If you’ve been in the literary field for a while, you have probably discovered that novels don’t just fall into place; you must develop the skill to fit everything together, kind of like a musician writing the score for all the different instruments to form a cohesive whole.
Your decisions will be better if you make sure you are aware of the choices you will face along the way. You can’t blindly charge ahead and expect everything to turn out right. Every decision you make, whether it concerns theme, strategy, structure, character, action, or plot, affects the ultimate outcome of the book. Those elements all have to be pulled together into one meaningful whole.
Ask yourself the following questions and don’t ignore any of them, because if you do, your efforts will be frustrated:
What writing style suits the story best?
What type of structure best suits the action?
What plot pattern best suits the tale you want to tell?
How many characters are necessary to the plot?
What are the dramatic phases you’ve selected for your work with regard to the plot pattern?
How can you take those dramatic phases and translate them into specific words and actions for your characters?
Do you want to play it safe or break a few rules?
Asking and answering these questions helps you come up with a plan and a solid foundation, which will ultimately give you a direction to pursue. If you avoid asking yourself these questions, they will answer themselves by default as you write. This is not your best course of action.
Don’t be afraid to change your mind if you choose to go in one direction and find it’s not working. Remember, nobody ever reads our novels, they read our rewritten novels. Change it as many times as you have to to get it right.
Finally, avoid being a tyrant. Sometimes, your characters have better ideas than you have. If they seem determined to do something you didn’t plan, let them do it and see how it turns out. Often, it’s nothing more than your subconscious mind coming up with a better idea. In other words, it never pays to be rigid or uptight about anything. Writing is creative, so create. If you take out that element, you have dry, dull work that no one wants to read. Write on!