Writing a First Novel
From the Ground Up

My teenage daughter is constantly getting new ideas for writing a first novel. Whichever one most interests her is the one she works on for now. When she loses interest, there's always another novel idea to work on.

If you're like this, you may wonder if you'll ever be done writing a first novel.

You can finish, but you may need more structure than bare ideas to work from. So, how do you build upon that idea that's nagging you? I'm glad you asked.


Starting a "House"

If you have a great idea for writing a first a novel, start by trying to write one sentence that summarizes the entire thing. For instance, "A young orphan ultimately saves her rescuer."

If you're having trouble nailing down the main idea of the novel, it might not be a novel-worthy idea. But it might be, if you play with it a little.

Give yourself some time with this. Use several sentences to pose the idea, if need be, then pare it down to bare bones. You should be able to tell people what your novel is about in one sentence. If not, you may need to refine your idea until you can.

Why, you might ask, should I be able to say in one sentence a story that takes an entire novel to tell?

Good question. The main reason for this "exercise" is to clarify your story's point. Without that, you'll too easily ramble around and lose track of where you meant to go. (Although if that happens, maybe it's a different novel you meant to write.)

So give this some time and thought. Once you've done this, then it's time to expand on the idea and continue writing a first novel from it.


Making a Blueprint

When you're building a house (sorry for the analogy, but we're in the midst of that as I write this), there are numerous bits and pieces you have to keep track of. Boards, sheet rock, nails...

The general contractor (the author, in the case of your novel), has a blueprint to work from, detailing exactly where each of those boards goes. That's what we're going to create next.

Not everyone wants to "stifle their creativity" with a novel outline , but I find I work better with at least a minimal one telling me my major plot points. So, that's how we'll work on writing a first novel.

Take your one sentence summary and turn it into a paragraph, stating briefly the main conflict and the three or so biggest obstacles the protagonist must overcome to reach his or her goal.

These are crises that the main character faces while battling the antagonist (whether a person or something more abstract like the environment). After all, if the hero can waltz past the first roadblock and win, you can't turn his story into a novel. A short story, maybe.

Let your imagination go, here. Let the main idea you had percolate in your head. You should begin to have characters populating your potential story as you're writing a first novel in brief. Keep notes on those, we'll be working with them next.

For now, you should have a paragraph or so detailing your main conflict and what you think the opening crisis should be, plus three or more (depending on the length of your novel) good-sized disasters to slow your hero (or heroine) down along the way.

Don't forget to jot down how it ends. The final biggest crisis and the resolution, in other words. If you don't know where it's going (and you should. You boiled it all down to one sentence, remember?), you can't get there.

Hopefully, you're feeling a sense of "logic" here. This precipitates that, which creates this third problem... etcetera, etcetera.

Then on to step three.


Adding "Walls" and "Windows"

Okay. You're well on your way to writing a first novel, and picking up speed.

Next we need characters.

Most of my stories come from characters I envision, not from story ideas that invent characters for them to happen to. The characters tell me what happens to them. So to speak.

If this is the case for you, your novel writing may take a slightly different path than I'm suggesting. That's fine. You need to do what works for you. You can mix these steps up a little, as long as you try to do them all.

So, if a character started your thoughts going, he or she should also have suggested a conflict and main story line. That's what you write in your one sentence summary, even if you do some of your character work first.

Once you're ready to fill out your cast, come back here and get their basics down. (You might like to download my free fiction writing character outline forms to help you get the details down a bit later.)

Create your main characters, and jot down a brief outline of each one's story. You should have one protagonist and several supporting characters, including an antagonist. Don't try to come up with thirty or forty characters! Especially not when writing a first novel. Just a few. The heroine and her best friend, maybe her dad, and the guy who's stalking her.

Then figure out what each main character's external goal is. For your heroine, that's probably to avoid the stalker and find a way to get him out of her life. For her best friend, it might be to protect her friend, to get the stalker arrested and jailed, or to keep the best friend's father ignorant of the danger his daughter is in.

You choose. The story lines should mesh to make a whole. Obviously the antagonist's and protagonist's external goals should clash.

This is also a good time to note internal goals these important characters have. Maybe the heroine's internal goal is to prove to her father that she's fine living on her own and being independent now. Let your mind toy with ideas and put them down. You can change any and all of this later, as needed to tighten the plot and make the novel work.


Nailing The "Walls" Together

Now it's time to flesh out your plot. I think it likely that this is where most authors differ in their opinion on how to write novels . For some, only a basic plot is needed or wanted. For others, every plot point gets drawn out before writing the first draft.

If you outline to that extent, you'll have the entire novel in bullet form when you're done. Writing a first novel at that point, or a first draft, should be fairly straightforward and quick.

If that's what works best for you, now it's time to create more of a full-blown synopsis of your novel, and get the details about your characters nailed down. So to speak.

For each important character, create a "picture" of them - a physical description, personality traits and important details. Keep these handy to refer to as you write your rough draft.

Next, take your main plot points and decide how you get to them and past them. Note what happens in each scene.

Don't panic if you aren't sure what order it all goes in. You'll go back to rearrange later, if needed.

You may want to put your scene descriptions into a spreadsheet, rather than a word processing program. That way, they're easily rearranged to suit the final plot order, and you can assign chapter numbers to them in separate columns.

I've never done it this way, but I've read some references that suggested it. I might give it a try with my next novel. It seems like an orderly way to keep track of where I'm going and how I should be getting there.


Moving Windows and Doors

Once you have all the scenes you think you need noted in brief, it's time to read them through and see if the plot seems to flow logically and smoothly from beginning to end.

Now, if you're building a house and you make changes late in the process, it's going to cost you (a lot).

But in writing a first novel, change is free. And now is a much better time to play "shuffle the deck" with your scenes than after you send it out to editors. They won't take the time to tell you it needs rearranging. They'll just reject it.

Play with the order of your scenes to up the stakes, to keep your readers in more suspense or to clarify the action. Maybe that scene when the stalker goes after the heroine's best friend needs to go before the one where Dad stalks the stalker.

Shuffle them until the order seems perfect. Then... write your first draft!

If you've done this much work ahead, you'll probably be writing a first novel draft pretty quickly. And have less major rewriting to do than if you'd drifted along chasing your original idea hither and yon all over the "house".

After your first draft is written, it's time for editing.

What? You aren't done, you ask?

Nope. I don't know anyone who doesn't need to edit a novel at least once. For most, it involves quite a few steps. That's okay. Once that's over, you'll be done writing a first novel, and can go on to writing a second.

Isn't that the whole point?