The Caffeinated Writer

The Caffeinated Writer

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The Caffeinated Writer
The Caffeinated Writer
How to Write a Novel: 10 Steps to Get You Started
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How to Write a Novel: 10 Steps to Get You Started

A Practical Guide for First-Time Novelists in Any Genre

Michelle Richmond's avatar
Michelle Richmond
Jul 01, 2025
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The Caffeinated Writer
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How to Write a Novel: 10 Steps to Get You Started
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an unwieldy stack of books beside my fireplace

This post is adapted from my course Foundations of Novel Writing.

Every novel demands its own structure, its own pace, its own way of looking at the world. Although your first novel will certainly provide lessons you can carry into writing your second, that doesn’t mean the second novel will be any less challenging. Nor will the third, fourth and so on.

If you’ve ever tried to write a novel and gotten stuck before the end, you know it can be an exercise in frustration. But it can also be a joyful adventure—the thing you wake up thinking about, the thing that provides shape and purpose to your creative energy. Your novel is your world. You get to make it, populate it, cultivate it, complicate it, put your characters through the paces, and bring all of the pieces together.

Every novel presents a brand new learning curve. I’ve published six novels, and I have three unpublished novels in a drawer. It never gets any easier. There’s no magic formula. That said, there are a few things you can do to make the process go more smoothly. Here are ten things to keep in mind as you begin writing your novel. These principles work for any genre.

1. Forget the outline. Start with situation.

Outlines are fine unless they derail you. I’ve seen it again and again: writers who end up spinning their wheels for years, beholden to a failed outline. The good thing about an outline is that it gives you direction. The downside of an outline is that it limits your novel’s possibilities and may cause you to get hopelessly stuck.

For the first fifty pages, at least, write your novel without an outline. Start with a situation and see where it goes. It works for Stephen King, who explains in his essential writing guide, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft:

I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible. A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a what-if question.

You can pick up any novel on your bookshelf and apply the what-if question. Doing so is a great way to learn how to distill your novel’s situation into a sentence or two.

  • What if a mildly famous artist holes up in a motel a few miles from home and blows her recent prize money on redecorating the room while becoming immersed in an erotically charged relationship with a much younger married man? (Miranda July, All Fours)

  • What if a recently murdered woman is brought back to life by a groundbreaking government project and returned to her husband and child, only to discover that her murder was never really solved? (Katie Williams, My Murder)

A teacher shared the “what-if” advice back when I was an undergraduate at The University of Alabama, and it has served me well ever since, providing a starting point for all of my novels:

  • What if a couple receives a wedding gift that promises to help them achieve a lasting marriage…with some rather serious caveats? (The Marriage Pact)

  • What if a child goes missing on a beach while in the care of her soon-to-be stepmother? (The Year of Fog)

  • What if an FBI agent in the aftermath of personal tragedy moves home to discover her small Northern California town has become a Silicon Valley suburb on steroids, obsessed with student performance? (The Wonder Test)

Once you have the situation and some words on the page, if you want more structure to your process, you can create a scene list, mapping out some of the key scenes you want to write.

2. Establish the setting.

Setting encompasses not only place, but also time. Where does your novel happen, and when?

Ian McEwan’s chilling novella, THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS, derives much of its tension from the setting of Venice — the convoluted streets and hidden alleys are essential to the feeling of disorientation that leads to the protagonist’s undoing.

When I began writing THE YEAR OF FOG, I knew it could happen only one place: San Francisco. And I knew the story of a child disappearing into the fog must begin on Ocean Beach, where the summer fog is so dense, you can see only a few feet in front of you. I’ve since published several more novels set in San Francisco. The moment I set foot in San Francisco twenty years ago, I found my muse.

My latest novel, THE WONDER TEST, a Silicon Valley thriller about “high-takes education, the 1%, and suburban tropes,” (Booklist), was inspired by my little corner of the Bay Area. It’s a Silicon Valley novel to its core, with the absurdities and dangers of productivity culture baked right in.

What location is your muse? What place do you know so intimately, you can describe it like no one else? Setting may be simply backdrop, or it may rise almost to the level of a character in the book — as in Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides and James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential, Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, and one of my favorites, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.

When you consider the setting of your novel, be as specific as possible. If it begins in a city, what part of the city? What street? What building? Why does the story happen here? How does the place define and challenge the characters?

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