Shame Shelf Planning Tips: From Idea to Plot

You have an idea for a story. That's great!

Now you're asking yourself, how do I turn this into a full novel? We've got exactly what you need. We've been where you are and in this mini-guide we will walk you through how we each went from our initial ideas to having a detailed plot.

Step 1: Brainstorm

The first step for both of us was brainstorming. This can take whatever form works best for you, but if you're struggling with where to start this is how we both approached the process.

Write a Draft Zero

For Kay she brainstormed her novel by writing a Draft 0, where she just did stream of consciousness writing to get the idea down onto paper and let the characters lead her through the plot. She did this whilst participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and she managed to write around 35,000 words within the month just from her initial idea and without any additional thought or planning. This gave her a better understanding of her characters and of where her story was going. After reading through Draft 0 she picked out what worked, which elements she wanted to keep, and which parts of the overall plot she needed to change.

Ask Questions

CY approached her brainstorming in a different way to Kay, by asking herself a series of questions in order to build on her initial idea. She had the initial idea that there was a girl who was running away. She then built upon this by asking herself the following questions in order to develop a better understanding of her characters, their backstories and the plot trajectory. As she answered the questions, more questions would naturally follow which ultimately allowed her to flesh out an interesting plot.

001

Ask yourself these questions to get a better understanding of your characters. If your idea revolves around a protagonist, try to understand who that is and what is it they are doing at that moment in time. You can use these answers to develop the starting point of your plot.

Example: Who? A girl called Nora. What?She is running. Why? Because someone is chasing her. A follow on question would be who is chasing her? Then repeat this same process for that character.

002

Ask yourself this to get a better understanding of your character's goal, which will inform where you need to take your plot. It is crucial to think about why your character wants this result, as giving your character a strong motivation for their goal is key to an intriguing plot. Think outside the box and make it a believable!

Example: What? She wants to survive. Why? She needs to live in order to save her sister. A follow on question would be what is the threat to her sister?

003

Who else forms part of your idea? Ask yourself these questions to understand how they relate to your protagonist and to get a better understanding of how this feeds into your plot. Any novel needs some sort of conflict in order to be interesting, so who feeds into that and in what way?

Example: What? This is Nora's older brother Josef. They are rivals. Helping or hindering? He tries to stop Nora from saving their sister. A follow on question would then be why does he do this?

004

Use this question to determine how your story ends, which will help you figure out what needs to happen along the way. It will also help you to identify any plot holes and to tie these up. Make sure you have a good reason for what happens as this will determine whether your readers are invested in the outcome or whether they lose interest in your protagonist's fate.

Example: Outcome? Nora manages to save her sister. Why? She chooses to sacrifice herself so her sister can live.

005

Ask yourself this to figure out the stepping stones to reach your end result. These will end up being the major plot points that your novel can't work without. If you identify things that you want to happen that don't fall into this category, jot them down and put them to one side for the next step as these will form your subplots.

Example: What? There is a threat to Nora's sister's life, Nora is given a choice between herself and her sister, Nora meets her brother who needs to thwart her plans.

006

World building is a separate part of the novel writing process that you will need to do. Understanding the basics of where your novel takes place prior to plotting it helps as there may be some unique parts of your world that feed into your plot. You need to have these in mind during your plotting process to ensure that your plot makes sense in the context of your world.

Example: Where? Nora lives in London. How? The limits of the everyday world apply, except Nora can predict the future.

Hopefully these suggestions have helped you to get an understanding of what you want to happen in your novel and you can then move onto the next step. You may need to revisit this step several times as your novel progresses and you get a better understanding of what works and what doesn't.

Step 2: Organize

Once your have an idea of what you want to happen, you need to get a bit organised so you know when it needs to happen. We both approached this step in slightly different ways also.

Kay organised her novel using the novel template on Milanote (www.milanote.com). She identified all of the main plot points and set these out in a series of bullet points in the sequence that they needed to occur. She then categorised all of the other elements that she wanted to happen, such as the best friends to lovers story and the backstory of the protagonist's family, and she set these out in their own lists as subplots. She then identified each element of these subplots and laid these out in a series of bullet points for each one. In total she identified 6 subplots in addition to her main plot.

Chee Yen organised her ideas by creating a flowchart. She began by writing the initial idea of what needed to happen in a box and then she drew out her flow chart with the events that resulted from each point. This helped her to link together her plot points into a logical sequence and to then identify the subplots that flowed from each plot point.

So that's it for mapping out your plot! We hope this helped you to flesh out your idea, and that now you feel one step closer to writing your manuscript. We will be publishing separate posts on other parts of the novel writing process, including how to structure your novel, our tips for worldbuilding, and a guide to creating interesting characters so be sure to subscribe so you can be notified when they go live!

Let us know if you found this post helpful in the comments, and as always: