- 1). Develop a solid idea. Make your backdrop personal. Find something that inherently interests you, for example -- federal politics, for example -- and use that as a backdrop for your story. Think about ideas that fit into this backdrop and compelling characters who could lead with a narrative voice. Write down all notes -- good, bad and ugly -- you have on the story until you feel ready to put the ideas into an outline.
- 2). Find the drama. Bring together all of your notes and ideas on the project. Draft an outline of the story. Introduce the main character, or characters, and the dilemma he faces. Drama is the conflict the characters face and how they deal with those conflicts. Map out the story based on the actions and emotions the main character demonstrates as a result of the drama, which always results in drama for others and increased drama for the character himself. Identify drama in the outline before moving on.
- 3). Create the supporting characters. Determine the values of each character. Analyze how each character behaves based on the values they possess and the drama they face. Ask yourself what motivates each character and what point they serve in the novel. In other words, what would the reader lose if each and every character were not involved in the story? Clearly define the qualities and motivations of each character to find the actions, interactions and progression of the story line.
- 4). Break the story into three acts, and use chapter titles to split the acts and the story into readable sections. The first act is the introduction, the second is the body and the third is the resolution. Launch the story with a compelling incident, an event that begins the story, in the first act. Familiarize readers with the main and supporting characters and set up the backdrop.
- 5). Craft the second act with the drama in mind. Tell the story of how the main character goes about getting what she wants or needs in the body using lots of conflict, humor and/or energy. The second act should be twice as long as the first.
- 6). Speed up the end of the resolution in the third act. Bring all conflict to a head and put the main character in one final predicament that will ultimately determine his fate. The third act takes the reader through this predicament and gives the story an outcome. This final act should feel twice as fast to the reader as the first act.
- 7). Employ supplemental literary techniques. Use character devices. Set up a protagonist (a hero) against an antagonist (arch enemy), for example, and pit them against one another throughout the novel. Write the story with dramatic irony and other story devices. Dramatic irony informs the audience of the fullness of a character's situation before the character is aware of it. Additional story devices include setting, point of view and theme.
- 8). Establish a clear place and time for the story to happen. Give the novel a human perspective -- the main character, for example -- from which the story is told. Impart life lessons and morals you wish to communicate in the characters' motivations, conflict and the results of the novel's action.
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