You have the premise, the beats, the scenes sorted into chapters, the story bible with those green eyes safely written down. You open a blank document, type “Chapter 1” and sit there looking at the cursor. It blinks. So do you.
That’s normal. Planning and writing are two different jobs, and moving from one to the other is a little dizzying. Here are a few ideas to make the jump shorter.
When you’re ready
Not when the blueprint is complete. That never happens, and waiting for it is a very elegant way of never starting.
You’re ready when the next few scenes are clear. Not all of them. The next few. If you know what happens in the first three or four, what the character wants in each, what gets in the way and how they end, you can write. The ones in chapter 20 will come into focus as you go, and they’ll probably change.
In Wanted: One Dragon, Sunday Plot’s sample novel, it would be enough to have the summer dance, the empty glass case and the conversation where Alex asks Mara not to leave town ready to go. What happens at the festival on day 7 can stay a “roughly” for now.
One scene at a time
The blueprint of the whole novel is great for thinking, but when you’re writing it gets in the way. There’s too much of it. What you need when you sit down is much smaller: today’s scene.
Before you start, look at just that:
- What happens, in one line.
- Goal, conflict and outcome.
- Who’s there, where and when. With everyone’s age that day, if it matters.
- What happened right before and what comes next, so the scene starts and ends where it should.
With that in front of you, the blank page isn’t quite so blank. You know Mara sneaks into the bakery at night, that Alex is already inside and that they end up staring at an empty shell. All that’s left is telling it.
Write wherever you like
Some people write in Word, some in Scrivener, some in a bare-bones text editor or in paper notebooks with an inherited fountain pen. All of them work. The blueprint doesn’t have to live where the novel lives. It just has to be within reach.
If you like paper, print out each scene’s sheet. If you write in Word, take your outline there and start with the chapters already in place. What matters is not having to rebuild from memory what you’ve already decided.
The blueprint will change (and that’s fine)
Worth knowing before you start, so it doesn’t catch you off guard: once you write, the novel bends. A character says something you hadn’t planned. A scene that was supposed to take three pages wraps up in one. Another one that didn’t exist shows up on its own at eleven at night, and it’s the best in the book.
That isn’t the blueprint failing. It’s what the blueprint is for: so you can wander off knowing where you started. If the bakery turns into the library halfway through a scene, no harm done. The only thing worth doing is noting it afterward, in five minutes, so the blueprint keeps telling the truth.
Tips
- Read the sheet before each session, not during. While you’re writing, the plan is already in your head. If you check it every two paragraphs, you’re not writing.
- Don’t re-plan every day. If something changes a lot, adjust it when you finish the session, not when you start.
- If you get stuck on a scene, go back to the three questions. What do they want, what makes it hard, how does it end. One of them is usually missing.
- Tick off what you’ve written. Not to keep score, but for the pleasure of watching the blueprint turn into a novel.
For today
Pick the first scene that’s ready, open it or print it, read it once and close the blueprint. Write it. Even if it comes out so-so. A first draft only has to exist.
In Sunday Plot, the Writing screen lays out your scenes in reading order, each with its scene sheet: what happens, goal, conflict and outcome, who’s there (with their age that day), where, when, what’s worth remembering, and what comes right before and after. You can print it. If you want to see a filled-in sheet before you have your own, open the sample novel from My novels (“Explore a sample novel”). When you’ve written a scene, hit “I’ve written it”. If you later tear it back open, untick it and it goes back to sketched. And from Export you can take the blueprint wherever you write: Word, a PDF for printing with each scene’s sheet, or Markdown. Always free. You write the novel, wherever you like. And if the plan changes, you change it: the outline keeps you company, it doesn’t freeze.