How to Plan a Novel

Even if You're a Pantser

Structure matters. I’ve written before about plotting vs pantsing and I stand by what I said in that post: however you write your novel is fine as long as it’s working for you. If you’re flying through the pages, then whether you plotted every scene in advance or are literally making it up as you go along doesn’t matter. But structure and plot isn’t quite the same thing. The plot is the story: what happens, point after point. Structure is how the story is arranged. Where the highs are, the lows, the twists, the reveals.

A great plot plus a strong structure makes for a compelling novel. You can have an amazing plot but if the structure is wrong – if we aren’t hitting the right points in the right places – then it won’t keep readers engaged. If we don’t get to an inciting incident/catalyst quickly enough, if we don’t work towards some kind of turning point/climax in the middle, if things don’t come to a nice resolution at the end, the story is, at one point or another, going to fall flat.

Thinking about the structure of your novel is useful at the planning stage as you work out what you want to write – but even if you are a pantster and/or don’t know exactly where the story will go yet, you can use a rough structure to give you touchpoints to aim for as you work through the story. Those touchpoints don’t have to be so specific that it forces you to write a certain thing (and even if you have planned like that, you should feel free to then write something different if it doesn’t feel right when you get there), but give you an idea of what you’re working towards: your protagonist gets part of their goal but realises they want something different/it isn’t what they thought it was/having it causes them another problem to overcome.

I’ve written before about plotting tools like Save the Cat! (with which I know a lot of authors who have had success!) and that it can feel too formulaic… especially if your heart wants to pants its way through the story. You definitely don’t have to follow the breakdowns of exactly what percentage of the way through your book each point needs to happen – or include all of them in the specific way they’re described – but any kind of structural framework like StC! is a useful way of working out what you need to include.

Another thing that I think is often useful is reverse engineering a bestseller. Pick a novel that yours would sit next to on the shelf (this is a shelf arranged by genre and ~vibe~, not author name – it’s my bookstore), and work out why it works. What is included, where do the plot twists come, when does it feel like the protagonist has wins and losses? Does your novel/outline hit those same points?

Photo by Hugo Rocha on Unsplash

The classic plot arc

The most basic plot arc looks like this:

BEGINNING > MIDDLE > END

I promise I am not being flippant. This is your three-act structure: the first act setting things up; the second with a midpoint or climax; the third where we reach resolution.

What I am trying to say is that there are a tonne of different story structures you could look at – Freytag’s Pyramid, the aforementioned Save the Cat!, the Hero’s Journey, Seven-Point Story Structure… – but really they are all just different ways of saying the same thing with more or less detail.

This means two things. Firstly, whichever one works for you is great. If there’s one that helps you mould the idea you have into something that looks like a novel outline, that one is perfect to you. Secondly, if all plot formulae are kind of the same… you can’t deny that structure matters. The idea is that even when authors are unaware of or consciously ignoring these structures, successful stories still work within them. So in my opinion, you might as well think about structure in advance, and save yourself some time working out why your novel isn’t working.

Whichever formulae you decide to use, however detailed your structure plan, here is the most basic run-down of what should happen in your novel:

What to include in the Beginning

This is where you set-up your story, build the world for the reader, introduce your characters, and – and this is the most important thing – lay your bait.

Your chances of hooking readers in start on the first line and get lower as you get further into the novel. As early as possible you want to pose a question the reader will have to know the answer to, which won’t be answered until the end (this is your inciting incident or catalyst for the plot).

What to include in the Middle

Avoid the saggy middle (technical term) at all costs!

Ensuring the middle of your novel has some kind of turning point – by adding a twist, upping the stakes, moving the goalposts, introducing a character/plot point/obstacle that changes everything – means we have something to work towards in the first half of the novel and something to drive the second half on.

What to include in the End

This is where everything is resolved. Tie up loose ends, solve the crime, fire Chekhov’s gun, answer the question raised in the opening pages. Ideally, everything that comes together here will have been seeded into the book earlier – deus ex machina endings are rarely satisfying – and no major characters vital to the plot’s resolution will be newly introduced.

A last note on genre expectations

Whilst a good novel structure is broadly the same across books, how that looks differs depending on the genre – and there are specific plot points which readers of certain genres will expect to sit within that structure.

For example, in romance your inciting incident will likely be (or happen close to/cause) the meet cute – and certainly the love interest should be introduced in the early stages of the novel. Your midpoint might be a breakup or some kind of obstacle preventing the lovers from moving forward, and your resolution will be a happy ever after (or a happily for now).

In a thriller your inciting incident is likely going to be a crime: a murder, a heist, a kidnap. In a mystery the resolution will be the solving of the case. And so on.

As always, genre expectations – and structure! – shouldn’t be constrictive or mean your novel is formulaic. When you know the rules you can play with them – intentionally.

How do you plan a novel? Do you think about structure or find that your story naturally takes on the right shape? And have you fallen foul of the saggy middle?

As always, please comment with any questions, requests for post topics, or tips for others!

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Abi