Illumination: A Writing Guide

Thinking about Planning + Research

Planning

It is important to bear in mind that every writer has different approaches to planning. Some people don’t really plan and like to dive straight in, whereas some people plan in lots of detail. I have tried both of these techniques and in this chapter will share some of my thoughts and give some advice on planning.

So a few years ago I used to take the ‘planning? What even is planning?’ approach and as soon as I came up with an idea I liked I just started writing it, without having any idea where it was going. And, inevitably, those stories never got finished. When I wrote The Water That Sings, about a year ago now, however, I planned. I didn’t plan it all before I started, but I had at least planned what would happen in each chapter up to about halfway through, and I had always planned ahead. This was my first completed novel.

What you need to take from this is that it is all about finding the right formula for YOU. I discovered that a certain amount of planning helped me stick with a book and finish it, and I didn’t get lost about what would happen next. It took me 7 years to figure that out. You might not find your best way of doing things right away. I certainly didn’t. You just have to find a way that works for you.

Even if you are one of those people who likes to dive in and not plan much, I think it is still important to plan characters, even if you don’t want to plan the plot. You need to sort out your characters before you start writing (chapters with more on this to come at a later date) and make sure they have goals and motivations.

Setting is also important. This paragraph is probably more relevant to things like fantasy rather than general fiction. Planning your setting can be helpful because the culture of the setting can influence the plot. For example, if kingdom A decides to stop trading with kingdom B that could produce conflict that might influence the plot. Culture may also influence how people interact with and treat each other. (chapter on settings also to come)

In terms of planning plot, you can take the general outline approach, or you can go more detailed and do a chapter-by-chapter plan. A general outline can be good because it gives you more freedom and is more like writing without a plan, but you have more of an idea where the plot is headed. If you have a complicated plot or several protagonists then a chapter-by-chapter plan can help get your ideas in order. I tend to use a chapter-by-chapter plan, but this doesn’t necessarily have to be that detailed. For example, in my plan for The Day It Rained all I have written for the first chapter is ‘Ryder goes to meet Mr. Bax to give him the relic he requested but Mr. Bax tries to have him killed’. Your chapter-by-chapter plan doesn’t have to be fixed in stone though, you can always change things as you go along.

Organisation is very important in terms of planning so that you keep your ideas in order. If you prefer using paper then have everything in a ring binder and use dividers to make sections. I used to do this when I was younger but now I prefer to have my planning on my computer. I used to use Office Powerpoint because you can have different information on different slides, but often these became really long and difficult to navigate. A writer friend suggested I used Office OneNote which was the best move I made. The layout of it means you can have different tabs and sections so it is good for planning and it is easy to navigate. That’s the way I like to work but there are so many other ways to do it.

If you like to plan lots then subplots are a good thing to look into. These go alongside the main plot and are really important in keeping your reader’s interest. If you plan these before you start writing then you can figure out where to weave them into the structure of the main plot a) so they appear at relevant places in relation to the main plot and b) where they will make the most impact based on the situations, the conflicts, the emotional state of the characters etc.

Researching

Whatever you are writing you are bound to need to some research. Some novels need much more research than others. If your protagonist does a particular hobby or works in particular job it can be useful to know a bit about that. Putting in little details of things like that can increase how realistic your novel appears. Each novel will have different things that need researching.

Researching locations:

If you novel is set in an Earth-based location then you’ll need to decide where, this could be a real town/city or a fictional one. You need to think about what kind of job your protagonist has, and where that would mean they would work. You could research what the area looks like, the geography of it, what kind of people the population is made up of, where things are located etc. These may seem like tiny details but can really help with realism.

Here are some genre-specific research ideas:

Historical fiction

A lot of research is going to be required to pull off this genre accurately. It is important to have a sense of the time you are writing about so watching films or television programmes set in that era is actually a really good way to research.

Things to research (these are just some suggestions, but different novels and periods would need research for specific things):

-‘technology’/advancements e.g. horse and cart? Flushable toilets? State of the roads?

-what is the class system like

-roles of men and women

-politics/government/monarchy of the time

-fashion

-language

-social expectations

-food

-lifestyle

-housing

-law and punishments

Science-Fiction

This genre is generally based around science, so you can’t go as crazy imaginative as you can with fantasy. It needs to make sense. There are lots of things you could research depending what kind of sci-fi you are writing. E.g. actual science stuff, technology, space-travel, theories of time-travel.

Dystopia

A lot of people don’t think to do research for dystopia but if you do then your novel will seem more realistic. You can research things like types of states and how they work e.g. totalitarian state. It is also important to understand the way society works. Are the people kept in line by soft or hard power? I.e. does the government use ideology or force to keep control over the people. This idea is one from Marxism so you could research that.

And that’s all for today’s chapter! More coming soon. :)