connects with the reader on a universal level—you should have an internal genre, too. (I highly recommend having both.)

You can also have a subplot. So that’s three genres that you can potentially incorporate into your novel.

For example, you might have an action plot with a love story subplot and a worldview education internal genre. Or a horror plot with a love story subplot and a morality internal genre. There’s a lot of room to maneuver.

Regardless of what you choose, the balance of the three will give your protagonist plenty of obstacles to face as they strive to achieve their goal from beginning to end. (For best results when you go to publish, though, make sure you have an external genre.)

If you want to have solid preparation to write you book, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of The Write Structure .

What two or three values are foundational to your story? Spend some time brainstorming what your book is really about. Even better, use our Write Structure worksheet to get to the heart of your story type.

8. Read Novels and Watch Films That Are Similar to Yours

“The hard truth is that books are made from books.”

I like to remember this quote from Cormac McCarthy when considering what my next novel is really about.

Now that you’ve thought about your novel's plot, it’s time to see how other great writers have pulled off the impossible and crafted a great story from the glimmer of an idea.

You might think, “My story is completely unique. There are no other stories similar to mine.”

If that’s you, then one small word of warning. If there are no books that are similar to yours, maybe there’s a reason for that.

Personally, I’ve read a lot of great books that were a lot of fun to read and were similar to other books. I’ve also read a lot of bad books that were completely unique.

Even precious, unique snowflakes look more or less like other snowflakes.

If you found your content genre in step three, select three to five novels and films that are in the same genre as yours and study them.

Don’t read/watch for pleasure. Instead, try to figure out the conventions, key scenes, and the way the author/filmmaker moves you through the story.

There's great strength in understanding how your story is the same but different.

9. STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE!

Those were the three words my college screenwriting professor, a successful Hollywood TV producer, wrote across the blackboard nearly every class. Your creative process doesn't matter without structure.

You can be a pantser , someone who writes by the seat of their pants.

You can be a plotter , someone who needs to have a detailed outline for each of the plot points in their novel.

You can even be a plantser , somewhere in between the two (like most writers, including me).

It doesn’t matter. You still have to know your story structure .

Here are a few important structural elements you’ll want to figure out for your novel before moving forward:

6 Key Moments of Story Structure

There are six required moments in every story, scene, and act. They are:

• Exposition : Introducing the world and the characters.
• Inciting incident : There’s a problem.
• Rising Action/Progressive complications : The problem gets worse, usually due to external conflict.
• Dilemma : The problem gets so bad that the character has no choice but to deal with it. Usually this happens off screen.
• Climax : The character makes their choice and the climax is the action that follows.
• Denouement : The problem is resolved (for now at least).

If you're unfamiliar with these terms, I recommend studying each of them, especially dilemma, which we'll talk about more in a moment. Mastering these will be a huge aid to your writing process.

For your first few scenes, try plotting out each of these six moments, focusing especially on the dilemma.

Better yet, download our story structure worksheet to guide you through the story structure process, from crafting your initial idea through to writing the synopsis.

I've included some more detailed thoughts (and must-knows) about structure briefly below:

Three Act Structure

The classic writing advice describes the three act structure well:

In the first act, put your character up a tree. In the second act, throw rocks at them. In the third act, bring them down.

Do you wonder whether you should use three act structure or five act structure? (Hint: you probably don't want to use the five act structure. Learn more about this type with our full guide on the five act structure here .)

Note that each of these acts should have the six key moments listed above.

The Dilemma

I mentioned the importance of a character undergoing a crisis, but it bears repeating since, for me, it completely transformed my writing process.

In every act, your protagonist must face an impossible choice. It is THIS choice that creates drama in your story. THIS is how your plot moves forward. If you don’t have a dilemma, if your character doesn’t choose, your scenes won’t work, nor will your acts or story.

In my writing, when I’m working on a first draft, I don’t focus on figuring out all five key moments every time (since I’ve internalized them by now), but I do try to figure out the crisis before I start writing .

I begin with that end in mind, and figure out how I can put the protagonist into a situation where they must make a difficult choice.

One that will have consequences even if they decide to do nothing.

When you do that, your scene works. When you don’t, it falls flat. The protagonist looks like a weak-willed observer of their own life, and ultimately your story will feel boring. Effective character development requires difficult choices.

Find the dilemma every time.

Write out a brief three-act outline with each of the six key moments for each act. It’s okay to leave those moments blank if you don’t know them right now. Fill in what you do know, and come back to it.

Point of View

Point of view, or POV, in a story refers to the narrator’s position in the description of events. There are four types of point of view, but there are only two main options used by most writers:

• Third-person limited point of view is the most common and easiest to use, especially for new writers. In this POV, the characters are referred to in third person (he/she/they) and the narrator has access to the thoughts and feelings to a maximum of one character at a time (and likely one character for the duration of the narrative). You can read more about how to use third-person limited here .
• First-person point of view is also very common and only slightly more difficult. In this POV, the narrator is a character in the story and uses first person pronouns (I/me/mine/we/ours) and has access only to their own thoughts and feelings. This point of view requires an especially strong style, one that shows the narrator's distinct attitude and voice as they tell the story.

The third option is used much less common, though is still found occasionally, especially in older works:

• Third-person omniscient point of view is much more difficult to pull off well and isn't recommended for first time authors. In this POV, the characters are referred to in third-person (he/she/him/her/they/them), but the narrator has access to the thoughts and feelings of any and all characters at the same time. This is a difficult narrative to pull off because of how disorienting it can be for the reader. Readers are placed “in the heads” of so many characters, which can easily destroy the drama of a story because of the lack of mystery.

One final option:

• Second-person point of view is the most difficult to pull off and isn't recommended for most authors. In this POV, the characters are referred to in second person (you/your). This choice is rarely (although not never) found in novels.

Get The Write Structure here »

10. Find the Climactic Moment in Your Novel

Every great novel has a climactic moment that the whole story builds up to—it's the whole reason a reader purchases a book and reads it to the end.

In Moby Dick , it’s the final showdown with the white whale.

In Pride and Prejudice , it’s Lizzie accepting Mr. Darcy’s proposal after discovering the lengths he went to in order to save her family.

In the final Harry Potter novel (spoiler alert!), it’s Harry offering himself up as a sacrifice to Voldemort to destroy the final Horcrux.

To be clear, you don’t have to have your climactic moment all planned out before you start writing your book . (Although knowing this might make writing and finishing your novel easier and more focused.)

But it IS a good idea to know what novels and films similar to yours have done.

For example, if you’re writing a performance story about a violinist, as I am, you need to have some kind of big violin competition at the end of your book.

If you’re writing a police procedural crime novel, you need to have a scene where the detective unmasks the murderer and explains the rationale behind the murder.

Think about the climactic moment your novel builds up before the final showdown at the end. This climactic moment will usually occur in the climax of the second or third act.

If you know this, fill in your outline with the climactic moment, then write out the five key moments of the scene for that moment.

If you don’t know them, just leave them blank. You can always come back to it.

11. Consider the Conventions

Readers are sophisticated. They’ve been taking in stories for years, since they were children, and they have deep expectations for what should be in your story.

That means if you want readers to like your story, you need to meet and even exceed some of those expectations.

Stories do this constantly. We call them conventions, or tropes, and they’re patterns that storytellers throughout history have found make for a good story.

In the romantic comedy (love) genre, for example, there is almost always the sidekick best friend, some kind of love triangle, and a meet cute moment where the two potential lovers meet.

In the mystery genre, the story always begins with a murder, there are one or more red herrings , and there’s a final unveiling of the murder at the end.

Think through the three to five novels and films you read/watched. What conventions and tropes did they have in common?

12. Set Your Intention

You’re almost ready to start writing. Before you do, set your intention.

Researchers have found that when you’re trying to create a new habit, if you imagine where and when you will participate in that habit, you’re far more likely to follow through.

For your writing, imagine where, when, and how much you will write each day. For example, you might imagine that you will write 1,000 words at your favorite coffee shop each afternoon during your lunch break.

As you imagine, picture your location and the writing space clearly in your mind. Watch yourself sitting down to work, typing on your laptop. Imagine your word count tracker going from 999 to 1,002 words.

When it’s time to write , you’ll be ready to go do it.

13. Picture Your Reader

The definition of a story is a narrative meant to entertain, amuse, or instruct. That implies there is someone being entertained, amused, or instructed!

I think it’s helpful to picture one person in your mind as you write (instead of an entire target audience). Then, as you write, you can better understand what would interest, amuse, or instruct them.

By picturing them, you will end up writing better stories.

Create a reader avatar.

Choose someone you know, or make up someone who would love your story. Describe them in terms of demographics and interests. Consider the question, “Why would this reader love my novel?”

When you write, write for them.

14. Build Your Team

Most people think they can write a novel on their own, that they need to stick themselves in some cabin in upstate New York or an attic apartment in Paris and just focus on writing their novel for a few months or decades.

And that’s why most people fail to finish writing a book .

As I’ve studied the lives of great writers, I’ve found that they all had a team. None of them did it all on their own. They all had people who supported and encouraged them as they wrote.

A team can look like:

• An editor with a publishing house
• A writing group
• An author mentor or coach
• An online writing course or community

Whatever you find, if you want to finish your novel, don’t make the mistake of believing you can do it all on your own (or that you have to do it on your own).

Find a writing group. Take an online writing class . Or hire a developmental editor .

Whatever you do, don’t keep trying to do everything by yourself.

15. Plan the Publishing Process

One thing I’ve found is that when successful people take on a task, they think through every part of the process from beginning to end. They create a plan. Their plan might change, but starting with a plan gives them clear focus for what they’re setting out to accomplish.

Most of the steps we’ve been talking about in this post involve planning (writing is coming up next, don’t worry), but in your plan, it’s important to think through things all the way to the end—the publishing and marketing process.

So spend ten or twenty minutes dreaming about how you’ll publish your novel (self-publishing vs. traditional publishing) and how you’ll promote it (to your email list, on social media, via Amazon ads, etc.).

By brainstorming about the publishing and marketing process, you’ll make it much more likely to actually finish your novel because you're eager for (and know what you want to do when you're at) the end.

Have no idea how to get published? Check out our 10-step book publishing and launch guide here .

16. Write (With Low Expectations)

You’ve created a plan. You know what you’re going to write, when you’re going to write it, and how you’re going to write.

Now it’s time to actually write it.

Sit down at the blank page. Take a deep breath. Write your very first chapter.

Don’t forget, your first draft is supposed to be bad.

Write anyway.

17. Trust the Process and Don’t Quit

As I’ve trained writers through the novel writing process in our 100 Day Book Program, inevitably around day sixty, they tell me how hard the process is, how tired they are of their story, how they have a new idea for a novel, and they want to work on that instead.

“Don’t quit,” I tell them. Trust the process. You’re so much closer than you think.

Then, miraculously, two or three weeks later, they’re emailing me to say they’re about to finish their books. They’re so grateful they didn’t quit.

This is the process. This is how it always goes.

Just when you think you’re not going to make it, you’re almost there.

Just when you most want to quit, that’s when you’re closest to a breakthrough.

Trust the process. Don’t quit. You’re going to make it.

Just keep showing up and doing the work (and remember, doing the work means writing imperfectly).

18. Keep Going, Even When It Hurts

Appliances always break when you’re writing a book.

Someone always gets sick making writing nearly impossible (either you or your spouse or all your kids or all of the above).

One writer told us recently a high-speed car chase ended with the car crashing into a building close to her house.

I’m not superstitious, but stuff like this always happens when you’re writing a book.

Expect it. Things will not go according to plan. Major real life problems will occur.

It will be really hard to stay focused for weeks on end.

This is where it’s so important to have a team (step fourteen). When life happens, you’ll need someone to vent to, to encourage you, and to support you.

No matter what, write anyway. This is what separates you from all the aspiring writers out there. You do the work even when it’s hard.

Keep going.

19. Finish Draft One… Then Onward to the Next

I followed this process, and then one day, I realized I’d written the second to last scene. And then the next day, my novel was finished.

It felt kind of anticlimactic.

I had wanted to write a novel for years, more than a decade. I had done it. And it wasn’t as big of a deal as I thought.

Amazing, without question.

But also just normal.

After all, I had been doing this, writing every day for ninety-nine days. Finishing was just another day.

But the journey itself? 100 days for writing a novel? That was amazing.

That was worth it.

And it will be worth it again and again.

Maybe it will be like that for you. You might finish your book and feel amazing and proud and relieved. You might also feel normal. It’s the difference between being an aspiring writer and being a real writer.

Real writers realize the joy is in the work, not in having a finished book .

When you get to this point, I just want to say, “Congratulations!”

You did it.

You finished a book. I’m so excited for you!

But also, as you will know when you get to this point, this is really just the beginning of your journey.

Your book isn’t nearly ready to publish yet.

So celebrate. Throw a party for yourself. Say thank you to all your team members. You finished. You should be proud!

After this celebratory breather, move on to your last step.

20. Next Drafts: Draft Two…Three…Four…Five

This is a novel writing guide, not a novel revising guide (that is coming soon!). But I’ll give you a few pointers on what to do after you write your novel:

• Rest. Take a break. You earned it. Resting also lets you get distance on your book, which you need right now.
• Read without revising. Most people jump right into the proofreading and line editing process. This is the worst thing you could do. Instead, read your novel from beginning to end without making revisions. You can take notes, but the goal for this is to create a plan for your next draft, not fix all your typos and misplaced commas . This step will usually reveal plot holes, character inconsistencies, and other high-level problems.
• Get feedback. Then, share your book with your team: editors and fellow writers (not friends and family yet). Ask for constructive feedback, especially structural feedback, not on typos for now.
• Next, rewrite for structure. Your second draft is all about fixing the structure of your novel. Revisit steps seven through eleven for help.
• Last, polish your prose. Your third (and additional) draft(s) is for fixing typos, line editing, and making your sentences sound nice. Save this for the end, because if you polish too soon, you might have to delete a whole scene that you spent hours rewriting.

Want to know more about what to do next? Check out our guide on what to do AFTER you finish your book here .

Writers’ Best Tips on How to Write a Novel

I’ve also asked the writers I’ve coached for their single tips on how to write a novel. These are from writers in our community who have followed this process and finished novels of their own. Here are their best novel writing tips:

“Get it out of your head and onto the page, because you can’t improve what’s not been written.” Imogen Mann

“What gets scheduled, gets done. Block time in your day to write. Set a time of day, place and duration that you will write 4-7 days/week until it becomes habit. It’s most effective if it’s the same time of day, in the same place. Then set your duration to a number of minutes or a number of words: 60 minutes, 500 words, whatever. Slowly but surely, those words string together into a piece of work!” Stacey Watkins

“Honestly? And nobody paid me for this one—enroll in the 100 Day Book challenge at The Write Practice. I had been writing around in my novel for years and it wasn’t until I took the challenge did I actually write it chapter by chapter from beginning to end in 80,000 words. Of course I now have to revise, revise, revise.” Madeline Slovenz

“I try to write for at least an hour every day. Some days I feel like the creativity flows out of me and others it’s awkward and slow. But yes, my advice is to write for at least one hour every day. It really helps.” Kurt Paulsen

“Be patient, be humble, be forgiving. Patient, because writing a novel well will take longer than you ever imagined. Humble, because being awake to your strengths and your weaknesses is the only way to grow as a writer. And forgiveness, for the days when nothing seems to work. Stay the course, and the reward at the end — whenever that comes — will be priceless. Because it will be all yours.” Erin Halden

“Single best tip I can recommend is the development of a plan. My early writing, historical stories for my world, was done as a pantser. But, when I took the 100 Day Book challenge , one of the steps was to produce an outline. Mine started as the briefest list of chapters. But, as I thought about it, the outline expanded to cover what was happening and who was in it. That lead to a pattern for the chapters, a timeline, and greater detail in the outline. I had always hated outlines, but like Patrick Rothfuss said in one of his interviews, that hatred may have been because of the way it was taught when I was in school (long ago.) I know I will use one for the second book (if I decide to go forward with it.) Just remember the plan is there for your needs. It doesn’t need to be a formal I. A. 1. a. format. It can simply be a set of notecards with general ideas you want to include in your story.” Patrick Macy

“Everybody who writes does so on faith and guts and determination. Just write one line. Just write one scene. Just write one page. And if you write more that day consider yourself fortunate. The more you do, the stronger the writing muscle gets. But don’t do a project; just break things down into small manageable bits.” Joe Hanzlik

“When you’re sending your novel out to beta readers , keep in mind some people‘s feedback may not resonate or be true for your vision of the work. Also, just because you’ve handed off a copy for beta reading doesn’t mean you don’t have control over how people give you feedback. For instance, if you don’t want line editing, ask them not to give paragraph and sentence corrections. Instead, ask for more general feedback on the character arcs, particular scenes in the story, the genre, ideal reader , etc. Be proactive about getting the kind of response you want and need.” B.E. Jackson

“Become your main character. Begin to think and act the way they would.” Valda Dracopoulos

“I write for minimum 3 hours starting 4 a.m. Mind is uncluttered and fresh with ideas. Daily issues and commitment can wait. Make a plan and stick to the basic plan.” R.B. Smith

“Stick to the plan (which includes writing an outline, puttin your butt in the chair and shipping). I’m trying to keep it simple!” Carole Wolf

“Have a spot where you write, get some bum glue, sit and write. I usually have a starting point, a flexible endpoint and the middle works itself out.” Vuyo Ngcakani

“Before I begin, I write down the ten key scenes that must be in the novel. What is the thing that must happen, who is there when it happens, where does it take place. Once I have those key scenes, I begin.” Cathy Ryan

“In my English classes, I was told to ‘show, don’t tell,' which is the most vague rule I’ve ever heard when it comes to writing. Until I saw a post that expanded upon this concept saying to ‘ show emotion, tell feelings …’. Showing emotion will bring the reader closer to the characters, to understand their actions better. But I don’t need to read about how slow she was moving due to tiredness.” Bryan Coulter

“For me, it’s the interaction between all of the characters. It drives almost all of my novels no matter how good or bad the plot may be .” Jonathan Srock

“Rules don’t apply in the first draft; they only apply when you begin to play with it in the second draft.” Victor Paul Scerri

“My best advice to you is: Just Write. No matter if you are not inspired, maybe you are writing how you can’t think of something to write or wrote something that sucks. But just having words written down gets you going and soon you’ll find yourself inspired. You just have to write.” Mony Martinez

“As Joseph Campbell said, “find your bliss.” Tap into a vein of whatever it is that “fills your glass” and take a ride on a stream of happy, joyful verbiage.” Jarrett Wilson

“Show don’t tell is the most cited rule in the history of fiction writing, but if you only show, you won’t get past ch. 1. Learn to master the other forms of narration as well.” Rebecka Jäger

“We’ve all been trained jump when the phone rings, or worse, to continually check in with social media. Good work requires focus, but I’ve had to adopt some hacks to achieve it. 1) Get up an hour before the rest of the household and start writing. Don’t check email, Facebook, Instagram, anything – just start working. 2) Use a timer app, to help keep you honest. I set it for 30 minutes, then it gives me a 5-minute break (when things are really humming, I ignore the breaks altogether). During that time, I don’t allow anything to interrupt me if I can help it. 3) Finally, set a 3-tiered word count goal: Good, Great, Amazing. Good is the number of words you need to generate in order to feel like you’ve accomplished something (1000 words, for example). Great would be a higher number, (say, 2000 words). 3000 words could be Amazing. What I love about this strategy is that it’s forgiving and inspiring at the same time.” Dave Strand

“My advice comes in two parts. First, I think it’s important to breathe life into characters, to give them emotions and personalities and quirks. Make them flawed so that they have plenty of room to grow. Make them feel real to the reader, so when they overcome the obstacles you throw in their way, or they don’t overcome them, the reader feels all the more connected and invested in their journey. Second, I think there’s just something so magical about a scene that transports me, as a reader, to the characters’ world; that allows me to see, feel, smell, and touch what the characters are experiencing. So, the second part of my advice is to describe the character’s experience of their surroundings keeping all of their senses in mind. Don’t stop simply with what they see.” Jennifer Baker

“Start with an outline (it can always be changed), set writing goals and stick to them, write every day, know that your first draft is going to suck and embrace that knowledge, and seek honest feedback. Oh, and celebrate milestones, especially when you type ‘The End’. Take a break from your novel (but don’t stop writing something — short stories, blog posts, articles, etc.) and then dive head-first into draft 2!” Jen Horgan O’Rourke

“I write in fits and spurts of inspiration and insights. Much of my ‘writing’ occurs when I am trying to fall asleep at night or weeding in the garden. I carry my stories and essays in my head, and when I sit down to start writing, I don’t like to ‘turn off the tap.’ My most important principle is that when I write a draft, I put it out of my mind for a few days before coming back to see what it sounds like when I read it aloud.” Gayle Woodson

“My stories almost always start from a single image… someone in a situation, a setting, with or without other people… there is a problem to be solved, a decision to make, some action being taken. Often that first image becomes the central point of the story but sometimes it is simply the kick-off point for something else. Once I’ve ‘seen’ my image clearly I sit down at the computer and start writing. More images appear as I write and the story evolves. Once the rough sketch has developed through a few chapters I may go back and fill in holes and round things out. Sometimes I even sketch a rough map of my setting or the ‘world’ I’m building. With first drafts I never worry about the grammatical and other writing ‘rules.’ Those things get ironed out in the second round.” Karin Weiss

“What it took to get my first novel drafted: the outline of a story idea, sitting in chair, DEADLINES, helpful feedback from the beginning so I could learn along the way.” Joan Cory

“I write a chapter in longhand and then later that day or the next morning type it and revise. The ideas seem to flow from mind to finger to pen to paper.” Al Rutgers

“Getting up early and write for a couple of hours from 6 am is my preferred choice as my mind is uncluttered with daily issues. Stick to the basic plan and learning to ‘show’ and ‘not tell’ has been hard but very beneficial.” Abe Tse

If you're ready to get serious about finishing your novel, I love for you to join us!

And if you want help getting organized and going, I greatly recommend purchasing The Write Planner and/or our 100 Day Book Program .

Frequently Asked Questions

If you're working on your first-ever novel, congratulations! Here are answers to frequently asked questions new (and even experienced) writers often ask me about what it takes to write a book.

How long should a novel be?

First, novel manuscripts are measured in words, not pages. A standard length for a novel is 85,000 words. The sweet number for literary agents is 90,000 words. Science fiction and fantasy tend to be around the 100,000 word range. And mystery and YA tend to be shorter, likely 65,000 words.

Over 120,000 words is usually too long, especially for traditional publishing. Under 60,000 words is a bit short, and might feel incomplete to the reader.

Of course, these are guidelines, not rules.

They exist for a reason, but that doesn’t mean you have to follow them if you have a good reason. For a more complete guide to best word count for novels, check out my guide here .

How long does it take to write a novel?

Each draft can take about the same amount of time as the first draft, or about 100 days. I recommend writing at least three drafts with a few breaks between drafts, which means you can have a finished, published novel in a little less than a year using this process.

Many people have finished novels faster. My friend and bestseller Carlos Cooper finishes four novels a year, and another bestselling author friend Stacy Claflin is working on her sixty-second book (and she’s not close to being sixty-two years old).

If you'd like, you can write faster.

If you take longer breaks between drafts or write more drafts, it might take longer.

Whatever you decide, I don’t recommend taking much longer than 100 days to finish your first draft. After that, you can lose your momentum and it becomes much harder to finish.

That’s It! The Foolproof Template for How to Write a Novel

Writing a novel isn’t easy. But it is possible with the write process (sorry, I had to do it). If you follow each step above, you will finish a novel.

Your novel may not be perfect, but it will be what you need on your road to making it great.

Good luck and happy writing!

Discover The Write Plan Planner »

Which steps of this process do you follow? Which steps are new or challenging for you? Let us know in the comments !

Writing your novel idea in the form of a single-sentence premise is the first step to finishing your novel . So let’s do that today!

Download our premise worksheet. Follow it to construct your single sentence premise.

Then post your premise  in the Pro Practice Workshop (and if you’re not a member yet, you can join here ). If you post, please be sure to leave feedback on premises by at least three other writers.

Maybe you'll start finding your writing team right here!

Happy writing!

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Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

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Blog • Perfecting your Craft

Posted on Jul 17, 2020

How to Plan a Novel: From Idea to First Draft in 7 Tips

Jumping headfirst into writing your very first novel without any planning is possibly the biggest mistake an author can make. That said, a good plan doesn’t have to be a chapter-by-chapter outline  or a massive document describing every character and setting.

Everyone has their own approach to crafting stories, so rather than giving you a specific guide on how to plan a novel, we’re going to share seven universal tips to help you form a solid foundation for your next writing endeavor. Let’s dive in!

If you're not writing fiction, you might want to check out our guide on how to outline a nonfiction book. 

1. Pick a planning method that works for you

Before we jump into the details of your story, let's discuss the planning approaches available to you. As mentioned before, there isn't a tried-and-true way to plan a novel — the process is specific to both the author and the story that's being told. Some authors type up bullet-point lists, some draw mind maps, some even sketch their characters. Here are just a few methods you may wish to try out.

Book development exercises 📖

Sometimes, all you need to do is ask the right questions, and amazing ideas will present themselves to you! If you’re wondering what those questions might be, check out the following template provided by Shaelin from our Youtube channel, and follow her video series on how to develop a book to see how she puts it to good use.

FREE RESOURCE

Get our Book Development Template

Use this template to go from a vague idea to a solid plan for a first draft.

We also have some writing exercises that might help you flesh out your plot and characters, if you need more inspiration!

The Snowflake Method ❄️

Picture a snowflake, starting at the center and then fanning out to all sides in an intricate design — that’s what your planning process would look like if you use this method . You begin with a simple one-sentence summary of your plot and then branch out to characters, setting, and other details from there.

And just as a snowflake is almost round in shape, the process for this kind of planning is also somewhat circular. You may start with character development, switch to worldbuilding, and then turn back to characters when you feel inspired to do so. Remember, growth in one area can create sparks for another — don’t feel like you have to plan in a particular order, just do what works for you!

The classic free-writing method ✍️

You can’t go wrong with free-writing — it lets you spill out all the thoughts you have about your story and can even help you make connections you’ve never noticed before. Our only advice to you if you intend to use this method is to organize your ideas under these headings: characters, setting, and plot. That way, you’ll be able to find and edit details easily, and you won’t become overwhelmed by your own notes.

2. Zero in on your protagonist

Now we get to the meat of the planning. Every single story follows at least one protagonist — so if you want a foolproof start to your plan, kick things off with your main character(s). But don’t just think about their names and what they’ll look like, as fun as that might be! Instead, to ensure that your novel has strong character development , you should delve into your main character’s core by doing the following.

Choose a goal 🎯

A goal is not just something a character has to work toward. Rather, it embodies that character’s greatest desire: the thing that they care about the most. This ties directly into other parts of their profile , such as temperament and backstory, and informs all of their choices throughout the story.

Let’s take a look at a popular example: The Hunger Games . Katniss Everdeen’s goal to survive the deadly Hunger Games stems from her desire to provide for and protect her family (temperament), a role she’d taken on since her father died (backstory).

A character's goal is the driving force behind every action they take, contributing to their  character arc  and the book's overall narrative arc. By teaming up with her competitors to try and survive, Katniss learns of the extent of the suffering created by the government. Subsequently, her goal extends from merely surviving to leading her family and countrymen in their fight against tyranny.

Reedsy’s Character Profile Template

A story is only as strong as its characters. Fill this out to develop yours.

Outline a belief system ☯

Having nailed down your character’s primary goal, temperament, and backstory, let’s dig a little deeper into their psyche — the parts of your character that may be less obvious on the page. Your protagonist should be a round character with a complex belief system which may include details about:

• How they see themselves in contrast to others;
• What they believe to be their rights; and
• Whether or not they agree with the reigning values of their society.

Not only will this deepen your understanding of your character, but also your plot! Perhaps even more so than their immediate goal, a character’s belief system can give you some great ideas about which kinds of situations you can construct to increase the stakes throughout your book.

For instance, Katniss has always trusted in herself more than the systems that were established around her; she starts out believing that laying low and living a simple life is how she can keep her mother and sister safe. By creating situations where surviving also means defying the state, the book strengthens the former belief while also challenging the latter.

If you’d like to dig deeper into your characters, here are some resources you might find useful:

• Dynamic Characters vs. Static Characters
• 12 Types of Characters Featured In Almost All Stories
• 8 Character Development Exercises to Help You Nail Your Character

3. Create a challenge

If your character’s biggest goal is one side of the storytelling coin, then the central conflict is the other — you need to have both in a novel. Only when there’s something to impede the protagonist in their quest can there be the rising stakes that readers so desire and enjoy.

This obstacle (or series of obstacles) can be a physical antagonist, a status quo, a disruption in the protagonist’s environment, or all of the above. There are plenty of different types of conflict you can use, even in conjunction with one another! However, we suggest you choose a central, impactful conflict when you’re planning your novel. Everything that happens in the story should either add to or resolve this central conflict.

Consider an internal conflict

Not every story needs a strong internal conflict — for example, Sherlock Holmes is more concerned about solving mysteries than searching his soul. But for most genres, a personal struggle can make the character more multi-layered and believable, and the story more compelling as a result.

This internal plight may come from a challenge to the character’s belief system, or a memory from the past that they can’t shake. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice prominently features internal conflicts. Both Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy let their pride and assumptions about one another's backgrounds stand in the way of their romance and, by extension, their happiness. Only by overcoming their prejudices and learning to see past each others' status could they begin to ease the tension and allow their romance to flourish.

Sometimes, internal and external conflicts play off each other and tie the character and narrative arcs together. In this way, sussing out an internal conflict may help you shape the central conflict itself.

4. Find a setting that suits the story

As you’d expect, the setting of a story varies wildly depending on your genre. Say you’re writing historical fiction about soldiers on the Western Front during World War II (think Atonement ) — the setting is part and parcel with the story concept. But even if your setting isn’t quite so intertwined with your novel’s plot, you should still put a good amount of thought into it.

Indeed, whether you’re building an elaborate mythical world or basing your narrative in a real location, it’s important to make sure that this environment helps you tell the story. Not quite sure how to do that? We’ve got a couple of suggestions for you.

Use the setting to enhance your conflict

If you’re choosing from several potential settings, ask yourself which one will most effectively heighten the central conflict. For instance, if your character is trying to find themselves, you might want to set the story in a big city full of exciting opportunities. A small, down-to-earth town may pop up as a stark contrast to that (for example, if your main character goes home for the holidays), but it probably won’t be ideal as your main setting.

One thing to note: though it doesn’t necessarily have to increase the conflict, your setting should never undermine the obstacles in the story. If you’re writing a horror that relies on the main character being utterly isolated, setting it in a theme park with free phone-charging points and maximum 4G signal might not be ideal.

Do some research (if needed)

🧭 For fantasy and sci-fi novels with complex invented social systems, you can look into both lore and existing scientific developments to strike a balance between what’s most interesting and what makes sense. This comprehensive worldbuilding guide , complete with a thorough template, might be of assistance to you.

🌎 For settings based on actual locations, especially those that you haven’t spent much (or any) time exploring yourself, find out more about the general living conditions and common lifestyles there. You don’t have to visit the place to get to know it — use blogs, books, or even Google Street View to construct a convincing image of life in this setting.

5. Decide on an ending

If you’ve written any kind of story before, you’ll know that it’s usually easy to start one, but finishing it can feel like a Herculean feat. Sometimes you lose direction of where the story’s going, sometimes you stumble into a creative cul-de-sac — both are incredibly frustrating. The good news is, you can let the story's ending inspire what happens in the lead-up. In other words, you can reverse-engineer from the finale to create a solid outline for the entire plot!

Pro-tip: Reverse-engineering from the ending is especially useful when planning for a mystery .

By far, the most common, organic way to end a story is to simply resolve the central conflict, giving characters closure and providing readers with answers to all their questions. Star-crossed lovers should get together for the finale, detective stories should end with the solving of a mystery. This is the type of ending you should aim for unless you’re writing a series , in which cliffhangers and open endings may be appropriate.

Follow a character arc

If you’re really struggling to come up with a satisfying finale, let your protagonist’s arc lead the way. After all, the story is about them; if you know where they will end up, that should give you a rough indication of where your story ends. For instance, if your character struggles in a toxic relationship throughout the story, a logical ending might be for them to move out and start up a new, independent life.

Be careful with ambiguous and twist endings

Unclear endings and plot twists have their places in literature — when done correctly, they thrive in literary fiction and mystery novels, respectively. But they’re also challenging to pull off. Writing a twist is often walking the line between not being surprising enough and being overly dramatic to the point where it's unconvincing. As for ambiguities, most readers don’t enjoy being left on the edge — they want a solid, conclusive ending (think "happy ever after" in a romance novel, or the villain's defeat in fantasy stories). So unless you can build onto it well enough, it’s probably safer to avoid twists and open endings.

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6. Consider your novel’s style and structure

Now let’s take a break from the story-based aspects of planning a novel and look at some technicalities. When it comes to style and structure, you may feel inclined to just go with the flow and see what happens. But to help you maintain consistency and avoid tedious revisions, here are a few elements to think about as you plan a novel.

Point of view

Most writers choose between the first and the third person POV. First person gives readers direct access to the mind of the protagonist. Third person, while less intimate, gives you the chance to explore a wider range of events and perspectives in the story.

A middle ground between first and third person is a multiple-POV book, often used for stories with an ensemble cast of characters. Use this breakdown of the benefits of each viewpoint to gauge which one’s the best for your novel. (To be clear, we don’t recommend writing a whole book in second person unless you have an extremely good reason for doing so.)

Note that each POV also comes with its own voice . With first person, the narrator voice is the voice of the protagonist. Using third person POV, not only can you explore the voices of your characters, you can also set the tone for the story. Whether the story is eerie or humorous, whether it's cynical or light-hearted — third person viewpoint can play a big part in determining these.

Most stories will follow a linear timeline, although some might not. Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl , a domestic mystery about the disappearance of Amy Dunne, is a good example of a non-linear story. The chapters don't just switch between Amy's and her husband Nick's viewpoints — they also jump back and forth in time. Nick’s narration tells the story that’s happening now , while Amy’s narration, at least in the first section of the novel, gives the backstory of their marriage. This adds to the suspense, although it might be too complicated a structure for other genres.

Pro-tip: If you do want to follow multiple timelines, it’s best to map everything out onto one big chronology first, so as not to lose track when you write.

Present vs. past tense

Again, there is a trend here: past tense tends to be the go-to for most genres, especially fantasy and science fiction . But that’s not to say that you don’t have a choice.

Present tense gives a sense of intimacy and immediacy to your story, and makes it easy to stage flashbacks. If you want to focus on the “now,” you will likely lean toward using present tense. Just be absolutely sure before you start writing, because editing the tense of several chapters (or a whole manuscript) won’t be easy.

7. Know when to start writing

Some people prefer to have a detailed outline to guide their writing, while others want to discover the story as they write. The decision of when to stop planning and start writing relies entirely on how you work best as an author.

However, before moving on, you should make sure you have at least developed:

✅ A narrative arc with a beginning, midpoint , and end ✅ Character profiles for your main characters ✅ A clear setting

These elements will come up again and again as you write, so having a firm grasp on them should help you immensely, saving you from excessive rewriting down the line.

Pro-tip: When you think you’ve done all the planning you need, leave it for a week before you start writing. That week’s reserved for mulling things over and seeing if you want to change anything.

Once you’ve nailed all those elements down — in other words, once you’ve created a good foundation — you’re ready to start writing that novel !

Continue reading

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How to Write a Novel: 15 Steps from Brainstorm to Bestseller

POSTED ON Apr 8, 2024

Written by Scott Allan

Learning how to write a novel is a dream for many people. But only a handful of could-be-published authors succeed in writing, publishing, and selling a book. The compulsion to write is powerful, and for most serious authors, they must get those stories out and into the hands of readers who need them.

This is where you come in. The world needs your novel. 

Learning how to write a book is hard work, and it takes more than a dream to make it happen. You must be willing to put in work every day to turn that dream into a reality.

In this post, we'll teach you how to write a novel from first idea to finished product in 15 simple steps.

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This Guide to How to Write a Novel Will Cover:

How to write a novel in 15 simple steps.

Here are the steps all new authors should take when learning how to write a novel:

1. Start with a novel idea 

Of course, every novel starts with a book idea . You can't learn how to write a novel if you don't have an idea for the book in the first place.

So, what’s the big picture of your novel? Try to write your novel idea in one sentence. 

It can be something broad, like: Tragic teen love affair that ends in suicide. 

Or, it can be something a bit more specific, almost like a writing prompt : Two teens, from rival families, fall in love and in a shocking twist of events, choose to die together rather than live apart. 

Tips for picking your best book idea

• It must interest you. You’re writing 60k+ words of this novel so if you lose interest, you’ll stop writing. 
• You have knowledge of this kind of book and the subject matter in it. If you write sci-fi, you must have read sci-fi a lot. Romance? You’re reading love stories every waking moment. Your passion for the book idea comes out of your passion for learning about telling this kind of story.
• Test your idea. Talk about it and tell people. 
• Define the conflict . Can you identify the main conflict?

2. Set up a productive writing space

When learning how to write a novel, you should ask yourself if your environment is the best place for writing.

Is it clean or cluttered?

Can you focus or is your room filled with distractions?

Are you alone or do you have friends, roommates, and family members surrounding you?

Is your space creative or chaotic? In my experience, if you live in chaos (ex: noise, distractions, beeps, a loud TV) you’re setting yourself up for failure. You won’t get far with writing before you’re doing something else.

Here are a few ideas to boost author productivity and make your writer’s space something you can actually get writing done in.

• Display your favorite author photos. Find at least twenty photos of authors you want to emulate. Print these out if you can and place them around your room. There is nothing like writing and having your favorite author looking back at you as if to say, “Come on, you’ve got this!”
• Hang up a yearly calendar. Your book will get written faster if you writing goals for each day and week. The best way to manage this is by scheduling your time on a calendar. Schedule every hour that you commit to your author’s business. What gets scheduled, gets done .
• Get a writing surface and chair. There are two types of desks and you should consider setting up your writing area with access to both. The first is the standing desk, which helps you avoid the unhealthy practice of sitting down for long periods. For sitting, you want a chair that is comfortable but not too comfortable. You can balance your online time between sitting and standing. For example, when I have a three-hour writing session, I do 50/50.
• Create a clutter-free environment. If there is any factor that will slow you down or kill your motivation, it is a room full of clutter. A great book I recommend for this is the 10-Minute Declutter: The Stress-Free Habit for Simplifying Your Home by S.J. Scott and Barrie Davenport. 

3. Mindmap your novel

You have the idea for your book, but the next step in learning how to write a novel is researching.  For instance, I’m writing a story where the protagonists become involved in an international scandal that takes them from the U.S. to Europe, from London to Paris to Athens. They are pursued by assassins with a lot of sophisticated weapons. At the end of the book, the protagonists escape via a submarine from Russia, only to be pursued by another submarine that ends in a big battle 3,000 meters underneath the ocean.

But wait a minute… I’ve never been to Europe. And I’ve never handled “sophisticated weapons” that shoot real bullets.

Submarines? I’ve read about them in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October . How do I write a book that requires so much know-how? Research is a necessary part of your book when you learn how to write a novel. It must be believable. This is true regardless if it is a reverse harem story, sci-fi space epic, or underwater action-adventure.

The details must be right.

First, start by writing down all the ideas you have. Set a timer and start writing – don't worry about fact or accuracy. This is your time to mindmap.

To mindmap a book , I like to use the “bubble method. I start with a central topic or theme in the book and surround it with smaller bubbles of secondary topics or ideas. These ideas, as they get fleshed out, will become the basis of my book chapters.

Write down every thought you have about the book and information you get from researching and keep branching off from whichever bubbles the thoughts relate to. You will eventually end up with an extensive mindmap that will help you to outline your book.

Tips for your novel research process 

• Visit your local library
• Conduct interviews with real people
• Gather data and info from “reliable resources” on the Internet
• Watch YouTube videos
• Read books in your genre (mentioned previously)
• Refer to Atlases and World Almanacs to confirm geography and cultural facts

4. Create your characters

Your characters help tell your story, and play a huge role in guiding readers through your storyline. 

When learning how to write a novel, you need to create a character profile for each character. Knowing how to build life-like characters is a huge step in knowing how to write a novel successfully.

Initial questions to consider when you create a character are:

• What motivates them?
• What is their character name ?
• What are their flaws?
• What is their purpose?
• What do they look like?
• What’s their personality type?

Create a protagonist/main character

Every story needs a hero or heroine. But your main character doesn’t always start out as a hero. One day, he or she may be an ordinary citizen and suddenly forced into a situation where they must take action or suffer the consequences.

Your protagonist must be…

• Challenged throughout the novel. There will be a series of scenes described as incidents or pivot scenes when everything is changed when the hero will be challenged to act in a way that pushes them out of their comfort zone.
• Realistic and believable. They have a weakness and character flaws that make them vulnerable.
• In pursuit of a goal. By the end of the novel, this goal must be achieved.
• Changed for the better. By the end, your main character will become a better person after winning against impossible odds.

Create an antagonist

Writing the villain , the bad guy, the character who is out to stop your hero/protagonist is a tough job. Both characters have similar goals—to overcome the other in hopes of winning the big game, whatever that may be.

The antagonist is motivated by something they absolutely must have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it. This goal is revealed right away in the novel and becomes the driving force behind the novel’s pacing.

As with the protagonist, your villain’s motivation has to be so strong, they are willing to do anything, go to any distance, to achieve it.

This results in a massive, edge-of-your-seat climax. 

The essence of your novel can best be described as your protagonist's world clashing with the antagonist. Both characters try to bring balance to this world by overthrowing the other. If you learn how to write a novel with this goal in mind, you will be on track to write a gripping novel with scene after scene built on conflict.

Sketch out your minor characters

These are the characters that drop in and out of a novel, or they appear for a brief moment to deliver a message, play a part in the protagonist’s journey, but their appearance is brief. Learning how to write a novel requires making a list of your minor characters that will appear throughout the book. You don’t have to go into any lengthy descriptions. Keep details brief and remember: If your character isn’t engaged in the story, they shouldn’t be there.

5. Outline your novel

You have your characters mapped out. But now you need scenes for them to carry out the story. The next step in how to write a novel is to use novel writing software to get all your ideas organized into a book outline.

In fiction, most novels follow the “Five Key Milestones Approach.” There could be dozens of scenes in your book, but the critical scenes are the events that turn everything around.

The Five Key Milestones are: 

• The Opening Scene/Setup

The Inciting Incident

• The Pivotal Complication
• The 2nd Pivotal Complication

The majority of novels, TV shows, and movies (depending on genre) follow this formula. Your readers are trained to expect this kind of pattern. So, we must deliver to satisfy their expectations. Let's explain each milestone a bit further:

Opening Scene/Setup

The opening scene is telling readers the kind of story to expect. You must connect your reader to your character. You can show off a strength, reveal a weakness, or share an in-character insight. Each of these gives the reader a hook into the character, helping them to understand why they should follow along.

Here are the steps to create an opening scene:

• Step One: Create a compelling first paragraph
• Step Two : Introduce your main character
• Step Three : Foreshadow the conflict
• Step Four : Elicit emotion
• Step Five : Leave the chapter on a cliffhanger (to keep them reading)

You also need to acclimate the reader to the setting. What is the setting of a story? Simply put, it is the climate and environment in which your characters are living.

In Fantasy and Sci-fi, you're building entire worlds and new social constructs. In historical fiction, you're taking the reader back into the moments of World War II, the Roman Empire, or whatever time period.

Ideally, you do this on the cover, with the book description, and the categories and keywords you choose. But, you'll also need to make sure that the first couple of chapters give the reader a clear picture of where this story takes place. Remember to show and not tell .

The inciting incident is the moment in your story when your hero’s life changes forever. It is the ‘no-going back’ moment, where nothing that happens afterward will return your hero’s world back to normal.

When this happens, it is full speed ahead and stays that way until the climax. The inciting incident is the doorway they walk through and can never return until things return to normal. That doesn’t happen until the end of the novel after the climax. But by then, your hero has changed and might decide she never wants to return back to the way things were.

Pivotal Complication: The First Slap

The first slap is the moment in our story when everything that our hero has gained is lost in one swift action. Your hero is brought down to nothing. All gains are lost, and your hero’s situation has never been bleaker. Readers need to squirm during this scene. Make your readers uncomfortable, and you will be distilling the storytelling down to perfect science.

Pivotal Complication: The Second Slap

If the first slap wasn’t enough, the second slap has to be worse. Just when your readers think your hero has a chance, you take most of that hope away, save for a sliver. In the second slap, we are setting up for the climax, which means that the hero needs to have an escape route. There should be some hope remaining. It is the “last chance”, the “only chance” for survival. If it fails, all is lost…

The Climactic Scene: “All Hell Breaks Loose”

No scene in your novel is as important as your climax. Everything that has happened up to now has been building towards this climactic chaos. The reader must be so engaged with the climax that by the time they put down the book (or turn off the eReader) they are sweating bullets…and already searching for your next book on Amazon.

6. Establish a writing schedule

Once you have your outline laid out, the next step of learning how to write a novel is to actually write! But in order to do that, you need to have an established writing schedule. Otherwise, it's too easy to put off writing, and you will never end up with a finished book! There isn’t any magic or secret formula. You learn how to write a novel by writing every day no matter what the day throws at you.

The single biggest reason people don’t get a book written is lack of commitment to the writing process, and not the book itself. A book writing coach can inspire accountability during this process and help you stick to a routine. But how do you establish a writing routine , you ask? Well, some writers would say:

• Show up at your desk like any other job. 
• Take five minutes to review your story notes.
• Be clear on what you’re writing.
• Type the first word.
• Type the second word.
• Continue typing for 30-45 minutes.

When I get asked the best way to write, whether you're learning how to write a novel or a nonfiction book, these are the steps I teach writers.

Of course, different authors have different writing routines:

• Haruki Murakami wakes up at 4 a.m. and works for five to six hours
• W.H. Auden would rise at 6 a.m. and work hard from 7:00 to 11:30 when his mind was sharpest.
• Stephen King sits down to write every morning from 8:00 to 8:30.

Whatever routine you decide to follow, remember that the focus is on preparing to write. The routine you implement will be your method for building a successful career as an author .

7. Write your rough draft

Now that you have all the groundwork prepared for learning how to write a novel, it’s time to actually start writing your rough draft .

All the prepping you’ve done until this point means you are set up for success! You know what your novel is about, you’ve researched the idea, and you have your characters, plot, and overall storyline mapped out. 

It’s time to start writing the story that lives inside you! You can ask yourself the questions below to make sure you have everything prepped up to this point and you can also use a book template to speed up the process. But this is ultimately about you taking time each day to write.

• I have determined my writing schedule.
• My writing space is optimized and free of clutter or distractions.
• I have selected a few books in my genre to use as inspiration for my writing.
• I know what genre and subgenre I'm writing for and what type of fiction author I am.
• I researched the heavy details of my book.
• I have sketched out my protagonist and antagonist profiles.
• I am clear on the Earth-shattering climax.
• I am committed to writing now and editing later!

8. Self-edit your novel 

Once your rough draft or manuscript is written, it’s time for the editing process. There are multiple different types of editing we recommend when learning how to write a novel. But you will start with a solid self-edit of your book before sending it to a professional editor. 

Self-editing will take your book to the next level. It will also challenge you as a writer. The material you have spent the past three months [or three years?] working on is ready to be brutally shredded.

Steps for self-editing any novel

• Verbally read through to find any glaring errors. 
• Find areas where depth can be added to the story. 
• Identify any missing details or inconsistencies.
• Catch any repetition.
• Watch for showing vs. telling. 
• Avoid passive voice.
• Do a spell check and grammar check. 
• Don’t over edit.
• Make sure there is a logical flow and order. 
• Eliminate any fluff or unnecessary words. 

For some of these steps, you can use AI to help you edit your book . It's an excellent tool to catch typos and syntax errors that you may overlook!

9. Find a professional editor

Once you’ve done a thorough self-edit, it’s time to hand your book off to a professional editor to really trim away the fat and get your novel publish-ready!

During the editing stage, you may realize you still need to work through your fears and doubts as an author. You may second-guess some scenes or worry about omitting too much. This is why it's important to work with a very skilled editor and book coach during this phase. These people will be your support system and will keep your readers' – and your book's – best interests in mind.

If you aren't sure how to find a book editor , you can find one on Upwork , Fiverr , Facebook groups, or even through the selfpublishing.com team.

10. Revise your novel

Real writing is about rewriting. The rewrite (or revision) is the stage when your book really starts to take shape. Learning how to write a novel is just as much revising as it is actually writing.

Now that your rough draft is written and has undergone a series of edits, it is time to rewrite your book using the feedback you’ve received.

So what do you do if you get your manuscript back and it has more red marks on it than white space?

Simple. You take it as constructive feedback and get to work. Maybe that isn’t the answer you wanted to hear, but there are two choices. You can question the corrections your editor has made, and in some cases, challenge them.

Or, you can work through your manuscript line by line, accepting the corrections as you move through the book, making additions here and there.

Remember: Your editor isn't out to get you. They are there to help you learn how to write a novel better. Catching errors or story inconsistencies now is better than having readers catch them after they have paid for your book.

When it comes time to work through your editing, stick with your editor’s suggestions. Run through the book page-by-page, paragraph-by-paragraph, and line-by-line. Read it as if you are reading it for the first time.

You may also want to get alpha and beta readers to read your novel at this point in the journey. These people will read through your current manuscript through the lense of your ideal reader. And their initial feedback could be invaluable when making touch editing decisions!

11. Decide on your book title

You may have thought the book title would come first, but in my experience with learning how to write a novel, it's actually best to name your book after all is said and done.

At this point, your novel has been written and revised and you know exactly what it is about. Now you can craft a title that will launch your book to bestseller status.

12. Craft the perfect book cover design

After you put the finishing touches on your book, the next step in learning how to write a novel is to create a book cover. While you can try to do this yourself, chances are, you aren't a graphic designer.

If you want a book cover that is truly eye-catching and speaks to your target audience, I recommend hiring a book cover designer to ensure your novel is successful. Your designer will work back and forth with you to understand what you are hoping for, but also provide insight on what will be best from a marketing standpoint.

13. Ensure your book is properly formatted

Book formatting is a step that is often overlooked when learning how to write a novel – but it shouldn't be ignored! The formatting of a book and greatly impact the reader experience, and you wouldn't want to choose a font that hurts your readers' eyes or have words in two different sizes on your page.

There is plenty of book formatting software you can use to get your novel in proper form, but you can also hire a professional formatter to ensure your book is ready for publishing.

14. Start book marketing

Marketing shouldn't happen right before your book launch. It takes months of careful planning to successfully launch your book, and marketing ahead of time is a big part of that.

Once your book is ready for publishing, it's time to start marketing. When learning how to write a novel, there are so many book marketing ideas you can try, from promoting it on social media, to utilizing your email list , to creating a book trailer for your author website .

I highly recommend putting together a launch team of around 100 people who will receive advanced reader copies (ARCs) of your book for free in return for honest reviews. This can help you rack up a bunch of reviews as soon as you launch your book on Amazon KDP .

15. Launch your book!

Last on my list of how to write a novel is preparing your book for publishing. If you are self-publishing your first novel, this stage can be a bit overwhelming, and you will likely want to reach out to experts for help.

Because learning how to write a novel is pointless if you can't actually get your book out into the world!

A successful book launch can require a lot of components you might not think of, such as:

• Learning how to get an ISBN number
• Creating a book launch website
• Hosting a book launch party
• Email/social media marketing
• Determining the correct Amazon KDP tags

Luckily for you, helping authors self-publish their books is what we do around here.

If you've read this guide on how to write a novel and think you'd rather embark on this journey with some support, our team is here to help. Just reach out to one of our talented book writing specialists to talk about your novel idea today! We can walk you through every step of how to write a novel from mindmap to book launch.

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Write Your First Novel

Taught in English

Some content may not be translated

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Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals

Instructor: David Wheeler

Included with Coursera Plus

(304 reviews)

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Beginner level

No experience necessary, just a passionate desire to write a novel.

What you'll learn

You will learn how to write and complete a full-length novel of 50,000 words. You will have a finished manuscript in hand at the end of the course.

Skills you'll gain

• Creative Writing
• Story Telling
• Novel Writing

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There are 26 modules in this course

WRITE YOUR FIRST NOVEL

From Inc.com - The 30 Most Popular Online Courses of 2020 "Write Your First Novel" made the list at #15 https://lnkd.in/gZqscmn If you’ve ever had the dream, the desire or even just a vague notion that you would like to write a novel, this course is for you. Whether you are a full-time student, have a full-time job, a family to take care of or all of the above, you can do it. Really! And I will help you get there. In this Course, you will write your first novel. Many people say they have often thought about writing a novel and are planning to do it someday, but very few ever actually do. However, in this course, you will do it. You will learn how to form a basic idea, any idea, into a structure and discipline that will allow you to create, write and complete a fully-realized novel ready to submit for publication. If you have any concerns regarding the protection of your original work, Coursera's privacy policy protects the learner's IP and you are indeed the sole owners of your work. Here is a link to a trailer for the course. To view the trailer, please copy and paste the link into your browser. https://vimeo.com/385761391/c5e7f873cf Learner review: "It was a great experience, I really enjoyed it." In Write Your First Novel, you’ll learn to break down your creative endeavor into components and you’ll discover a process that will allow you to do what few have done: produce and complete a full-length work of fiction in the form of a 50,000-word novel. Learner Review: "You teach storytelling like no other teacher. I cannot put in words how much I appreciate it. This daily writing, and the product that comes with it, have been a great mental support during the pandemic time. Art is a support for life, as Stephen King said, and thanks to you I experienced it first-hand during this time. I think I will keep writing 500 words per night for the rest of my life. I owe it to you. You taught me how to write a novel, and it works every time. Huge thanks, and wishing you all the best." I am a proponent of experiential learning (also known as active learning). My lectures are short and to the point, designed in a step-by-step process essential to your success as a writer. I will guide you, I will show you how to get there, hopefully I will inspire you. You will learn through your own activity - which is writing! I firmly believe that the only way to become a writer is to write, write, write! Learner review: "As a published author, I took this course to relearn the skills. I thoroughly enjoyed each and every lecture and quiz. This course was very, very helpful and the videos were very well executed. Cheers!" Writing fiction is a truly beautiful thing. Putting your own words on a page to tell a story which enters your readers minds and allows them to share the thoughts, emotions and lives of your characters is a very satisfying, rewarding experience. Learner review: "BEST TEACHER EVER! LOVE THE COURSE."

Week One: Creating the idea for your novel

In Week One you will create a concept for your original novel, your own Intellectual Property (IP). You will write up a pitch document, post it and review the pitches of five of your peers. You will also create a Logline and a Dramatic Question for your novel, post those documents, review the work of five of your peers and revise your own work with the feedback you get from your peers

What's included

3 videos 3 peer reviews 1 discussion prompt

3 videos • Total 11 minutes

• Pitch Your Idea for Your Novel • 5 minutes • Preview module
• Create Your Logline • 3 minutes
• Create The Dramatic Question • 2 minutes

3 peer reviews • Total 180 minutes

• Create the idea for your novel • 60 minutes
• Create the logline for your novel • 60 minutes
• Create the Dramatic Question • 60 minutes

1 discussion prompt • Total 60 minutes

• Form a writers group • 60 minutes

Week Two: Create your character profiles and outline Chapter One

In Week Two you will create profiles for your major characters and write up an outline for the first chapter of your novel.

2 videos 2 peer reviews 1 discussion prompt

2 videos • Total 4 minutes

• Define your characters • 2 minutes • Preview module
• Outline Chapter One • 2 minutes

2 peer reviews • Total 120 minutes

• Create your character profiles • 60 minutes
• Outline Chapter One • 60 minutes

1 discussion prompt • Total 10 minutes

• Reminder to form a Writers Group • 10 minutes

Week Three: Write Chapter One

In Week Three you will begin writing your novel.

2 videos 1 peer review

2 videos • Total 10 minutes

• The Structure of Your Novel • 3 minutes • Preview module
• Write Chapter One • 6 minutes

1 peer review • Total 300 minutes

• Write Chapter One • 300 minutes

Week Four: Write Chapter Two

In Week Four you will write the second chapter of your novel.

2 videos 2 peer reviews

• Outline Chapter Two • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Two • 2 minutes

2 peer reviews • Total 360 minutes

• Outline Chapter Two • 60 minutes
• Write Chapter Two • 300 minutes

Week Five: Write Chapter Three

In Week Five you will write the third chapter of your novel.

1 video 1 peer review

1 video • Total 2 minutes

• Write Chapter Three • 2 minutes • Preview module
• Write Chapter Three • 300 minutes

Week Six: Write Chapter Four

In Week six you will write the fourth chapter of your novel.

1 video • Total 1 minute

• Write Chapter Four • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Four • 300 minutes

Week Seven: Write Chapter Five

In Week Seven you will write the fifth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Five • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Five • 300 minutes

Week Eight: Write Chapter Six

In Week Eight you will write the sixth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Six • 0 minutes • Preview module
• Write Chapter Six • 300 minutes

Week Nine: Write Chapter Seven

In Week Nine you will write the seventh chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Seven • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Seven • 300 minutes

Week Ten: Table Read Chapters One to Seven

In Week Ten, you have the week off from writing. This week, you will get together with a few friends and read Act One, the first seven chapters of your novel,

1 video 1 reading

• Table Read Act One • 2 minutes • Preview module

1 reading • Total 190 minutes

• Table read Act One • 190 minutes

Week Eleven: Write Chapter Eight

In Week Eleven you will write the eighth chapter of your novel.

1 video • Total 3 minutes

• Write Chapter Eight • 3 minutes • Preview module
• Write Chapter Eight • 300 minutes

Week Twelve: Write Chapter Nine

In Week Twelve you will write the ninth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Nine • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Nine • 300 minutes

Week Thirteen: Write Chapter Ten

In Week Thirteen you will write the tenth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Ten • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Ten • 300 minutes

Week Fourteen: Write Chapter Eleven

In Week Fourteen you will write the eleventh chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Eleven • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Eleven • 300 minutes

Week Fifteen: Write Chapter Twelve

In Week Fifteen you will write the twelfth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Twelve • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Twelve • 300 minutes

Week Sixteen: Write Chapter Thirteen

In Week Sixteen you will write the thirteenth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Thirteen • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Thirteen • 300 minutes

Week Seventeen: Write Chapter Fourteen

In Week Seventeen you will write the fourteenth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Fourteen • 2 minutes • Preview module
• Write Chapter Fourteen • 300 minutes

Week Eighteen: Table Read Chapters Eight to Fourteen

In Week Eighteen, you have another week off from writing. This week, you will again get together with a few friends and read chapters Eight through Fourteen, Act Two of your novel.

• Table Read Chapters Eight to Fourteen • 2 minutes • Preview module

1 reading • Total 300 minutes

• Table Read Chapters Eight to Fourteen • 300 minutes

Week Nineteen: Write Chapter Fifteen

In Week Nineteen you will begin the final Act of Your Novel

• Write Chapter Fifteen • 2 minutes • Preview module
• Write Chapter Fifteen • 300 minutes

Week Twenty: Write Chapter Sixteen

In Week Twenty you will write the sixteenth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Sixteen • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Sixteen • 300 minutes

Week Twenty-One: Write Chapter Seventeen

In Week Twenty-One you will write the seventeenth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Seventeen • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Seventeen • 300 minutes

Week Twenty-Two: Write Chapter Eighteen

In Week Twenty-Two you will write the eighteenth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Eighteen • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Eighteen • 300 minutes

Week Twenty-Three: Write Chapter Nineteen

In Week Twenty-Three you will write the nineteenth chapter of your novel.

• Write Chapter Nineteen • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write Chapter Nineteen • 300 minutes

Week Twenty-Four: Write Chapter Twenty

In Week Twenty-Four you will write the final chapter of your novel.

• Write Your Final Chapter • 2 minutes • Preview module
• Write Chapter Twenty • 300 minutes

Week Twenty-Five: Table Read Chapters Fifteen to Twenty

In Week Twenty-Five you will take another week off from writing and table read the final act of your novel.

• Table Read Chapters Fifteen to Twenty • 2 minutes • Preview module

1 reading • Total 310 minutes

• Table Read Act Three • 310 minutes

Week Twenty-Six: Submit Your Finished Novel

In Week-Twenty Six you will submit your completed, polished novel. You will also write a prologue for your novel and a synopsis to submit to agents.

4 videos 1 quiz 1 peer review

4 videos • Total 9 minutes

• Write A Prologue • 1 minute • Preview module
• Write A Synopsis • 2 minutes
• Self Publishing • 2 minutes
• Thank You and Congratulations • 2 minutes

1 quiz • Total 30 minutes

• Final course reflection • 30 minutes
• Submit Your Finished Novel • 300 minutes

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How To Write a Novel: 11 Steps to Writing a Great Work of Fiction

by Kate Sullivan | 2 comments

Ask a random person on the street what their biggest unfulfilled dream is, and odds are many of them will say, “I want to write a novel.”

More than 80% of people aspire to write a book someday—but never get around to it.

If you want to learn how to write a novel and are actually ready to get started, you’re in the right spot.

How to Write a Novel

There are many reasons why you might not take the plunge and put off writing the novel that’s been spinning in your head for months or even years.

You might think you don’t have the time; you might not have been the best student in English class; you might be afraid of what your friends and family will think.

But if you have the passion and drive to write, you should!

Everyone can learn the skills they need to become a better writer, entertain their audience, and write the very best novel they have within them.

And with the publishing revolution of the past few years, anyone who’s willing to put in some time and effort can find a path to getting published.

Whether you choose to pursue a traditional agented deal , go with a small press , or self-publish , you can learn how to write a novel that readers all over the world will be eager to devour.

It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a writer! The trick is, you have to actually get started.

With that in mind, we’ve created a guide to writing your novel that can help you get going and remove the barriers to your dream.

The 5 Essential Steps of Writing Your First Novel

Now that you understand the key elements of a novel, it’s time to get started creating one! Here’s how to write a novel in 5 essential steps .

1. Develop a Story Concept

The first step to writing your novel is creating the concept for your story. Your story concept is the underlying idea that your novel is built on.

What do you want to convey to readers through your novel? What themes do you want to tackle? What’s your goal in writing this book?

Your answers to these questions will shape your novel throughout the process, so it’s worth thinking them through at the very beginning.

You probably already have a pretty solid concept for your novel. Maybe you want to write an inspiring tale of romance that redeems its characters and reaffirms readers’ faith in love. Maybe you want to sweep readers into a thrilling tale of political intrigue that leaves them asking questions about the current state of affairs in the world. Maybe you just want to give them an escape to a magical world where dragons serve tea every day at four.

All of these are great novel concepts!

Take a few minutes to think about what you want to do with your novel—inspire, educate, entertain, provoke, escape—and how you might best do that with your writing. Jot down a few of those themes and goals and use them to help guide you through the writing process.

What tone do you want to take? Serious, funny, provocative, informative, uplifting…? Find the voice that speaks to you and your goals for this novel and its readers.

2. Read Extensively in Your Genre

Whether or not this is your first go at writing, you should make sure you have a thorough knowledge of your genre before starting your novel.

This means if you’re writing a romance novel, you should spend your downtime reading plenty of romance. Take note of both the good and the bad. Get familiar with some of the most common tropes from your genre.

Genres are important because they tell readers what they can expect from a story. For example, if a reader picks up what was marketed as a romance novel only to find the main characters wrapped up in a murder mystery leading one of them to their tragic death and zero chance of a Happily Ever After , they’re bound to be a little pissed.

Study the best examples of writing in your genre, learn what your readers want, and find a fresh way to give it to them.

3. Build Your Setting

Our environments shape how we act, what we think, what we focus on, and what we value. In the case of speculative fiction, in particular, the environment or setting can almost become a character in its own right. For example, strange science-fiction or fantasy worlds are full of intricate detail and unusual elements that make them incredibly challenging (and rewarding) to create.

Historical settings, too, can become virtual characters of their own, loaded with details and nuances that astute readers will appreciate.

Worldbuilding , as the creation of a setting is known, can be one of the most fun parts of writing a novel. But it can also be a little overwhelming—sometimes, in fact, authors get stuck on building the world and never move on to actually writing the story!

Here’s a few ways to get started with creating the setting for your novel.

Use Experiences to Reveal the World

The old principle “ show, don’t tell ” is key here. Much like with creating characters, building a world is all about finding a balance between giving too much description and too little.

When in doubt, don’t tell the reader everything about the setting—drop in little hints as you go, such as what a character sees out of the corner of her eye or what another smells as he rounds a corner. Let us experience the world through your characters rather than explicitly telling us what to imagine.

Tips for Worldbuilding

You may want to consider making a spreadsheet, Word doc profile, or visual inspiration board for your setting. This is especially helpful when creating a sf/f setting or working in a historical context—having a way to organize your research and setting development can ensure that you keep everything straight and have it ready to access when you need to refer to it during the writing process.

It’s also important to make sure that your settings are unique enough that your reader can identify them—it’s confusing and a bit boring if everything is set in the same generic courtyard or sterile room (unless, of course, that’s part of the plot!).

Smooth over Your Research

While it’s admirable to do great background work in creating your setting, putting so much care and attention into the details of your world can also backfire when you start writing.

Many authors have a tendency to “show their work,” especially in sf/f and historical novels. They’ve worked hard to create a vivid setting and they want to show that off!

This creeps into their writing in the form of lengthy paragraphs of detailed background research in historical novels, noting the exact style of the plasterwork or the date a certain light fixture was first introduced.

In sf/f novels, you see it in the form of long asides on the epic history of the world, details on a specific plant or animal that appeared in the background, or extended descriptions of cultural practices.

For the most part, these long descriptions don’t add to the story—they explain background elements that the author has worked hard to learn or create, but they don’t advance the plot, help a character’s growth, or otherwise add to the reading experience.

Smooth over your research and background wherever you can. Ask yourself every time you’re tempted to put in background information: Is this really necessary? How does it move the plot forward?

4. Develop Your Characters

Characters are key to any novel—a series of descriptions of places or events that don’t feature any actual people (or trolls, or talking dogs, or hyper-intelligent plants, or…you get the picture) just won’t engage your readers.

People are social creatures; we like to think about, talk about, and engage with other people.

So the cornerstone of any great novel is great characters .

Great characters, mind you, aren’t perfect people—in fact, the best characters are inherently flawed.

Avoid Absolutes, Stereotypes, and Perfect Characters

Absolutely perfect characters are often referred to as “Mary Sues” and “Gary Stus” —you know the type, with perfect hair, sparkling eyes (often an unusual color), and they’re very relatable but incredibly popular and beloved by everyone who meets them.

They’re also boring as heck, and usually a beginning author’s attempt to either create a likeable main character or live out some wish fulfillment of their ideal self.

In reality, we all have our faults and flaws, and the most engaging characters also show these traits. Maybe your hero has a bad habit of talking over other people. Maybe your heroine is impatient and easily frustrated. Maybe one character picks his nose, or always leaves the toilet seat up.

Flaws, quirks, bad habits, and foibles all make your characters more believable, and make it easier for your readers to relate.

Avoiding perfection goes for your antagonists and villains, too—no villain is ever perfectly evil. Remember, “We’re all the hero of our own story.” So perhaps your dastardly evildoer, who’s always trying to thwart your hero, also visits her elderly grandmother every week with homemade soup.

The more human and relatable your characters are, with a full store of good and bad qualities that come out in the course of the novel, the more engaged your readers will be, because they’ll see some of themselves or someone they recognize in your characters.

Make Characters Individuals

Another key to building great characters is to make them individuals. This goes along with the flaws and quirks—every character should be instantly recognizable as a unique person.

Every person has a motivation —a reason for doing what they do. Some are after power; some want recognition. Others want to be helpful, or fit in with a group, or achieve some particular goal.

Kurt Vonnegut once said, “Every character should want something, even if it’s a glass of water.”

What do your characters want? Give them individual motives and desires and allow that to shape who and what they become in the course of your story.

Tips for Character Creation

With these guidelines in mind, you can start shaping the characters for your novel.

Make Character Profiles

Make a character profile for each of your main and supporting characters. You can also create a Pinterest board with imagery and quotes that relates to your mental image of your character.

Try out different names, jot down character traits (handsome but with a squint, loyal, easily frustrated, etc.), and keep tabs on how the characters relate.

Borrow from Life

Art imitates life, and you should feel free to borrow character traits, speaking patterns, foibles and flaws, and more from people you know or interact with in real life.

It’s probably not a great idea to drop your boss right smack into your horror novel as Murder Victim #1, complete with the same name, personality, and job title, but you can borrow elements of people you know to help create more realistic characters.

This tip also applies when writing dialogue: you want your characters to speak like real people do, not sound stiff or forced, and so borrowing speech patterns from conversations you hear around you every day (complete with contractions, slang, and other “improper” language elements) can help make your novel even more engaging.

5. Choose a Point of View

Once you have a general idea of your storyline and main characters, you should choose a point of view from which to tell your story.

The lens through which you choose to present your story can have a huge impact on how it unfolds and how readers relate.

Do you want to stick to an all-knowing, third-person omniscient narrator? This offers advantages and disadvantages. Similarly, choosing a character to tell the story from the first person point of view offers a very unique perspective, with many benefits and setbacks of its own.

Before you start writing, think carefully about how you want your story to be told and by whom. Consider the benefits and drawbacks for every option, then choose the one that offers your readers the best experience.

6. Shape the Story Arc

You’ll often hear about the “three-act structure” or the “narrative arc” when discussing how to write fiction.

But what do these really mean?

A story arc is the overall shape of your novel. It refers to the rising and falling of tension or emotion, and to the development and successful conclusion of your plot .

The great Greek philosopher Aristotle once said that “A whole should have a beginning, middle and an end.” This is definitely true of your novel!

That said, the beginning of your novel doesn’t have to be the beginning of the story . It can be very effective to pick up the action in the middle of things, a technique called in medias res .

Basically, you jump straight into the action, immediately making your readers want to know what happened to get to this point, and where things are going from here.

That brings us into the overall structure of a good novel. These elements are often called different things by different people, but engaging stories always contain each of these elements to some degree:

Some common story arcs leave out one or more of these elements, and some common arcs handle them in slightly different ways—for instance, the resolution doesn’t always have to be happy (a satisfying end to a novel might be a sad one), and so you might not have the “overcoming” phase in that sad story.

The exact pattern of your story arc will depend on your novel concept, your plot, and what you want to accomplish with your story. But at the very least, you should include:

• Conflict and Tension

The hook is the first thing your reader will see. It’s the opening of your novel, the “can’t put it down” intro that makes them just have to keep reading.

This may be the most important bit of the book, because it will determine whether your readers keep reading .

This is why the in medias res technique is so powerful. When you start in the middle of the action, a reader’s instinct is to want to know what’s happening, why it’s happening, and where it’s going to go from here.

You don’t have to open every novel with a slam-bang action scene, though. Your hook can be more character-driven, too—you can drop us into a moment in the daily life of your main character that gives us a glimpse into who they are as a person, thus hooking us to want to know more about them.

7. Establish Conflict and Raise the Stakes

A story that doesn’t go anywhere isn’t very satisfying, and it’s certainly not a lot of fun to read.

A great story, in contrast, is one where stuff happens . Characters go off on an adventure—or go on a spiritual or personal journey within themselves while seemingly staying put in their lives. The key is that there’s movement of some sort, whether that’s character growth or actual journeys.

There are tons of different ways to approach conflict and tension in your novel.

You might be penning a more literary work where the conflict is internal: the main character is struggling with some great question and has to find her way to clarity and growth.

Or you might be writing an epic space adventure where the conflict is between two sprawling intergalactic empires, both seeking interstellar dominance.

Maybe it’s something in between, where the conflict is between two people, perhaps a gruff rancher and the beautiful real estate developer who wants to put condos next door.

Clearly, there’s room for conflict and tension at every level, and every scope.

Raising the Stakes

The trick here is that your conflict and tension should ratchet up over the course of your story arc.

Start off with a hint of that conflict right at the beginning, so we know something interesting is going to happen. Add a little more tension, then a little more, raising the stakes as you go. Wind things tighter until you stick your characters in a really hard spot that they have to figure their way out of.

That hard spot, the key turning point where your characters’ decisions and actions will make the difference in how the story goes from there, is the climax of your novel, and it’s what everything you’ve been doing is building towards.

Once you hit that tipping point, you’re heading on your way to the resolution .

But it doesn’t need to be a smooth journey from hook to climax to resolution!

Your novel can have a bumpy story arc instead of a smooth one. In fact, this often makes for the most engaging novels!

Consider having several small mini-climaxes before your main climax—put your characters in a few sticky situations and have them deal with them before getting to the key turning point.

Running in Parallel

You can also keep your readers engaged by running multiple story arcs at the same time. You can have one big overall arc, with one or two sub-plots moving alongside it and within it.

This can be very complicated to do, and hard to keep track of all the moving parts, but when it works, it’s dynamite!

Whenever the action slows with one set of characters or one aspect of the plot, you can keep things chugging along by having a sub-plot ready to go and switching to that mini-arc to repeat the process of creating a hook, raising the tension, hitting the climax, and creating resolution.

When we finish a story, we want to feel satisfied—we want to know that something happened and that it’s wrapped up.

Otherwise, something just feels undone or incomplete.

Be sure that your story has a logical resolution: everything that the rising tension has led to comes to a head, ultimately concluding with a scenario that makes sense given everything that’s come before.

This isn’t always a happy ending; all the conflict and drama could turn out such that the main character meets his downfall in some way.

The key is that readers will feel satisfied if things are wrapped up in a way that makes sense given everything that’s happened in the story.

Wrapping It Up: A Warning

This is an area of caution for fiction authors who are creating series: it’s often tempting to leave certain elements unresolved—to not tie up all the loose ends so that you have a ready-made hook for the next book in the series.

But failing to provide a solid resolution won’t entice your readers to pick up the next book; it’ll annoy them, because they feel they’ve been cheated out of an ending.

Think about how you can leave some loose ends dangling to make your reader want to know more, to dive deeper, without leaving them on a cliffhanger at the end of the book.

You might, for instance, resolve your main story arc, but leave one or two sub-plots unresolved, hinting that you’ll pick them up in the next book.

Maybe the main characters defeated the villain, but he got away to fight another day. Perhaps the romantic leads fell in love and got married, but there’s a hint of conflict yet to come because they never did work out the drama with her sister.

Resolve your main source of conflict in a logical and satisfying way, but leave a few threads ready to pick up in the next book. Readers who love what you did in this novel will be eager to follow to the next, knowing that you can craft a satisfying story from start to finish.

Tips for Shaping a Story Arc

One of the best ways to figure out the pacing and shape of your story arc is to draw it.

Kurt Vonnegut once diagrammed the arc and flow of the classic fairy tale Cinderella to show why it’s had such a lasting impact on literature.

We can map out the initial setup, the tension and conflict of being forbidden to go to the ball, the escalation of preparing for the event, the turning point of dancing with the prince, the setback of fleeing and losing her slipper, and the overcoming phase of being identified by the prince and living happily ever after in a solid resolution.

Those ups and downs are what make for a gripping plot and story arc.

Consider diagramming out your own plot to see where you can add some setbacks, overcome obstacles, or otherwise turn a boringly smooth arc into something jaggedly exciting.

8. Write an Outline

Now that you’ve created characters, built a setting, and mapped out your story arc, it’s time to buckle down to the heady business of writing!

To help you do so, you should create an outline before you really start putting words down.

Consider the good ol’ 5 Ws (and an H) :

We’ve already covered several of these in our prep work tips for how to write a novel.

You know who is involved—your characters. You know when and where things are happening—your setting. You have the basics of what is going to happen—your story arc. And you know why it’s all taking place—your concept.

Fill out the how and you’ve got yourself a novel!

9. Experiment with Literary Techniques and Devices

What makes many of the best works of literature so great is the authors’s skilled use of literary devices and narrative techniques.

This doesn’t mean you need to shove metaphors and similes into every crevice of your story. (In fact, an overreliance on such devices can be the mark of a novice writer.)

However, a good use of irony or foreshadowing can go a long way to make a compelling story.

10. Establish a Writing Routine

With your trusty outline in hand, all that’s left to do is start writing your novel. Easy, right?

Well, unless you’re already a #1 bestselling author with a huge platform, you probably still have a day job, or other day-to-day obligations, like your family or other hobbies.

Life happens, and often, these day-to-day duties will keep aspiring writers from finishing their first novel. It becomes a pipe dream, doomed to sit in their desk drawer for eternity, something you’ll get around to “someday” when you “have the time.”

The good news is that with some careful planning, you can make time, as long as writing your novel is truly a priority for you.

No, you don’t need to (and shouldn’t!) quit your day job. Instead, set your alarm clock one hour earlier every morning to get your writing in while you have some quiet time to yourself. Or, if you’re more of a night owl, switch off the late-night talk shows for a while and work on your manuscript.

Develop a strong writing routine that you can realistically maintain. Just a little time every day can help you make loads of progress.

11. Revise and Seek Feedback

When the first draft of your manuscript is complete, print a few copies for some friends, family, or colleagues whose opinions you trust.

They don’t need to be aspiring authors themselves; just having a fresh set of eyes on your work can help you identify plot holes, areas in need of greater development, or other issues that you didn’t notice because you were too close to your writing.

Before you send your work off to a professional editor or a literary agent, make sure that you’ve done some diligent editing yourself and made your manuscript the best it can possibly be. Asking for feedback and insight from others can certainly help you get there.

What to Do Next

Once you’ve finished writing your novel, it’s time to find an editor and study how to get your book published !

Then, create a master marketing plan for your book, starting with some thorough market research.

Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

For more great guides to the world of fiction, read on!

• How to Publish a Book
• How to Write Better Fiction and Become a Great Novelist
• How To Earn a Full-Time Income Writing Fiction Books

Understanding the Different Types of Editing

Kate Sullivan is an editor with experience in every aspect of the publishing industry, from editorial to marketing to cover and interior design.

In her career, Kate has edited millions of words and helped dozens of bestselling, award-winning authors grow their careers and do what they love!

Hi, Kate. Good to have you here. Thanks for making novel writing inviting and attractive. I have learnt a lot from this write up. I know you shall be of great help to me and a dozen of my works. Love what you are doing. Stay blessed

I’m so glad you found Kate’s article helpful, Michael! Best of luck with your writing :)

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The novel form is a large, unwieldy, towering project, and if you find yourself wondering how to write a novel, you might already be daunted by the project’s size and complexity. Good. How you’re feeling is how every great novelist has ever felt before approaching the blank page; you have already put yourself in the same annals as James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Toni Morrison. 

Writing a novel is like building a house: no matter how much planning and work you put into it, there is always more work you can do. No novel is perfect, and the effort required to build believable worlds, complex characters, and an entertaining plot that explores nuanced themes is certainly overwhelming. If you’re here, you’re probably wondering how you can fit all of these requirements into 300-odd pages. The novel writing tips in this article have you covered. 

Whether you find yourself nervous to start writing a novel for the first time, or whether you’re intrigued by the novel form but don’t know where to begin, this article will help ground you in how to write a novel. In truth, there’s no single, one-size-fits-all novel writing roadmap, but use these ideas as a diving board, and you will soon be swimming through the writing process.

This article answers the most important questions in writing a novel, including:

• What is a novel?
• How many words are in a novel?
• What are some different approaches to writing a novel?
• What are the elements of novel writing?
• What fiction techniques can I use in my novel?
• What are some books on how to write a novel?

So, are you ready to learn how to write a novel? Let’s dive into the novel form, the elements that make a novel come to life, and some other novel writing tips to support you on this long and wondrous journey.

How to Write a Novel: Contents

How Many Words Are in a Novel?

How to write a novel: a 6-phase approach.

• The Pantser Method
• The Plotter Method
• The Plotser Method
• Write a Discovery Draft
• The Snowflake Method
• The 5 Draft Method
• Starting with Short Stories
• Point of View
• Plot and Structure
• Style and Tone
• Scene Vs Summary
• Description

Novel Writing Tips: Find Your Voice as a Novelist

Books on how to write a novel, what is a novel.

Before diving into how to write a novel, let’s first demystify the novel itself. A novel is a book-length work of fiction that tells a complete story (or, as is usually the case, multiple stories). By immersing the reader in a world with complex characters, settings, plot points, and themes, novels emulate real life and inevitably impart wisdom about the human experience.

What is a novel? A novel is book-length work of fiction. By immersing the reader in a world with complex characters, settings, plot points, and themes, novels emulate real life and impart wisdom about the human experience.

Some people might balk at the idea that a novel always emulates real life. After all, there are many genres of fiction that ignore what everyday life looks like. How could a novel set on Mars, or a novel about secret agents, or a novel from the point-of-view of cats, reflect the human experience?

No novel can capture the totality of life, although it might try to. Novels like War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Les Misérable by Victor Hugo each total over 1,000 pages, and each novel examines the complexities and philosophies of simply being human, but none of them can convey the entirety of what it means to be alive.

Rather, novels capture a slice of the human experience. So, even a novel about cats will have its characters make tough decisions, like the ones that human beings make. Even a novel set in a galaxy far, far away might address philosophies of life, love, and conflict.

In fact, these elements—character, setting, plot, etc.—often act as metaphors for human experiences, representing our shared struggles in fictional realms. Such is the magic, the mystery, and the goal of novel writing.

Works of fiction can be categorized into different lengths, such as flash fiction, the vignette, the novella, and the novel. Although these categories are arbitrary, it is important to understand how the length of a work of fiction affects the story itself. It is also worth thinking about length, because length impacts the story’s publication opportunities—both literary journals and publishing houses pay a great deal of attention to word count.

How many words are in a novel? Fictional works of this length, as well as others, are summarized in the chart below:

Some publishers and literary journals may have different definitions for each category of fiction, but these lengths are common definitions. Most publishers claim a novel is 50,000+ words, although you will find some theorists argue that the minimum length is 40,000.

How many words in a novel: 50,000+, though definitions vary.

For a longer breakdown of fiction forms by approximate word count, see our interview with Writers.com instructor Jack Smith .

Although the minimum length of a novel is 50,000 words, novels of this length are rarely published by conventional publishing houses. Why? The primary reason is that book buyers are less likely to purchase short novels. A 50,000 word novel will rarely satisfy the reader’s desire for a well-developed story, with complex characters and themes. Short novels—as well as novellas—simply don’t appeal to the modern reader.

So, what is the ideal length for a novel? If you are writing a novel, and you haven’t previously published any novels, then a good goal to reach for is 70,000-90,000 words. Novels of this length are long enough to satisfy the reader’s desires without being too drawn out that the story becomes boring. 

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, and there are certainly debut novelists who publish shorter and longer books. But, this Goldilocks zone is sure to please many traditional publishers.

One way to think about writing a novel is through a 6 phase approach. The following phases aren’t the only way to write a novel, but many novelists include these 6 things in their process:

• Generating an Idea
• Writing a Novel Outline
• Establishing a Writing Schedule
• The First Draft
• Edit, Rinse, Repeat

Let’s explore this novel writing process. 

Phase 1: Generating an Idea

The first step to writing a novel is having an idea. Novel ideas can come out of anywhere: you might decide to expand upon a short story you had previously written, or you might decide to build an entirely new fictional world and use the novel to explore it. Your novel idea might try to dissect the psyche of an individual character, or it can try to comment on society as a whole. The novel is infinite, and so are the ideas that jumpstart one.

Generating an idea for your novel is much the same as generating a story idea . A story idea generally answers the following three questions:

• Who is your main character?
• What does your main character want?
• What prevents the main character from getting what they want?

Novel Writing Tips: From Idea to Novel

Novel-length projects are complex. To push your writing past 50,000 words, your novel will likely confront complicated situations and ideas. Let’s compare two stories written by Agatha Christie, both of which share the same premise but are written at vastly different lengths.

“ The Plymouth Express ” (short story): A young naval officer discovers the body of the Honourable – and nearly-divorced – Mrs. Rupert Carrington.

The Mystery of the Blue Train (novel): Detective Hercule Poirot investigates the case of a woman murdered in her train compartment, whose death may have been motivated by death, jealousy, greed, or revenge.

The first premise works perfectly for a short story. We are given the basic event of the story, the central character in question, and enough detail to make the story vaguely interesting.

The second idea, by contrast, shifts the focus of the story onto the motive of the murderer. This allows the story to develop into a novel, as it can muse on the concepts of love and greed, while also giving a narrative framework from the lens of the detective.

So, to write a great novel, start with an idea that offers the basic components of a story, but also offers room to explore the world and its characters. In much the same way as Agatha Christie writes the dark side of the human psyche, your novel can write about people, history, or the world at large.

Novel Writing Tips: How to Start Writing a Novel

Most novels begin at or near the start of the story’s conflict. The reader must become acquainted with the protagonist(s), their motivations and challenges, and the conflict that fuels the story’s plot. Readers must also learn about what everyday life looks like before the conflict begins, and they must be given ways to relate directly with the protagonist(s).

Most novels begin at or near the start of the story’s conflict.

Some stories, of course, begin in the middle or the end of the conflict. If you decide to do this, you must still tell us how the story began, otherwise the reader will get lost in the weeds of a conflict they don’t understand.

If your novel starts at the beginning of the conflict, keep this advice at heart: do not start your novel on a typical day. Start your novel on the day that something changes. 

You might be wondering how to start writing a novel’s first line. This list of 100 first lines in novels might help you find inspiration.

Novel Writing Tips: Know Your Purpose

Once you have an idea, the novel writing process will feel much less daunting if you can identify three things: the genre for your novel, an audience that might enjoy your novel, and your intent for writing the novel.

Define Your Genre

Knowing the genre of your work will help you structure the story you want to write. You might know your novel will be fantasy, mystery, or literary fiction, but go one step further: is it urban fantasy or magical realism ? Is it noir mystery, a medical thriller, or both?

Delving into the genre of your novel requires some time, and it can bring up questions to motivate the plot and details of your fiction. This list of fiction genres is a great place to start unpacking your novel’s genre, though you might end up writing something even more niche.

Genres are just conventions for writing a novel, and while those rules can help guide your work, rules are made to be broken.

Now, “genre” is not a roadmap. Genres are just conventions for writing a novel, and while those rules can help guide your work, rules are made to be broken. Combine genres, avoid genres, or create a new one entirely; either way, know the conventions for your story, and plan accordingly.

Define Your Audience

Knowing your audience will help you plan out your story and develop a writing style for the novel. Of course, write your novel for yourself, not for your audience. But, if you know that a certain readership will gravitate towards your work, there’s no harm in considering what that readership will like.

For example, you might realize that a young adult audience will love your fantasy novel, so you decide to draw inspiration from The Hunger Games or from the Percy Jackson series. Or, you might write a mystery novel that appeals to women readers, so you consider making your main character a female detective. These considerations won’t define your work, but they will certainly guide it.

Define Your Intent

Answer this question: why do you want to write this novel?

Examining your own intent is one of the best tips for writing a novel. Because there is no set procedure on how to write a novel, many of the answers will come from inside yourself. You found yourself attracted to your novel idea for a certain reason, so whether you want to explore the human psyche, examine society, or build a lush and beautiful fantasy world, defining your intent will help you figure out where to start—and where to keep returning.

Phase 2: Research and Planning

All novels require research. Whether you’re writing romance, historical fiction, or autobiographical fiction , you will end up researching relevant details to make your novel more convincing. Having a plan for finding and organizing this research will make writing a novel much easier.

Research can help jumpstart ideas that you will work into your story outline ; more on that below. It will also make the act of writing go by much quicker, as your notes and knowledge base will be much easier to reference. Keep your research organized in a word processing software, like Bear, Scrivener, or Microsoft OneNote.

Here are some free resources to help you with your research:

• Boolean search operators (for mastering search engines)
• The Smithsonian
• Archive today (for accessing paywalled journalism)
• 101 free journals and databases

Most importantly, your local library or university may be able to provide free access to certain research databases. When in doubt, ask a local librarian!

Starting with research will help jumpstart the creative process and make the writing experience much smoother. Your preliminary novel research won’t be comprehensive, and you will likely have to do more research once you start the actual writing process. However, getting it out of the way now will help jumpstart the creative process and make the writing experience much smoother. It will also help you outline your novel, or even spark ideas for what happens in the story. 

Phase 3: Writing A Novel Outline

The story outline scaffolds your novel idea into a working plot. Outlining your novel is a long process, and some writers will take months to outline their ideas before they put the first word down. There are many different ways to write a story outline, but your outline should match your intent for writing the story.

For example, if you want to write a character-focused novel, then writing a novel outline that’s focused on character development might work best. Or, if your novel relies on heavy world-building and setting, then a scene-based outline will do the trick. Let your novel’s purpose guide the outline, then let the outline guide the novel itself.

Let your novel’s purpose guide the outline, then let the outline guide the novel itself.

Note: this method is called the “plotter” method, where you map out key details of the story before you start writing it. The opposite method is called the “pantser” method. If you write without outlining, you “write by the seat of your pants.” Both methods have their benefits: while plotting helps you work out the kinks in your story, pantsing allows you to surprise yourself with where the story might take you. If you’re daring enough, you can even do what our instructor Sarah Aronson does: write a “discovery draft,” where she pantses the first draft of the novel, then delete it (yes,  delete it entirely ), and write a new draft from scratch. 

If you’re uncertain which method to take, try writing some short stories using both plotting and pantsing methods.

For help getting started with this phase of writing your novel, see our practical guide to writing a story outline .

Phase 4: Establishing a Writing Schedule

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut. —Stephen King

Wouldn’t it be great if we could dream up a novel one day, write it the next, and publish it the day after? Writing a novel is a marathon, not a sprint, so if you want to get to the finish line you’ll need patience, diligence, and discipline.

Stephen King put it best when he said “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”

Of course, King has the resources to devote his entire life to writing, which is why he can churn out a first draft in three months. On the other hand, you might be writing your first novel while also working, caring for family, and living day-to-day life.

So, the next step for your novel is to build a working schedule. You might decide you have room to write 500 words a day, or time to write for 30-60 minutes a day. What matters is consistency: setting and keeping a defined schedule for you to sit down and focus your mind on your novel.

Writing a novel is a marathon, not a sprint.

Give yourself a working timeline with weekly or monthly goals, and try to write every day. A consistent writing practice will carry you to the finish line.

Phase 5: The First Draft

Armed with an outline, a schedule, and a passion for your idea, it’s time to start writing. Your writing doesn’t have to come out quickly, and it doesn’t even need to be good writing. The first draft simply needs to exist: if it’s written, then it’s already successful.

The previous phases are intended to give you the structure to write your novel. When it comes to the writing process itself, everyone’s novel writing experience is different. However, remember to stay diligent, join a writing community , and remember that a first draft is allowed to be bad —that’s why we edit!

Phase 6: Edit, Rinse, Repeat

The editing process is often what takes the longest for a novel. You could write a novel in three months and edit it for three years or longer. Like the writing process, there’s no strict timeline for editing your novel, but don’t expect the editing to be quick and easy.

When you finish your first draft and get to the editing stages, give yourself a small brain break and reward yourself—because woohoo , you wrote it! Then when you get back to the drawing board, examine your writing with a critical eye, figure out what the novel needs, and set up an editing schedule like you set up a writing schedule.

A [story] is never finished, only abandoned. —Paul Valery

Follow this process for as many novel drafts until you’re satisfied—and remember, no novel will ever feel perfect. Paul Valery once said “a poem is never finished, only abandoned.” It’s the same with the novel.

Once you feel like you’ve worked on your novel for long enough, and you don’t know how to improve it further, find beta readers. Beta readers are people who read your novel and give useful feedback on how they experienced it, what’s working and what isn’t, and what you might want to do in your next revision. Typically, beta readers will swap ready novel drafts, so you’ll read theirs while they read yours. Do this with writers you trust and whose opinions you respect, and you’ll have feedback that can take your novel draft to the next level.

What comes after that? When you’ve finished writing a novel, check out our guides on publishing:

• Tips on Self-Publishing
• Self-Publishing on Amazon
• Literary Agents (for traditional publishing)

How to Write a Novel: 8 Additional Approaches

How are novels written? What does the process look like for writing a novel? Different novelists have different approaches to the form, and indeed, different novels might require their own unique approaches. 

The following methodologies are tried and true, as they’ve been utilized by countless storytellers. Use these plans as structures to guide your own writing process, and go with what feels comfortable for both you and your work.

Here are 8 different approaches on how to write a novel:

1. How to Write a Novel: The Pantser Method

The “pantser” method gets its name from the phrase “writing by the seat of your pants.” This is the least structured of any particular novel writing approach. To be a pantser, you only need to do one thing: make things up as you go. 

Pantsers do not do much planning in advance. They will likely have a story premise and a sense of who the characters are, but after they’ve written the inciting incident, everything gets made up on the spot. Pantsers simply follow their characters around as they make decisions, mess things up, and follow the plot to its logical conclusion.

Some novel writers are scared of the pantser method, as the innate formlessness of this approach makes it hard to guarantee the first draft is even readable . But, others find this approach to be delightfully freeing. Novel writing is a long process, and if you can have fun with it by letting your imagination run wild, why not give it free rein on the page? 

2. How to Write a Novel: The Plotter Method

Plotting is the opposite of pantsing. If you’re a plotter, then you have all the important details written down before you pen the first word of your manuscript. 

Novel writing requires a lot of attention to detail. Later in this article, we discuss the elements of fiction writing that plotters must consider as they plan things out, including:

• Characters and conflicts
• Settings 
• Point of View 
• The plot itself

Plotters may also want to consider what kinds of themes they want to target, and the styles they want to employ in their writing. Of course, these things also develop organically, and it may be better to allow those elements to emerge naturally. 

Plotting in advance gives novelists a structure to follow. But, some writers feel constricted by having a strict roadmap to follow—they want to steer off course, to consider different ideas, but should they?

While some novelists are strict plotters or strict pantsers, some fall in the middle: the plotser.

3. How to Write a Novel: The Plotser Method

“Plotser” is a portmanteau of “pantser” and “plotter.” It’s an ugly word, but it’ll do. 

Plotsers use a mix of planning and pantsing in novel writing. They might sketch out the details of their characters and form a working plot, but also allow themselves to follow new ideas as they emerge. The plotser doesn’t view their plan as the final roadmap for the novel, but rather as a living document, much like the novel itself, that changes and adapts over time. 

So, which are you? A plotter, a pantser, or a plotser? Again, go with what feels natural to you, and what makes sense given your own traits as a creative writer. 

The following approaches to novel writing can be used by plotters, pantsers, and plotsers alike—they are simply other means for developing ideas and turning them into fully fledged first drafts. 

4. How to Write a Novel: Write a Discovery Draft (and Throw it Away!) 

A “discovery draft” is most closely aligned with the pantser method. It’s a first draft that you use simply to explore what your novel could be. Any idea is fair game, as you simply want to learn about who your characters are and what situations they’ll get themselves in as you’re writing your novel . 

This method, which our talented instructor Sarah Aronson uses, is simple. Write a discovery draft. Then, when you’ve written the last word, throw it away. 

What? Yes! Throw it away. Delete the copy. Kill your darlings. Goodbye, nice to see ya, I’ll never hear from you again. 

What’s the point of this? By deleting your discovery draft, you empower yourself to write a completely new draft with everything you learned by writing the first one. Instead of going back, copying and pasting, and fiddling with words you’ve already written, you write an entirely new draft based on what you remember.

This method might seem crazy. But it works. The second draft you write will be significantly improved than the first, because now you know your characters and plot much better than you did before. You have a better sense of what works for your novel, and what not to include. And, simply by the act of writing a first draft, you have improved your skills as a writer. 

If you’re not comfortable deleting your discovery draft, you don’t have to. One alternative is to reread your discovery draft, plot it out, and then consider how you might want to change the plot before starting a second draft—something more in line with a plotser method. In any case, no matter how counterproductive this method seems, it works , and it will certainly result in a much stronger final draft. 

5. How to Write a Novel: The Snowflake Method

The Snowflake Method is a tried-and-true approach to novel writing. In a series of 10 steps, the novelist writes their novel from idea to finished draft, starting with the most basic details and fine-tuning them into something complete.

Here’s how to write a novel using the snowflake method: 

Step 1: Write a one-sentence summary of your novel. This is a big picture summary, hopefully under 15 words long, detailing the most basic details: what happens, why, and maybe where and when. For most, this summary is connected to the inciting incident. 

Step 2: Expand your sentence to a paragraph. In that paragraph, include broad plot details: the “disasters” or complications that arise from your protagonist trying to achieve something, and an idea of how the story ends. 

Step 3: Develop a list of your novel’s major characters. Write a 1-page summary for each character that includes their names, backgrounds, motivations, conflicts, and how they change (or don’t change) by the end of the novel. Also write a paragraph summary of each character’s storyline. 

Step 4: Take your summary paragraph from Step 2. Now, expand each sentence into its own unique paragraph, providing more detail about the plot points and complications arising for the characters. 

Step 5: Write a 1-page description of each major character. These descriptions should tell the complete story of the novel from each character’s perspective. For non-major (but still important) characters, your description can be a half page. 

Step 6: Expand the 1-page synopsis from Step 4 into a 4-page synopsis (essentially: turn each paragraph into a full page). At this point, you are making strategic decisions about how your plot points go together, and developing the guiding logic of the story as a whole. 

Step 7: Expand your character descriptions into fully developed character charts. Write down everything you can possibly know about each character, even if those details won’t end up in the novel (you never know, they might!) Spend plenty of time thinking about each character’s transformation throughout the novel. 

Step 8: Turn your 4 page novel into a list of scenes. Chart out each individual scene that will eventually be strung together into the novel. If you want, you can do this in a spreadsheet, reserving different columns for different details relating to each scene (for example: the characters involved, the conflict, which subplot each scene is related to, etc.).

Step 9: Take each idea for a scene you’ve sketched out above, and write a 1-paragraph description of each scene. Allow yourself to be thinking about scene details, dialogue, and other useful notes as you move towards the actual writing process. 

Step 10: Actually write your novel’s first draft! At this point, all of the notes you’ve written down will (hopefully) make the writing process much easier, and much more rewarding. 

The Snowflake Method was developed by Randy Ingermanson. Learn more about this method at his site Advanced Fiction Writing . 

6. How to Write a Novel:The 5 Draft Method

The 5 draft method is a different way of developing raw ideas and material into finished, polished work. This method comes courtesy of Jeff Goins . 

Here’s how to write a novel using the 5 draft method:

Draft 1: The Junk Draft . Also, what we’ve termed, the discovery draft. This is exactly what it sounds like: write what you want, because anything goes. 

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” –Ann Patchett 

Draft 2: The Structure Draft . Now that you have your junk draft, it’s time to start making decisions about your story. Will it work? What’s the plot? What things are and aren’t working in your junk draft? (Don’t worry, necessarily, about writing a completely new draft. You can analyze what you wrote and create a working plot before your next draft starts.)

Draft 3: The Rough Draft . This is the draft you’ve written after you have a working plot. Hopefully, you will have written and feel confident about the story as a whole—the work from here is to start polishing the details and getting things just right. 

Draft 4: The Surgery Draft . Take your rough draft, and start shaping things towards a final draft. Cut superfluous details, unnecessary words, unnecessary scenes. Add whatever is needed to make the story whole. At this point, you will most certainly be relying on feedback from other readers to make revising and editing possible. 

Draft 5: The Last Draft . This is where revision turns to editing. The global details have been finalized, and your concerns are largely at the word, sentence, and paragraph level. This is also the point where you start to think about publication.

7. How to Write a Novel: Starting with Short Stories

Novels and short stories rely on the same fundamentals of fiction, yet they’re two vastly different crafts. There are some novelists who are incapable of writing short stories, and vice versa. But, if you feel comfortable experimenting with short-form fiction, you might want to try writing short stories first. 

Many contemporary novelists will use the short story as a space to explore new ideas. Some of those ideas remain as short stories; others end up being developed into novels. 

The novelist Haruki Murakami, for example, will often switch between novel writing and short story writing. After he’s finished a novel, he will work on short stories to tinker with different ideas, one of which often becomes a novel. Writing and publishing short stories can also make getting your novel published possible. Zadie Smith, for example, published her short story “ The Waiter’s Wife ” in Granta , which eventually became her debut novel White Teeth . Smith was discovered by her agent because of, among other things, the stories she was publishing in her university’s literary journal The Mays Anthology . 

Finally, starting with short stories can help you hone your voice and style as an author. Any attempt at writing fiction will naturally make you a stronger fiction writer. 

For more on short story writing, check out our guide:

https://writers.com/how-to-write-a-short-story

8. How to Write a Novel: NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month, occurs every year in November. During this month, novelists will write 50,000+ words towards a first draft of a novel. 

NaNoWriMo started as an internet sensation, and has since developed local community chapters and a cult following of avid novel writers. Writing alongside other frantic novelists, even if just over the internet, can help keep you motivated to get that first discovery draft written. That said, you can also try doing your own NaNoWriMo, during whatever part of the year you’re reading this article. If tomorrow is May 1st, why not try to write a full novel by the time June 1st rolls around?

NaNoWriMo is best done with some preparation. Here’s our guide on the topic:

https://writers.com/nanowrimo-tips  

How to Write a Novel: Honing the 6 Elements of Fiction

Writing a novel requires the synchronous interplay of these 6 elements:

1. Writing a Novel: Character

A character is a person in a book. No matter what genre you’re writing in, readers are most drawn to compelling characters; moreover, a good plot is informed by the decisions that characters make, so you want to spend plenty of time developing your characters as you write your novel. 

Your main character is your protagonist . The protagonist is the main character because their conflicts shape the core of what the novel explores. The protagonist’s stakes must be high enough that readers care what happens. 

What do those stakes consist of? A small thing can be a big thing to one character and not to another. It’s the context that makes it work. Context is what affects the character in terms of needs, desires, goals, etc.

When we think of a character’s stake in the story, we think of conflict . Conflict is what drives fiction. Not all conflicts make for good fiction, but some conflict is essential for writing a novel.

Conflict is what drives fiction. Not all conflicts make for good fiction, but some conflict is essential for writing a novel.

For example, be careful with alcoholic, abusive fathers and husbands—these stories tend to be very clichéd. Stephen King did a marvelous job in Dolores Claiborne with an abusive husband, but generally speaking, it’s hard to escape the clichés ridden in this storyline.

Who should be your protagonist? To answer this question, ask yourself whose story needs to be told. Whose story is important enough to give full treatment to? Whose story is the most intriguing? You might opt for more than one point-of-view (POV), using a character who isn’t a protagonist, but simply an interesting (and necessary) additional perspective.

Let’s return to your protagonist, who is central to understand as you learn how to write a novel. More than any other character in the novel, your protagonist needs to come alive—to seem very real. Avoid writing a one-dimensional, cardboard character. We need to get to know this character in and out—their traits, loves, hates, goals, aspirations, disappointments, etc. Make your protagonist complex—or “round,” as E.M. Forster describes it in Aspects of the Novel .

Protagonists also need the potential for change. In Forster’s terms, they need to be “ dynamic characters .” They need a character arc, in which they change in some way—undergoing some sort of movement, perhaps coming to a newfound recognition.

But not every character needs to be multi-dimensional or undergo change. Secondary characters are an exception. Even so, make them as real as possible , if not fully developed. Who are secondary characters? They might be friends or associates. A secondary character might be an antagonist . They might serve as a foil for the protagonist, to reveal certain things about the protagonist that don’t come out elsewhere.

2. Writing a Novel: Point of View

Point of view is the lens through which the story is told. It is also the choice of person: first, second, or third. In The Great Gatsby , Nick Carraway is the POV character; in The Catcher in the Rye , it’s Holden Caulfield. All novels are “filtered” through these points of view, or perspectives. We’re in these characters’ heads, not in others’.

Generally speaking, the protagonist is the lens through which we view the story’s action. In other words, the protagonist defines the narrator.

There is also the choice of person. First person, in which the protagonist is usually the narrator (using the “I” pronoun), gives an immediacy that’s lacking in third. With the third person, you have the choice of a fully omniscient narrator, a limited narrator, or an effaced narrator (where the author makes no appearance, or presence) with multiple third-person points of view. There is also an objective or dramatic point of view, in which all we come to know about characters is what they say and do. Think of this as close to the script of a play—dialogue and action only.

The riskiest point of view when writing a novel is the omniscient one, because you can easily fall into mere telling, without giving your reader an experience to enter into.

You can find more help in Jack’s article entitled “ Tips on handling the omniscient POV in fiction .”

An unusual point of view for writing a novel is the second person—the “you” POV. Jay McInerney famously pulls it off in Bright Lights, Big City . I deal with the ins and outs of this point of view in a Writer’s magazine article entitled “ When to use the second-person POV in fiction. ”

3. Writing a Novel: Plot and Structure

Plot is what happens and why. It’s a matter of causality. Of course, this can be complicated, though if it’s too complicated your reader will get lost in a thicket of plot threads and story strands. When writing a novel, simple is better than excessively complicated.

Plot is based on conflict; conflict involves reversals. Readers look for foreshadowing (thoughts, events, etc.) that predict future happenings. They also look for echoing, or reminders of different developments. Foreshadowing and echoing stitch a novel together.

As we explore how to write a novel, keep in mind three basic types of narrative structure:

• Five-stage plot structure: exposition (with inciting incident ; rising action; climax; falling action; resolution). Also known as Freytag’s Pyramid .
• Three-act structure, as in screenplays.
• Episodic structure, as in journey stories (e.g. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ).

If you have two protagonists, matters get more difficult. Not only do you need to decide on the overarching structure of the storylines of each character, but you must also decide on how you’ll alternate from one point of view to another.

For more help on structure, check out Jack’s article in The Writer magazine, entitled “ How to find your novel’s structure .” 

Also read Jeff Lyon’s article discussing the difference between a story and a situation. This guide is essential to any storyteller wondering how to write a novel. 

Stories vs. Situations: How to Know Your Story Will Work in Any Genre

4. Writing a Novel: Setting

Setting includes time and place. In fiction, as in real life, characters are someplace, somewhere, when they engage in action and speech. You need to situate your reader in a given environment, whether it’s an apartment, a workplace, a restaurant, a bar, or in the middle of the woods. If you need to create an atmosphere, choose the details that do this.

You need to situate your reader in a given environment.

In some novels, setting is really important and less so in others. In a workplace novel, setting might well be critical to understanding the conflicts the protagonist faces. In a survival story in the Alaskan wilderness, the rugged setting needs plenty of development to feel real to your reader. If you’re writing a novel set on a college campus, it might be enough to give what in movies is called an establishing shot, a wide shot of the campus—and perhaps only a few details about one classroom building where the protagonist has most of her classes.

No matter the importance of your setting, it should influence the decisions that your characters make. The more important the setting, the more personality it should have. Some writers even treat setting like it’s its own character. A great example of this is the novella  Especially Heinous by Carmen Maria Machado.

5. Writing a Novel: Style and Tone

Style refers to the manner of your expression. As you learn how to write a novel, you’ll find that a novel and its style are inseparable. Style affects the novel’s mood , how we understand the protagonist, how we picture the setting, etc.

As you learn how to write a novel, you’ll find that a novel and its style are inseparable.

Some writers are very dense with their language, very detailed—think Charles Dickens, Henry James, or Toni Morrison. At the opposite end there’s Cormac McCarthy, whose style is utterly stripped-down. Style also is related to the use of figurative language like metaphor, simile, and analogy . Style has to do with the sound of the language, with tone. Is it nostalgic, sarcastic, biting?

Style affects tone —the apparent attitude generated by the work. Tone isn’t just related to style, though. Tone is affected by everything in the work: the nature of the protagonist, the plot, the mood from scene to scene, etc.

Lastly, tone is related to voice. You might be interested in Jack’s article on voice in The Writer magazine, entitled “ Setting the tone: How to handle voice in your fiction .”

6. Writing a Novel: Theme or Idea

Theme is the most abstract idea or ideas of your novel. Any number of plots can suggest the same basic theme. Perhaps the theme is the seductive nature of the pursuit of money, or let’s say it’s the rite of passage from innocence to experience. Any number of plots have been borne out of familiar thematic patterns.

When writing a novel, should you begin with a theme in mind? Some writers do, but many writers argue against doing this, claiming that this leads to authorial intrusion, to manipulation intended to make a point. In other words, theme should be a natural byproduct of storytelling, not the primary focus of the storyteller.

Illuminate instead of preach.

Incidentally, be careful to avoid didactic novels. Illuminate instead of preach. The latter might work well in certain nonfiction works, but the novel reader wants to experience the world of the novel, not be told how to experience it.

How to Write a Novel: Fiction Writing Techniques

Now that we’ve covered the large, overarching elements of fiction writing, let’s get into the more granular elements of storytelling. Fiction writers have a few different modes of storytelling at their disposal, including:

• Summary writing
• Scene writing

These different uses of prose allow fiction writers to convey the most information possible, letting them create cohesive, immersive worlds. It is important to vary your uses of each of these storytelling modes: readers get tired if they read pages upon pages of description, or unending snippets of dialogue.

Of course, those considerations are more important in revision. For the purposes of how to write a novel, let’s explore these fiction writing techniques.

1. How to Write a Novel: Narrative Summary Versus Narrative Scene

A novel operates in two main modes of storytelling: summary and scene.

Narrative summary is a telescoping of life over a given period, perhaps a week, a month, a year or more. Here’s how it was for your protagonist from January to June when she was struggling to advance in her career.

Narrative scene, in contrast, is action at a given time. Your protagonist arrives at a meeting and overhears her bête noire making an ugly remark about her. A narrative scene involves us directly in a play-by-play action. It should reveal character and advance plot. It shouldn’t be dead space you fill up.

Good writing has a mix of scene and summary. You never want to bore the reader with too much summary, but you don’t want too much scene either, or else the reader might lose focus on what’s important. You need places where you stop with the action and distill experience in your protagonist’s head: here’s how it’s been; this is what it adds up to at this point…

For a closer look at scene vs summary, check out this craft analysis:

On Timing and Tension

2. How to Write a Novel: Scene Writing with Dialogue

Good dialogue makes a scene, but it’s not easy to write. You’ve got to get the right rhythm going. You have to avoid making it sound like a prepared speech. Listen to conversation. Notice how speakers interrupt each other, or don’t finish ideas… and move on. Notice how they dodge questions. Work with some back and forth. Get your reader involved.

Some ingredients of a good scene:

• Interesting dialogue.
• Revelation of character through language and gesture.
• Setting details that situate the scene and create interest.
• Depending on point of view, character thoughts.

But, there’s no strict formula here. Read it out loud. Does it move? Does it sound real? Make sure it does.

Novel Writing Tips: Character Tags

Avoid dull character tags like “she responded,” or “he replied,” or “she admitted.” Dead language. As much as you can, avoid “he said,” and “she said.” It’s true that Hemingway could make repetition of “said” sound lyrical and carry us right along, but so often it’s dull. As long as the speaker is clear, you can leave off the “said” bit. Now and then, it’s true, you need to insert the tag for clarification’s sake.

3. How to Write a Novel: Description

Description is a word picture. If you want to show versus tell , give your readers imagery that places them in a world of the five senses.

How much description? This is a matter of style. Some writers use very little description, but we feel like we know their characters because of what they say, and how they say it. Or if they do describe, they give a dominant impression, just enough details to individualize the character, place, or thing.

Some writers describe a lot, providing us a real thicket of language. Some don’t. When writing a novel, decide on the purpose. What is vital in telling your particular story? Which details will get at the essence of this character or place? Be careful, too, about inflated, overdone descriptive language, called purple prose —that can kill your writing right off.

4. How to Write a Novel: Exposition

You can think of exposition in two different ways. In terms of the five-stage plot structure, exposition sets forth the present equilibrium of your protagonist just before a complication, or an inciting incident.

A second way to think of it is expository prose, which explains or comments. This technique can be used anywhere in the story, where ideas and feelings need to be bounced around.

Exposition handled through an author can certainly work—and work beautifully—but you must avoid sounding like you’re telling. If this happens, readers will feel that they can’t enter into the story as well—they can’t experience the world you’re creating.

In the case of the third-person limited point of view, do as much as you can to make readers feel like they’re in the character’s head, experiencing their thoughts and feelings.

There are two key uses of expository prose in writing a novel: backstory, and the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings.

Novel Writing Tips: Backstory

Backstory is important in giving your reader context for present conflicts. Backstory shapes where your protagonist has been. You’ve got a choice in bringing in backstory. First, how much do you need to make the present time-frame of the novel clear? Second, you can either front-load it or bring it in as the novel proceeds in memories and flashbacks.

Novel Writing Tips: Thoughts and Feelings

Your protagonist struggles to make a decision, to understand what to do, to decide how she feels about different choices she’s got. Think of the many areas where we engage in private thoughts and feelings. We work things over in our minds. We analyze problems. We sum up.

The culmination of all these different skills—the elements of fiction, the tools of successful prose writing, and the honing of your own writing style—is “voice.” 

What is “voice?” It’s a difficult concept to define in creative writing. In short, voice is the nebulous, ineffable quality of a piece of writing that “sounds like” you. You can’t point to one specific thing and call it voice; it is the gestalt of everything happening in the text. Not just your style and word choice, but also your characters, your themes, your  perspective as a novelist. 

Our instructor Donna Levin puts it another way: voice is “you, artistically projected.”

Voice: you, artistically projected.

No guide on how to write a novel is complete without mentioning voice. Why? Because your voice is what your readers will fall in love with.

Yes, they will love your characters and plots, the ways your novel immerses them in worlds both strange and familiar. But the thing that sells these elements is your voice as a novelist. 

Think of a novel you love. You don’t just love the story and its characters, you love  the way the story is told . That’s voice. It’s a selling point for readers and, if you want to publish your novel traditionally, it’s a huge selling point for literary agents.

So, how do you find your voice as a novelist? That’s the hard part: there’s no easy way to teach it. After all, voice comes from within you. The only advice we can offer is the work you can do to find your voice and coax it onto the page.

So, here’s some advice on that—how to hone your voice as you write a novel:

• Write often and regularly. The more you write, the better you get at writing, and the more you find your own style and approach to the page.
• Write like yourself. Do not try to write like anyone else, and do not try to be a capital-W “Writer.” 
• That said, experiment on the page. Try different styles and techniques. See what works for you, what feels good, and what doesn’t sit right in your ear. You will find what it means to “write like yourself” this way. 
• Spend ample time in revision. You won’t hone your voice just in the first draft; it will emerge as you write, revise, and revise again. 
• Write with confidence. This is easier said than done, of course. But the more you believe in yourself and your work, the easier it is to let your natural voice shine through on the page. 
• Don’t just write a novel. Experiment with short stories, microfiction, essays, poetry, and other forms of writing. Every word you write is an exploration into your voice as an author. 

For more novel writing tips, here’s a list of books on how to write a novel:

• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• On Writing by Stephen King
• The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
• On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner
• Write and Revise for Publication by Jack Smith
• Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
• Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
• Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
• Get That Novel Written by Donna Levin
• Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
• Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster

Learn How to Write a Novel at Writers.com

Do my characters seem real? Can you picture this setting? What parts of my novel need editing?

Writing a novel is an ongoing process, and the more you work on it, the more questions you’ll ask. Find your answers at Writers.com. With different novel writing courses to choose from, additional novel writing tips at our blog , and a supportive and caring Facebook group , we’re here to get your novel from idea to bestseller.

Jack Smith is the author of 6 novels and 3 books of nonfiction. He’s a regular contributor to The Writer magazine. He teaches novel writing, as well as other fiction writing courses, for Writers.com.

This is wonderful! congrats!

Thanks for this well-written and detailed article on the novel. I was interested in the discussion about what length/page/word count differentiates writing forms and had not heard of the term “novelette”. If novella length fiction is difficult to find a home for with the exception of small, independent presses, then the novelette length must be near impossible. Or so it seems.

Again, thanks for the informative article.

Our pleasure, Rebecca! I’m happy you found it useful.

I’m so pleased with your article. Thanks for this one! I was looking for some takes regarding this topic and I found your article quite informative. It has given me a fresh perspective on the topic tackled. Thanks!

Good overview. Very helpful. It helps an aspiring writer to think about what he/she is missing, and helps the writer improve. Thank you.

This article provides a comprehensive guide to tackling the daunting task of novel writing, offering insights into essential elements like character, plot, setting, style, and theme. The practical tips and diverse techniques presented here serve as a valuable resource for both novice and experienced writers, demystifying the intricate art of crafting a novel. Excited to apply these strategies to my own writing journey!

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How to Write a Novel: A 12-Step Guide

You’ve always wanted to write a novel. But something’s stopped you.

Maybe you’ve tried before, only to get a few, or several, pages in and lose steam because:

• Your story idea didn’t hold up
• You couldn’t overcome procrastination
• You feared your writing wasn’t good enough
• You ran out of ideas and had no clue what to do next

You may be surprised that even after writing 200 books (two-thirds of those novels) over the last 45+ years, including several New York Times bestsellers (most notably the Left Behind Series), I face those same problems every time .

So how do I overcome them and succeed?

I use a repeatable novel-writing plan — one that helps me smash through those obstacles. And that’s what I reveal to you in this definitive guide.

Imagine finishing your first draft. Better yet, imagine a finished manuscript . Or, best of all, your name on the cover of a newly published book — does that excite you?

Imagine letters from readers telling you your novel changed their lives, gave them a new perspective, renewed hope.

If other writers enjoy such things, why can’t you?

Of course this goes without saying, but first you must finish a novel manuscript.

This guide shows you how to write a novel (based on the process I use to write mine). I hope you enjoy it and can apply it to your own writing!

• How to Write a Novel in 12 Steps
• Nail down a winning story idea .
• Determine whether you’re an Outliner or a Pantser .
• Create an unforgettable main character .
• Expand your idea into a plot .
• Research, research, research .
• Choose your Voice and Point of View .
• Start in medias res (in the midst of things) .
• Engage the theater of the reader’s mind .
• Intensify your main character’s problems .
• Make the predicament appear hopeless .
• Bring it all to a climax .
• Leave readers wholly satisfied .
• Step 1: Nail-down a winning story idea.

Is your novel concept special?

• Big enough to warrant 75,000 to 100,000 words?
• Powerful enough to hold the reader all the way?

Come up with a story laden with conflict — the engine that will drive your plot .

I based my first novel, Margo , on this idea: A judge tries a man for a murder the judge committed .

Take whatever time you need to prioritize your story ideas and choose the one you would most want to read — the one about which you’re most passionate and which would keep you eagerly returning to the keyboard every day.

It must capture YOU so completely you can’t get it out of your head. Only that kind of an idea will inspire you to write the novel you’ve always dreamed of.

• Step 2: Determine whether you’re an Outliner or a Pantser.

If you’re an Outliner, you prefer to map out everything before you start writing your novel. You want to know your characters and what happens to them from beginning to end.

If you’re a Pantser, meaning you write by the seat of your pants, you begin with the germ of an idea and write as a process of discovery.

As Stephen King says, “Put interesting characters in difficult situations and write to find out what happens.”

One or the other of these approaches will simply feel most natural to you.

But, in truth, many of us are hybrids, some combination of the two — needing the security of an outline and the freedom to let the story take us where it will.

So do what makes the most sense to you and don’t fret if that means incorporating both Outlining and Pantsing.

(I cover strategies for both types and talk about how to structure a novel here .)

Regardless, you need some form of structure to keep from burning out after so many pages.

I’m a Pantser with a hint of Outlining thrown in, but I never start writing a novel without an idea where I’m going — or think I’m going.

• Step 3: Create an unforgettable main character.

Your most important character will be your protagonist, also known as your lead or your hero/heroine.

This main character must experience a life arc — in other words, be a different, better or worse, stronger or weaker person by the end. (I use “he” inclusively to mean hero or heroine)

For most novels, that means he must bear potentially heroic qualities that emerge in the climax.

For readers to be able to relate to him, he should also exhibit human flaws.

So resist the temptation to create a perfect lead. Who can relate to perfection?

You’ll also have an antagonist (also known as the villain ) who should be every bit as formidable and compelling as your hero. Make sure the bad guy isn’t bad just because he’s the bad guy. 😊

He must be able to justify — if only in his own mind — why he does what he does to make him a worthy foe, realistic and memorable.

You may also need important orbital cast members.

For each character, ask:

• Who are they?
• What do they want?
• Why do they want it?
• What or who is keeping them from it?
• What will they do about it?

Use distinct names (even distinct initials) for every character — and make them look and sound different from each other too, so your reader won’t confuse them.

Limit how many you introduce early. If your reader needs a program to keep them straight, you may not have him for long.

Naturally, your lead character will face an outward problem — a quest, a challenge, a journey, a cause… But he also must face inner turmoil to make him really relatable to the reader and come alive on the page.

Heroic, inventive, morally upright, and physically strong? Of course. But your protagonist must also face fear, insecurity, self-doubt.

The more challenges he faces, the more potential he has to grow and develop.

Much as in real life, the tougher the challenges, the greater the potential transformation.

For more on developing your characters, check out my blog posts Your Ultimate Guide to Character Development: 9 Steps to Creating Memorable Heroes , How to Create a Powerful Character Arc , and Character Motivation: How to Craft Realistic Characters .

• Step 4: Expand your idea into a plot.

True Pantsers — yes, even some bestselling novelists — don’t plot. Here’s the downside:

Like me, you might love being a Pantser and writing as a process of discovery, BUT — even we non-Outliners need some modicum of structure.

Discovering what bestselling novelist Dean Koontz calls the Classic Story Structure (in his How to Write Best-Selling Fiction ) changed my writing forever . My book sales took off when I started following his advice:

• Plunge your main character into terrible trouble as soon as possible.
• Everything your character does to try to get out of that trouble makes it only progressively worse…
• …until his predicament appears hopeless.
• Finally, everything your hero learns from trying to get out of the terrible trouble builds in him what he needs to succeed in the end.

Want to download this 12-step guide to refer to whenever you wish? Click here.

Plot Elements

Writing coaches call by different names their own suggested story structures , but the basic sequence is largely common. They all include some variation of:

• The Inciting Incident that changes everything
• A series of crises that build tension
• A Conclusion

Regardless how you plot your novel, your primary goal must be to grab readers by the throat from the get-go and never let go.

For more on developing your plot, visit my blog post The Writer’s Guide to Creating the Plot of a Story .

More in-depth plotting resources:

• Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell
• The Secrets of Story Structure by K. M. Weiland
• The Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson
• Step 5: Research, research, research.

Though fiction, by definition, is made up, to succeed it must be believable. Even fantasies need to make sense.

You must research to avoid errors that render your story unbelievable.

Once a reader has bought into your premise, what follows must be logical. Effective research allows you to add the specificity necessary to make this work .

When my character uses a weapon, I learn everything I can about it. I’ll hear about it from readers if I refer to a pistol as a revolver or if my protagonist shoots 12 bullets from a gun that holds only 8 rounds.

Accurate details add flavor and authenticity.

Get details wrong and your reader loses confidence — and interest — in your story.

Research essentials:

• Consult Atlases and World Almanacs to confirm geography and cultural norms and find character names that align with the setting, period, and customs . If your Middle Eastern character flashes someone a thumbs up, be sure that means the same in his culture as it does in yours.
• Encyclopedias. If you don’t own a set, access one at your local library or online .
• YouTube and online search engines can yield tens of thousands of results. (Just be careful to avoid wasting time getting drawn into clickbait videos.)
• Use a Thesaurus while writing your novel, but not to find the most exotic word. I most often a thesaurus to find that normal word that’s on the tip of my tongue.
• There’s no substitute for in-person interviews with experts. People love to talk about their work, and often such conversations lead to more story ideas.

Resist the urge to shortchange the research process.

Readers notice geographical, cultural, and technological blunders and trust me, they’ll let you know.

Even sci-fi or fantasy readers demand believability within the parameters of the world you’ve established .

One caveat: Don’t overload your story with all the esoteric facts you’ve learned, just to show off your research. Add specifics the way you would add seasoning to food. It enhances the experience, but it’s not the main course.

• Step 6: Choose your point of view.

The perspective from which you write your novel can be complicated because it encompasses so much.

Your Point of View (POV) is more than simply deciding what voice to use: First Person ( I, me ), Second Person ( you, your ), or Third Person ( he, she, or it ).

It also involves deciding who will be your POV character, serving as your story’s camera.

The cardinal rule is one perspective character per scene , but I prefer only one per chapter, and ideally one per novel.

Readers experience everything in your story from this character’s perspective.

No hopping into the heads of other characters. What your POV character sees, hears, touches, smells, tastes, and thinks is all you can convey.

Some writers think that limits them to First Person, but it doesn’t. Most novels are written in Third Person Limited.

That means limited to one perspective character at a time, and that character ought to be the one with the most at stake in each scene.

Writing your novel in First Person makes it easiest to limit yourself to that one perspective character, but Third-Person Limited is the most common.

I’m often asked how other characters can be revealed or developed without switching to them as the perspective character.

Read current popular fiction to see how the bestsellers do it.

(One example: the main character hears what another character says, reads his tone and his expression and his body language, and comes to a conclusion. Then he finds out that person told someone else something entirely different, proving he was lying to one of them.)

For a more in-depth explanation of Voice and Point of View, read my post A Writer’s Guide to Point of View .

Step 7: Begin in medias res (in the midst of things) .

You must grab your reader by the throat on page one.

That doesn’t necessarily mean bullets flying or a high speed chase, though that might work for a thriller. It means avoiding too much scene setting and description and, rather, getting to the good stuff — the guts of the story .

Les Edgerton, a gritty writer who writes big boy novels (don’t say I didn’t warn you) says beginning writers worry too much about explaining all the backstory to the reader first.

He’s saying, in essence, get on with it and trust your reader to deduce what’s going on.

The goal of every sentence, in fact of every word , is to compel the reader to read the next.

• Step 8: Engage the theater of the reader’s mind.

Don’t moviegoers often say they liked the book better?

The reason is obvious: Even with all its high-tech computer-generated imagery , Hollywood cannot compete with the theater of the reader’s mind.

The images our mind’s eye evokes are far more imaginative and dramatic than anything Hollywood can produce.

Your job as a writer is not to make readers imagine things as you see them, but to trigger the theaters of their minds.

Give them just enough to engage their mental projectors. That’s where the magic happens.

For more, visit my post on What Is Imagery? and Show, Don’t Tell: What You Need to Know .

• Step 9: Intensify your main character’s problems.

You’ve grabbed your reader with a riveting opener and plunged your hero into terrible trouble.

Now, everything he does to get out of that terrible trouble must make it progressively worse.

Do not give him a break.

Too many amateurs render their hero’s life too easy.

They give a private eye a nice car, a great weapon, a beautiful girlfriend, an upscale apartment, a fancy office, and a rich client. Rather, pull out from under him anything that makes his life easy.

Have his car break down, his weapon get stolen, his girlfriend leave, his landlord evict him, his office burn, and his client go broke. Now thrust him into a dangerous case.

Conflict is the engine of fiction .

(For more on conflict, read my post Internal and External Conflict: Tips for Creating Unforgettable Characters )

His trouble should escalate logically with his every successive attempt to fix it.

You can hint that he’s growing, developing, changing, getting stronger, and adding more to his skillset through his trials, but his trouble should become increasingly terrible until you…

• Step 10: Make his predicament appear hopeless.

Writing coaches have various labels for this crucial plot point.

Novelist Angela Hunt refers to this as The Bleakest Moment. It’s where even you wonder how you’re going to write your way out of this.

The once-reprobate lover who has become a changed man and a loving fiance suddenly falls off the wagon the night before the wedding.

Caught red-handed doing drugs and drinking with another woman, he sees his true love storm off, vowing to never speak to him again.

Imagine the nadir, the low point, the bleakest moment for your lead character. Your ability to mine this can make or break you as a novelist.

This is not easy, believe me. You’ll be tempted to give your protagonist a break, invent an escape, or inject a miracle. Don’t you dare!

The Bleakest Moment forces your hero to take action, to use every new muscle and technique gained from facing a book full of obstacles to prove that things only appeared beyond repair.

The more hopeless the situation, the more powerful your climax and ending will be.

• Step 11: Bring it all to a climax.

The ultimate resolution, the peak emotional point of your story, comes when your hero faces his toughest test yet. The stakes must be dire and failure catastrophic.

The conflict that has been building throughout now crescendos to a final, ultimate confrontation, and all the major book-length setups are paid off.

Star Wars: A New Hope climaxes with the rebels forced to destroy the Death Star.

In the original version of the movie, that scene felt flat. So the filmmakers added that the Death Star was on the verge of destroying the rebel base.

That skyrocketed the tension and sent the stakes over the top.

Give readers the payoff they’ve been set up for. Reward their sticking with you and let them experience the fireworks.

But remember, the climax is not the end. The real conclusion ties up loose ends and puts everything into perspective.

• Step 12: Leave readers wholly satisfied.

A great ending :

• Honors the reader for his investment of time and money.
• Is the best of all your options. If it comes down to clever, quirky, or emotional, always aim for the heart.
• Keeps your hero on stage till the last word.

Because climaxes are so dramatic, endings often just peter out. Don’t let that happen.

Your ending might not be as dramatic or action-filled as the climax, but it must be every bit as provocative and riveting.

Don’t rush it. Rewrite it until it shines. I’ve long been on record that all writing is rewriting, and this is never more true than at the end of your novel.

When do you know it’s been rewritten enough? When you’ve gone from making it better to merely making it different.

Write a fully satisfying ending that drops the curtain with a resounding thud. Your readers will thank you for it.

• Frequently Asked Questions and Novel Writing Tips

1. How long does it take to write a novel?

A lifetime. It will pull from you everything you know and everything you are.

It takes as long as necessary.

I know those answers sound flippant, but remember, speed is not the point.

Quality is the point.

Spend as much time as it takes for you to be happy with every word before you start pitching your manuscript to the market.

How long writing a novel will take you depends on your goals and your schedule.

A manuscript of a 100,000 words, including revision, should be doable — even for a beginner — in six to nine months.

Develop and practice the right habits , set a regular writing schedule, and stick to it.

2. How hard is it to write a novel?

If you’re anything like me, it will prove the hardest thing you have ever done. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Every published novelist (yes, even any big name you can think of) was once right where you are — unpublished and unknown. They ultimately succeeded because they didn’t quit.

Resolve to not quit, and you will write a novel. I can’t guarantee it will become a bestseller, but I can guarantee it won’t if you don’t finish it.

3. How do I know if my story idea has potential?

You’ll know your story has legs if it stays in your mind, growing and developing every time you think of it.

The right concept simply feels right. You’ll know it when you land on it. Most importantly, your idea must compel you to write it.

Tell your story idea to someone whose opinion you trust.

You should be able to tell by their expression and their tone of voice whether they really like it or are just being polite.

• You Can Do This

If you want to write a novel, don’t allow the magnitude of the writing process to overwhelm you.

Attack it the way you would eat an elephant — one bite at a time. 😊

Don’t let fear stop you. Use it as motivation to do your best work.

Avoid wondering What if…?

Take the leap.

Stay focused on why you started this journey in the first place.

Follow the steps I’ve given you, and you may find that this time next year, you’re holding in your hands a manuscript that could become a published novel with your name on the cover.

• Step 7: Begin in medias res (in the midst of things).

Are You Making This #1 Amateur Writing Mistake?

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A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Your First Novel

Many of us dream of writing a novel one day but only a few of us make that dream come true.

Here’s the thing: as long as you keep the task of “writing a novel” in the “eventually” pile, it won’t happen.

There will never be a perfect time or enough time. You must make the time.

Writing a novel isn’t easy. Some days, you’ll sit at the keyboard and feel completely uninspired. Other days, you’ll be unable to rein in all of your great ideas. But successful novelists don’t wait for inspiration. Instead, they write every day because they know that consistency (and not inspiration) is the best way to finish a novel.

In addition to rock-solid discipline, you also need guidance to complete your first book. You may be a born writer, but no one’s a born novelist. Every first-time novelist can benefit from a step-by-step plan.

Well, here it is!

Below, we share all the steps that you need to finally crank out your first novel.

Let's start with the basics.

What is the common structure of a novel?

Most novels contain five elements: characters, conflict, plot, setting, and theme. While some experimental novels may deviate from this structure, the majority interweave these elements to tell a relatable and entertaining story.

What is the average length of a novel?

The average novel contains 80,000 words, but don't let that word count scare you! A novel of this length could be written in less than a year . It’s even doable in less than three months.

Thousands of writers participate in the annual novel-in-a-month project, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This project takes place in November and encourages participants to complete a 50,000-word novel in only 30 days.

The idea behind NaNoWriMo is the same one that I'm emphasizing in this post: write now and write every day. Even if you only write 1,000 words per day (which amounts to approximately two typed pages), you can complete a full-length novel in 90 days.

Now, let’s discuss what steps to take to complete your novel.

Step 0: Develop a Basic Story Idea

Let's call this “Step Zero.”

Before you can move forward with this guide, you need an idea.

As simple as it sounds, the process of developing a viable story can be difficult. I've spoken to many fledgling writers who have a desire to write a novel but are unsure of what to write about. Indecisiveness is common among us writers.

Maybe you have so many story ideas that you’re overwhelmed and not sure which one to choose. If this sounds like you, my advice is to go with the story idea that you like the most.

Maybe you feel compelled to make a statement on the human condition but aren’t sure how to turn it into a story. You have a theme (i.e. a big idea, such as “love conquers all” or “hard work pays off”). What you don’t have is a vehicle to drive that theme home. You need the other four elements (characters, conflict, plot, and setting) to create a story. If this sounds like you, use a story generator. Here are some to try:

• Plot Generator by Masterpiece Generator
• The Story Idea Generator By Film Crux (This generator is for screenwriters but it can work for novelists, too.)
• Plot Generator by RanGen
• Random Plot Generator by WritingExercises.co.uk

Learn more about story ideation here: How to Turn Your Simple Idea Into an Unforgettable Novel

Step 1: Get to Know Your Main Characters

Characters drive the narrative. In other words, the story doesn’t happen to your characters. Instead, your characters create the story.

This means that you can’t write characters you don’t know. Get to know your characters, especially your protagonist and antagonist. Discover their backstories, their idiosyncrasies, their goals, and what compels them to act.

Here are two guides to help you craft well-rounded characters:

• 6 Tips to Avoid Writing Cliched Characters
• Developing a Sympathetic Villain for Your Novel

Here’s a handy checklist to help you write your first novel. Subscribe to receive this extra resource.

Download your bonus content:

Step 2: Insert Conflict

Conflict happens when two forces oppose each other, such as character against character or character against an idea. Conflict is necessary to move the story along in a forward direction.

A good story introduces two types of conflict: internal conflict within the minds of the main characters and external conflict which prevents the characters from easily meeting their goals.

To learn more about conflict, check out these resources:

• Tips for Balancing Characterization With Plot
• Tension! What It Is & How to Develop It In Your Novel

Step 3: Choose a Point of View for Your Story

It’s important to consider your story’s point of view (POV) before you start writing. Decide who will tell your story.

Will it be a personal narrator, such as the story’s protagonist? This is the first-person POV and it uses “I.” A first-person narrator is someone who is personally involved in or tied to the story as a character. This personal narrator could also be a secondary character in your story.

Will you choose the POV of the reader? This is known as the second-person and it's the least common POV. It requires that you turn the reader into an active character in your novel, which is hard to do, but it has been done. This POV uses “you.”

Will you use the POV of an impersonal narrator who does not exist within the story? This POV is known as the third-person and it uses “he,” “she,” or “they.” This POV can be broken down even further.

You can write from a third-person limited POV where the narrator sticks with one character, usually the protagonist.

You can write from the third-person multiple POV where the narrator can hop between several characters. The narrator doesn't know everything, but he does know the characters that he follows.

Finally, you can write from the third-person omniscient POV where the narrator has a god-like knowledge of every character in the story, including their motivations and thoughts.

Need help choosing the right POV? Check out this guide: All About Point of View .

Step 4: Choose a Setting

Let's talk about the setting of your novel. Decide on the time period and whether it's an actual location or an imagined one. Because your characters live there, it's important for you to see and know what they do.

We've created two helpful guides on world construction that you can find here:

• How to Build a Dystopian World
• Fantasy World Building 101: How to Create a Breathing World for Your Fantasy Novel

Step 5: Give Yourself Plenty of Deadlines

There's nothing like a looming deadline to motivate me. Do you feel the same?

According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, we perform best when pressure (i.e. stress) is applied. This is why deadlines are important. A deadline doesn’t only provide a time limit, but it also encourages you to do your best work.

To complete a novel, you’ll need plenty of deadlines. Here’s a basic guideline that you can borrow:

• Give yourself a deadline to choose a story idea. This step can take years but don’t let it take longer than 15 minutes. Seriously . Decide on a topic that you like and then move on to the next step.
• Set a time limit for research. This includes learning about the main and background elements in your story, such as its location and time period. It also includes figuring out how to write a compelling story. Set a time limit for when you should leave this step and enter into writing mode. If, after researching, you realize that you don’t like your story idea, go back to step 0. But be careful not to repeat this loop too often.
• Outline your story. There are two groups of people: those who like to outline their novels and those who don’t. Because you’re reading this post, I’m willing to bet that you prefer outlining. Set a deadline for when you'd like to complete your story’s outline.
• Give yourself a word count to target each day, such as 1,000 to 2,500 words. This deadline should reset each day.
• Set a final deadline for when you’d like the first draft to be completed.
• Read through your first draft and make revisions. This process may take a few weeks.
• When making revisions to your first draft, assign deadlines to complete each chapter. Check out these tips for writing chapters .
• Send your manuscript to a professional editor for a manuscript critique (also known as the big-picture edit). This edit takes between five to seven weeks, on average.
• Make a second round of revisions based on the editor’s advice. This process can also take a few weeks.
• Send your revised manuscript to a professional editor for a comprehensive edit , which also includes a line edit. This process takes between six to 12 weeks.
• Review notes from the comprehensive edit and then make changes to your draft. This process can take a few weeks.
• Send your manuscript to a professional copyeditor for a copyedit. This type of edit focuses on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other technical errors that may be in your manuscript. Copyediting is necessary for any novel before publishing. This process takes between three to five weeks.

Learn more about our editing packages here .

Impose plenty of deadlines to keep yourself moving forward.

Step 6: Hire a Professional Editor

Speaking from my experience as a writer, all writers need editors. Just like peanut butter goes with jelly and coffee with donuts, writers and editors make a great team.

No matter how much time you take away from your novel, you will always be too close to your own work to critique it impartially. Plus, there's the matter of grammar. From dangling modifiers to adverb abuse to subject-verb agreement errors, you may be committing tons of grammar sins without even realizing it. Let's not even talk about typos! Even the smallest grammar mistake could damage your story because it interrupts the reader's focus.

Learn about our editing services here .

Step 7: Resolve to Finish

This step requires a simple mental shift, but it’s perhaps the most important step in this guide. Make a promise to yourself that you will finish your novel by [ insert deadline here ]. Write the promise down. Tell others. Let us know in the comments below! Hold yourself accountable. Remember that only you can make this dream happen, and that process starts right now with a promise and an action plan that you can find in the downloadable resource at the end of this post.

Final Thoughts

To complete your first novel, you need to take a practical approach. You can’t wait for inspiration to strike. Use the above guide to turn your dreams into a realistic action plan.

Before you go, don’t miss these related resources:

• Use These Novel-Writing Tips to Get Unstuck
• What to Do Before Writing Your Next Novel
• A Guide to Writing Your Novel in One Year

Enter your email for your FREE 7-Day Bootcamp and learn:

• 5 Unconventional Techniques to help you finish your Draft
• The Key to Getting Readers to Care About Your Characters
• How to Master Dialogue, even if you’re a First-Time Writer
• What You Need to Know to Hold Your Reader’s Interest

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Novelist - Write your novels

Still looking for the perfect app to write your novel? Novelist might just be the perfect tool for the job!

This is the best app if you are composing a story. This deserve five stars!

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I. Am. In. LOVE. With this app. Simply the best app I've found on the store or, really, about anywhere.

Truly a wonderful app. I used a similar program, but this is easier and it's nice to have it on the go!

Marian Klatt

This app is amazing, it helps a lot for book writing and I love how it helps me plan and plot the story.

This app is exactly what I needed to keep my stories organised. It's a great tool!

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Love how I could manage all these thoughts in my head and put it down.

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Advanced features, output compilation.

Output your book in many different formats according to your needs, suitable for ebook readers or word processors

Rich Text Editor

Novelist provides a Rich Text Editor to edit your texts, with advanced formatting, comments, autosave, counters and revision history

Backup and Restore

Save your work with our backup/restore system on any available storage provider: internal, external or cloud

Goal Setting

Set your desired word count or due date and Novelist will track your chapter-by-chapter progress up to completion

Integrated Preview

Preview your book's final output without leaving Novelist, and enjoy the result without distractions

Use one of the provided templates or create your custom one, including categories, statuses, items and metadata

Actual Facts

It's very easy to find and install Novelist on your smartphone. Just follow the above link or search in the Android marketplace. Click on Install App and you're done.

Novelist is completely free: no buying costs, in-app purchases or hidden charges. And no ads too, so you can concentrate only on what matters to you: writing!

Novelist sports a complete tutorial and an in-app help section. Non enough? Just use our email or the provided contact form to get in touch, and we'll answer as soon as possible.

Always At Hand

Have you ever had that brilliant idea and no place to mark it? Novelist is like a structured notebook that is always with you on your favorite device: your smartphone.

• Save the traits of your characters and places
• Write scenes and structure chapters on the go

Monitor Your Progresses

Do you think you'll never be able to finish writing your book? Track your progress and set goals to increase focus on the final result.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many books can I write with Novelist?

There is no maximum number of books you can write using Novelist. The only limit is your imagination!

Will there ever be a cloud version?

Yes, probably. A web based cloud version is already in development, but there's no timing schedule or pricing information at the moment.

How are the features to be added established?

Every feature is carefully planned and introduced only after extensive testing. If you have feedbacks, suggestions, critics, feature requests or anything else please contact us.

Additional Details

Plot is when you list all the elements of your story, like on a board. Items can be edited, moved, merged, splitted, reordered and deleted. You can even set a status, write notes and texts or add tags, metadata and pictures to each item. Categories are completely customizable, as are metadata and statuses.

Outline is when you put all the items together to compose scenes. Each scene is a piece of your story and can be annotated or written directly in our app!

Organize is when you structure your scenes in acts, parts, chapters and so on. Your imagination is the limit.

Schedule is when you set your goals: word count or due date.

Video Showcase

Check out below Novelist's video from YouYube, for a brief showcase of its screens and features.

Average Rating

Our goal is to make sure that every Novelist user can meet his needs and expectations. You should also check out our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy .

More Reviews

Some reviews of our application found online. Here's what they say about us...

New York Times

“ Check your app store for software like Novelist which has a text editor function and templates for organizing… ”

Make Use Of

“ Novelist has every tool you could need to plan and write every detail of your book from scratch. ”

Penstricken

“ If you own an Android device and are looking for a way to develop an idea, this app is definitely worth a look . ”

Lord of Things

“ When I found this app it looked great but was still immature, but now I must say it has become my favorite . ”

Get In Touch

Use the contact form to send us your message, feedback, feature request, or anything else.

We will use these contact details only for following up on any request. We will not use your contact details for anything else. Accept the terms if you agree. Read the full Privacy Policy here .

• [email protected]
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Copyright © Novelist by Return True

How to write a first novel: 10 Do’s and Don’ts

When you’re starting out, nobody shows you how to write a first novel. Writing a novel requires focus, planning, motivation and discipline. Here are 10 do’s and don’ts for writing your first book:

• Post author By Jordan
• 29 Comments on How to write a first novel: 10 Do’s and Don’ts

When you write your first novel, do:

Plan and structure your book and your time.

Writing a book is a mid- to long-term project (unless you are one of those rare authors who can churn a book out in a week or two).

If you don’t want writing your novel to drag on, planning is essential. Planning also makes sense because an underlying plan will help to avert writer’s block.

To start writing a novel , set a deadline for completing your first draft. From here you can work out how many words you need to write per day on average. If, for example, you give yourself a year to finish, your necessary word count per day will be (length of your novel)/365. If you want to write a standard length novel (80 000 to 100 000 words), your word count will be 220 to 280 words per day approximately. When you look at it this way, it’s entirely possible to write your book in a year (or a much shorter period if you have more time to write).

If possible structure each writing session in advance so that you have a clear plan of what you will be working on and where it fits into the larger picture. If you already have a story outline, build which parts of the story arc you will work on during each session into your plan. In a week or month planner, write, for example, ‘Write first scene (protagonist receives word of an approaching army, forms party to defend the village)’. If you are not sure how to outline, try one of these 7 outlining methods .

Keep any research you need in an organized, accessible place

Some books demand more background research than others. If you are writing about an unfamiliar location, take a tour on Google Street View and note down landmarks and what the architecture or natural environment is like.

One way to organize your research is to keep a master document that is like an alphabetized dictionary of your story-in-progress. Under each letter, add any relevant information. For example, under ‘L’ you could have ‘Locations’. Write down each of the locations of your novel as you write your story and create new ones (or use real places). Note any important features next to each entry, for example:

‘Cape Town, South Africa: Seaside city. Center of tourism. Wine-growing region. Ethnically and culturally diverse. Wide wealth gap.’

Having an overview of the individual places, themes, characters and other elements of your novel that you can refer back to will keep you focused on the details that bring your fictional world to life.

Write every day, without fail

As author Steven Raichlen says in his post on how to write a first novel for Writer’s Digest :

‘The secret to writing a novel — or any book — is writing. You won’t turn out elegant prose every day. But it’s important to keep cranking it out. Bad writing eventually leads to good writing and paragraphs eventually add up to pages, chapters, and a finished novel.’

Write every day, even when you least feel like it. When you don’t feel in the mood to write, your writing might feel stale, forced and not worth keeping. Persist and keep the ‘bad’ writing for now: You may find later that it is not that bad or simply needs a revision with fresh eyes to be transformed.

‘I don’t have time to write’ is one of the most common reasons for not writing that we hear from Now Novel members. If this is a challenge while you write your first novel, divide your writing sessions into smaller units. It’s much easier to squeeze in 15 minutes than a full hour. If you write every day, even if for only a short while, your writing can only improve.

Stay accountable and finish

Stay accountable by swapping crits with other writers for free, plus get pro feedback when you upgrade.

Put excuses for not writing and put them to one side

As writers we find endless reasons why we  can’t  write: “I don’t have the time” and “my writing sucks” are two common ones. Yet as author Susan K. Perry says of writing your first novel :

‘Distractions are powerful. Writers are famous for coming up with buckets of rationalizations for not writing, including the suddenly-urgent need to thin out who you follow on Twitter, decluttering old files you had forgotten existed, or dusting the back of your printer. If you must, build in an allowable pre-writing period of miscellaneous tasks, but make it short.’

If you’re writing your first novel (or your second, third or fourth), it’s helpful to journal about the process itself. Write down doubts, surprises, insights, self-discoveries – anything that is worth keeping in mind. Sometimes simply writing down the doubts makes it easier to put them to one side and focus on the most important task: Finishing your book.

Write out helpful questions to ask yourself as you go

If you’re detail-oriented by nature, you might get lost in describing the particulars of a scene and lose sight of how your novel will read as a whole. On the other hand, if you’re focused on the whole plot arc and not individual characters, motivations and scenes, your novel might meander. Neither is a catastrophe, but you can keep a balanced perspective by keeping a list of useful questions to ask yourself as you write:

How to write a first novel: Questions to ask as you go

• Are my characters’ distinct from each other: Does each have an identifiable voice and set of goals and motivations?
• Am I including enough sense detail – can the reader see, smell, touch my fictional world in her mind’s eye?
• Am I being original enough? (No ‘dead as a doornail’ and other clichés). As Joanna Penn says, ‘Keep in mind that fans of sci-fi read a lot of sci-fi, fans of chick lit read a lot of chick lit, and so on. They’ve seen many variations of the same story. You don’t need to recreate the wheel, but a fresh voice or a new approach to a tried and true formula will delight the reader.’
• Is it clear to my reader who’s talking, where the scene is set, why x event is occurring?

Make sure that your story events show cause and effect (x leads to y) and that your characters are interesting. Create enough intrigue and detail to draw readers in. Show as much as you can without telling in a way that blocks the reader’s imagination.

When you’re working on your first book, don’t:

Continuously change your mind about your story idea and start over.

If you are just working out how to write a first novel, committing to one story idea can feel daunting. Resist the urge to continuously abandon your novel for a ‘better’ story idea. It could simply be that the better idea appeared superior because it promised an escape from writing challenges you are currently facing. Instead, get help from a writing group or writing coach to find a way forward with your existing idea.

The risk of starting your novel over perpetually is that you’ll end up with twenty-something story starts and no finished book manuscript. Each time a great new story idea occurs to you, write it down and store it away. Be disciplined and start on it once you’ve finished your current project.

Underestimate what it takes to write a novel

Some aspiring writers have visions of publishing success and acclaim from the start, but it will take hard work and perseverance to get to the submitting and publishing stage. Writing your first novel means having to find strategies for maintaining the following things:

• Confidence in your story

These are all essential aspects of writing a book a fiction writing coach can help you with . Read our best posts on how to maintain your motivation to write a book, as well as how to improve and increase confidence in your writing.

Focus on building your world to the exclusion of compelling relationships

This important advice on writing a first novel is courtesy of author Robert Twigger. Twigger cautions against focusing so much on descriptive detail that you neglect to create vivid relationships between your characters:

‘Nabokov informed us, convincingly, that a novel is a world. Reading this, a new writer of fiction hares off and starts describing this world in intricate detail, inventing all manner of places and events. But think of your own world – it isn’t about detail, it’s about relationships.’

While your fictional world stimulates the reader’s senses, the relationships in your book will anchor the reader’s feelings, letting them invest something in your characters’ lives and choices.

Make everything fit your preconceived plot

Sometimes writers learning how to write a first novel follow commonplace advice to put plot interest first. Yet if every event in your novel is made to fit a template, it can feel forced and over-cautious. Instead, come up with the main events of your novel and describe each separately – you don’t even have to write them in sequence, necessarily. Combine them at a later stage when you have a clearer sense of how they will all fit together. This will make sure that no unnecessary scenes are included.

Tell the reader everything about your character at first introduction

When you first meet someone new, they are a mystery to you. Over time you discover details – their backstory, their core beliefs, values, likes, dislikes and details such as their favourite sayings and expressions. The same should go for characters in a novel. If you begin a character description with details of the character’s face, feelings, wants, fears and beliefs, this can be overwhelming. It also is less likely to leave the reader tantalized – the reader has less reason to want to get to know your character better.

Keep the above do’s and don’ts of writing a first book in mind and the writing process will flow smoother.

Start and finish writing a book with the help of the Now Novel process now .

Related Posts:

• Why write a book? 10 global authors give reasons to write
• 'Can I write a book?' Yes: 7 resolutions that will help
• Structure of a novel: How to write a chapter
• Tags writing process , writing your first novel

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

29 replies on “How to write a first novel: 10 Do’s and Don’ts”

wow! I love your blog.

Thanks so much, Kassie. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

I can’t thank you enough for thorough posts; this one was especially helpful! The tip about world building and character relationships is great.

Thank you so much, J. I’m glad you found that tip helpful. All speed in your writing.

There are some nice tips, but I disagree about writing every day, “without fail”. Some of my best story ideas as well as solutions to story problems have come when I stepped away from the computer. Sometimes for extended periods. If you have to force yourself to write, rather than feel excited at the opportunity to do so, you shouldn’t be writing. How and when a writer writes is as individual a decision as writers themselves. This is why I don’t believe in generalized word-count goals. The schedule that works for me might not work for others. Additionally, writing doesn’t improve simply by continuing to do it. A writer must receive constructive criticism, both from within and from others if he or she expects to improve. Should you self-edit to perfection as you go? No, but you learn through the editing and proof-reading processes. Writing is the creation and assembly of ideas into words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books which others will find engaging upon reading them. It’s supposed to be fun.

That’s fair comment, B.L. Thank you for adding your perspective. As I’ve said elsewhere, taking time out when you need to is important too. Just not so long that you lose momentum altogether. However, it’s true that every writer has to find the set of practices that work best for their creative process.

Having the discipline to write every day is so hard, especially with a very active family, but I can see why it is so critical. Thanks for this post. I needed it.

It’s a pleasure! It truly is a challenge, Erin, and I can relate on that count with two toddlers. I find waking up earlier while everyone is still asleep affords some valuable distraction-free time.

Thank you for the the 10 Do’s and Don’ts. I have definitely fell into the trap of starting and restarting a story. I just had these unrealistic need or idea of my first novel being a hit,but realize this is stunning my growth. In addition, I want this to be a fun journey for me. As a mom, nurse, and graduate student I am extremely busy. However, in order for my novel to start I need to just put words to paper.

Question: Do you reccomend typing novel or writing it in a book? Thank you in advance!

Saya senang sekali menemukan tips ini. Terimakasih.

An amazing post with great tips as always. Anyone will find your post useful. Keep up the good work.

Telling stories and sharing your knowledge with the world is one of the most amazing feelings there is.

I hope you can take the time to read my post as well Effective Steps on Writing Your First Novel .

Really great tips, thank you!

It’s a pleasure, Kathryn! Thank you for reading our blog.

Thank you so much for these Awesome tips, I’am 22 YO, I want to start writing my first novel and this is too helpful!

Hi Omaima, that’s great! Good luck with your first novel, have fun writing it.

Great words of advice for one about writing his or her first novel, I am 17 am working on writing my first novel and this blog is all I ever wanted for a go. Thanks and shine on

Thank you, Meshack! Good luck with your first novel, enjoy the process.

Thanks this was help ful

It’s a pleasure, Shillah. Thank you for reading our blog.

So helpful. It motivated me further. Cut and dry instructions. Very positive.

Thank you, Richard, I’m glad to hear this motivated you. Happy New Year, here’s to further motivation and inspiration throughout the year ahead.

This was a great inspiration for me Thank you so much

Hi Diamona, I’m so glad to hear that. It’s a pleasure, thank you for reading and sharing your feedback on our blog.

Thank you, This was great information, I really like how everything was broken down. This is what I needed to continue the novel I’m working now.

Hi Nikki, I’m glad to hear that. Thanks for sharing your feedback and good luck with your novel-in-progress.

This blog was very helpful and encouraging. Thank you for taking the time to put this together for those seeking to put their vision to paper. Cheers.

Hi Joseph, I’m so glad to hear that you found this helpful, thank you for reading our blog and sharing your feedback. Good luck with your story!

have you ever written a book or novel before, also this was really helpful and I cant wait to start my novel the dream walker!!!

Hi Serenity, thank you for your feedback. Start it! I love the title. I haven’t, though I have written workbooks and have had poetry published. My primary experience I draw on as an editor and for the blog is the past eight years I’ve spent helping and editing writers on Now Novel and before that my undergrad and postgrad in English Literature (there was a lot of deep analysis of novels from all eras during that which helped me develop my understanding of storytelling and story craft a lot).

I’ll write a book one day, I’m still banking up the life experience to decide what I want my debut to be :). In the meantime helping other writers is just as rewarding.

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How to write a novel and get published: A beginner's guide

Desperate to write that novel but don’t know how to start? Author Fiona Gibson offers inside intel on how to make your dream a reality and send your story out into the world

STEP TWO: Make time to write

Step three: find your writing method, step four: forget about perfection, step five: keep going (even when the going gets tough), step six: find writing buddies, how to get your book published, top authors on the one thing they wish they'd known about writing novels, best resources if you want to write a book.

I’ve been writing novels for 20 years. In those two decades, I’ve written 18 books , consumed enough coffee to fill an Olympic swimming pool several times over, and lost count of the people who’ve said, once they find out what I do for a living, ‘Oh, I’d love to write a book.’ So what’s stopping them?

Addressing fear is a biggie. Getting those ideas down and forming them into a story is a deeply personal business. Sometimes the block is less about knowing how to write a novel and more about worrying what your friends and family will think. Should you really be doing this when there’s laundry to sort, dinner to cook and you’re being called on to watch that last episode of a boxset ?

But hang on a sec. You want to write a novel – it’s burning inside you – which means you’re in a great place to start. When I wrote my first book, I had a baby, twin toddlers, a houseful of builders and a day job. If I can do it, you can, too.

Here are my top tips on how to write a novel along with advice from other authors...

STEP ONE: Figure out what you want to write

"Write the story you want to read," says bestselling author Jenny Colgan . "What makes you laugh or expresses something authentic about the world?"

However, if bestseller status is your goal, cast an eye over what’s currently popular. "Think about what trends you’re seeing and what new perspectives there could be on these books,"| says Hannah Todd , literary agent at Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency. "Untold stories from history can be very popular. Or if you love romances, writing a character informed by your own experiences is a great place to start."

Author Tammy Cohen ’s novels range from historical fiction to nail-biting thrillers. "I wrote my first one in my mid-40s, when my kids were teens and holed up in their bedrooms after dinner," she says. "I wrote in the evenings instead of watching TV – or, more accurately, not even watching but just scrolling for something to watch. I reckon if we added up all the time we spend scrolling, it would easily add up to a book a year."

Whenever you do it, it’s important to make writing a regular habit. "Let your partner and/or family know you’re not just playing at writing – you’re taking it seriously and need time to do it," says author Mike Gayle , who wrote his first novel, My Legendary Girlfriend , while juggling a day job.

"I snatched moments here and there. It’s a fallacy that you need to give up your day job. All you need is the determination to write regularly, even if it’s just 15 minutes. Lunch breaks at work can be useful – bring in lunch to save on sandwich-shop queuing time. Over time, those 15 minutes can add up to the first draft of your novel."

Most writers procrastinate. My kitchen floor is never more gleaming than when I’m stuck on a tricky chapter! However, as you write, you’ll learn the best method for you.

"Some writers prefer to get straight into the writing – they call themselves 'pantsers', as they fly by the seats of their pants," says Hannah. "Others, the 'plotters', plan it all out thoroughly first, so they know the structure before they start."

I planned my first novel carefully so I’d have a framework to cling on to. But now I just jump in, as I never truly understand my characters until I start writing about them.

"Plots are all the same," says Jenny, a confirmed pantser. "It’s characters that make you give a damn. Take some characters for a walk and see where you end up."

Whatever you do, try to dive right into the action. "Make sure you’re starting your book at the most exciting part of the story," says Hannah. "You want to instantly grab your reader so they can’t put it down."

Mike mentioned the ‘first draft’ because that’s what it is initially. Virtually every author writes their entire story in a pretty rough form, right through to the end. "It’s better to have it all on the page and then go back to edit, rather than tweaking as you go and never finishing the story," advises Hannah.

Mike forced himself to push on through until he’d finished the first draft of what would become his debut novel. "I did it by giving myself permission to be awful," he admits. "It was really freeing. New writers often make the mistake of comparing themselves to their favourite writers and favourite books – what a way to intimidate yourself! By allowing myself to be imperfect, I could just enjoy the writing process. And it worked."

Once your first draft is done, you can go back to the start with fresh eyes and figure out how to improve it. But when you’re starting out, getting that first draft nailed should be your goal.

Coming up with an idea is the easy bit. Even starting to write can be a breeze compared with the ‘tricky middle’. This is the point where my ideas become muddled and I have to force myself on. But the more you write, the more you’ll find tricks and techniques to help you keep going.

"The main thing is to enjoy it," says Tammy Cohen. "If you want to put in dancing leprechauns, go right ahead and do it. At this stage, you’re just writing for yourself, and that’s exhilarating."

If distractions are a problem, Mike Gayle suggests working in a cafe. "Noise- cancelling headphones are another great way to block out the sounds of kids or partners asking where their shoes are!"

"The going will get tough," admits Jenny Colgan, "and that’s the difference between writers and hobbyists. Writers stick bum to chair and get through it. So make yourself finish something."

Top-selling author Cathy BramIey reminds herself why she’s writing and the effect she wants her books to have. "For me, the most joyful aspect is when readers tell me how one of my storylines resonated with them, or prompted them to make a constructive change," she says. "I like to think my books carry a positive message and this sort of feedback means I must be doing something right."

Writing is a lonely business. That’s why Hannah Todd recommends finding some writing friends. "They’ll be people who can relate to the tricky writing days, but they’ll also be able to read your writing, give you feedback and celebrate the successes with you," she says.

For 15 years, I belonged to a women’s writing group in my local town in rural Scotland. Without my buddies, I’d never have written any books at all. As Cathy puts it: "There’s nothing like having a friend who understands what you’re going through. I speak to my author friend Isabelle Broom on a daily basis. We are each other’s cheerleaders."

Every author has their own method; the only way to discover yours is to sit down and write.

"There are several routes to publication," says literary agent Hannah Todd. "For instance, you can self-publish via a platform such as Amazon."

You can approach digital-first publishers [which focus on e-books] that accept submissions directly. Or you can get an agent to help you secure a publishing deal.

"Literary agents are cheerleaders, editors, contracts specialists, deal brokers, business managers, salespeople and networkers. It’s my job to find writers and sell their works to publishers. This involves working with clients to get their work in the best possible shape, sending it to a curated list of editors who I think will love the book, and pitching it effectively. It’s then my job to get the best deal for my client. Taking someone from debut author to a huge success is the best feeling in the world."

I found my own agent by googling ‘literary agents’ and studying their websites to see which looked like the best ‘fit’ for me. There’s no point sending off your grisly thriller to an agent whose passion is contemporary romance.

"Agents have requirements for submissions on their websites, so follow those," adds Hannah. "They’ll likely ask for a covering letter, synopsis and first 5-10,000 words of your book."

• Hannah Todd is a literary agent representing bestselling commercial fiction authors at Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency, and is always on the lookout for new authors. Visit madeleinemilburn.co.uk/agents/hannah-todd

• "That writing a novel is like driving somewhere you haven’t driven for a long time. You couldn’t set out the map now, but the closer you get, the clearer it will become." Jenny Colgan, author of The Summer Skies (Sphere)
• "Just how special it is to be writing a book with no expectations other than for the love of writing.’" Mike Gayle, author of A Song Of Me And You (Hodder & Stoughton)
• "That writing isn’t just about typing your novel. The weeks spent thinking about it and rewriting it are all part of the process." Cathy Bramley, author of The Sunrise Sisterhood (Orion)
• "That it’s best to relax and have fun with it, and write that first draft at speed rather than agonising over every paragraph." Fiona Gibson, author of The Woman Who Ran Away From Everything (Avon)
• "The creative freedom I had as an unpublished writer. My first book was entirely in an epistolary style (addressed to one person), without chapters, as it seemed to fit the narrative and there was no one to tell me I shouldn’t. Now I wouldn’t take those risks." Tammy Cohen, author of The Wedding Party (Black Swan)

Writing a novel is a steep learning curve, but there are plenty of resources to help and guide you...

Brilliant books about writing

• Save The Cat! Writes A Novel (Clarkson Potter) by Jessica Brody
• On Writing (Hodder) by Stephen King
• Bird By Bird (Canongate Canons) by Anne Lamott

Inspiring podcasts for budding authors

All available from your usual podcast provider.

• Writer’s Routine
• The Bestseller Experiment
• Inside Writing – The Faber Academy Podcast

The Woman Who Ran Away from Everything: The hilarious and heart-warming read for 2024

Fiona Gibson’s new novel, The Woman Who Ran Away From Everything (Avon) is now available to buy

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How to write a novel

Posted: April 25, 2024 | Last updated: April 25, 2024

If you're thinking about starting to write your own book , this gallery is for you. Writing a novel might sound like a daunting task, but it's actually doable.

We've brought you some great tips to help you achieve your dream of writing a novel. Click through and get started today!

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Read. A lot.

If you want to write, you need to read first. Authors are influenced and shaped by other authors. Get inspired by your favorite writers.

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Set daily goals

Some authors like to go with the flow, but daily goals are a good thing to have, especially if you’re starting out. For example, you can aim to write 2,000 words a day. Considering how many words your novel will have, this is not such a crazy number.

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Make a list

Why do you want to write? Write down a list of your motivations for writing and refer back when you have doubts. It can be great to motivate you.

Good habits

You’re likely not going to be writing your first novel full time, so it’s important to manage time around your other responsibilities. The key is to develop good habits when it comes to writing. Set aside blocks of time to do so, in a specific place. Make it a habit, and it will stick.

Think ahead

Before you sit down to write, think about it. Where is that storyline taking you? Do you need to do some research first? It’s best to think ahead so you can make the most of your time writing.

Save your work

If you write on a computer, make sure you have security copies in a cloud and maybe even in a physical device such as a USB pen. If you’re more into pen and paper, don’t worry: taking pictures with your phone will ensure your words are quickly safe.

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A thesaurus can be your best friend

You will likely need one, and you will need it quite a few times. Just find one you like to use and embrace it.

Write anything

Action precedes inspiration, not the other way round. Many times you just need to start writing to then start thinking. It’s the opposite of the romanticized version of creativity.

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Write about what you know

E.g. if you’re a musician, it will be easier for you to tell a story involving musicians, right? You know how it is, how it feels, how things go. Writing about what you know not only makes the story more believable, it also makes it easier to write.

Your story should move you

If you’re writing an emotional story and it doesn’t move you, don’t expect the reader to feel differently. Conversely, if you shed a tear or two during the process, readers might just share the same feeling when they read your words.

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Read it out loud

This is the best way to ensure the pace of the sentences is good. Rhythm is very important when it comes to writing. Listening to yourself reading aloud can really help.

Who’s telling the story?

Choose a point of view to tell the story. Is there a narrator? Is the story told in the first or second person?

Show (but don’t tell)

Think of writing fiction in these terms. You want to show the story to the reader. You want them to imagine and be enriched by the experience.

Characters, characters, characters

Sure, a good plot is very important, but it has to be based on good characters first. Think about a main character strong enough to carry the story, and things will flow more easily.

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Don’t make your characters sound cliché

Creating multi-dimensional characters is a good thing. Say you’re writing about a Parisian woman; maybe a beret will just be too stereotypical. Why not give her other particular characteristics? Make her a competent employee, or passionate about a specific music genre, for instance.

Motivation of characters

Your characters need some sort of motivation. This is especially important when you’re struggling to give a character a direction. Just ask yourself: “What does this character want?”

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Don’t go overboard with detailed descriptions of characters

It is true that some authors manage to pull it off, and of course you can give physical descriptions of the characters. Just avoid doing so in a manner that the reader will switch off and want to skip the paragraph.

Don’t open the novel with weather

Unless it has a direct effect on a person, e.g. a character’s reaction to the weather. If it’s just to set the atmosphere, then be brief and move on to people, which is what most readers will be looking for in the opening lines.

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Skip the prologue

Prologues kind of work in non-fiction, but when it comes to novels they don’t make much sense. Unless you really need to establish a backstory right there and then, a prologue can just be slightly annoying. Whatever you were meant to write in the prologue can, most times, be included elsewhere in the book.

Control the use of regional dialects and patois

These can give character to your novel, but they can also be somewhat distracting, with all the sounds described using apostrophes.

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Keep your exclamation points in check

A good rule of thumb is to use two or three per 100,000 words.

Stick to "said" to carry dialogue

There is no need to get fancy when it comes to carrying dialogue. It will only deviate the reader’s attention from the dialogue itself. Any other words, such as "grumbled" or "cautioned," can be intrusive and distracting.

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And don’t use an adverb to modify the verb "said"

Elmore Leonard’s '10 Rules of Good Writing' tells us to “Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said.'" This will break the rhythm and indeed be distracting for the reader.

Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose"

Leonard reminds us that these are no-nos when it comes to writing a novel. Those who do use the word “suddenly” also seem to have a tendency to use more exclamation marks than they should.

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Don’t play book critic

The analysis of the text is better left out for later. The last thing you want is to be worried about labeling the genre of your book. Leave it for critics.

Your first draft is just...your first draft

There is no need to stress over it. It’s a first draft, with mistakes, with lots of words that need to be edited and proofread. Don't try to make it perfect straight away. Let the first draft be the first draft.

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Find a good editor

Working with a good editor is key. A good partnership can make a huge difference in how your book turns out.

Believe in yourself

Yes, doubt is a pain. You’ll go through it many times. Ultimately, you should just trust your gut and go with it when it comes to your novel. It’s your novel, after all, not someone else’s!

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Allow yourself to change your mind

Reading back the first 50 pages and are not sure about something? Go back, rewrite, and change the story if need be. It’s yours, and you can do whatever you want with it.

Rules are meant to be broken

Yes, everyone is different and we work in different ways. These are guidelines at most. Many authors will tell you they do the exact opposite and are successful!

Sources: (MasterClass) (The New Yorker) (The Guardian) (The New York Times)

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How to Write a Successful Book Chapter for an Academic Publication?

If you are an academic or a researcher working towards a PhD degree or engaged in various tasks in a university or academic institution the idea of writing a book chapter would have definitely crossed your mind. Receiving an invitation to write an academic book chapter is indeed a great honor, and going onto write it is a milestone that every writer aims to achieve in their career. Writing a successful academic book chapter requires careful planning and execution by the author. In this article we will look at how to write an academic book chapter along with a few key steps that must be followed during the writing process.  

Table of Contents

• What is an academic book chapter? 

Information collection

Finalizing chapter structure, attractive chapter title, a strong introduction, detailing out the chapter, summarizing the chapter, what is an academic book chapter.

An academic book chapter is a distinct section of a book having its own title or a chapter number. A book consists of several chapters, each of which focuses on a particular topic or sub-argument that is linked to the overall theme of the book. In other words, each chapter should have a sound argument that is consistent with the central theme or argument of the book. Each chapter should therefore be an inter-connected part to the rest of the chapters and to the overall book. 

It is important to understand that an academic book chapter is very different from a thesis chapter. While a book chapter has as its audience anyone who may be interested in the particular topic, the audience for a thesis chapter is primarily the thesis examiner. For the same reason, a thesis examiner will closely read the entire chapter and thesis, but this may not be the case for a book chapter. As mentioned earlier, a book chapter deals with a specific topic with an important idea or argument related to the central theme of the book and hence it is a separate division of a book. On the other hand, a thesis chapter does not stand separately but will have multiple arguments and relies on the other chapters to make it a complete whole. The length of each academic book chapter normally varies and there is no standard rule as to the length of chapters. However, on a general note, chapter length usually varies from 3500 to 5000 words.  

Key steps to follow when writing an academic book chapter

Integrating the following steps as you plan to write an academic book chapter can help you achieve excellent results.  

It is important that sufficient research is carried out and the author has a thorough understanding of the available literature in the field. Collecting relevant information and being up to date with all aspects on the topic that you are going to write about is one of first steps in writing an academic book chapter. Presenting information in a visually attractive manner and using various tools like mind maps can help in structuring the key arguments better.  

An academic book chapter also requires a good outline. For example, you must have a title, a well worded introduction, informative paras that make up the main body, a chapter summary and a neat transition to the succeeding chapter. Try to make the outline clear and concise, organize your ideas effectively and ensure there is a logical flow.  

This is a critical element and goes a long way in getting people to read your chapter or even pick up the book. Strive to make the title or heading of your chapter interesting and impactful, potential readers should be attracted to the title by itself, going on to pick up the book just by the vigor of the title itself.  

Having a well written introduction can be invaluable in ensuring that audiences will be compelled to read further. Engaging your reader with an anecdote or a dialogue or through a fictional account or plot can be useful devices to anchor the introduction on.  

Ideally as you elaborate on your chapter with the key points as you begin, it is a good idea to provide evidence for your statements and arguments. Try to highlight these in about 4 to 5 paragraphs linking it to the chapter details. 

A concise summary is a must as you come to the end of your chapter. Remember, here you are reflecting on the main content of the chapter and helping the reader to take away some key aspects of the arguments that you have presented in the chapter.  

Paperpal is a comprehensive AI writing toolkit that helps students and researchers achieve 2x the writing in half the time. It leverages 21+ years of STM experience and insights from millions of research articles to provide in-depth academic writing, language editing, and submission readiness support to help you write better, faster.  

Get accurate academic translations, rewriting support, grammar checks, vocabulary suggestions, and generative AI assistance that delivers human precision at machine speed. Try for free or upgrade to Paperpal Prime starting at US$19 a month to access premium features, including consistency, plagiarism, and 30+ submission readiness checks to help you succeed.  

Experience the future of academic writing – Sign up to Paperpal and start writing for free!  

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Book Review: A grandfather’s 1,500-page family history undergirds Claire Messud’s latest novel

The Associated Press

May 13, 2024, 2:18 PM

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Secrets and shame — every family has its share. When it came time to write her most autobiographical novel, Claire Messud relied on a 1,500-page family history compiled by her paternal grandfather. The result, “This Strange Eventful History,” sprawls over a third as many pages — 423, to be exact — to tell the story of three generations of a French Algerian family displaced from their colonial homeland, who never quite found another place where they felt so completely at home.

The story is told from the point of view of the fiercely French, devout Catholic, patriarch Gaston; his rootless, cosmopolitan son, Francois; and his fearful, deluded, psychologically damaged daughter, Denise. Rounding out the chorus are Barbara, the beautiful, Protestant, Canadian-born wife of Francois, torn between roles as wife, mother and daughter as she struggles to earn a law degree at the peak of 1970s-era “women’s lib” while raising their two daughters and whipping up Julia Child recipes for dinner parties; and finally, Gaston’s granddaughter Chloe, a stand-in for the author, inheritor of this “strange, eventful history” and ultimately, spiller of family secrets and perhaps, exorciser of shame.

Behind the “endless ritual” of their busy lives — from birth to death, grade school to retirement — Messud is keenly aware that a vaster story is unfolding, one that spans epochs and continents, perceived only in glimmers by various members of the clan. For instance, when Francois calls Barbara to tell her about a terrible accident at the site of a mining operation in Australia, where they have been posted for his job, she thinks, “What had been there? Not nothing. It was an Aboriginal tribal homeland: before it had been transformed into a dystopian hellscape, it had been untouched for thousands of years, the people there living as lightly and resourcefully upon the land as the animals and birds.”

For fans of Messud, whose earlier novels include the bestselling 2006 novel “The Emperor’s Children” as well as “The Woman Upstairs,” this latest work will be ambrosial, brimming with long passages that attempt to capture the evanescent sensations of life — touch, taste, sounds, smells, the ever-shifting register of light. Others may get lost in dense, descriptive passages that roll on and on, owing a debt to the English modernist writer Virginia Woolf, one of Messud’s literary heroes. Yet all in all, the book is a masterful achievement, a somber, joyous meditation on the consolations and disappointments of empire, nation, faith and family.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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Can You Recognize This Novel From a One-Line Description?

By J. D. Biersdorfer May 6, 2024

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Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s multiple-choice quiz designed to test your knowledge of books and literary culture. This week’s challenge asks you to identify five famous 20th-century novels based on a very simple one-sentence plot description.

Just tap or click on the title you think is correct to see the answer and a snippet of the original coverage in The Times. After the last question, you’ll find links to the titles in case you’re looking for a something to read.

A man runs around Dublin all day in June 1904.

“Birchwood,” by John Banville

“Borstal Boy,” by Brendan Behan

“Ulysses,” by James Joyce

“Strumpet City,” by James Plunkett

A young girl grows up in an impoverished urban area and, inspired by nature’s tenacity, strives to get an education as a key to success in life.

“Angels on Toast,” by Dawn Powell

“Brown Girl, Brownstones,” by Paule Marshall

“My Sister Eileen,” by Ruth McKenney

“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” by Betty Smith

A man recalls his childhood and young adulthood in high society for thousands of pages and has a memorable encounter with a snack food.

“The Remains of the Day,” by Kazuo Ishiguro

“In Search of Lost Time,” by Marcel Proust

“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” by James Joyce

“The Grapes of Wrath,” by John Steinbeck

An American in Paris, dealing with social alienation and other issues, has a relationship with an Italian bartender.

“Paris France,” by Gertrude Stein

“Giovanni’s Room,” by James Baldwin

“Gigi and the Cat,” by Colette

“The Ambassadors,” by Henry James

A clairvoyant woman keeps a journal for decades and records the dramatic lives of several generations of her family through love and political upheaval.

“In the Time of the Butterflies,” by Julia Alvarez

“The Kitchen God’s Wife,” by Amy Tan

“Paradise,” by Toni Morrison

“The House of the Spirits,” by Isabel Allende

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Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

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Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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