Planning your novel the old fashioned way

So let’s talk about our WIPs for a minute. Well, actually, let’s talk about my WIP for a minute 😛

I’ve mentioned before that I’m trying something completely new to me, and that’s epic fantasy. It’s crazy to think that I’m working on a book that needs to be 3-5 times longer than my YA novel. It’s even crazier to think that’s that’s only the first book of a series.

Writing something like this is so different than anything I’ve done before. You know, my first novel had one POV characters. My second (unpunished) one has six, but they are all pretty much wrapped up into a solitary plot, so things are easy to keep track of.

So while this trilogy is different than anything I’ve written before, it’s also the most difficult. And I think I understand why, and it’s not only the length and number of characters, but the entire scope of it. And try as I might, I can’t just write this thing the way I’d write anything else.

I have to plan. A lot.

One of the problems I’ve mentioned about my unpublished novel was that I didn’t do enough planning and pre-writing. I just hit ground running. To put it another way; I wrote it like a short story. That worked with Holy Fudgesicles, but it didn’t work with that second novel.

And it sure as heck isn’t working with this trilogy.

Now, it is worth mentioning that I have been doing quite a bit of planning. Scrivener is incredible for pre-writing. I’ve got a lot of characters profiles, setting profiles, and a very basic outline (and even a few chapters) all in Scrivener.  But there are still problems. It’s still just so hard to get the big picture out of my head and onto the computer.

The worldbuilding just isn’t there yet. The outline just isn’t coming along. I have a few scenes, but trying to get them in the right order is giving me headaches.

So I decided to try something new.

Paper.

I’ve spent like a year complaining that Scrivener has no built-in mapping software and no built-in outlining software. Well, you know what? I decided I didn’t need either one of those things.

Instead, I grabbed a little notebook and scribbled “Novel Notes” on the cover.

And then I started drawing a map. And then I started jotting down an outline. A good outline.

It dawned on me that–for whatever reason–outlining on a computer has always been very difficult for me. But paper made it work. There’s just something about the freedom of quickly scanning up and down over a written page that is lacking on a screen. I don’t know.

But what I do know is this: As soon as I started drawing that map and outlining on paper, everything that was in my head and didn’t want to come out….came out.

Somehow using a pen and paper just made the whole pre-writing exercise easier. And more fun.

So if you’re getting stuck on your worldbuilding and pre-writing, go ahead and give this a try.

And leave a comment to let us know how it works for you.