How to Plan and Write More Than One Crime Novel a Year Without Burning Out

Do you want to be able to plan and write your crime fiction novels quickly, cleanly and more intentionally?

In September 2022, I signed a 3-book publishing deal with Bloodhound Books. I had written two psychological thrillers earlier in the year but I had yet to write the third. During 2022, I also ghostwrote two other novels for author clients. In total, I wrote four books in one year (while also running my editing business). How did I do it without burning out? This blog answers that question, as well as explains how you too can plan and write more than one crime novel a year!

Let me start off by saying this: I am a planner through and through. I plan everything. Lists and methods and processes and blueprints are my ‘thing’. I always try to find the most logical and systematic way to do something, and this definitely applies to writing books too. But when I started writing my very first full length novel in early 2019 (which I went on to self publish), I didn’t plan or plot or outline to the extent I do now, and it showed! I wrote myself into plot holes, my characters were two dimensional, and I included too many extraneous details. Although I could solve some/all of those issues after writing the first draft, it was just so overwhelming. I wanted a way to prevent the issues from happening in the first place!

Simplifying the novel planning process

I wanted – and needed – to simplify my novel writing process which meant deep-diving into planning! All the existing novel planners I found were too basic and/or generic and/or caused more procrastination! Combining notebooks and whiteboards and big sheets of paper with sticky notes felt too messy and confusing for my desperate-for-order brain. Using Word tables and spreadsheets meant even more screen time and resulted in endless variations of desktop files, most of which I ended up completely forgetting about. I wanted logic and structure and a methodical system specifically for writing a crime fiction book. So I created one! An amalgamation of everything I’ve learned from my English and creative writing degree, many years of writing my own stories, ghostwriting books, editing books for fellow authors, becoming a published author, and all the writing and editing courses and story craft books I’ve heavily invested in…

Introducing the Crime Novel Planner so you too can learn how to plan and write more than one crime novel a year!

Who is the Crime Novel Planner ideal for?

This Crime Novel Planner is ideal for you if:

• You’re a crime novelist who loves (or wants to start/get better at) plotting your books (especially ahead of NaNoWriMo!).
• You want a professional editor and ghostwriter’s guidelines to refer to, to help you structure a story that meets readers’ expectations.
• You wish you had a guided planner to jot down all your ideas, flesh out your characters and follow a step-by-step story plotting process.
• You start off with good intentions but struggle to keep track of your ideas on sticky notes, on your notes app, and in a variety of random notebooks – you need everything in one place!
• You want to feel more organised and in control of your writing process by using a dedicated novel planner for every work in progress.

The Crime Novel Planner is split into six main sections to help you plan the big picture overview of your story before zooming in for a closer inspection of each and every chapter.

The six main sections are:

• The Big Picture
• The Big Decisions
• The Main Characters
• The Side Characters
• The Three Acts
• Chapter By Chapter Breakdown

Starting from the outside (the big picture) and gradually working your way inside the story (chapter by chapter breakdown) is such a logical, focused, structured way of harnessing all of your ideas into a detailed novel outline that will ultimately transform your book into a page-turning read.

Including word count trackers and notes/brainstorm pages, this Crime Novel Planner is designed to help you plan and plot your story easily, quickly and more intentionally, all in one place.

What are the benefits of the Crime Novel Planner?

As I said before, I wrote four new books during 2022. I outlined them first, in detail, using the Crime Novel Planner. It is intended as a tool to use before opening that blank Word document or Scrivener project. However, it can also be used to fix novels that might not be working by going back to the planning stage. Outlining again could help you to ruthlessly hack through your disordered draft with clear intent!

The Crime Novel Planner has both streamlined and speeded up my planning process, meaning I can quickly and easily convert my detailed novel outlines into clean, well structured first drafts without plot holes, character inconsistencies, and unnecessary padding.

If the Crime Novel Planner works for me, it can work for you too!

• Because it’s a step-by-step planner, it helps you create a detailed, structured, skeleton outline which just needs fleshing out once you start typing your novel. This simplified process helped me feel much less overwhelmed because the planner held my ideas rather than them bouncing around randomly in my brain.
• As it contains guidelines in every section, it helps you create a tighter plot, which means less chance of slower paced chapters or the dreaded ‘saggy middle’! This means less stress throughout, particularly at the 50% point, which means less desire to just give up on your book. The feeling of achievement when you type THE END is immense!
• Due to it being a dedicated one-novel-at-a-time planner, you can write down and keep all your ideas in one place, creating a scrapbook style keepsake after you have written the book. And because it’s a printable PDF, you can simply print another planner (or just the pages you need) when it’s time to write your next book.
• And last but not least, writing ideas down by hand often aids creativity and conceptual development. Plus, it cuts down on screen time and it means you get to use beautiful pens!

So, if you’re a crime fiction novelist (or an aspiring crime fiction writer) and you want to learn how to plan and write more than one crime novel a year without burning out, get your 100 page PDF printable Crime Novel Planner for just £7.99 by clicking the image below!

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