Now that you’ve chosen which POV (Point of View) to use for your novel, you need to plot out what will happen during the course of your novel.
Karen Wiesner’s First Draft in 30 days discusses how many storylines to have in a full length novel. She recommends 5 to 9. It’s a great book to read and lean on if you want to finish your first book.
The key with those storylines is that they need to be inter-related. All the storylines need to come together in the end. And each scene should directly advance the story.
In a romance, you’d have two POV’s – the hero and the heroine. Each would have a romance storyline. If you were writing in CBA, they’d each have a spiritual storyline. And each character would have their main storyline. If you read a romance novel, you’ll see that their main storyline intersects at some point – making all six storylines inter-related.
Susan May Warren recommends that each scene be about 1200 to 1600 words. These days you’ll see novels that have 8 to 9 pages for each chapter. For an 80,000 word novel, that works out to 30 chapters. Two scenes for each chapter. We’ll go over storyboarding next time!
What about longer or shorter formats? Hartline Agent Terry Burns has a blurb on his website with some basic word count guidelines that might help you.
[Photo by Jean-Sébastien Roy]