Writing a Book: Step 4.5 - Chapter by Chapter

So, you have your outlines ready, your plot points down and your character profiles written. What's next? Well, personally, I'd say Step 4.5 - Chapter by Chapter.

At this stage, you're just about ready to start writing - or maybe you are ready to write - and that's great! But there's one thing that I find extremely helpful to do before I start writing: write general outlines for every single one of my chapters. Now, this may not be for you, and that's why this is Step 4.5 and not Step 5 - it isn't going to apply to everyone. Let's call it a mini step.

This mini step involves opening a new word document (or whatever you're using to write your novel) and take time to plan your story chapter by chapter. Decide how many chapters you want to have in your novel, i.e. how many chapters it will take to tell your story. Keep in mind though, that each genre has it's own specific word count. (I'll post the word counts for each genre in this article series.) So, knowing the general word count of your genre, you will have to decide what your word count for each chapter will be. For example, I am currently writing a novel that would be labelled under the Crime genre, with subgenres in YA and Romance, so my target word count is between 70,000 - 90,000 words in total. I have 19 chapters, each averaging around 4,000 words per chapter, which will land me within my necessary range.

The way in which I work this out, and would recommend others to do also, would be to write a paragraph for each chapter of your novel with the general outline for what happens within that novel. This way, you'll have a fair idea of how many chapters you will need to tell your story and an idea of how long those chapters may be. This doesn't need to be long, I managed to do mine in under 4,000 words. It's just a general idea of what main plot points happen in each chapter; is there a cliffhanger, a resolution, or another question at the end etc.

Upon finishing my chapter by chapter outline myself, I felt like this book was real - like I had read this book on my kindle. I have made good progress, I am proud of myself, and I feel much more comfortable beginning the writing process now. I know my beginning, middle and end which, I will point out now, is a MUST! You need to know these things - especially how it ends!

Give it a try and see if it works for you. If it doesn't just move on to Step 5!

Keep an eye out as I'll be posting the general genre word count expectations in each chapter soon!