Combining Story Elements to Make the
Final Plan

You will be pleased to hear that combining all the various story elements to create the Final Plan is the last task you need to carry out during the long process of planning a novel. After this, it will be time to begin the exciting part - doing some actual writing!

So far in the planning process, you have been looking at all of the story elements - plot, character, viewpoint, setting, and theme - in isolation. It is now time to combine these five elements of a novel to make I call the final plan.

The idea is that, when you begin to write the first draft of the novel, you want all of the information in one convenient location, not to have to go rooting about for some character notes in this file, a description of the story's setting in another file, and so on.

Writing a first draft is a creative and intuitive process, and having all of the raw material at your fingertips is a great way to keep the writing process as free from distraction as possible.

Let's look at what you have so far:

• You have a plot outline, probably quite a complex one.
• You have character notes.
• You have notes on the setting.
• You have a page or two of writing exploring the novel's theme.
• And you have decided on a point of view, though probably have nothing on paper.

What you have to do now is to combine these five story elements into a single document, so that when you write Chapter One, all of the notes for the first chapter are right there in front of you.

How to Combine the Story Elements

1. Plot

The plot is the thing that most closely resembles the Final Plan you are aiming to create, in that it is already laid out (more or less) in a chapter-by-chapter format.

The plot outline, therefore, forms the starting point for the Final Plan. All you have to do is add the remaining elements to it and you are done.

(Incidentally, this whole process is clearly much easier to do on a word processor than in longhand.)

2. Theme and Viewpoint

I am looking at these two story elements together because there is very little work to do on either of them.

Theme, as I am sure you understand by now, happens more organically than by design. Earlier in the planning process, you wrote out a page or two of notes on what you want the novel to "say", and this is usually enough. Having planted the thematic seeds in your mind, as it were, theme should simply emerge without you even having to think about it.

Having said that, it is not a bad idea at this stage to re-read those notes and then run through the plot outline to add any comments that occur to you along the way. If you come across a scene, for example, which lies at the very heart of what the novel is about, add some notes to the outline to remind yourself to concentrate on the theme when you write the scene. Generally, though, there will be very little to do here.

With viewpoint, too, there will not be much to add to the plot outline. You have either decided to write the novel in first person or third person point of view (or possibly something more avant-garde), and that is all there is to it.

If you have chosen to write a multiple viewpoint novel, you will want to go through the plot outline and make sure that every chapter is clearly labelled with the viewpoint character's name. Otherwise, move on...

3. Character

Now the work begins. Having character notes to hand when you write the first draft of a chapter is vital. What you have done so far is write mini-biographies for each of the characters. What you now have to do is work out how you will make each character come to life on the page.

You have to work out what you will say about a character in Chapter One, what you will say about them in Chapter Two, and so on, all the way to the end, so that their personalities are revealed gradually to the readers throughout the novel. You then need to annotate the plot outline with these notes, so that it is all there in front of you when you come to write each chapter.

How, precisely, do you achieve this chapter-by-chapter revelation of character? This article, from the section on Creating Characters, reveals all: Bringing Fictional Characters to Life.

4. Setting

And so to the last of the story elements. Setting, as you probably know by now, is very similar to a character in a novel. And as a writer, you deal with it in a very similar way.

With characters, you took the mini-biographies and worked out how to portray each character to the readers so that their personalities were gradually revealed through the story. With setting, you take your notes and do exactly the same thing - deciding what to reveal about the setting in each chapter, from the first to the last.

Again, there is an article in the Setting section which will help you to achieve precisely this: Bringing the Setting to Life.

Finishing Touches

Having combined all of the story elements into a single document - The Final Plan - there are a couple of final adjustments you might need to make before you are ready to write...

The Anatomy of a Novel: Chapters, etc
The chances are that you have already divided the novel into chapters, and that you did it intuitively. This isn't a bad way to do it, but read this article for the lowdown on chapters, parts, prologues and epilogues.

Finding Novel Titles
Some writers can't begin to write a novel until they have given it a title. Others prefer to wait until the end, when finding a title is arguably easier. Whenever you decide to name your baby, this article will be here to help.