Today is the era when people are witnessing a lot of new books releasing almost every day. Using an Author tag is quite fantasizing these days. But we all know that writing a book is a challenging task. To be honest one out of thousands of people succeeds in writing a complete book. Most of the writers give up their writing in the middle of completing their manuscript and this happens because of no pre-structured plan or poor execution of their plan. However, this article ‘how to write a novel in 30 days’ will lay down a structured approach to help you complete your book in the easiest way possible.
Step 1: Build a complete outline and structure of the book
Following are the four essential aspects of a novel that you must work on before you start writing your book.
Theme – Decide the main idea behind the book that will connect all other elements of your book. For example, the theme behind Damini Aggarwal’s famous book ‘What’s Your Story, Stanger?’ is ‘criminal never wins’. Your theme would be the subject that would run throughout the story of your book.
Plot – Plan all the major happenings and events that would take place in your story. These events will then be divided into a series of events which in turn take the shape of chapters. Spend enough time in deciding your plot and see if it is convincing enough to keep you motivated to write the book.
Characters – Create a list of characters that will play their roles in the story. This would include the bifurcation of characters into protagonist, antagonist and supporting characters. Also decide the major features of your characters like age, appearance, background, likes, dislikes, strengths & weaknesses, etc.
Setting – It is important to decide where and when the story is taking place. Decide the time period and location where the story will move throughout the narration. Do create a map and a timeline or pre-plan the sequence of events in the order you wish the story to move ahead.
Step 2: Create a storyboard
Once you have decided on the outline of the book, visualize all the scenes from your book and see if it is a perfect setting. Note down all the ideas, must write things from various scenes so that you don’t miss them while narrating those scenes. Once you have noted down all the important things, you are well prepared to build your story.
Step 3: Create a plot graph
Decide the progression of your story using your scene cards. The plot graph basically helps you to plan what to write and when to write a particular scene. It includes arranging every big and small scene in a sequence.
Here is a basic plot graph for how a storyline of a fictional book will progress –
- Introducing the characters & setting – This step includes the introduction of characters and the setting to give a glimpse of the main characters used in the book.
- Introduction of the main event that leads to series events – This step includes describing the main event that will lead the characters into the premise of the story and will push them through other series of events.
- Execution of the plot – This step includes describing the series of events that will take place from the beginning to the end of the story and how the characters will act throughout the entire story.
- Introduction of curiosity-filled moment – This step includes the highly significant moment which will force the reader to speculate about the end of the story and lead the characters towards the climax.
- The climax – As the name suggests, this will be the step that would bind all the loose ends and sum up the entire story to an end. This will also give an end to the role of all the main and supporting characters.
Step 4: Create a writing schedule
Generally, a fictional novel is about 40,000 to 60,000 words or more. The ideal size of a novel is 160 to 200 pages (a 5 by 8 sized book would include 250 words per page). It often looks like a huge task to knock down 50,000 words in a month, but if we calculate the number of words to write per day, it is 1667 words.
This article is more than 1000 words and took nearly three hours to complete in a single sitting without any disturbance around.
This indicates that you have to sit and write for 3 hours every day. At the end of each day, you will notice your story progressing at a continuous pace and you will feel motivated enough to complete it within a month.
Step 5: Complete your first draft
Now that you already have a basic outline of your novel, its characters, storyboard and a plot graph, it’s time to start writing as per your writing schedule. Try and stick to your writing schedule.
Step 6: Edit and proofread your manuscript
It is important to go for at least two rounds of editing and proofreading before you submit your proposal to a publisher. Try to get a reader friend who would review your manuscript once. If you have properly followed your storyboard, you won’t be facing a major issue in the script. Minor corrections and revisions are however inevitable. Always take out time to check the tone, consistency, grammar and punctuation of your manuscript. Use tools like Grammarly for Ms Office Word if you want to save time in finding errors.
Summing up this article, we would like to suggest you to spend enough time in drafting the structure and outline of your manuscript, breakdown the entire writing process into smaller targets, stick to your writing schedule, and finally, when the manuscript is ready, review and edit the script to give it perfection.
Good Luck!
Please Note: It is important to choose an amazing Book Publisher to publish your manuscript. Here is your guide to self publish a book in India.
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