How Do I Plan My Book?

This week, 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block is free on the Kindle. To celebrate that fact, we're going to look at some of the basic questions new writers ask. Previously, we looked at whether you should plan your book. If you're going to, let's now look at how you might do that.

How do I plan my book?

While I have a whole book on this topic - I'm that much of a fan of planning a book before writing it - this post can serve as a short master class for beginners. This practice works for more than just novels, too. All we're going to do is break down your book into scenes.

Step 1, figure out some key events in your book. These are the ones you most likely thought of when you were thinking about your book. Before I plan a book, I can already see some scenes in my head, like two characters meeting for the first time, or (as is the case with many short stories I write) a setting that sticks out because of how unusual it is.

How many key events you can imagine depends on how many ideas you've had for your book before this point. Don't worry, we're going to fill in the gaps soon. What we need before we do that, though, are a beginning, and an ending.

Your book will fill in the events between what happens at the very start, and what happens at the very end. If you're planning to write a series, it helps to know how the whole thing will end before you begin, and how many books you want to write. 

Say, for example, you're writing a trilogy. You need three powerful scenes to end each of your books on, that are natural endings to each part of the story, as well as concluding the individual tale contained in the book.

When you have your beginning and your ending(s), then we can move on to Step 2: filling in the gaps. Start with the scenes you have already. What needs to happen for your story to progress from one scene to another. For example, in the first Harry Potter book, we begin at Privet Drive, and later find Harry at Hogwarts. If we took those two key events/scenes to begin with, we then need to figure out what happens between each point.

Do that with each scene or idea you have, jotting down briefly what sort of event would lead to the next scene. Harry needs to get his invite to the school, so that has to happen. But, because we know the Dursleys don't want him to be a wizard, they'll try to keep the letter from him. To deal with that, the invitations keep coming, pushing the family away from the house, to the cabin where we meet Hagrid. You get the idea: each time you decide what needs to happen next, figure out what other steps need to be taken to keep the story moving from one scene to the next.

By the time you reach the end of your book, you should have a lot to work with. Break it up into chapters - use the larger events as a guide to where the chapter breaks will be.

Step 3: write it out neatly, and add in more detail if needed. I usually write out a paragraph for each scene in the book, but that's up to you.

If you want more information on planning a book, you can check out my ebook Planning Before Writing.

You can also find 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block on Amazon, currently available for free download while the promotion lasts. Read more about it below.

Have you ever struggled with writer’s block? Have you sat at your desk, looking at your work in progress, wondering what to do with a character who just won’t budge, or a poem that just won’t take form, or an article that just won’t work for you? Have you ever joined thousands of authors in the search for a way to beat writer’s block?

From the author of Planning Before Writing comes a solution to the problem of writer’s block: 25 ways to tackle one of the biggest issues facing writers, each with an exercise to help you to develop as an author and improve your writing skills.

With exercises to suit every writer, and drawing on over ten years’ experience in the craft, 25 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block is a must-have reference for your collection.

Available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HYMVZJ2
and Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HYMVZJ2

A Pottermore Experience

I've spent a bit of time on Pottermore today, after I was given the go-ahead to enter yesterday. At first, I was unimpressed. Actually, that's the understatement of the century: Pottermore sucks when you first enter. You have no wand, no house, nothing to do and no one to talk to, and it's all very boring. The only thing to do is to follow the story and read about a few different things, but otherwise it's the most useless thing in the world.

Nothing at all good happens until you reach Diagon Alley and get to buy some things. You follow Harry's buying path, meaning the wand is last. The wand is the first thing that makes Pottermore fun, to be honest. Following a series of questions, I was assigned my official wand of wizardry: ten and three-quarter inches, alder, slightly springy and with a unicorn core. I was really rather happy about this. There's more info on the Pottermore site about the different cores and woods used, and for the first time the website adds something extra to the Harry Potter world: detailed information on the very basic tool all witches and wizards carry with them, and a first-time glance at some of the secrets behind their maker.

Once you visit Diagon Alley, you're also able to brew potions. My advice: use the free test run to give it a try, but then wait until later when potions will earn you house points. I don't know whether or not the potions you make before house assignment (if you can even do it!) will count towards your score.

Come Chapter Seven, you get into a house. Again, questions are asked and it's a little more interactive again. Plus, you know, you get into a house. Nevermind the questions: now you can boast about being in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor, cause panic about being in Slytherin or hide the fact that you're in Hufflpuff (kidding!). What house am I in?

Um... rawr?

So, I'm in Gryffindor. It's fun knowing that, and while it doesn't change the experience of Pottermore, suddenly I'm a part of something bigger than just myself along on this little island in the midst of the seemingly great Pottermore. Also, you know, Dumbledore was in that house and he's friggin' awesome. (Along with Harry and whatnot... but let's face it, Hermione and Neville really are the best people in the house!)

What I have yet to experience is a wizardry duel, and with a lack of any lessons on how to do this I remain pulled back into the story. I'm enjoying the idea of reading along to the "moments" in the book that are highlighted on the website, so it'll take me a while to get through it all, but it's allowed me to rediscover the wonderful storytelling in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It's not just the magic: there is genuine humour in this book that I might have missed as an excited child waiting for the climax and possibly skipping sentences to get through the book quicker.

That's what Pottermore really has to offer for older fans, like myself: a chance to rediscover the books, if they're put them down for a few years (yes, years!)

The website doesn't open to the public officially until October, so it's still in the Beta testing stage. But it will be worth it, in a way, when people start flooding in. Just be a little patient in the beginning: it will be boring, but  it gets better. The novelty of wands and houses really does add to the excitement a bit. Also, I've got this lovely boil removal potion brewing at the moment. It requires my attention, soon. When I discover some more of the magic of Pottermore - and I hope it doesn't end at novelty - I'll add a brand new post for that. And who knows, mayhaps I'll make some friends on the site!

Pottermore Announcement

What is Pottermore? From what I can establish, it's an official Harry Potter online experience. It's a glorified forum, maybe. It's a way to get more involved in a series of books that have taken the world by storm, been adapted for cinema, had games made from them, Lego, and turned a whole generation of children to reading. There's been music about Harry Potter, and a musical. There have been parodies. There has been fanfiction jumping up all over the place about Harry Potter since the books began.

And none of that tells us what we can do in Pottermore when the site launches to the public in October. Only minutes ago, JK Rowling made the announcement of Pottermore, saying a select few who "follow the owl" will be able to begin the experience early. No one knows how many will get in, how to get in, or what to do once they get there. No one even knows why they want to get into the site, except they're curious and it's Harry Potter.

Rowling's announcement had many excited. Some so excited they stayed up all night for the announcement - that's the American readers. And still no one knows what to do.

To be honest, the message released today was a let down. A nice "thank you", but a let down nonetheless. Will I be checking out Pottermore? I don't know. I will be in college. I will be writing. I don't know if I will care enough to spend my days talking about books I had finished reading when I was sixteen. By the time I get around to checking it out, the whole place will have become established, and maybe the people on-board will have formed exclusive groups. This is what happens on the Internet. The original readers of Harry Potter aren't children anymore. They're adults, and they've lost the innocence that once made Harry Potter so great, even if that innocence was itself limited.

Follow the owl? It brought me to the same site I had gone through to find the announcement. I suppose that's the magic of JK Rowling, isn't it? Tell the world to go somewhere to see a message that sends them right back where they started. More importantly, tell the world to read her books all over again. This assumes most of her readers haven't grown up. This assumes that people have time. This may assume incorrectly that people want to get involved as much as they hope.

But maybe I'm cynical. Maybe this will be a great website when it's started up. Maybe people will really have a great time, and maybe they'll be extra encouraged to pursue their own dreams. Maybe that will be the magic of Pottermore.com.