So you’ve been planning to write your novel since who-knows-what year. You know it is long due. You need to write your novel now.
So where do you start? Writing a novel is a daunting task, but don’t worry. It’s doable.
There is a lot of advice on how to start your novel, but for this purpose — and for the sake of you taking action now — we’ll keep this guide on how to write a novel as simple and as easy to follow.
So let’s dive in.
Brainstorm and Get the Core of Your Story
Do you have a story already? None yet? Then brainstorm for possible good story.
Pick what interests you. What genre do you prefer? Young adult? Romance? Thriller? Or literature. It does not matter.
Say you got a story already. Say, it is a disaster survival story or a love story about a long-distance love affair.
Now we got a story to write about.
Get a mental frame of the core of your story. If you want you can also jot it down or create an outline.
Write the Draft
The purpose of this process is just to pour your story onto the document. Start writing and tell your story.
Now, here’s where everybody mistakes the draft for the finish product.
When you write your novel, you can easily assess it as ugly and not professional.
Of course, when we read our favorite novels, their text has been polished and edited numerous times.
You cannot get the same quality of sentences say in your first try of writing your novel.
Yours will be weaker or cruder and uglier.
The point is: your text does not have to be perfect. You can polish it later in the whole novel-writing process.
The purpose of the draft is to lay the story and not to come up with a polished copy of well-structured beautiful sentences and paragraphs.
This is not purpose of this stage.
Your main goal is to make the story exist, warts and all.
This draft can be written quickly.
Just imagine yourself pouring out what you know about the story. You can easily reach 5 or 10 thousand words in this process in days, or more than what you normally produce in weeks.
When you are done with this stage, now you are ready for the next phase.
Revision Time
This is the process where you organize your whole novel. You may find the story structure ugly or crude. You need to arrange your chapters, say Chapter 4 should be after Chapter 5, not before etc.
This is why a writing tool like NovelScriber can help in this task. Make the process run smoothly.
Then, here, you can polish the text, like shape them properly for better cadence and clarity and style. This process is laborious since you need to clear up the noise that you have written, so you can tell your story more effectively.
Revision can take several stages based on your needs. But at least do it several times.
Proofreading
Now, after you have a revised manuscript, you can proofread your novel for syntax and grammar errors.
This stage is like cleaning the novel for errors you have missed during the revision stage.
These steps for writing a novel are simplified for you so as not to over-think the process. The goal is for you to take action now and just write the novel.
You can follow this simplified guide and see where it gets you.
