Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Plottr,a 2021 NaNo sponsor, is a visual outlining software that helps you plan your book for success. Today, author Troy Lambert shares some tips for outlining a novel when you’re used to flying by the seat of your pants:
Pantsing a novel can be great—after all, writing into the dark and discovering the story as you go is kinda fun, right?
But you probably also know it can lead to nonsensical plots, writer’s block, and endless rewrites.
Well, don’t worry. As a book coach, editor, and mystery author of over 25 novels, I’ve been there myself… and I understand exactly what you’re experiencing.
The good news is you can use this simple four step formula to give yourself the best of both worlds: a general roadmap for your novel that still lets you take fun detours along the way.
Linked to this post is a free google slides document I’ve designed for the purposes of character and plot development. You can use this in several ways, including:
Making a copy to your google drive and editing it digitally
Downloading as a Microsoft powerpoint document
Editing in google slides and then downloading as a printable PDF
This document includes technical instructions and guides to the planning models I integrated. The included pages are:
Looking to develop your villain further? Trying to build a villain for the first time? Look no further for here is a simple guide to building a fearsome villain for your story. Disclaimer: I’m a fantasy writer, this will be fantasy based.
Step 1: Choose a Motivation
While this can be anything, some common motivations are: Power, Legacy, Revenge, Respect, Protectionism, Hate, Love, Indifference, Drive for Utopia, and Infliction of Pain. Now you might be thinking I can understand why the last one is villainous, but some of the others seem okay! Remember, a villains motivations should be understandable, and their goals can be noble, but it is the means that make them “bad.”
Step 2: Decide if They Really are “Bad”
Despite my previous statement, some villains are just trying to achieve noble goals by noble means. This is actually a really good way to get your audience thinking about your theme if it ties in well. The flipside of this is my personal favourite – make the heroes bad too.
Step 3: Design Their Personality
There are a few traits you’ll want to consider in particular and in the extremes. Make sure to chose the side that your hero will struggle with more. Villains should be handcrafted challengers, designed to ruin your hero.
Intelligence vs Stupidity - A villain who can scheme intricate plots is terrifying, but extreme stupidity leads to recklessness and unpredictability, good for control freak heroes.
Short Temper vs Controlled Emotions - Short tempered villains are a threat to anyone close to them, while those that can control their emotions can be highly manipulative.
Calculated vs Irrational - This again leans into the trade off between the unbeatable factor and the unpredictability factor. Both are equally fearsome.
Charismatic vs Black Seep – Why do their followers believe in them? Is it because they can talk the hind legs off a donkey or was your villain an outcast come to take their revenge.
Don’t underestimate the stupid, short tempered, irrational black sheep. They often have intelligent advisors pulling their strings while their stupidity causes chaos like no other.
Step 4: Ask Yourself Why?
Not just Why did my villain set out on this path? orWhy don’t they see the harm they’re causing? but also Why have I reached the end of a post specifically using ‘they’ pronouns and imagine a white man with black hair and dark eyes? Because many of you will have done just that, particularly for the intelligent, manipulative villain with more power than you could ever imagine. Ask yourself why intelligent, charismatic villains with goals outside of revenge and love need always be a man. Some villains are just heroes who don’t understood the cost of their actions. Ask yourself why they shouldn’t be diverse and stereotypical caricatures.
This post is quite long enough. I reckon I’ll do a part 2 if you guys like it :)
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So you’ve written your outline, maybe even your first draft, and you’re a bit worried about the length. Maybe it’s too short for your genre. Maybe you feel something’s missing. Well fear not! There are many ways you can flesh out your plot without making it feel botched and pointless.
1)Check your beats. Whether or not you’re actively using Save the Cat! as a structure, the beats make for good inspiration. Do you have a clear theme? Do you have a clear catalyst? Do you have a mid-point that raises the stakes? Do you have a B plot? If you’re missing any of these, it might be a good idea to weave them in.
2)Foreshadowing.This is a good time to ask yourself if you’ve foreshadowed your plot twists and major character decisions. Have you laid the groundwork? Is it justified in the text? If not, you might want to add another couple of scenes that show the reasoning behind the plot twits and big decisions in your novel.
3)Light Relief. If you really want your reader to feel something when reading your book, you need good dynamics. That means soaring highs before tragic lows. If your book lacks light relief, your reader will become used to the tragedy and it won’t have the same impact. Don’t underestimate the need for a bit of fluff here and there.
4)Relationships.No, I am not talking about your romantic interest. I’m talking about friends, family, enemies. Explore how you can develop these, how they shape the character. If you’re planning on killing one of them off, make sure we see how much they mean to the protagonist to ensure it will really hurt the reader.
So there you have it, just a few ideas for fleshing out your plot. Feel free to add any other you can think of below! Happy writing!
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So far on my blog, I’ve covered the first two steps of writing a novel: developing realistic characters and coming up with a plot. Congratulations! You now have an A plot.
An A plot is the surface level plot. It’s what your character is doing and what’s happening to them. This plot deals with questions like:
What is wrong with my character’s life at the beginning of the novel?
What do they think will fix their lives when—spoiler alert—it won’t?
Why haven’t they achieved this goal yet?
What catalyst (or inciting incident) will cause them to get off their butts and start chasing this goal for real?
Now it’s time to move on to the B plot. The B plot is about your character’s development and changing who they are as a person. This is about working out not what your character wants but what they need.
Remember all those flaws we gave our characters? This is where we need to ask the questions:
How does this flaw affect the rest of my hero’s life?
Do my characters flaws get in the way of them achieving their goal?
How is the plot going to help them realise this flaw and overcome it by the end of the novel after their breaking point?
How is overcoming this flaw really going to make their lives better?
This character development is what gives novels their sparkle. The A plot is what makes your plot interesting, but the B plot is what makes your charactersinteresting.
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good gray morality: you’re offered a range of solutions, none of which are perfect. if there is a perfect solution, it’s difficult to attain and even then, there’s oftentimes an arguable downside. You have to weigh your options, and decide what you personally think is better. every option has downsides, even straightforwardly good ones. Characters are forced to do the best they can with the options they have.
bad gray morality: This is an activist group fighting for civil rights for an oppressed minority. but they went TOO FAR. yeah this person is a fucking monster but they feel sad about it sometimes so maybe they’re ok?
