Tag: book plotting

Getting started with a work is perhaps one of the most difficult things you can do in writing. The runner-up is staying motivated and on target when life gets in the way or you suffer from writer’s block. But not to fear! I have some suggestions.

Even if you’re the most scatterbrained person on the planet (me, hello), having a fluid yet coherent plan is going to take you further than “just write.” You don’t need to attach dates, schedules, word counts, or any other performance indicator to the project; this can demotivate you more.

Rather, you stage everything out and move through each component in order. This gives you the flexibility to change things up when necessary but the mental organization to know what’s coming next.

You don’t have to follow my methodology to be a great writer. Everyone is different, and what works for me may not work for you. However, if you don’t have a structure, consider how you might be able to adapt mine to your own needs.

Without further blathering, let’s discuss.

Brainstorming

Brainstorm is not outlining, though many get the two confused. All you’re asking is, “What if? And then what? And what comes from that?”

You don’t even need to write anything down other than your barest, rawest idea. Put it in a Notepad document, then add any stray thoughts that come to you when you look at this prompt.

Crucial point: do not start outlining here! Don’t come up with plot points! Just sketch out the simplest outline of what you’re thinking, such as what problem will be solved or how magic works. You will then collect and cultivate these thoughts in later stages.

Character Development

This is my personal opinion, but I think so many people have flat characters because they cram them into a plot rather than molding the plot around them. Such a problem can occur when you start with idea refinement and outlining rather than characterization.

A plot needs to happen to someone, and that someone needs to be interesting. So, start with characterization. I have some helpful guides on this process here:

• Troubleshooting your characterization
• Developing character agency
• Making relatable characters
• Fixing Mary Sues
• Quality assurance for characters

Can you tell characterization is my favorite aspect of writing?

Idea Refinement

Now that we have a little guy, we can begin refining the ideas we brainstormed. We can better see how the world may shape the character and vice versa, as well as understand how the character will react to different elements of our world or plot.

Go back to your brainstorming list and ask some questions. You can even take these questions and write out your answers, helping you get a better idea of what the plot will look like.

• How does the “what if” impact the plot? Why would it cause conflict?
• How is the “what if” informed by the world? What does it change about the world if you’re in a fantasy/scifi story?
• Why did the inciting event happen? Does it have roots in the past? Was it just a strange coincidence?
• Look at each element. How does it come into play? Why is it important to the reader’s understanding?
• What is the most important thing for readers to understand in order to enjoy your book? How can you emphasize it?
• Why is your MC the best person for the job? What attributes (knowledge, skills, experience, special abilities) make them a suitable protagonist?
• Who else plays a role in this story and why?

Outlining

Now we can get started figuring out plot points. When creating a plot, you need to slowly amp up the pressure until the climax, but also provide downtime. A constant upward slog grows tiring, and it can also become melodramatic.

I have you covered. Ditch Save the Cat and the Hero’s Journey! Instead, consider using my Plot Mountain method.

Why does my method work better? There’s a few reasons.

Plot Mountain naturally integrates rest points, called base camps, where your readers can catch a breather. This prevents melodrama and allows for deeper characterization.

By thinking of your book like a mountain climbing expedition, you become more selective about characters and can better stick to a main cast. It also forces you to think about how each character plays a role in what happens and how they can work together.

You will understand how each stage of the plot has different stakes and intensity. You can build in mini conflicts that slowly grow more intense until the climax.

Just like mountain climbing, any plot will have some hiccups, accidents, and close calls. Reminding yourself of this ensures that nothing feels guaranteed for your readers.

Your characters will naturally grow throughout the plot as they face different challenges. No one leaves a mountain unchanged, and your characters don’t either.

Avoid going overboard with your plotting, as this can discourage you. I recommend my double outline method if you often find yourself creating dozens of pages for your plot, then not knowing what to do with all of it.

Messy Draft

Messy draft is exactly what it sounds like. I call it that to mentally delineate between your “real” draft and this malformed one.

Ignore beginner writer mistakes; forget about your dialogue sounding natural. All that you’re doing here is getting things down as quickly as possible.

Be aware that a lot of this isn’t going to make it into the final draft. Think of it as an extended brainstorming session, where you’re just dumping out everything you can think of so you don’t forget it.

The plot may be half-baked and the characterization weird. There’s time to fix all of that later. Your only goal is not to forget what you wanted to include, even if you have to move it around.

If you hate writing messy drafts, don’t worry; I understand. The longer that you write, the more polished that your first forays will become. After over 15 years of writing, I have found that most of my messy draft makes it to the final cut, though I typically have to write more before I’m done.

Draft 1

Yay! You have some soft, tasty clay to shape into a real draft. Now’s the time to look back at your outline and see how you can form all your thoughts into a coherent plot.

I like to create a brand new document and make headers for every scene I want to do. I do that instead of use chapter headers because then I’m thinking about it as a story, not about where chapter breaks should be. Later, I’ll cut scenes up, shorten or lengthen them, etc, so each chapter has roughly the same word count.

Now, we can copy-paste that nonsense from the messy draft into our pretty new D1 document. This lets you see how things fit together and what you might be missing.

Go back and fill in the blanks until you have a full plot. Don’t worry about writing in order; do what feels the most urgent to you. This helps you avoid writer’s block, where you get stuck on one section so you can’t move on to the rest. You’ll be able to fix those sticky points later.

Percolation

D1 is done, and it’s time to relax. Percolation is a critical and underappreciated element of writing. This is when you … just stop writing.

No, really. Stop writing. Put it down. Close the document. Leave it alone. Do something else.

In general, you want to wait a month at minimum. This seems like an extremely long time if you’re impatient, and it is. But that’s the point. You need to “forget” about everything you put into your draft so you can approach it with a fresh perspective.

Draft 2

Make a new copy of your first draft and call it D2. Why do you need a new document? Because you may take something out, then realize you wanted it again. Having D1 as backup means you won’t worry about deleting something, as you can always look back at your first version and compare them.

If you’d rather use D1 for whatever reason, you can also copy-paste what you remove into another document so that you still have it.

Please don’t use version histories to revise. They may not exactly sync up to your saves, and you might not even realize you missed half a sentence until much later.

Now, let’s look at what we’re fixing in D2. It’s not grammar or spelling, I can tell you that. Instead, we’re looking for structural issues and characterization problems.

You’ll be asking yourself a lot of questions now. Here are some you should reflect upon.

Is my point of view the most compelling option? Do I need multiple POVs or does one suffice?

Do my characters speak naturally or do they sound like therapists?

If I have LGBTQ characters, have I avoided stereotypes and poor representation?

Are my descriptions bland, nonexistent, or too long?

In fantasy and scifi, is my worldbuilding too elaborate or too barebones? Is the magic system overdone or confusing?

Am I imposing too much cognitive load on the reader by having too many characters, adding too many details, or going on long-winded diatribes about backstory?

Have I considered perspective when writing descriptions? Does what I focus on make sense for the POV?

Does my work read like fanfic instead of original fiction? Why?

Beta Reading

Once we’ve gotten that done, we can send our work to beta readers.

People argue that you should send your D1 to alpha readers, but I disagree. In many cases, you could have solved those problems yourself by percolating. Sending things out too early means you have wasted time (and sometimes money) getting feedback that doesn’t help.

For a productive beta reading, send over some questions about the things you are most concerned about. These could be issues that you have been told about in the past or plot-specific items.

Common questions I ask my beta readers include:

• Is the main character compelling and three-dimensional? Do their decisions feel coherent?
• Does the POV make sense for the character? Is there a unique voice that matches what you would expect from them?
• Are secondary characters fleshed out enough? Were there any characters you wanted to understand better?
• Are there any excessive infodumps or internal monologue?
• Does the plot progress smoothly and draw the reader along, or are there areas where it lags too much?
• Are there any scenes or descriptions that are too intense or seem overblown?
• Was there anything that confused you, seemed out of place, or was not explored enough?
• My themes are XYZ. Did these shine through, or were they lost?
• Were there scenes you would have liked to see, or that could have been fleshed out more?

Percolation Part Two

Now, you let your draft rest again while you digest the feedback you have been provided by beta readers.

The main reason this is important is because you need time to integrate these new elements. However, it’s also important so you avoid getting defensive and dismissing what your reader said because it hurt your feelings.

My beta readers are absolutely amazing, but I do still sometimes get annoyed because I thought everything was perfect and then they call something into question. Letting things settle makes me realize they were totally right most of the time. That’s why I trust them and have built a great partnership.

Sometimes, this percolation stage will last longer because you need to really reflect on the feedback, and sometimes it will be shorter if your beta reader didn’t have a lot of notes.

For me, I took a month between sending What Is Cannot Be Unwritten (coming November 7, 2025) to my beta reader and getting back to work on it. My reader’s suggestions were great, but they also required more subtle shifts in characterization that I needed to puzzle out.

Draft 3 (Final Fixes)

At last, we get to the final draft. You can integrate the feedback you got from your beta reader(s), such as fleshing out character motivations or adding more scenes that provide greater context.

Many writers get kinda demotivated at this point. They’re sick of their draft and want to be done with it. That’s actually a good thing; it means you’ve really dug into your story, and there are only a few minor touch-ups.

I send D3 to one last beta reader, usually the most expensive one in my roster. This ensures I haven’t missed anything and gives me the confidence to move onto editing.

Editing

With editing, you are going over everything with a fine-tooth comb, checking that every word is spelled correctly and every sentence flows smoothly.

My two favorite editing tools are Sensory Readable and ProWritingAid. Sensory Readable works much like Microsoft Read Aloud, but it allows you to build a custom dictionary with pronunciations. This is useful if you have non-English words or unique names, as often happens in fantasy.

ProWritingAid does include AI, but I don’t use it for that. Instead, I use its assessment tools such as for reading level (never above Grade 9), glue words, overly long sentences, repetitive sentence structure, and too many dialogue tags. Microsoft Word is not robust enough for this, and Grammarly is designed more for business writing, so it often recommends overly clinical sentence fixes.

Pre-Publication or Submission

Your draft is completed and ready for release. You’ll need to format it according to whatever you’re doing, whether that’s turning it into a KDP file or submitting it to literary agents.

If you’re self-publishing, you also need to commission a book cover at this point. It’s important to do this relatively early so you can use the book cover for marketing purposes.

Pre-Publishing Marketing

Once your book is all set up, it’s time to market. Write the blurb, including both a short and long one (Draft2Digital lets you do both).

Set up a review campaign on somewhere like BookSprout, create marketing pages on Canva or another tool, and queue posts about your book on social media/your blog.

You can also request professional reviews, which you might have to pay for. While these may not make you any sales, they will improve your SEO. Google draws on these to make its AI overviews when someone searches for your book title.

If you have a newsletter (as I do, which you can sign up for here), offer your readers a few little snippets to intrigue them.

The key here is to build interest by sharing things about the book. Consider what readers would most want to know about the story and characters, but make sure your synopsis isn’t overly mysterious. You don’t want to spoil the plot, just give enough hints about where it’s going that readers will be interested.

Publication and Marketing

When publication day arrives, you should have garnered at least some interest in your book, but the advertising doesn’t end there. Regularly remind people about your books by sharing new promotional material, offering quotes, and inserting links to your books in any articles or blog posts you might write.

Consistency and patience is key with marketing. It will take time to get traction. Publishing is an extremely saturated market; you may not sell a lot of books for months or even years. This is completely normal, but you may start to get discouraged when you don’t see instant success.

What’s the best antidote for this? Yeah, I know you don’t want to hear it.

Start all the way at the beginning. Write another book. And then another. And then advertise all of them together.

This roadmap may seem daunting; I understand. But writing a book is a huge endeavor, no matter how much people might try to diminish it. A completed novel can take months or years depending on its complexity and your timeline.

Millions of people give up at the outline stage, and others don’t start at all. If you’ve gotten just a messy draft down, you’re doing so much better than you think. Keep going! You can see this through until the end.