Creative Writing: Basic Techniques on How to Plan Your Novel | Matthew Dewey | Skillshare
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Creative Writing: Basic Techniques on How to Plan Your Novel

teacher avatar Matthew Dewey, Writer, Artist

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction to How to Plan Your Novel for Beginners

      2:11

    • 2.

      Taking a Dream and Turning it into an Idea

      5:59

    • 3.

      Developing a Plot from a Simple Idea

      5:55

    • 4.

      Refining a Plot by Establishing Structure

      7:02

    • 5.

      Choosing a Word-Count and Chapters

      5:22

    • 6.

      Finishing Your Plan with Chapter and Character Summaries

      8:26

    • 7.

      BONUS: Planning a Novel in 1 Day

      5:07

    • 8.

      Conclusion to Planning Your Novel for Beginners

      1:09

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About This Class

Welcome to the course where I show you how to create a novel plan that will help you throughout your writing process!

Don't make the same mistakes that so many novice authors make and create a novel plan that will ensure the quality of your novel!

My name is Matthew Dewey and I am a writer. It is hard to say when my passion for writing began, but if I can recall it all started back in primary school. A small child with not much to say, but plenty to write, or in most cases scribble, across a page. From there writing became a hobby, moving on to become a part-time job writing articles on various subjects from technology to programming. Suddenly, the spark was ignited and I wrote my first novel. From there I was hooked onto something that was akin to a calling.

Enough monologue, it is time to tell you what this course is worth to you. First, That being said, this course was created with the express intention to teach the fundamentals of creating a plan for your novel. In my rising through the writing world I found that information was handed freely, but not with enough dedication and forethought. The advice lacking and the examples poor. I decided to push through and after several years developed my own toolkit that is simple and multipurpose. The first and most important lesson I learned was how not to plan a novel. From there I experimented and found out what you should do.

In addition to the research, I also write from experience, having written several articles on the subject as well.

I will show you how to:

  • Turn a dream into an idea

  • Turn an idea into a plot

  • Refine that plot

  • Establish word count and chapter summaries

  • Take a lengthy planning process and work it into a single day!

  • AND MANY MORE TIPS ALONG THE WAY!

Welcome to your Novel Planning Course! I will show what you need to know to develop an interesting novel from scratch. All it takes is a well-thought-out plan!

"Writing is a powerful form of art, but it is the reader's imagination that is the canvas, not the page."

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Matthew Dewey

Writer, Artist

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Transcripts

1. Introduction to How to Plan Your Novel for Beginners: all right. Hello and welcome to your novel planning course. Money is Matthew Dewey and I am Arata. I've been writing and teaching for over five years. Now, as off 2020 I've taught everything from the young adult to the adult writing as well as fantasy to thriller. In this course, I'll be teaching you how to plan your novel easily as well as effectively. And that's right. Planning can be easy if you make use off the proper structure. It is this structure that will take your day dreams of a novel and turn it into solid planning, which will help you write it. For many authors, this planning is essential for even the completion off the novel. So with that amount, you cannot lose with having a solid plan to work off proper planning. Not early ensures that you maintain a writing schedule but also ensures that the quality of your novel is consistent throughout. And this is often a problem that writers face where generally the also starts to lose interest in the novel or the quality of the novel begins to listen as the novel goes on will be going over everything from writing your ideas down to plot development to structure to word count to chapter summaries. By the end of this course, you have a refund plan toe work off to cap all this off hours to be Indian, This course on a video that helps you plan a novel in a day where in a day we'll tackle the crucial elements of planning a novel so that where you can start as soon as possible. Now this would be a thorough as the average process, which will be going through. But for the young and the ego rata out there ready to start writing your novel. That's maybe the planning process for you now recommend this course to any begin Arata are the young, old looking for simple and fun process to plan the novel. If you have ever struggled with planning your novel, I can assure you, by the end of this course, you'll not only find the process easy but enjoyable as well. And with that, I'll see you in the first video Bye for now, 2. Taking a Dream and Turning it into an Idea: all right. Hello and welcome to your first video on planning your novel. Before I begin, explain what we'll be going over in this video. I'm going to sum up the beginnings of a novel. Inspiration is fickle. We feel it in the strangest terms, that wonderful creative energy that has our body longing to write something. It is often inspiration that gives a writer the powerful push to turn their dream into a plan. And then they plan into a novel. In this video, I'll be showing you how to take advantage of the daydreaming phase off a novel to be more productive and speed up the process from dreaming to planning, you no doubt have an assortment of ideas for novel. Sometimes these ideas don't fit so well with each other. So you enjoy passing thoughts and wait till something similar to your favorite idea comes along. But it's during this phase that you are losing the most potential for novel. It is during this phase that you need to collect your ideas and present them physically in a journal or no pad. A collection of thoughts fades so easily, but once you have a book full of them. You have clusters of gold in one bag ready to be melted down into the bullying. That will be your novel. The first and most important step is to have a journal and pen me about all terms for naps . It's so difficult to get into for your writing ideas and in the episode, easy to ignore. However, a book with some ideas hastily scribbled, catches your attention easily. You can refer to it, go through them and perhaps piece together enough ideas to develop a plot. Yet if you don't keep track of your ideas, it'll be difficult to keep in mind all of them. It will be difficult for you to receive that final mental push to sit down and plan your novel, let alone write it now. As I said earlier, you need to keep the journal close spy as you never know when an ideal will hit you. Many writers are inspired by their dreams and not means so. Having a general close to a asleep might be a good idea. Of course, that is only one example seen as well, unique. You might find inspiration hitting you later in the day during some activity in which case have in your journal with you then could be invaluable. With that said, You see the importance of having an idea, general, but now you should consider what you rot. I often tell my students that I don't like to interfere with their writing style. Your writing style is your own. It is what you're comfortable with, and it is the best way you can write your book was that amount. I help by giving some tips and advice on how to organize and structure ideas clearly. So you're writing. No matter. The style has the desired effect on the reader. For an idea journal, I recommend keeping it short. Some ideas you only ever be able to write a few sentences on maybe one or two, but others you might feel it necessary to go into detail. That is not to say you shouldn't write these lengthy ideas down. If you ever find your mind constructing a lengthy seen or dialogue, I recommend actually turning it into a short story. Anything ranging from 500 to 2000 words. A short story with an end or not, the scene can be a great idea that leads to a novel, in which case it be better to use your computer a laptop to write it down, an idea journalists filter for ideas that are normally regionally a paragraph or two. But anything longer than that can be turned to do something more. Over time, you'll connect many ideas and stories. Some might be fanciful ideas, phases you go through. We want to run one genre and in an entirely different one. Yet you will soon have an idea that sticks with you. It could be an enjoyable character or a thrilling concept that you find you have more ideas for than any other possible novel that you have had plans for once. If you have a messed enough ideas, which could be a handful of ideas or so many that there could be a novel on the own, you're then ready to go from daydreaming to planning. To sum up, keep an idea journal and be consistent. You might not have an idea every day or every week, but you will have ideas worth keeping. Write them down, read through them from time to Tom. With this journal, you can see your progress in your writing, inspirational ideas that you can look back on. Personally, I have collected many ideas. I started with straight pieces of paper, simply listing these ideas down for novel that I had in mind. It got them out of the chaos of Armand into a neat and structured list. It is thanks to omitted such as this, that many of my ideas became novels that I have written, and you'll be surprised how inspirational it is as an idea. Crossing your mind doesn't coax you into writing a book, But constantly reading an idea that you really enjoy in a journal on a scrap piece of paper isn't giving you enough inspiration and push to turn it into a novel. And that's all for this video. Your project for this video is to simply grab a note pad, exam pad or perhaps a leather bound journal. If you have one lying around as well as a pen and pencil that you can either bundle with it , this will be your idea journal. Keep it close bonds. So that way, when you've you have an idea right one down and you're soon see that you'll begin listing many ideas, some fitting together more than others. But ideas nonetheless that could be turned into novels. Once you have done this or you have been doing this, then I'll see you in the next video. We'll be taking your ideas and turning them into a plot. I know that. I'll see you then. Bye. For now. Yeah. 3. Developing a Plot from a Simple Idea: all right. Hello and welcome to you. Noble Plenty cough. In this video, I'll be going over how you can turn your collection of ID ears into a workable plot. Let's start with the bare bones. So if you have collected one or two ideas, you can still develop a plot but might take a bit more to work it into a plot. But it's still easy and effective. Plot development is much like a game of chase. There are two sides, protagonist and antagonised. There are several pieces that you need to establish. Some pieces have more important roles and others these pieces can be characters. There could be object to even places. Let's start by taking ideas and establishing some of those pieces. For example, I have an idea worth this process. It's hard to record to study was inspired by something consciously or if it came from the dream. But it was a scene a young character arguing with an adult in a suit. There is over the disappearance off someone related to the young character, such as a brother or parent. No clear main character has been set, but I can already start using my imagination to create a story. The way I do this is by asking questions and making assumptions. Of course, the young man is concerned for the loss of someone close to them. Perhaps they were murdered, all kidnapped. Perhaps the young man decides to take things into their own hands. Perhaps the young man follows their own leads, retracing the steps of the victim, learning more about them a few questions later. And then I'll have a pop. A young man funds that both his parents are missing decides to investigate when the police don't give him the proper help. The character was the help of. Some retired detective neighbor retraces the steps off his parents to find out they had an incredibly shady past. The young man learns his parents are related to some conspiracy or perhaps a criminal organisation, which has paid the police off to ensure an investigation doesn't happen. We have protagonist side characters, an antagonist which grows more foreboding each chapter. Essentially, we have the summary of a plot. The bare bones of a great story, but only needs some seems to make up with the meat of it. It's a plot vague enough for me to write for other adults or young adults. It depends how realistic I'm willing to make it. In addition, it is only one perspective. I can rot from the original idea in mind. For example, the man in the suit could be the main protagonist. He could be moved by the young man and goes down a similar journey to uncover the truth with an adult on the police force, I might decide to make their perspective, the adult novel and the young man's perspective into a young adult novel. As you can see, it is easy to take an idea, be it a character or scene you had in mind and turn it into the skeleton of a plot. Ask questions. Make assumptions. As you develop a world. The decisions you make are more fitting. If I decided on a more science fiction aspect, the man and the suit could be a government agent, and the boy needs Parents are aliens, but only the missing parents know that truth. It could be a story sit 100 years ago on a more modern world. These are decisions you make as you answer the questions you asked once you have established your skeleton of a plot. Your next step is to develop the scenes. Keep that big plot in mind as you do and be creative. Don't be afraid to create scenes that unusual. Lend your own sense of storytelling to the plant if you enjoy writing or reading. Darker novels include darker scenes. It is easy to run with an idea and develop an interesting plot, and that is why this is your first project for this course. Hit. The listen is not over yet. As you develop your story, you need to take into consideration. The characters were discussed the scenes in the next video. But what is important now is the characters with a skeleton, the plot established. You need to develop characters that fit that plot, characters that are interesting and learn something over the events of the novel. Taking that example I mentioned earlier could make the young man a real brat, one that is rude and shows no care for his parents. Yet once they go missing, the young man grows with each scene maturing and refining that family love he or she once had as a child. Perhaps the young character sees what they have been doing wrong or has a look at what the parents have done in sacrificed for them. Suddenly, the character's personality is established as well as a moral lesson taught throughout the novel. Of course, you need not teach such a clear and obvious listen. But great stories often teach something profound and powerful. Sometimes it could just instill a sense off wonder in the reader as they are captured by the world and the characters you have written. That is something I will discuss further. But I recommend that once you have a skeleton of the plot, you think more the characters picture them in your head what they look like, where they're from and what the oclock. Use these characters to help shape your plot as well as you develop your character as they grow throughout your story to conclude if you feel like showing you my dears and how you turn them into a plot, you can talk about them in the discussions below, perhaps give some constructive thoughts on someone else's idea or receive constructive criticism on yours. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. We will refund our plot structure by reviewing scenes and ideas. Bye for now, 4. Refining a Plot by Establishing Structure: all right. Hello and welcome to a novel writing course in this lecture will be going over how to identify scenes and ideas that based work with your novel. Refining a plot can be easy for some and difficult fathers. Often a plot is jeopardized by a syriza of scenes that either don't fit the novel or don't carry enough weight as they should. Your novel will contain many scenes, most ranging from I Think, city to 60 scenes, which is what average there's not to say You'll have these scenes all planned out now. If you did, have all those scenes planned out, you about two short steps away from having a finished first draft get you might have a handful or more you want to include at this point in your novel. With so many seems to work with, it is very easy to create the scene that breaks the flow off your novel. You can identify these scenes, but what has changed by them if it's seen adds nothing to character to the plot, then it is a scene that needs to be cut out. That is a more obvious example, of course, So let me break this process down, step by step First arrangers scenes in an order you feel best suit to novel. You have a plot arranged in the needle on for you to work with sick and review each scene to see if that adds to other the character or plot development. Those two in particular. The way you approach this is by Chicken Deceiver character will be changed by the events. You know. Novel all the novels events changed by the character are your grain or destroying the character, changing them in small but important ways. Or you're developing the plot by introducing new features, characters, places or interesting developments with prat sequencing. If you have answered yes to any of these, thin you seem is important to your novel. It is a scene that will add to your story or intrigue the reader. If you find the scene that does none of this or does but doesn't add to the plot to the story or anything like that, then you have a scene that is better left out. Seems like these serve for padding and in the end, take away rather than add to your story. I've talked about the scenes with my students before, and I'm telling you now, you don't want to waste your time on writing something that will only lessen the impact of your novel. Such scenes only take away say matters, will cut them out and save yourself some writing time in future. Of course, this can lead us to step three. If you have a scene or more like this, you might have to adjust the sequencing of your plot. It is unlikely that if you cut out an unnecessary scene that you need to do this as your character will not have learned anything. Nothing really changes, so it's barely noticed. However, if your character went from A to B in that scene and you cut it out, you need to develop another scene that will explain how they got there in order to make it more necessary. It is not too difficult to step, but it does leave your full moment to think of something worthwhile to tell your reader. Like I said before, it is unlikely that cutting out such scenes will have this effect. Which brings us to the end of this process, your partisan eater and all the scenes you have created unnecessary in some way. Everything is crucial and important to your plant, so you don't have any unnecessary padding that could take away from the novel. There might be a few scenes you feel unsure of how to run. Or perhaps you feel you don't have enough scenes yet that one stop you from the next process off plot for finding what is introducing a structure to a novel. Generally speaking, plot structures depend on a plot itself. More complex pots have a back and forth between terms telling more than one story. Perhaps some plots prefer to start at the end and tell the story that led up to those events brought structures can very better can all be broken down into three crucial parts. The first part of being an introduction, you present your characters, then you present your plot. This takes more than a single chapter, but in a handful of chapters you have all those pretty much established the second part. The largest part continues for several chapters. The bulk of your scenes will take place here, developing the plot and the characters. If you have a clear protagonist and antagonist than the balance of power shifts back and forth in the sequence where nothing really changes. Finally, the third part or your characters are laid by the plot. To this point. It is show time, or they are is tested. Perhaps they finally work up the courage to ask someone they like on a date or put on a show in the local theater or make a groundbreaking decision or end up in a thrilling battle with the enemy. In these last few chapters, your characters are tested. It is often the most suspenseful part of the novel, where they might be challenged, beaten down and make a sudden comeback. In the last few chapters. The final Chapter two, tying off loose ends and allow hinting at a sequel are found that many writers start here third part when they're planning a great ending, serves a book. Well, sir, planning this part carefully is crucial Now. If those three parts discussed see how you can arrange your scenes to fit the structure you might find you have an introductory phase that lasts too long or second phase that's far too short. You might find yourself adding more scenes to space these out, which in turn will improve your pacing. It can be a lengthy process, but it is ultimately a worthwhile one. Having such a structure in mind, which will help you better understand how your plot works, which in turn will help you better create and rot scenes for each point. That is the point of planning oft all to make the writing process easier and the novel better. You need not share your plot in the discussions below writers often secretive after all, but your project for this lecture is to refine your novel by introducing a structure to it . It need not be a basic three part structure I've talked about. You can use a similar structure to a novel that you enjoyed, and it's similar to your own. Or it can even be the level that inspired you to write in the first place with that hour in this lecture here in the next video, we'll be discussing word count and chapter creation. What would Kant basically two novel, and how many chapters should you have fund out in the next video? Bye for now? 5. Choosing a Word-Count and Chapters: all right. Hello and welcome back to a novel planning course in this lecture will go through the process of taking a novel's plot, organizing it into chapters and then establishing a word country. Let's begin with the process of deciding how many chapters your novel involved. What may seem like a simple, almost unnecessary step can influence the pacing of your novel. Processing is a difficult subject to understand, as there are many factors to take into account. Pacing of a novel can be increased was simplistic writing, with shorter chapters even coming down to the choice of words you use. More descriptive writing would off course slowed the pacing down. Of course, your writing style is your in style. In a better suits, the genre you prefer writing. He should also know a fast paced novel is not bad. And now there's a slow pace level. Any genre can be rich in a certain way and still succeed. It is the content itself that is important and how it is presented rather than how fast or slow it is presented. You can understand how a slow paced mystery novel often does better than a fast paced mystery novel to take advantage of the genre differences. We could set up certain numbers of chapters for novel to influence the pacing without influencing the writing style. Now how many chapters should enough will involve? On average, a novel off any genre can contain 10 to 3 chapters. That is a large range of chapters, and pacing, therefore can very generally speaking most novels, so either be around 10 lengthy chapters or around 30 shorter chapters. These novels can have exactly the same number of words, but they're pacing can be adjusted dramatically. But the number of chapters chapters serve a purpose. You novel in that sense. When a reader finishes a chapter, they feel small relief. It's a break the fade out before the next part of the movie begins. Perfect time to grab a snack or take a break and come back later. It is for this reason that a novel with 10 chapters feels dancer. Much slower to read than the novel were 30 chapters, although you can read them in the exact same amount of time. The specific number of chapters can very depending on your plot, but I recommend taking a look at your writing style and genre first and then decide on one of these two goals. Do you feel you should use 30 chapters? Is a goal because you have a large variety of scenes, a writing style, you feel, too, so plot that requires a faster pace. Or perhaps it is the exact opposite, and you feel you should use the 10 chapters to slow things down. Think of it as a simple decision you are struggling to decide on, because at the end of the day, the number of chapters will change when you're writing your novel and yours might be longer than 30 chapters or shorter than 10 or even right in the middle at the 20 chapters mark. That being said, the next concern is work count. It's a far simpler question to answer, so it's announced question it. And orphan for short weekend Read usually ranges from 50,000 words to 80,000 words. Regardless of target audience, any novel shorter than 50,000 words is more novella than a novel. 80,000 words 203,000 words isn't heavy. Read lasting longer than a weekend for the average reader. Finally, anything above 130,000 words is considered an epic novel in the sense of length with such a large word count. These novels are commonly called bricks by the reading community, not a negative term. But these are thick novels often enjoyed by passionate readers who enjoy stories that last longer than typical novels. Now for the beginner, right always recommend a short novel around 60,000 to 70,000 words. It is an excellent starting goal, of course, for the more experienced or perhaps dedicated Begin Arata, I recommend 80,000 to 90,000 words to start any more than that is up to you. It comes down to how much your at and how long you want your novel to be. On that note. You have a number of words and a number of chapters. You should now sit down with your few pieces of paper and a pencil, organizing your scenes into chapters and calculate the average would count per chapter. Depending on how many scenes you have prepared. This could be a lengthy process, but a worthwhile one. But they knew this process. You have a rough planning complete. You can actually take this planning and start writing your novel with it. adjusting here and there as you write your novel. Of course, however, if you feel you're playing deserves more, join me in the next lecture when we'll add more me to the skeleton off. Planning in the next lecture will be going over chapter and character summaries to help keep track of important characters and what goes on in each chapter, all using some short summaries and paragraphs. Of course, give you some examples then as well I'll see you then in the next video Bopha now, yeah! 6. Finishing Your Plan with Chapter and Character Summaries: all right. Hello and welcome back to novel planning course in this lecture will be discussing chapter summaries and character summaries before we begin. I'm sure you understand the subject of this video. Great in a summary for chapter is common practice, but it is often done poorly. The same goes for character summaries. When making a summary for chapter, you need to look at which characters are involved and the events in the previous and following chapters. Essentially, that is all that chapters are. Chapter two is a journey from Chapter one to Chapter three Chapter three years, a journey from Chapter two to Chapter four. You're progressing some part of your book, be it the plot or character development. Your chapter should be focused on this aspect rather than a vague telling of events, thus stocking a summary with what you're progressing. Does your character Luna Listen, do your characters uncover some plot altering fact? Doesn't negative or positive event transpire? You can summarize this in a paragraph detail in your crucial aspect off a scene and who is involved. You'll do this for each scene that you're chapter contains. You will find this process similar to screenplays you'll find this process similar to screen plays. A film being developed has similar parts broken down into scenes. These scenes work like chapters. With that mindset, you should have no problems summarizing a scene with these simple and useful chapter summaries. You understand the purpose of each scene You're autumn, and thus your writing and tone will focus on the purpose. So let's have a look at an example of a chapter summary as it will be shown on screen. Now here's the first example. Jonathan returns to work to find there is nobody They He finds the know Tony's desk, warning him. Jonathan is attacked but manages to escape and barricade himself from the monster in the printer room. He realizes he is wounded and uses tape to stop the bleeding. Rubin fools of strange gas. Jonathan passes out. This is a summary that tells the writer all the information they need for the chapter. It is brought enough that I can give them room to work with, especially if they feel that they're some aspects of the scene that need to be changed. A scene such as this can be written and many number of ways, depending on the rata, but the story would be the scene, if not the feeling the writer gives. Let's have a look at one more chapter summary. You should see the on screen now. Charlie wakes up in the middle of a physics lecture. Nobody noticed a sleeping or nobody. Cade Charlie checks of phone messages and notice a civil messages from my mother. But she ignores. After the lecture, Charlie talks with one of her friends, Julie, the to talk about home and eventually this Coxes Charlie into reading her mother's messages . Charlie runs home after reading them. That's another cliffhanger to end this chapter, but once more a clean and helpful summary. The unimportant details are lift out, leaving only the crucial summary of the characters involved and what they do. In both examples, I made it clear that the tone of the novel shifts. By the end of the chapter. Something changes in the first example. The story goes from creepy to suspenseful. In the second chapter, the tone shifts from calm to mysterious. Now these are chapter summaries. Next, our character summaries. The complexity off characters cannot be understated. Each one has a role to play in your novel, some of them incredibly important. With that a month having a connection of summaries, detail ing, certain features of your character can be incredibly useful. It could be a collection off their behavior, personality traits, decisions and actions they've made have incredibly useful. It not only serves as something to help you with writing them in your novel, but also serves as a reminder in case you forget a certain detail how certain characters should behave. Nothing stands out more than a character making a crucial decision that is out of character . You'd be surprised how often another's writer will lead it character down a certain parts unconsciously, until they realize they are writing an entirely different character to create a character sheet or summary, you don't simply write a characters of physical features down. You write down some basic adjectives describing their personality. Keep track of the major decisions, phrases and personal beliefs. For example, your character could hate swimming, so if you write a scene where they're happy swimming later in the novel, it is out of character. That is a small detail, but they can be bigger and more crucial. You want to avoid such contradictions in your novel as it will break the immersion, keep your character sheets handy and one additional sheet detailing the facts about your world. Even in a fictional world, Arata can contradict themselves. Discuss the environment, the politics, the level of technology the entire sitting that your novel is taking placing should be described on one piece of paper. If you decide to add a plot crucial detail, be sure to check with your character sheets if it isn't the and it doesn't contradict some other fact, be sure to update the sheet to conclude this point. I personally don't use character sheets as often as I should. I include a few crucial mean inside characters in my novels for reason. It makes it easier to keep track of all of them. But I definitely keep a sheet detail in facts about the world, as I kind of want to make the world a part of the novel as important as that of the main character. So keeping details on the world is incredibly important when it comes to my writing. With that said, it does the pain on the complexity of, you know, if you're like me, you need not be so complex in that part of your planning. But keeping such information handy is always useful as this saves you. The pain of going back in a novel to find a specific name will fact check something if you're unsure something that you bought a right, so in the long run, they will save your town. Seen as this is the final stage of the planning process, we're going to now collect ideas that weren't important. But we're entertaining. It could be an amusing scene that you thought up or a fascinating detail, which makes the world more interesting. These details may not be as important as the characters or the core plot, but they certainly add a certain level of depth to your story. How you approach the stage is simple. Read through your plan. Go over the summaries and imagine the scenes feel for yourself if a scene could be improved . If you add some detail, perhaps make a suspenseful Seymour grouping or a lighthearted seen more uplifting they small. But sometimes wonderful details can add a sense of character to your world to further that point. Also include alternative scenes. Alternative scenes are your full back if your initial scenes don't pan out. It's a common occurrence when writing a novel that a scene might go a different but far better way In such a circumstance. The next scene or even chapter might not fit the plot anymore. That is a harsh possibility. It is more than likely that once you have a better feel for your novel, you might prefer the alternative scene that you planned earlier. Keeping tabs on these interesting details and alternative scenes is unnecessary, but they can help you in the long run opinion on the complexity of your novel, of course, Yet this is still a short step you can do in your day. Speaking of which, in the next lecture, I'll be going through the short process off pain in your novel in a single day. That's right. You can take what we've talked about and boil it down into a simple one day planning process. It won't be as thorough, and you may have trouble with it later in your novel, but those who don't mind and are eager to write this process might be the one for you. With that, I'll see you in the next video bye for now, 7. BONUS: Planning a Novel in 1 Day: all right. Hello and welcome to the final lecture in your novel planning course, it is going to be a short one, but fun lecture as we go over the one day planning process. Now, this is a process are developed for my first nanowrimo challenge. For those who don't know, the Nana Rahm Oh is a shorter name for National November Writing month in this month, writers around the world are challenged to rot a 50,000 word book in a single month, a serious challenge, but a great way to improve your productivity if you need to push yourself. Yet I was introduced to the challenge close to it, beginning. So there wasn't much time to go through the lengthy planning process. I wanted to take full advantage, though, of every day in that month, so I couldn't take my planning into that month without losing those writing days. Thus, the one day planning process was created, so let's go over this process step by step. First, you need an idea. For me, it was something simple. Just a theme. Pirates. That's all I needed to start thinking up ideas for you. You can use more defined concept from your idea journal. Second, I needed a main character. I decided to simplify things by aiming for young adults and choosing a teenage protagonist . But you can choose whatever you want a simple, this picture character and described them just that character. Anything else you'll build up around it. Third is developed a short plot summary a bit more difficult, but once more keep it simple. Making only a sentence or two, such as the main character, is tracking down a killer along the main characters Searching for treasure or the main character opens a bakery. Anything so simple that it could be made complex later in your planning, so developing scenes fought shouldn't be difficult to run. The fourth step is deciding how many chapters and making use staging the side. However many chapters you want and write it down, and then you'll make use off staging. Now. Staging is a term I use for breaking a plot in two stages. It's Macy, but a quick method. I don't recommend it for the lengthy planning process, but it is helpful if you want to speed things up. I chose to have 25 chapters. Then I broke the novel up into far chapter segments for me to settle on what happens each stage stage one would be chapter 1 to 5. Stage two would be chapter 6 to 10 and so on. So then I took stage one and decided this will be were introduced. The characters and the plant, once the world of characters, are more defined. I move on to stage 23 and four, which were the next 15 chapters, consisting of the protagonists completing some tasks, progressing the plot and so on. Step five, the final five chapters where everything starts to end. For me, it ended with a clash off swords and some characters being sacrificed. Staging for me was vague but useful as I don't have much tongue. I don't recommend relying on staging if you have more time to spend, of course. And now for the fifth and final step, which is just refining. If you have the term refund, what you feel needs to be refined in your planning, especially if you feel too vague to work with. Perhaps the characters require more depth, or their roles need to be better established. Or perhaps search and scenes need a going over. They might be too sudden a lot of place for your novel, in short, to go over your plan and improve what you can improve steps 1 to 4, require plenty of thought and take up your day quite quickly. So don't stress too much on this fifth and final step. By the end of this process, you'll have a plan for a novel. It'll help you in the writing process and to conclude our myself. Don't make use of this method as often as the lengthy myth it off planning. I do use it when tackling small ideas, senior, if I can work it into a novel novella. But for major novels, the one day process just doesn't do them justice. Was that a month? There are many successful writers who write novels without planning, not even a scrap of piece of paper with a small plot line established. Perhaps this one day process for your writing style better than the lengthy process. So it may work just perfectly for you, and with that said, I like to thank you for watching this video and in fact, this course as this is the last instructional video, your project for this course is to take all these steps and develop a plan for your novel. As you write your novel, you'll develop it further. But for now, you need to concentrate and spend as much time as you can on planning it. Decide which seems that you feel best suits your novel, go over it again and again until eventually you have something that you really excited to rot, and at that point you're ready to begin. In the next video, I conclude on what you have learned and give you some further advice on rotting, so I'll see then and Buffalo. 8. Conclusion to Planning Your Novel for Beginners: All right, Congratulations. Writers on completing the course haven't reached the end of this course. You have learned the step by step process for effective level planning. You learned how to simplify your plans by cutting out what isn't necessary to set the word count and your chapter goals. Be sure to follow your plan closely, but question it constantly. The writing process is filled with moments where you believe you can approve. Even the best laid plans cannot predict unpredictable. To in that statement door, I wish you the best of luck with your planning and writing. If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask in the discussions. I am an active instructor, so expect a response soon enough. If you're interested in tackling any other problems or improve upon your writing in some way, be sure to look at my profile. I host a wide selection of courses on the subject of writing, helping you become the writer you want to be. And on that note, thank you for watching and happy rotting