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So in part 1, I helped you choose software to plan out your novel. In this part, I want to explore what I did next: setting up a system for yourself and creating a plan and goals.
In writing a fantasy or SCIFI story, there are three major categories to plan:
Worldbuilding
Characters
Plot
So what I would do here, is in your chosen software, make three sections (boards in Milanote) for each of these categories.
These categories can be done in any order. Some people prefer to start with the world then build the plot into the world. Some people prefer to start with the plot, then build the world to fit. There's no right or wrong way.
My preferred method is to have a basic idea of the main characters and plot, dump them down organized, and then move on to building a fully fleshed out world. I then flesh everything else out later, so that's the order I'll follow in this series.
For this particular story, I planned for a few months, the worldbuilding, the plot, the characters, fleshing out the fundamentals, then started the first draft in the story. Some of the worldbuilding subcategories are finished, while the rest are still in the process.
After the first draft, I will add the worldbuilding I wrote in, then build my world some more, then add that in. To be honest, it's kind of a mess. In the future, I think I'll fully world build, then get started on the plot and first draft.
Before all of that though, I like creating a framework, a sort of template to fill out later for all three categories. Then I know what to do every step of the way and everything is organized ahead of time. Obviously, my template evolves & changes as it's used, but it's still nice to have a framework. It's easiest to describe how to do this in my chosen system, Milanote, but this can be modified for any system.
So now, it's time to break those big categories into smaller categories. For worldbuilding, my categories are:
Cultures \ Races
Physical-world
Mythology
Government
Animals
Fashion
Jobs & groups
Magic
Plants
Food
Religions
Belief systems
History
Calendar & holidays
Science
Tech
Current State of the world
Language
Fighting
Some of these can be combined to make for less clutter, but I find that smaller categories are easier for me to handle. Others can be cut entirely if you're not interested in exploring them.
Now, I broke down each of these categories further. To figure out how to break them down, I did a lot of research. I'll share those subcategories and the questions \ templates I used for each in future posts.
Now start organizing them in the order that you want to do them. One great piece of advice that I read was to choose on world-building category as your focal, starting point, and build out from there. So for example, I wanted culture to be what everything was built from, so I started from that.
If you want the rest of your world to be built around the magic system or the physical world, those are both great starting points. Then organize the rest of the categories in the order that is most important \ interesting to you. Remember, the things that most interest you should be where you dig deepest, while the not so interesting stuff to you you can spend less time on.
Ok, now you have the framework to start from. In the next part, we'll start filling out the framework, starting from culture \ races. Now let's get to setting goals.
Setting goals to plan your novel
There are three different ways to set goals. Again, there is no right or wrong, it depends on what works best for you.
No matter what kind of goals you set, the best way to set goals is to try & see what you can accomplish every day for a few days. Find the amount you were able to achieve every day and make that that your goal. Then, slowly increase that amount every month or few months.
Task-based goals -
That is what I primarily used when world-building. For example, I would finish two sub-boards in a given subcategory (say belief systems in a culture) in a day, then finish that entire subcategory in a week.
When worldbuilding, this typically worked well for me over as word count goal, because there was a lot of research involved, which could be a big time suck. So just 200 words could take hours to write, because of all the time spent on research. And for things like Fashion, I used a lot of pictures as inspiration, again which finding ones that work can take time.
Word count goals -
This is simple. You choose a word count that you can do daily and try to do that every day. I started at 400 words and made my way up to 1,000. I'm doing this currently for my first draft, but you can also use this for the planning stage. You can use something like a word counter to keep track of all the words. Or you can simply start a note in Milanote, convert it to long term using the power-up section, which has a built-in word counter and copy and paste everything you write elsewhere on the board.
Timing goals -
Choose how much time a day you can spend on writing & time yourself to make sure you can stick to it. One way to do this is through the Pomodoro method, where you write for a time then take a short break. If you want to try that, this clock was built for that (affiliate link.)
That's a wrap for today! I've really been enjoying writing this series - taking a second look at my process and sharing it to hopefully help you. I hope to see you back here next week when we go on the next step of this journey. Has this series been helping you? How do you do things differently? Let me know below.
If you enjoy my writing and would like me to write for you, consider working with me.
There are so many things I love & use that I wanted to share that I made a whole page full of them. Check it out here. It's also a great way to support this blog so you see more posts like this one.
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