I figured it would probably be easiest just to pull everything together in one place, also, the more I added, the more I realized this should probably just be a page on my website. So this is also a draft of that. 😂 (I have a page already, but it doesn’t have all the added tips or the insights into my process.)

Oh, and there’s lots of links to files in my OneDrive. Feel free to copy whatever you’d like your own copy of!

⬇️ Click on a listing in the Table of Contents to jump to the relevant section.

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General Advice

1. Most writing advice works fine for the one single individual person giving it. Take everything with a grain or two of salt.
2. That said, people give advice because it worked for them. So try a variety of things until you find a) something that works, or b) pieces of different things you can put together into something that works.

Pre-Writing

When it comes to longer-form writing, I’m a planner. What works for me is a combination of a few different methods (I’ll link to all the original things, then provide my amalgamation):

1. The Smarter Artist’s 40-Scene Template [Word] from Sterling and Stone. (These guys don’t do the teaching and advising anymore, but they left the Smarter Artist blog up, and I’ll have more for you from them later.)
2. Reverse engineering [PDF]. I took Screenwriting 101 from Great Courses ($ or free trial; they’re now Wondrium) and the professor’s whole deal is starting with how you want the story to end, then work backwards.
3. James Scott Bell’s Signpost Scenes [PDF]. Basically, the 14 scenes that need to show up in a book. Anything else you put in is gravy (ideally) (you know, in a figurative way).

I learned about 2 & 3 after I had published the first edition of Through the Mirrah (TTM), so I used just the 40 Scenes for that. But this is what I used to plan books 2 and 3 (and what I’m using to re-plan book 2) (and probably book 3): Reverse Engineered Signpost Scenes [Word].

The template starts out with two rules, and they’re really the only rules you need for filling it out.

“Cognitive effect” refers to the emotions you want your reader to feel at the end of the book. (The Screenwriting 101 PDF linked above has more on this, with a lot of great examples.)

I’ve only used the “Scenes in Between” portion (thus far) as more of a checklist. Once I’ve written a draft, I’ll go through and see if I’ve included those things. I don’t really use it as part of my planning.

What I like to do is fill out as much of the template (up to that last part) as I can with the ideas I’ve already had. Then I look back through to see what I’m missing and focus my brainstorming on those parts.

Other Helpful Pre-Writing/Writing Resources

Another gift from the Sterling & Stone guys was the Smarter Artist pack [PDF], which has a bunch of helpful one-sheets, but the Planning Your Novel section (2 pages) is a great round-up of things that are good to know going into writing (though some of it won’t come to you until later, and that’s okay!)