Here we are again. It’s been a while since I posted anything, a full-time job and trying to get the novel I’m working on finished has eaten some time. In my last post I talked about making a chapter plan. What I usually do after the chapter plan, is do a scene plan. How much planning you need to do at this stage depends on how many scenes you plan to have.
Start with your first chapter. What do you want to have happen? How do you need to break this up into scenes to get you to your goal for the end of the chapter? When I’m doing my scene plan I give myself just enough detail to know what it is I need to write. A paragraph is plenty.
When planning a scene I usually figure out whose POV (Point of View) the scene is going to be written in. This not cast in stone, and if you find after you’ve written a scene that it would be better in someone else’s POV, then make that change.
I also decide what I want to have happen in that particular scene, where my starting point is and where the end point of the scene is. I usually include what the POV character is feeling in addition to what I want to have happen. As I said before a paragraph should be sufficient.
Continue in this vein until you have a scene plan for every chapter in your chapter plan.
In the next post we are ready to start the actually writing of the novel. I’ll talk about facing a blank page and how to get started.
See you soon.
