Where’s Microsoft Word? I admire anyone who attempts to produce a novel-length work in Microsoft’s jack-of-all-trades word processor. You could dedicate a website to reviewing writing tools, but for this rewrite I’ve decided to focus on the five I know best. The range of tools available to writers has expanded enormously since I wrote the original version of this post for my 5×5 Medium blog. I’ve also discovered what happens without a plan (did I mention the unfinished novel?). I’ve tried a few tools and discovered some of their strengths and weaknesses for my process. On my way through five novels (one unfinished, one about to be self-published, one in beta, two in pre-planning), I’ve had plenty of opportunity to experiment. Wherever you are in the writing process, finding the right tool to produce your outline is more than a thought experiment. Wherever you stand, you’ll need an outline because agents want a synopsis of your whole novel if your 10,000-word taster gets their attention.Īs a taster, my MA in Creative Writing at St Mary’s University demanded a 3,000-word chapter-by-chapter breakdown of our WIPs to show that we could produce a full-length work. There are pantsers who claim the words flow naturally into a three-act story, planners who painstakingly detail every scene in advance, and plantsers like me in between. But I’m a bear of little brain, and a novel is a thousand times more complex. How do you turn a collection of story ideas into a coherent 100,000-word novel? Novel planning was one of the most daunting tasks I faced as a first-time novelist.Īs a journalist, I’d got used to writing a few hundred words without an outline, or jotting down a few ideas for a thousand-word article or blog post.
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