How to Plan a Fantasy Novel: 6 Steps for a Memorable Read
Bella Rose Emmorey
book editor, rogue behaviorist, digital marketer, writer, brand builder, plant aunt, and cheese enthusiast.
Outlining VS Free-Writing for Fantasy NovelsPreparing a Fantasy Novel by Subgenre & CategoryHow to Plan a Fantasy Novel That’ll Keep You On Pace to FINISH it1. Create an organization system2. Brain dump general ideas3. Separate categories of elements4. Craft core details for the categoriesCharacterMagicWorldbuildingSettingPlot5. Set goals for finishing6. Create an outline
If you’re like most fantasy writers, you have all the ideas. For characters. For magic. For cultures. For worlds. Which makes learning how to plan a fantasy novel a bit more difficult than, say, a contemporary romance.
There’s more to keep track of, naturally.
And if you don’t keep track of it all, then you’ll leave out elements, forget plans, and end up brainstorming in a circle without ever taking the steps to actually, you know, write the damn thing.
Plus, you want your story to be good, right? No worries. There are ways to plan a fantasy novel that’ll account for all of this and then some.
But first, the type of writer you are will dictate much of the advice below.
Outlining VS Free-Writing for Fantasy Novels
Which type you are, and where you fall on the $ outlining vs free-writing spectrum$ , will dictate how much planning you’ll do for the story. If a free-writer tries to plan too much, they’ll stall out. If an outliner doesn’t plan enough, they’ll get stuck and not know how to proceed.
As we go through learning how to plan a fantasy novel, keep your type in mind. If you’re not sure, you’ll definitely find out during this process.
To give you a visual of where you might fall, here’s the spectrum:
The more to the "outline" side you are, the more detail you’ll put into the planning steps below. The more on the "free-write" side, the less. But it’s still valuable for free writers to understand how to plan a fantasy novel because you will still need a plan. You’ll just approach the plan as you arrive at the next point, instead of figuring it all out ahead of time.
That’s not the only consideration before we get into the steps for how to plan a fantasy novel.
Preparing a Fantasy Novel by Subgenre & Category
Different types of fantasy novels require different planning tactics. Learning how to plan a fantasy novel that falls under the "epic" category may require more steps than an urban fantasy or a $ romantasy$ .
Knowing the fantasy subgenre you want to write in, along with any categories, will go a long way to helping you tweak and tailor the advice below.
According to Amazon, these are popular fantasy subgenres and how much planning is typically involved using light, moderate, and extensive:
Which is yours?
Keep in mind that some of these are in combination. If you write in the romance subgenre, you might also write a dark or epic or even historical along with that.
The more research necessary for a subgenre, like historical or alternate history, the more planning is necessary, because you want to be factually accurate when necessary.
How to Plan a Fantasy Novel That’ll Keep You On Pace to FINISH it
This stage of learning how to plan a fantasy novel is separate from actually writing a fantasy novel. The process below will get you to the stage of being ready to focus on the craft of writing what you plan.
1. Create an organization system
Fantasy contains a ton of moving pieces, more so than other genres thanks to the magical elements, worldbuilding, and setting. Plus, if it’s an epic fantasy, one that has multiple points of view even, you’ll need extensive character tracking capabilities.
There are a lot of options for organizing a book, like:
- Google Docs and Sheets
- Standard Word
- Notebooks
- Binders with loose leaf
- Writing softwares designed for it
The last option will often give you the biggest bang for your buck. Notebooks are okay, but you can’t search for certain phrases and they become disorganized quickly. Google can help if your work is simple.
But for the purposes of learning how to plan a fantasy novel, writing softwares with extensive yet simple capabilities makes the most sense. For this, I like to use NovelPad because of the various ways to organize and track information.
Like the character profiles that will track characters across the manuscript, $ scene cards$ , and even $ notes$ you can assign to scenes, chapters, characters, and any other element within NovelPad.
2. Brain dump general ideas
The first stage of writing is to just get your ideas out. Most of us have been thinking about our stories for a long time before we take action on them. Get your thoughts out. They don’t have to be organized just yet.
Even if you use paper and write them out to start, it can help you determine what you’ll later bring to your writing software.
During this stage, nothing is off the table. What you want is momentum in generating possibilities, and nothing has to be in any sort of order. Just get your brain juices flowing and dump it all down wherever makes sense for you.
Write down the initial ideas you have about:
- Characters
- Settings
- Worldbuilding
- Plot points
- Magic
3. Separate categories of elements
This means taking the general ideas and piecing out the components that can be grouped together, like $ characters$ , settings, $ magic elements$ , $ religion$ , lore, and any other details you notice from your brain dump.
If you have more plot elements than character details, you’re likely a plot-heavy planner. If you have more character details, you’re a character-driven plotter.
One isn’t better or worse than the other, it’s just good for you to understand when learning how to plan a fantasy novel, because you’ll have to compensate for the other. Having too many plot details without character information results in problems when you get to crafting characters, and vice versa. More on balancing this dynamic below.
You can separate these ideas in a binder with tabs, or you can make it easier on yourself and utilize a notes feature, like NovelPad's, and give them labels.
4. Craft core details for the categories
Now is the time to focus on certain aspects of the story. Let’s take a look at what you’ll want to plan for each element, keeping in mind that outliners will likely have more detail than free-writers.
Character
Who is the main character? What abilities do they have? Why is this the best character to tell the fantasy novel through? Get as many details as you can for the main character. At this stage, focus on planning the character arc of the story, which we’ll merge with the plot below.
Who are the other characters? What are their significance to the story? Try to think about characters that will highlight your main character’s strengths and weaknesses. And don’t forget about creating a diverse cast of people with different traits, views on life, skill sets, and backgrounds.
Highlight the characters who will be major players that affect the plot.
Magic
Build out your $ magic system$ . Know the rules of how it works, what its limitations are, and how it relates to the main character and plot. When learning how to plan a fantasy novel, many writers come up with the abilities of magic without thinking about the ramifications of it, when really, the limitations and ramifications are often the most interesting parts of magic systems.
Make sure you understand how it works and what the cost of using magic is. Magic that creates conflict is more interesting than magic that solves conflict.
Worldbuilding
If your story takes place in our modern world, there’s less you’ll have to do here aside from explaining where magic comes from and why it’s here.
Ultimately, you’ll want to have a firm grasp on what the world is like, the cultures, religions, common ways of living, norms and expectations the culture may have. This will also include a bit about the actual environment of the world, too.
What’s the landscape like? The weather? Does any of this impact the characters, plot, and lifestyle of the people in this region? I always like to have some of the environment play a role when I figure out how to plan a fantasy novel because it gives it something external the characters have to work around. But it’s up to you!
Setting
For fantasy novels, you can get really creative. Where will the majority of the book take place? Even if it’s an epic fantasy, "on the road" would be the primary location. You’ll want to have a few interesting places for most of the scenes to take place, introducing new ones as the book progresses.
If you know certain scenes that take place in certain settings, tracking this with NovelPad’s Location feature can be a major help when writing the book. If ever you have to change a detail about a setting in one scene, you can easily locate all other scenes in that setting to update as well.
Plot
You likely already have some core plot points you want to use. If you’re like me, the plot arises in various scenes that you then have to connect, which makes up the bulk of your book. Learning how to plan a fantasy novel often means taking a look at plot structure.
This is a brief list of major plot points to have worked out, and if you’re an outliner, you can further plot the details between each.
1. The opening
2. Inciting incident
3. First setback
4. Moment of progress (first big win)
5. Bigger setback
6. Biggest setback
7. Climax
8. Resolution
If you want to use other formulas for plot, feel free! Something like the $ three act structure$ , the $ Snowflake Method$ , or $ Save the Cat!$ can help you develop your plot. Just remember that the climax will almost always be solved when the character has come to the point of completing their character arc.
That’s what makes a climax satisfying, so think about ways to merge the two events: plot and character arc completion.
5. Set goals for finishing
It’s not all just about learning how to plan a fantasy novel. You also have to learn how to $ set goals$ so you can actually finish the novel.
When do you want this book completed by? When can you start? How often can you work on the book?
Depending on your genre, you’ll have different word count goals for finishing. An epic fantasy will probably finish at a higher word count than romantasy or $ science fantasy$ .
To create specific goals, do some math to figure out what your daily word count goal should be based on the timeline you set and how many days you can write per week.
This does involve a bit of math unless you have a NovelPad account, since they do that for you, and track all of your progress along the way.
Once you set your goal, start on the outline if you’re an outliner.
6. Create an outline
Now, I like to create the goal beforehand, because it gives you a deadline to complete the outline. I outline on a near chapter by chapter basis. You only need to be as detailed as necessary for the type of writer you are.
Go through your plans and start crafting parts, sections, or chapters according to the details you have so you know what will happen at which point in the book. This makes it really easy to sit down and know exactly what to write.
Outlining a fantasy novel is one of the more complicated endeavours an author can undertake. Let NovelPad help you out! $ Try it for free$ —no commitment, no credit card. Happy writing!
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