Planning a novel
Let me start by saying I have no idea what I'm doing. Sure I've heard about the three-act structure of any good piece of narrative, about knowing your characters' motivations, strengths and weaknesses, about starting with action to get the reader hooked. I've read some stuff.
But how much detail do I need to put into my character sheet without getting bored or overwhelmed? What's the right amount of information I need to give to painting a clear picture of them without giving to much away too early? How do I build a world, and in which era do I place it? Is it an alternate universe or is it somewhere in our past or future?
If anyone has any advice, please let me know!
What you probably don't know about me, is that by trade I'm a UX designer, which is relevant for 2 reasons:
- I have a pragmatic approach to problem-solving
- I have a quite extensive experience with online whiteboarding tools such as Miro
I've used Miro to create and moderate workshops, ideation sessions and other design-related activities that require a whiteboard. I think it's a great tool with a lot of useful templates and a functional, intuitive interface. You can use it in-browser or download the app, and your stuff is stored in their cloud.
Of course, as many non-federated cloud services, you're always at risk of losing access it or having your account hacked, but for something as non-sensitive as novel planing, I think it's ok.
Using Miro to map out themes and relationships
With fanfiction, I usually start writing from a hunch. I find a universe and characters I like – for example, the Birds of Prey from 2020 homonymous movie – and I imagine them in a situation. I don't always know how the situation is going to pan out, but I know there will be a happy ending (I don't write sad endings, there's too much of that) and I will use the narration to probably go through some of my own conflict or trauma.
Fanfiction is a wonderful way to tell a story having a starter kit to get you going. The best characters have clear major traits and compelling backstories, but leave enough freedom or the writer to add their own interpretation.
For a novel, however, I need to start from scratch and one thing I want to avoid is not knowing what I want to say with the story. I want to have a point of view, what some people would call a morale. I want my characters to be nuanced and never motivated by pure evil. I want to find conflict in the fact that the characters do their best with the information they have, yet a lot of information is withheld from them (in fact, this could be the overarching theme of the novel).
In order to do that, I created my first board, titled “Barebone” (the title is not very important)
The Barebone board contains 3 elements: themes, characters, and setting.
Then I tried to map out the relationships between these elements
I'm also posting a thread about it on my Mastodon, come say hi!