It must just be my turn as a writer:  in the past month, three friends/colleagues/people I know have come up to me with variations of "I wrote a novel and I'm going to get it published!" Never written a novel before, or sent out a short story. Never taken a class in writing, or even in literature. Never looked into the industry or how it works, or what they should or shouldn't do to not get totally screwed over. In short, no idea what they were doing. But they wrote a novel, and they wanted it published.

There's nothing inherently wrong here. Everybody starts in ignorance and there's no rule that says you have to do things in any particular order. And I'm overjoyed for them, proud of them and cheering them on in the background that they actually finished the damn things - that's awesome. But after repeating the same advice three times, I thought perhaps it was blog-time.

So - you've just finished the last word of your novel - what now?

Editing has been on my mind lately - specifically, ways people edit and what information is useful to them. The little”learning” project I mentioned last week is software to help developmental editing, you see, and I’m a firm believer that any tool designed for artists should never constrain how the artist has to work in order to be useful.

One thing I’ve come across is a great idea for people who aren’t sure which of their plot elements have to be there. It can also work equally well if you haven’t written the book yet, and are trying to plan it out.

Start at the end - what ending do you want to see? What do you want to leave your reader with? What is the emotional finish note (and why. If we’re feeling triumphant, what are we feeling triumphant about?). Is this moment the actual climax, or a few moments after, or many moments after? What just happened?

Now, work backwards to the scene just before. What setup do you need for this payoff? What has to happen here? Where should the emotion be, and the tension?

Go to the scene before that, and ask again - work your way backwards until you reach the start of the story.

Reversing the cause and effect order (that is, taking the effect and then creating the cause) can make it much easier to work out what the bones are of the story - what has to happen, and what’s just in there because you liked it. 

There’s no reason that you have to go scene by scene, either - if you have a big sheet of paper, then just start at the end with one arc (for example, put the solving of the murder at the end or the bottom of the page) and then write the necessary elements (eg the clues) on the page in roughly where you think they’ll fall in the book. Repeat for the character arsc, the subplot, etc. Then go back and see if any of the elements on the page can be grouped into the same scene. This can work well if you know what has to happen, but you're not sure about when.