There are two main types of writers. Planners and Pantsers. Planners set out the whole book in advance, and the detail of their plans can range from elaborate to just a bare outline. Pantsers, on the other hand, just sit down and start to write, more or less making up the story as they go, writing by the 'seat of their pants' - thus 'pantsers'. Stephen King is a famous pantser, although he readily admits to two of the greatest drawbacks of pantsing: 1. having to go back and keep rewriting the manuscript until the plot tightens up and flows with good pace and 2. in many cases the plot fizzles out around the 30k to 50k word mark and nothing will bring it back to life.
I have tried both and while pantsing can be fun (I wrote the first draft of The Lost Valor of Love that way), in my humble opinion, pantsing is a much longer and more arduous road to final product. The next book I wrote, Into the Light, got the full planning treatment, and the effort I made beforehand cut out months of work afterwards. In fact, the version you see on wattpad is more or less the first draft, with some light editing. The same goes for the second book I wrote with a beat sheet and outline, Daughter of Azeroth, which is also a first draft with light editing.
So if you are tight on time, writing around school, job, or even family responsibilities, I cannot recommend enough the advantages of spending a little time and effort on planning the core of your book before beginning to write.
Now if planning is not your thing, and you prefer the freedom of writing whatever pops into your head then please feel free to ignore everything in this chapter. Planning is not for everyone, it really comes down to how one likes to approach their writing project (and how much effort they want to spend polishing their work afterward). But since there really isn't much advice to give on pantsing, this chapter is focussed on the opposite side of the spectrum, and the tools you can use to plan an awesome book. (And in most cases, using the tools I use, the guts of your book can be planned out this way in a mere afternoon).
So here's how to plan a great book in just one day!
You're only going to need two tools, which work in synergy. One of them will help you get the main plot of the book straight, and keep the pace nice and tight, while the other will be your compass as you work through the months of writing ahead.
First of all, you need to prepare your Beat Sheet.
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What I do to test my book for pacing is write out a brief outline of the story in a synopsis-like format, checking that the plot pulse points follow the major beats listed above. To do so, first you need to calculate how many words your final copy will be. (Pro tip: it's a good idea to check what the upper word count agents and publishers will accept in a manuscript submission for your specific genre. For example crimes and thrillers usually land around 80k words max). With your word count decided, now all you need to do is create a template.
For Into the Light, I was aiming for 50k words since it was for NaNoWriMo. To guide yourself, set your story's major events to connect at the major points of the beat sheet otherwise you will find the pacing is going to be saggy. It's super easy if you break these major points down into percentages.
