How to Write a Novel, Step by Step

To write a novel, turn an idea into a one-sentence premise, build a main character who wants something, give the story a beginning, middle and end, then write a complete first draft before you revise any of it. That is the whole method in one sentence. The ten steps below take each part in turn, with what novelists actually said about it, checked against their own books and interviews.

A novel is a long piece of prose fiction. E. M. Forster, in Aspects of the Novel (1927), borrowed a French critic's definition, "a fiction in prose of a certain extent", and added that "the extent should not be less than 50,000 words." Most novels today run longer. Length by genre has its own page. Fiction under 7,500 words is a short story, which is built differently, around one effect read at one sitting: how to write a short story covers it.

What Are the Steps to Write a Novel?

1. Start with an idea you want to read.
2. Turn the idea into a premise.
3. Decide how much to plan.
4. Build your main character.
5. Choose a point of view.
6. Give the story a structure.
7. Set a length and a daily target.
8. Write the first draft with the door closed.
9. Finish the draft before you fix it.
10. Revise with the door open.

Step 1: How Do You Get an Idea for a Novel?

Start with the book you want to read and cannot find. Toni Morrison said it to the Ohio Arts Council in 1981, as reported in The Cincinnati Enquirer: "If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

An idea is usually smaller than a story. It is a situation, a character or a question. Stephen King, in On Writing (2000), describes his starting point as a situation, and says he believes "stories are found things, like fossils in the ground." Write the idea down in one line. If it still interests you a week later, it can carry a book.

Read in the kind of book you want to write, too. King puts it first in On Writing: a writer must do two things above all others, "read a lot and write a lot."

Step 2: How Do You Turn an Idea Into a Premise?

A premise is the idea stated as a story: who it is about, what they want, and what stands in the way. Lajos Egri, in The Art of Dramatic Writing (1946), took the word further and made it the point the story proves. His premise for Romeo and Juliet: "Great love defies even death."

Use both versions:

• The story line. One sentence with a character, a goal and an obstacle. This is also the first step of the Snowflake Method.
• The point. A short claim the ending will prove, in Egri's sense. It keeps the scenes pulling the same way.

Step 3: Should You Outline a Novel Before Writing It?

Outline as much as helps you finish, and no more. Novelists split on this. Iris Murdoch planned "every conversation". King distrusts plot. Most sit between the two, and plotter vs pantser sets out what each side actually said.

E. L. Doctorow's answer, from his Paris Review interview, is the one to keep in mind if you are nervous about starting without a full plan: "it's like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

Step 4: How Do You Create a Main Character?

A main character needs a goal, a reason to want it, and something inside them that makes it harder. Write down three things before the first chapter:

• Want. What they are chasing on the page.
• Flaw. What in them gets in the way.
• Change. Who they are by the end, or why they refuse to change.

The shapes that change can take are covered in character arc types. The person or force that blocks the goal matters as much, and how to write a villain deals with that side.

Step 5: Which Point of View Should a Novel Use?

Choose the narrator before you draft, because changing it later means rewriting every sentence. First person tells the story as "I"; third person limited follows one character as "she" or "he"; omniscient knows everything. First person vs third person compares them, with deep POV and second person.

Step 6: How Do You Structure a Novel?

A novel needs a beginning that sets up the character and the problem, a middle where the problem gets worse, and an end that settles it. The most used frame for that is the three-act structure, with its two turning points.

Two pieces matter most at the planning stage:

• The event that starts the story. The inciting incident upsets the character's life and sets the plot moving.
• The unit you write in. A novel is built from scenes, and scene and sequel gives each one a goal, a conflict and a setback.

Step 7: How Long Should a Novel Be, and How Much Should You Write a Day?

Pick a target length from your genre, then divide it into days. King's own rate, in On Writing: "I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That's 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book." He also says "the first draft of a book" should take "no more than three months, the length of a season."

That is one novelist's pace, not a rule. No study supports any daily number, which is why how many words you should write a day looks at what the research does support: short, regular sessions. The arithmetic is simple. At 1,000 words a day, a 90,000-word draft takes 90 writing days. Nobody has measured how long drafting takes in general, but editing time is measured, which is the point of how long it takes to write a novel.

Step 8: How Do You Write the First Draft of a Novel?

Write it for yourself first. King's rule: "write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open." The first draft is for finding the story. Nobody else needs to see it yet. That goes for the first page too: write a plain opening and come back to it at the end, when you know what it has to promise. Starting a novel well, from the first line to the end of chapter one, is easier once the ending exists.

Expect it to be rough. Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird (1994), called the chapter "Shitty First Drafts" and wrote: "All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts."

One habit helps every day's start. Ernest Hemingway, in his 1958 Paris Review interview: "You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again." Stop mid-scene, and tomorrow's first sentence is already waiting.

Step 9: How Do You Finish Writing a Novel?

Finish the draft before fixing it. Going back to polish chapter one is a common way for a first novel to stall. Keep a list of the changes you mean to make and keep moving forward.

If you get stuck, it is usually a story problem rather than a lack of will. Go back to the premise and the character's want, and ask what they would do next. What to do about writer's block covers what the research found about getting unstuck.

Step 10: How Do You Revise a Novel?

Revise from the largest problems down to the smallest: structure first, then scenes, then sentences. Revision passes explains why that order saves work, and the self-editing checklist turns it into a pass-by-pass list.

Two pieces of advice from the record:

• Cut. King passes on a formula an editor gave him early in his career: the second draft is the first draft minus 10 per cent.
• Expect to redo the hard parts. Hemingway, asked how much he rewrote: "I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied."

Then show it to readers. That is King's open door, and getting feedback from beta readers covers who to ask and what to ask them. After that comes the choice between an agent and doing it yourself, set out in traditional vs self-publishing.

Which Famous Rules for Writing a Novel Are Misquoted?

Several of the most shared lines about writing a novel have the wrong name on them, or the wrong words.

• "There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Credited to W. Somerset Maugham, but the earliest print source Quote Investigator found is Ralph Daigh's Maybe You Should Write a Book (1977), twelve years after Maugham died, told as an anecdote about Maugham answering a student in a literature class. Daigh's wording is "There are three rules for the writing of a novel." Maugham is the leading candidate, not a documented source.
• "Write drunk, edit sober." Not Hemingway. The earliest known version is in Peter De Vries's novel Reuben, Reuben (1964), spoken by a fictional poet: "Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk." Quote Investigator found no support for Hemingway, who, in his Paris Review interview, describes writing every morning "as soon after first light as possible."
• "Kill your darlings." Usually credited to William Faulkner or Stephen King. It comes from Arthur Quiller-Couch, in a Cambridge lecture "On Style" on 28 January 1914: "Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it ... and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings." His target was showy prose, not characters.
• "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." The idea is Morrison's, but this is the internet's wording. Her words in 1981 were "If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

A Worked Example

Here is one novel, taken from idea to first page.

1. Idea. A canal is closing, and someone still keeps its last lock.
2. Story line. Mae, the last lock-keeper on a dying canal, finds an empty narrowboat in her lock at dawn, and every answer she finds about it makes the canal's closure more certain.
3. Point. Telling the truth costs more than keeping quiet, and is worth it.
4. Character. Want: keep the canal open. Flaw: she never asks anyone for help. Change: she asks the whole town.
5. Point of view. Third person, close on Mae.
6. Structure. The empty boat (inciting incident), the owner's name in the log (first turning point), the council vote (midpoint), the night she opens the lock for the inspectors (climax).
7. Target. 80,000 words at 1,000 a day: 80 writing days.
8. First line. "The boat came through the fog at six, and there was nobody on it."

How Do You Write a Novel in Deckle?

Deckle is a novel-writing app. It keeps the plan, the characters and the draft in one project, so each step above has a place to live.

1. Write the premise. Create a project and open the Outliner on the Draft. Add a card with Add › Scene, call it "Premise", and write your story line in its synopsis.
2. Build the character. Open the Codex, click + (New entry) in the Characters section and choose the Character template. The built-in template has sections for Motivation & Goals, Flaw / Inner Conflict, The Lie They Believe and Arc: want, flaw and change.
3. Lay out the structure. Back on the Outliner, add a card for each key scene with Add › Scene, in order, and write what happens in each synopsis. Use Add › Folder for an act or a part.
4. Set the target. Open Writing Stats, choose the Manuscript tab and enter your Target word count, and add a deadline. Deckle then shows the words a day you need to finish on time.
5. Write. Open a card and draft into it. The synopsis stays on the card, so the plan is beside the prose.
6. Revise. Switch the Outliner to its list to read the whole book as rows, and drag cards to restructure the novel without cutting and pasting.

For the setup side, such as where the file lives and how it is backed up, see how to write a book on a computer. For a comparison of tools, see the best novel writing software.

Common Mistakes

• Starting with no premise. An idea alone runs out by chapter three. A character with a goal and an obstacle keeps going.
• Polishing chapter one. Revise once the draft is finished, not during it.
• Treating one writer's method as a rule. King's 2,000 words a day and Murdoch's full plan are their habits. Find yours.
• Changing point of view halfway. Decide it before the first draft.
• Revising sentences before structure. A scene you later cut wastes every hour spent polishing it.
• Quoting the famous rules as written. Maugham's three rules, "write drunk, edit sober" and "kill your darlings" all carry the wrong name or the wrong words.

Sources

Retrieved 26 October 2026.

• E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927), chapter 1, "Introductory" (archive.org).
• Lajos Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing (Simon & Schuster, 1946), chapter 1, "Premise" (archive.org).
• Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Scribner, 2000), read through Open Library's search inside (archive.org).
• Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Pantheon, 1994), "Shitty First Drafts" (archive.org).
• George Plimpton, Ernest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21, The Paris Review 18, Spring 1958.
• George Plimpton, E. L. Doctorow, The Art of Fiction No. 94, The Paris Review 101, Winter 1986.
• Arthur Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing (1916), Lecture XII, "On Style", 28 January 1914 (Project Gutenberg).
• Peter De Vries, Reuben, Reuben (Little, Brown, 1964), chapter 30 (archive.org).
• Quote Investigator, There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novel, 2013.
• Quote Investigator, Write Drunk, Revise Sober, 2016.
• Quote Investigator, If You Find a Book You Really Want To Read But It Hasn't Been Written Yet, Then You Must Write It, 2018, citing The Cincinnati Enquirer, 27 September 1981.