Every story needs a plan.  Without a plan, a book quickly falls from story to *series of things that happen.*

And no one wants to read that!

It’s no secret that I am a big proponent of plotting my novels in the plotting-vs-pantsing debate.  But even for steadfast pantsers, having a plan helps ensure a story stays cohesive, meaningful, and enjoyable to read.

What is a Story Plan?

A story plan includes notes on theme, character development, world building, conflict, and, of course, plot.

It is all the background stuff that is important for creating a rich and immersive world.

All of these elements need to remain cohesive, ie, they all need to blend into one another.  I often talk about how in a plot, nothing should ever just happen.  Deus Ex Machina (or making up a random thing that happens to help move the plot along) is lazy and, frankly, annoying for the reader.

It’s the same with story planning, if a little less rigid: nothing should ever just be.

If I want my character to jump off the page, I need to feel (and a reader needs to feel) that the character has a logical storyline from their birth up to where they are at today.  This means that hobbies, interests, even patterns of speech need a reason for having developed.

If I want my world to be realistic, every feature must have shaped part of the society they live in, the characters themselves, and the plot.

Developing Your Story Plan:

It may sound daunting to build a story where absolutely everything relates together; wouldn’t it be a lot more fun to throw a bunch of ideas into something and see what happens?

Luckily, developing a cohesive story plan is not that hard.  It’s a process that can be followed.

Here is my step-by-step process for developing my story plan:

1) Inspiration

Almost no one sits down to write a book without any idea of what they want to write about.  We all have some vision of the story we want to write.

For some of us, we know something about one of the characters, or we know a bit about the world, or we have imagined a scene.  Maybe we just have a feeling we want the book to impart, or a message we want to share.

As creative people, we often are overflowing with ideas.

In the inspiration phase, I am not thinking too seriously about the story.  I might have an idea, and let it sit for a few weeks, and then have another idea.  Some ideas fade into the background, and other ideas keep pounding at my door, demanding my attention.

Once I decide an idea is going to be my next book, I write down everything I know, or everything I want to be in the story, and brain dump my ideas.  This gets them out of my head so I can move onto the serious work.

Action Step: brain dump all your ideas for the story

2) Theme

When I create my stories, theme is at the forefront.

For some reason, we don’t talk about theme that much, but it is vital.

Theme is what the story is about on a deep level.  It is the life lesson or message we want to share with the reader.

To write truly memorable and inspiring fiction, we need to make people question their beliefs and force them into uncomfortable situations (via the main character’s trials) in order for them to personally grow.

(and you thought you were reading for pleasure?)

Readers crave growth.  In Wired for Story, Lisa Cron tells us that stories are a vehicle for passing on information; people can have experiences, and learn from those experiences, by reading a story about someone in that experience without having to experience it themselves.

Having a theme also helps us as the writer (or me at least) feel more motivated to finish the story.  Theme is the thing that helps us feel like the story is going somewhere.

Action step: identify the life lesson you want to teach.

Read more about how I come up with Theme here.

3) Character-World-Conflict

My theme is now going to inform everything about the rest of my story.

This part gets a bit nebulous….

I believe that Character, World, and Conflict all need to be developed at the same time.  They inform each other, as much as theme informs them. I build them in a kind of cycle, adding one layer to character, then one layer to world, then one layer to conflict.  Then I go back and add a second layer, and so on.

There is no hard and fast way that I do it, as every story’s features might need to be handled in a special way, but in general, I have multiple documents open and ready to go at the same time.

I start with one document for each of character, world, and conflict.

My theme is going to dictate some core features of my main character and my antagonist, the world, and the conflict.

For example, my currently work-in-progress is about the power of art.  Therefore, my main character must like art (he is an artist) and he begins his journey believing art is useless.  My antagonist also believes art is useless.  The world they live in believes generally that art is useless so is a very drab, utilitarian space where business is valued.  And the conflict must start with art (he is arrested for making art) and be solved using art.

I keep expanding by asking the questions, Why, How, and Who.  Eventually, I will have multiple documents for each character, setting, and story line.

You can read more about how I develop each of these features here:

• Character
• World
• Conflict

Usually during this process, I have have ideas for different scenes.  I jot them down, because I can use them in the final phase: plotting.

4) Plot

At this point, I have a lot of information.  My characters are fully 3D people, my world is rich and living, and I have multiple story lines to follow.

I know the starting point of my overarching conflict, and I know the end point.  These should also dictate the start and end of the novel.

In the previous phase, I will have also developed lots of little scenes for each of my story lines / conflicts, and I start dropping them into my story structure.

I then fill in the blanks.  Because I know my characters, I know what they will do when faced with different situations.  I know how the world will react.  And I know all the different threads that get pulled.

Plotting, for me, is all about knowing your highlights (climax, turning points, etc) and then finding a logical way between point A and point B.

You can read more about Plotting here.

Ready to Write

My story planning process usually takes me a few weeks.  I can do it faster, but I like to let the ideas simmer (this saves me from having a moment of brilliance halfway through writing my first draft, and deciding to change everything!)

I also like to be very thorough.  It does save me from switching things around, or wishing I’d done them differently, I am able to write my manuscripts very quickly (usually also in just a few weeks) and produce well structured first drafts, and I almost never write my characters into a dead end (I always know how they will react and what they are capable of when faced with life or death) so I can be fearless in putting them into some incredibly tight situations.

Because I write in series, all these benefits become ten-fold more important.  (No one likes to be writing book 5 when they realize they should have made the main character xyz instead of abc….)

Want to learn more?

Go back to the How Do I Write a Book? Overview

Download the Free Story Planning Workbook