Planning a Novel the Gates Annai Way
- gatesannai1
- Aug 22
- 14 min read
Updated: Aug 27
Actually, technically it's the film school way but whatever
I learned how to write and plan a novel through film school, which seems like an unlikely place to do it until you realize that film is all about formulas, constrictions, and rules. Trying to plan a novel and knowing it could literally be anything made it so that I never finished what I started. But with rules, there were guiderails towards what it should be, towards what would make a satisfying and complete story.
So this is how I plan all my novels using everything I learned in film school and my experience from the decade-plus I've been writing. This is basically the reason we're here.
Contents
Step 0: Laying the Groundwork
Theme:
A theme is a big statement about the world or society or people in general. It is “people are actually inherently evil because our instincts tell us to act on self-preservation” or “world peace would be possible if everyone had the support they needed to become their best selves”. If it sounds a bit like you’re making a godly declaration, you’ve done it right. It is the answer to a question your story poses, not the question itself.
How your story ends reveals this answer. If the story is about a selfish person trying to get better and it ends by them failing, we’re saying (at the simplest level) that “selfish people will always be selfish”, whereas if they succeed, we’re saying “actually, selfish people can overcome their selfishness if they have (whatever your character did to work on themselves. Love, dogs, therapy, etc.)”
Motifs:
An idea/object/concept/place that keeps coming up throughout the story. Creates a sense of unity throughout the story, and often symbolizes a character, or the theme.
Ex: Family, belonging, vulnerability, connection, apple trees.
“Feel” of the Story:
The tone, mood, aesthetic you want to convey throughout your story. This is conveyed through word choice, pacing, and the details you draw attention to.
Ex. The woods are expansive and alive—never still in the breeze.
VS
Ex. The woods loomed over them, swallowing all light into a hollow black void.
(Conveys same information with a very different tone)
Moodboards:
Pinterest time!! Gather things that remind you of characters, world, plot elements, aesthetic—really anything that is inspiring or representative of your story.
Step 1: Worldbuilding
There’s so much to think about here, and it’s going to look totally different for each story, but I’ll run you through a general list of things to consider:
Minor Settings:
These are the specific places within your world your characters will inhabit and encounter. Stuff like the MC’s office building, their best friend’s bedroom, the highschool, the garage they do band practice in, the field they go to think, etc. Consider:
What about this place makes it unique
What makes a character’s bedroom theirs rather than any other bedroom. I already know bedrooms have beds and side tables and lamps in them. What’s the interesting detail?
What history has occurred here
All places important to your character probably have some sort of history. The field they go to think they also had their first date at. Their bedroom carries years of childhood and slumber parties and being grounded. Or maybe it’s new, and its newness has been hard to get used to.
How does your MC think of this place?
Similar to history, every place has a specific feeling. I felt dread when I walked into my part-time barista job, I feel joy and freedom when I get into my car because it usually means I’m driving home, etc.
NPCs:
The characters that fill out the world but may not really impact the plot as heavily. The teacher, the barista that always seems to be working when the MC wants a coffee, the guy who always delivers the mail, the secretary.
What’s a distinguishing detail about them?
Give them a voice and maybe one distinguishing character trait.
Consider their history with the MC—what impression do they leave on each other? If the MC thinks their barista hates them, they will act differently towards them than if they’re generally friendly if distant.
And lastly, consider if they’re truly really necessary. Are they worth this work and their mention in the story?
Larger Settings:
These are the towns/cities/villages/settlements that your minor settings are housed in. We’ll do broader worldbuilding here. Consider:
Weather
Culture (ethnicities, languages, traditions, events and festivals, celebrations, bigotry)
Industry (major economies, trading, foreign relations)
Mythology (beliefs, superstitions if applicable, religions)
The brief history
Any magic systems or powers
Social structures/class
Politics
How do the citizens generally feel about their government/lives?
Anything else story specific you need to know for your characters or plot
An important note to all worldbuilding is that a list of facts is a lot less interesting and irrelevant than how it impacts the people. To say somewhere rains a lot is okay, but it’s much more interesting to consider how a city that rains all the time would have infrastructure to accommodate for lots of water, maybe umbrellas are huge factors in style, maybe festivals and events rarely take place outdoors so there’s a ton of giant indoor public spaces, maybe people are known for having low moods.
For everything you decide, ask yourself—what does it mean for the people in this world? How do the people feel about it?
Step 2: Character Development
In this step we’re filling out the:
MC (main character)
Close allies/teammates/other POV characters
Antagonist
Major Characters
Objective: the actionable (your character can work at it) objective of the story. What your character is physically doing throughout the story. Frodo taking the ring to Mordor is his Objective, Rapunzel going to see the lanterns in Tangled. Mulan protecting her dad by taking his place. Essentially, objective is what we’ve thought of as plot.
Goal: the intention behind the objective. Why is your character doing this? This is usually the emotional core of the story, where we tuck away arc and characterization. Rapunzel wants to see the lanterns to finally get out and start her life. Mulan wants to prove she’s worthy. Your character wants to make someone proud, or hurt someone who’s hurt them, or feel loved. This is the emotion behind their objective and cannot on its own be turned into an arc. One cannot ‘prove themselves worthy’ out of a void, that’s the goal, you also need an objective, ‘prove themselves worthy through taking their father’s place in the war’.
Unconscious Need: Your character needs to realize something they haven’t been aware of to achieve their goal. Or they need to realize a flaw in their goal. For example, a woman wants to run for president (objective) to make her mother proud (goal), but she needs to realize all her mother wants is to spend more time with her, and by using all her time to campaign for president, she’s actually splitting them further apart. Mulan needs to not rely so much on external validation for her own worth if she wants to feel worthy (goal).
Your need is character specific, which means no one else should need the same thing. If your need can apply to multiple people, you probably didn’t get specific enough. Everyone needs to be loved, everyone needs to feel cared for. However, not everyone closed themselves off from relationships and needs to open up to people if they want to foster the connection they crave.
Disrupting Characteristic: This step is adding a flaw to your character, specifically, it’s the flaw that’s holding them back from meeting their need. If there was nothing holding them back, wouldn’t they be satisfied already? So that’s the easiest place to start with this one, what they need, and what could possibly be holding them back from it. If they need to see their father as he truly is, maybe their disrupting characteristic is that they’re optimistic to a fault. This characteristic could be a thing the character does (idolizes their father, acts fiercely independent, etc.) or a belief they have about themselves or the world (self conscious, believes humans are inherently cruel, etc.) It’s the epitome of their internal conflict, they need something, but some ingrained part of them is keeping them from it.
Formative Event: this is essentially your beginnings of backstory. The formative event Is the (usually) singular event in a character’s past that made them to be who they are today—importantly, that developed their need and disrupting characteristic. Your character showed up to school in their new dress and was bullied, Mirabelle didn’t get her gift, a mom left, or a dog died. The reason they are the way that they are. From this, you can build up the rest of their backstory. Moana is chosen by the ocean, her parents try to keep her away from the ocean, she grows up unsure about the idea of being the next chief. If you’re struggling with backstory, start here, build around it.
Backstory
Start with your formative event, and build outwards. I find it most helpful to explore what happened leading up to said event, and what the immediate fallout was. Other things to consider with backstory:
What does their family situation look like?
What was their upbringing like? What values did their parents/caregivers hold?
What kind of education do they have?
Where did they grow up?
What sort of communities/friend groups did they have?
What hobbies or other activities did they do?
I tend to explore more backstory than needed, but not all of it makes it into the final product because of one piece of advice I was given: backstory comes in the moment it is necessary, and it comes out through conflict. If your backstory fails either of these briefs, it is likely unnecessary.
Voice
What’s most important to convey through voice is background and attitude. Background is all those details you came up with around your character’s past. Family, class, education, friends all might influence what your character says.
For example, a character who was raised in a very proper household may use the word “pardon” rather than “excuse me.”. A character who was raised outside of societal rules may not excuse themselves at all, and could come off as rude.
The second thing voice can convey is attitude. This is how more temporary/current things impact voice of character. It’s how they react to their situation, and how that betrays what they’re thinking. I’ll say it a million times, but characters never say what they mean. What things they hide through their voice is very telling of who they are as people.
Minor Characters:
Take the advice from above but we’re just figuring out:
Objective
Goal
Core characteristics (something distinctive about them)
Formative Event or brief Backstory
It’s basically the same process with a little less work for your parents, minor friends, siblings, an important teacher or mentor, etc.
Loglines
This is something I learned in film that I find is super helpful in remembering and figuring out who characters are and what their arc is. They work like: A but B so C.
A: Disrupting characteristic
but
B: Conflict (goal/objective meets antagonist)
so
C: Changed character
Here’s an example:
Elsa from Frozen –
A: Isolates self for fear of hurting others.
B: Her secret is revealed to the kingdom
C: Must open up to her sister to save her and their kingdom
Elsa, the Queen of Arandelle with uncontrollable ice powers, isolates herself from her sister and her kingdom from the rest of the world for fear that her powers will hurt those she cares most about, but when a chance event reveals her secret to her kingdom, she flees and accidentally condemns her kingdom to an eternal winter. Elsa must open up to her sister in order to gain the confidence to control her power, saving her sister’s life and freeing their kingdom.
Step 3: Outline
Intro: This is the setup. It’ll introduce our protagonist, the rules of the world we’re in, set up genre, and contains a bit of foreshadowing for the story to come. How to do all of that? Our first conflict—something your character can solve or face to show their strengths, setting up who they are at the beginning, and what world they’re in. This conflict should be smaller than what they’re facing the rest of the story, but should somewhat connect to what’s going to happen. For example, if throughout your story your protagonist is fleeing from a dangerous group that they’ve accidentally wronged in some way, the intro conflict may be them running into a member of that group and diffusing a situation about to go awry.
Inciting Incident: The inciting incident is something that happens to your character, because otherwise, why hadn’t they decided to make any sort of change beforehand? So the inciting incident is the thing that flips the world on its head, that forces the protagonist to act if they wish to remain in their comfy normal world. It’s best if it’s irreversible and has personal consequences. Characters always want to stay in their comfy world because change is hard and scary, and unless forced to, why would anything need to change? So the inciting incident forces them into something that they now need to work at to resolve so they can go back to their normal life. (Spoilers, through the act of trying to resolve it, they will change enough as people that they will never go back to their normal lives, and often, it’s for the better).
First Act Turn: This is now your first active choice made by the protagonist to pursue their goal (thus acting through their objective). It’s a direct response to the inciting incident, which means this is the character’s first attempt to solve whatever happened in the inciting incident. It’s important these two are connected, because your inciting incident was meant to jumpstart the story, and this is just the follow-up to that. The continuation of the story, now with the protagonist’s involvement.
Fun and Games: This one is fun! (and games) because it’s really just bants. It’s your protagonist seemingly achieving what they want, their decision is paying off well so far—while there still should be conflict, we’re on a trajectory of success. The especially fun part (in a more evil sort of way) is that there’s a growing problem we’re not ready to address yet that will have consequences at the midpoint.
Midpoint: This is the false victory—the character thinks they’ve reached their objective, but it’s quickly followed by a reversal, the objective is snatched away, or they lose something essential. It typically surprises the audience/readers, sends the plot in a new direction (while still being relevant to the beginning obviously), raises the stakes, strips away support the protagonist was relying on, and often starts a ticking clock (time pressure). Ever heard of the advice “what does your character take for granted? Take it away from them.” This is the time to do that.
(It’s relevant here to note that I find from this point to the resolution to be shorter than it took to get to this point from the intro in novel writing. There’s no reason each major point needs to be the same length, follow what your story demands, you’ll likely have more to set up than you do to wrap up, and that’s okay.)
Things get Worse: This is a bit like fun and games in that it’s almost a transition stage between major points, but it’s so much sadder. Essentially it finishes what the midpoint started, removing allies, raising stakes. Our protagonist is still using their same strategy they chose at their first act turn, even though it’s really not working.
Second Act Turn: Another large choice the protagonist makes that responds directly to what happened in the midpoint. We’ve now changed strategies to getting what we want, but the goal/objective remains the same. It should feel desperate, but of course a slim amount of hope is necessary. So for example, maybe your character’s first strategy was to run from the danger coming towards them and all it’s done has lost them their allies and condemned more people to hurt. The second act turn may be that they decide that they can’t run any longer, and turn to fight what’s after them.
Crisis: the consequence from your character’s choice (all choices have consequences). It typically puts your character in a dangerous or unstable situation where the stakes are high, they’re in jeopardy, but they’re so close to achieving their objective/goal even if the probability that they fail Is high. This is the “all hope is lost” moment, your protagonist has lost and knows they have. They’re facing their worst fear. Your character probably realizes now they have to make another choice, they understand their need, and they can either adhere to it (positive arc) or ignore it (tragic arc). Taking another example from Frozen, at this point Anna has been betrayed by the bad guy and is freezing to death, Elsa is locked up, she either understands she needs to do something (open up to her sister), or she ignores it (stays locked up). Obviously we know what she chooses, which is what makes her arc positive instead of tragic.
Climax: This is the choice your character makes. They’ve realized their need, and now they’re choosing what to do with that information. It should be a difficult choice, maybe even requiring a sacrifice to do what the story considers to be the right thing and reveals who the protagonist is/who they’ve become over the course of the story. (Elsa breaks free of the prison and goes to save Anna.)
Resolution: The resolution is what happens because of the protagonist’s choice, and depending on what happens, you either reveal to the audience it was the right choice (happy ending) or the wrong one (tragic ending). It draws any remaining questions brought up by the story to a close and demonstrates the “new normal” of the world. Where the character set out to put their world back into order, they grew as a person to create instead a new normal. If the world is the exact same as how it started, it will feel as though there was no point to the story, so character and world must change.
We did the hardest part! Now onto…
Step 4: Research
Your research needs will vary significantly depending on your story, but here are some general ideas for things you may want to consider:
Characters:
Are they a different culture/race/have a different background than you? It’s important to make sure that you depict them respectfully and accurately. On that note:
Consider stereotypes of the character’s identity. Do you subvert them or use other strategies to not depict the identity as solely its stereotype?
What skills do they have that you don’t have? How does one gain that skill, develop it, practice it, and perform it well (or not so well)?
What would be expected of them at their job? How does their industry work?
What knowledge do they have that you don’t have?
Essentially, anything about your characters that isn’t informed by your own personal experiences (and even some that are) should be researched so that you have an accurate foundation to write from.
World:
How would its weather impact its architecture?
Are there real-world counterparts to the mechanics/mythology/industry of your world
Most research for your world will likely come up in the moment you’re writing it (for example, wanting to describe a vase of flowers so you search up what sort of flowers would grow in the climate you’ve created) but also, don’t be afraid to fudge some things if necessary—it’s your world, you get to decide the rules, and most people won’t be experts enough to call you out on slight inaccuracies or things that in reality wouldn’t work.
Outline:
Look inwards to your planning; does it all line up? Are there inconsistencies with how you know your city works and what needs to happen in your plot? Or a character’s skill versus the world they’re in? Does the growth make sense?
Question Everything
1. Are all my characters necessary?
2. Have I done my research?
3. Do my characters inform my outline, or is my outline informing my characters?
4. Can I put words to everything/do I know the specifics or reasoning of everything?
5. Are there unintentional messages or politics I’m reinforcing?
Consider getting someone to look over what you’ve made so far and ask questions about it. Be open to new directions or ideas that may open up your plot.
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