Plan your book and increase your writing speed

Have you ever been sat at your computer staring at the screen or had pen in hand yet the words just wouldn’t flow? Perhaps now is the time to try planning your book before you start writing. Many writers prefer to start with a blank page and let the story develop as they write, if this works for you fine, but what if you find that your daily word count is low because you don’t know what to write next then give planning a try.

This method works for both fiction and non-fiction.  Not only will you know what comes next you will also know what areas require additional research; this could be hours saved trawling the internet.

Non-fiction

Divide the subject of your book into main topics/chapters. If your main subject is gardening throughout the year you might divide your chapters into months. If you are writing about your local area you might choose to have chapters on history, people, places to visit, etc. Aim for 10 – 12 chapters.

Under each topic/chapter list what you need to cover. For your gardening book you might have common areas e.g. jobs to do, plants in flower, the vegetable patch. For your local area this might include lists of who, where and what needs to be covered.

For each item on your list write what you already know, this could be note form or longer sentences. Each point will form a paragraph; each paragraph should be 50 – 100 words long.  Set chapter lengths at 1500 – 10,000 words long. Using these word counts makes planning easier however it is your choice, you could decide to produce a book of 20 chapters each of 500 words.

Look through this rough outline to see if you have any particularly long or short chapters. Ask yourself if long chapters can be split into two or whether shorter chapters can be combined. It is OK to have different chapter lengths if needed.

You now have your outline

• Main Subject
• Chapters
• Subheadings
• Paragraphs

Start writing and filling in the gaps. You do not need to write from the beginning to the end – just dip in depending on your knowledge or mood, and research areas as needed. Before long you will have a completed draft.

Fiction

The best way to plan out a piece of fiction is to divide the complete work into scenes. For a novel you are likely to need 50 – 100 scenes each of 1000 – 2000 words long. Individual scenes may be longer or shorter than your average.

It can be useful to plan each scene on a small card, the type found in a card index box. On each card note the basics of the scene: characters, location, main event, purpose and a hook. The hook may be a question raised by the scene.

Once you have notes of each scene you can then decide on which order they should be in the book; depending on the type of novel it can work well to alternative fast scenes with slower ones. Do not worry about chapters at this stage.

Start writing each scene. You do not need to write them in order and you can change the order of the scenes if you feel this would improve your book.

Before long you will have a completed novel.

Happy writing.