12 Days of Planning a Novel: Setting as a Character

12 Days of Planning a Novel: Setting as a Character

Today I’m going to cover another tip to help beef up your outline. I know by this point, you are probably itching to get writing your novel, but unless you are a pantser, which I don’t think you would be reading this post if you are, you’ll appreciate having a very detailed outline once you start writing.

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Subplots

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Subplots

Adding subplots to your novel is a really great way to make your story more interesting as well as help you hit your word count goal. So far in this series, 12 Days of Planning Your Novel, I’ve covered figuring out what to write about, conducting research, character development, story vs. plot, starting your outline, creating conflict, and using other stories as inspiration. Let’s talk about the importance of subplots and how you can add them to your outline in a natural way.

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Story Inspiration

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Story Inspiration

At this point in my series, 12 Days of Planning Your Novel, you probably have a pretty good outline but you might be wondering if you have enough ideas to write a full length novel. Don’t worry! The next few posts in this series will provide you with a few more ways you can add scenes to your outline, so when it comes time to write your novel, you’ll have plenty to work from.

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Creating Conflict Through Character Motivation

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Creating Conflict Through Character Motivation

Wow, here we are at day six in my twelve day novel planning series already! I hope you have been enjoying the posts so far and are gleaning some useful tips. This series is intended to prepare you to start working on your novel during Christmas break (if you get one), however, you can use these tips to get started anytime.

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Start Your Outline

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Start Your Outline

The next step in planning your novel involves mapping out the major scenes in your novel. In my last post, I talked about the difference between story and plot, and in today’s post we are going to be moving on from your story and starting to work more on your plot.

In the post about conducting research for your novel, I mentioned how genre stories have obligatory scenes. We are going to be working with those obligatory scenes today so if you haven’t finished researching the kinds of scenes you need for your novel, this is a great place to start.

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Story vs Plot

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Story vs Plot

Here we are at day (or step) number four in my planning your novel series. I hope you’re getting excited to start creating a story involving the characters you created in step three. Today I want to discuss the ‘big picture’ when it comes to your novel so I’ll be discussing the difference between story and plot.

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Character Development

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Character Development

Welcome to post number three in my 12-post series about planning a novel. 12 Days of Planning Your Novel is a fun tribute to the 12 Days of Christmas with the goal of being ready start writing your novel during the actual twelve days of Christmas (December 25 - January 5). Here’s where you can find the first two posts.

Step 1: Brainstorm

Step 2: Research

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12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Research, Research, Research

12 Days of Planning Your Novel: Research, Research, Research

I hope you enjoyed Day 1 of planning your novel. Now that you've figured out what type of novel you want to write, it’s time to move on to the next stage: research. Even if you're writing a story that takes place in a completely made up world, you'll still have a bit of research to do.

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