How to Craft a Novel

4 steps on how to craft a novel, starting from its structure!

*DISCLAIMER: this is based on my experience and might not work for you. You can try these tips but this is not gospel, no writing tip is!*

You have your characters, a plot, an outline, and now you have to start writing. But how do you plan chapters, major, minor, and filler scenes?

Major events are moments that absolutely can’t be omitted in the story. E.g.: the moment Hagrid told Harry he’s a wizard, or when he met Ron and Hermione.

Minor events/scenes are usually shorter moments in which the plot doesn’t progress too much, but you present a character to your audience, or you simply give your reader a taste of the setting. Think about when you close a book and you think “God, I’d really like to live in Alicante”. You got that feeling from a minor scene, not a major one where the plot is the focus.

Filler scenes are the moments where you have fun, basically, and play around with your characters showing parts of them that give the reader a break of pure fun from the “serious” plot business. You can find a lot of examples in movies or tv series where you see scenes that don’t really make the plot advance or anything.

Normally, I’d start a project having already in mind all the major events and a couple of important minor scenes.

1. Decide how long your novel will be

It’s not the most important thing, but this definitely helps guiding my planning.

For example, my current WIP (almost done!! ok, back to being serious) is a soft sci-fi/fantasy. On average, a book of this genre should be around 100k words long.

Now, put this number aside. It’s important for me to keep it in mind but it’s not fundamental.

2. Write down the major events

Remember that, normally, they won’t be too close to each other. That brings me to the next point:

3. Fill in the gaps with minor events.

This is the moment to write down sketches of scenes that you haven’t thought about yet, but you know must be in the book!

4. Try to include filler scenes

No worries! I wrote a couple of filler scenes in my outline-project but then added more or cut some of them while I was writing my first draft. This kind of scene is totally flexible and should be fun to write, so don’t worry too much about this.

Bonus!

... Before writing a 1st draft

a. Decide:

· your povs,

· tone,

· voice,

· tense.

b. Adjust language to your audience

At this point, it’s also important to remember your target audience.

Write according to their specifics: don’t use curse words if you’re writing for teens or kids, but use language that will make them laugh, from time to time, maybe; write vivid and direct scenes of sexuality or violence if you know your target audience is made of adults who might enjoy this kind of images and the language that follows.

I hope this helped! Let me know what you think about these tips in the comments!

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