How to Write a Novel For Beginners – Super Quick and Easy Method!

Have you always wanted to write a Novel?

This is ‘How to Write a Novel for Beginners’ even if you don’t have any ideas about what you want to write a novel about.

Our mission is to help anybody get that novel written in the simplest way possible.

Is writing a novel something that’s on your bucket list or a New Year’s resolution?

But the idea of writing a novel does feel like climbing Everest, doesn’t it?

It feels overwhelming, right?

It is one thing writing a book, but also you want to be able to sell it and make some money, don’t you?

But what if your novel doesn’t even sell?

Please don’t worry, we’re going to show you a ridiculously easy method to come up with plots that your readers will buy.

When you write and release a novel, you feel like you’re buzzing.

So today we’re going to show you the following:

Pick a genre

Come up with a compelling plot

Come up with character names

Locations

Endings your readers will love (Act 3)

Know what you need to do for act 1

Know how to change the mood in act 2

Pick an awesome idea for your book cover

Discover the secrets of what your readers want and don’t want with a super simple way.

This is the absolute basics of how to write a novel.

So where to start?

When you first approach it, it may seem like walking through fog to even write your first sentence, do you agree?

But just think if all of a sudden you had a flashlight, how much easier that would be?

Even if you have no experience, you could keep walking forward step by step, and you’d be making progress.

So if you had a guide, people who have been there before, how much easier would that be?

So from our own experience as authors, we have found it a much more enjoyable process if we have a repeatable system in place.

We are going to share a system with you, but in a way where it won’t be overwhelming.

We’ve been there, we’ve done it, and we’ve made all the mistakes.

If we simplify it, streamline it, cut out all the noise, and cut out the things that don’t work, we can get more novels written.

If you do the same, you are more likely to complete your projects rather than have loads of notes everywhere and ideas that don’t get to see the light of day.

As long as you give your readers what they want, everybody wins.

So the first thing to do is to pick a genre.

Crime

Romance

Science fiction

Historical fiction

Young Adult

Fantasy etc.

but there are many, more.

So pick one.

What do you enjoy reading about? So passion really helps here.

If you love reading psychological thrillers, then start there.

Now, search for the best-selling books in that genre.

Read their book descriptions and look at their covers and I mean, really, study them.

I naturally veer towards crime fiction. So if you look at these best-selling crime fiction front covers, you can see that they all tend to be dark colours.

The font tends to be quite easy to read.

They’re not sort of flowery and cursive. It’s straight to the point.

What names get used, and how many words are in the book description?

How does it start off?

Does it start off with the character named?

Does it start off with a place?

You’ll start to see patterns. Yes, it can take quite a long time to research, but you’ll be confident that whatever idea you come up with, you know that it is going to be popular.

If your ideas are from the best-selling books, that means that they’re obviously doing , really well.

If they’re doing really well, it means there are a lot of readers that are wanting to read them by either word of mouth or they love the author.

But if you study these, you’re already going to be setting off on the right foot.

Read about five or 10 of the descriptions them and start to pick them apart and start to see where the patterns are.

What are the themes of the book?

Are they to do with betrayal, loss? Are they adventures? Are they about murders? Are there kidnappings?

Is it revenge, or is it a mystery?

What character names do they tend to use?

I want you to emulate, but don’t copy. You don’t want to rip off an idea because you’re going to get into some big trouble.

So write a selection that you like across from the five to 10 books. And I want you just to mix and match.

Where are the books set? Write the locations down. Are they set in rural areas, urban areas, cities, are they set in a village somewhere?

What words are used in the title and subtitle? See what patterns are there.

These are the titles and subtitles for Crime Fiction Bestsellers –

Why would these titles and subtitles attract readers?

Is it because it features the words: Unputdownable, gripping, page-turning, stunning twists etc.?

If you found that book intriguing, so will readers, which means it gets sales.

What I want you to do now is look up the reviews on your five to 10 books.

Check out the five-star reviews and look at the one to two-star reviews.

When you look at the five-star reviews, this is what you want to do more of in your own novel. It’s what your readers want.

Look at the one-star and two-star reviews because this is what you want to avoid doing.

This is not what I’m telling you to do, this is what your readers don’t want you to do.

If you do that for five to 10 books, you’ll start to have a bit of a guideline for your genre.

Now we need a basic plot.

So from your five to 10 book descriptions, write down some power words. Words that pack a punch or seem to do something or be interesting.

Then start having fun brainstorming!

I found these.

Struggle, murder secrets, killing, darker, shame found, uncover, sinister, remains, fear, discover justice, guilty, hiding, threatening reveal, wounds, haunting, killer case, body, hiding, innocent and dark.

That was just what I got from the crime book descriptions.

If you do the same, you’ll come up with some words like this.

Pick some words that jump out at you.

My pretend plot example for a crime thriller using these words:

I literally came up with this in five minutes.

The words in BOLD are from my list.

A detective struggles to solve a murder from years ago.

It feels like the killer was haunting him.

The detective wants justice for the family who lives in the same community, but the case takes a sinister turn.

People close to the detective haven’t been honest.

Just as the detective starts to uncover dark secrets about those around him, he has to grapple with his own fears.

When he is about to uncover the identity of the killer, more remains are discovered, which throws everything up in the air…

I didn’t put a lot of thought into it, I just joined them up and already I’ve come up with a bit of an interesting plot.

I’ve done this across genres to make sure that it works and I’ve come up with a book idea in genres that are not my strong point, like science fiction for example.

So this method works!

You need a basic structure.

You’ve probably heard of the three-act structure; act one, act two, act three.

Act one’s basic job is to set up the plot, and introduce characters and the beginnings of a conflict.

Act two is what I call the changing mood and speed.

Act three is setting up the ending.

So act one I see as the opposite of act three.

I personally would think about how I’d like the story to end, and I’d do that first.

I want you to pick an ending that’s the most shocking and that is going to be your act three.

In order to throw your readers off, I would make act one the complete opposite of this, right?

And act two is the changing of the mood.

So how we can slowly arrive to act three.?

My pretend ideas of the worst possible ending ideas:

The killer is his brother

The killer is his dad

The killer is the wife who got with him to get close to the case.

I picked the last one as I’ve think I could do more with it. That would be my Act 3

The complete opposite of this is she’s a loving wife and it’s a perfect marriage. She acts like she doesn’t care about his work because she’s got her own life. (Act 1)

Now what we have is a very basic novel outline that you can work with.

Act one – She’s a loving wife, acts like she doesn’t care about his work, but listens to everything – show not tell this.

Act two – some arguments start happening. She starts to hinder the case, and fakes illnesses to get the detective away from work (which is the case that she wants covered up)

Act three – the killer is his wife who thought she got away with the murder or murders and got who got with him to get close to the case and throw him off.

So that is a basic novel outline that I did in minutes using this method.

I know there’s quite a lot of research that goes in the beginning.

It’s up to you at the end of the day if you want to plot or pants it.

Plotting it is what we do now and we always finish our projects.

We have tried pantsing it and I’m not yet to knock it, but it doesn’t work for us.

We like to make sure that the ending that we come up with is the ending that we arrive at.

So if you’d love for us to give you all the research for whichever genre you want to write, we have brought out a novel outline workbook series.

We have done all the work for you!

Click here to check out these workbooks that do the work for you!

These are the reviews so far on our novel outline workbook series.

We’re working on 14 different genres.

You can find them on Amazon.

All that’s left for you is to have fun!

We give you a guideline as to what to write in chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, all the way up to the ending.

We actually give you the writing prompts. So there’s no thinking involved. It’s more about creating.

And that’s what I love about this method. It’s taken us years to perfect it. It’s taken us months to create these workbooks, but we didn’t want to bring them out unless they solved every single problem.

And it’s not just the writing of the novel we help you with the publishing as well.

This really is the quickest way to write your crime novel without ever getting writer’s block – guaranteed.

Share it with another author who’s battling writer’s block.

Our mission is to get everybody to not only come up with a novel idea, but to get that novel published.

Click to check out the Novel Writing Workbooks

Thank you!

Vicky & Claire x