writing tips

planning

PLAN.

Yes, you may be excellent at writing. Your descriptions may be on point, the pace might be perfect, the general concept of the story is great—but you won't get anywhere without planning.

Most often people dive straight into the writing process of a story with no outline and barely a basic idea of where they're going to take the plot. A lot of the times they only have a concept/prompt they want to execute. As much as this could work out for some writers, most of the time it doesn't.

Spontaneous, sporadic writing isn't bad per se, but the story would turn out messy and unorganized. There'd be a lot of plot holes you didn't think through and details you could've mixed up or missed. (Ex. In chapter 1 you said the character's dad died from cancer. In chapter 10 you said he died in a car crash.)

That's why planning would make it a whole lot easier to remember all the information you're laying down.

One
Create a brief outline. A short, quick outline of the biggest/major events happening in the story. Have the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Don't think about plot twists, backstories, characters (and character arcs/development), plot holes, and the nitty gritty details yet.

Two
Now that you know where the story could go, you need to make an even clearer path. Add the less major things happening in between each big event. Keep going until you pretty much have a (long) summary of what's going to happen. Sort out the timeline and make sure it flows nicely.

Three
Now, get even more detailed! Add plot twists, refine your world building. Make sure you know what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, where it's going to happen, and why it's going to happen (and who's going to make it happen as an extra). Start outlining by chapter, getting the sequence of events and general flow of the story moving.

Four
Now it's time for all the tiny, itty bitty details. Go over your outline again. Fix and hunt down plot holes. Don't force the twists (they'll come and go as you write the story and plan characters).

Five
Start writing and edit along the way. It's long and hard (that's what she said) but in the end it's worth it.

*personally this is how I'd do it. Every person outlines in different ways, depending on what works. This is what works for me, but you could always do another way. (If you need more ideas, here's a video by Shaelin writes.)

CHARACTER PLANNING:

This is a key in creating three dimensional, substantial characters. Even with a good plot, if the characters don't carry a story, readers will probably drop the book and stop reading.

An example of really, really well written characters are the characters from Harry Potter. There's an entire debate whether or not Snape is a hero/good person, because he isn't just evil or good. He has some flaws and he's committed so many mistakes. Maybe, of course, the bad will override the good or vice verse, but the characters still make mistakes.

Using a character sheet and planning character development (there's a video for that too by Shaelin Writes) will help a lot. There's an extremely good character sheet by  @maplefoot from her book "Designing Your Character and Other Handy Things".

Also getting to know your character can help in really establishing their personality.