What design taught me about plotting novels

I spent thirty years as a digital product designer and consultant before I wrote my first novel. For most of that time I kept the two things completely separate in my mind, as if the skills I used professionally had nothing to offer the writer I wanted to become.

It took a pandemic lockdown and four months of uninterrupted time to discover how wrong I was.

When I sat down to write The Weaver in 2020, I stopped trying to write the way I thought writers were supposed to write, and started approaching the problem the way I’d always approached design problems. The results surprised me. What follows is a breakdown of the techniques I borrowed directly from my design background and how I adapted them for plotting and planning fiction.

Character profiles: from user personas to character encyclopedias

In product design, we use something called user personas. A persona is a detailed profile of a representative user, capturing their goals, motivations, behaviours, frustrations, and characteristics. The purpose is to keep the design team anchored to the real human being at the centre of what they are building.

When I started plotting The Weaver I realised I needed exactly the same thing for my characters.

I built a spreadsheet with one column per character. Each column captures everything I know about that character across a comprehensive set of fields:

• Role and purpose
• Age
• Birth date
• Physical characteristics (height, eyes, hair, body type)
• First appearance in the story
• Main goal
• Occupation
• Motivation
• Inner need
• Flaws
• Backstory
• Core traits
• Habits both good and bad
• Secrets
• Skills and knowledge
• Quirks
• Attitude
• Dialogue style
• Fears
• Education
• Personality
• Hobbies
• Relationships
• Food and drink preferences
• and health.

I don’t fill every field before I start writing. I fill out as many as I need to get started and add more as I learn more about the character through the writing itself. The spreadsheet grows alongside the story.

What this gives me is an encyclopedia of facts about every main character and most significant secondary characters across all five books of the Old Blood Saga. It keeps things aligned and consistent in the ways that matter: eye colours, hair colours, birthdays, food preferences, relationship histories. The details that are easy to get wrong across a multi-book series and that readers notice when you do.

It has saved me from continuity errors more times than I can count. When you are five books into a series and a character mentions their favourite food or the colour of another character’s eyes, you want to be certain you are getting it right. The spreadsheet means I don’t have to rely on memory.

Narrative mapping: from journey maps to visual story arcs

Journey mapping is a design technique for visualising the end to end experience of a user moving through a product or service. You map out each stage of their journey, the actions they take, the emotions they feel, the pain points they encounter, and the opportunities to improve their experience. It gives you a clear picture of the whole before you get lost in the detail of any one part.

I use the same principle to plot my novels, and I do it in Miro (though you could also use Mural, Freeform on the Mac, or a large sheet of paper), a virtual whiteboarding tool that lets you build visual diagrams you can zoom in and out of, move around freely, and colour code.

My process works at multiple levels simultaneously. I start with a high level visual story arc for the entire book, getting the shape of the narrative clear before I go anywhere near the detail. I then work down to chapter and scene level, mapping out what happens, when, and why. Subplots get their own colour coding so I can see at a glance how the different narrative threads weave together across the book.

The Miro board isn’t a static document. I build it before I write, detail it as I work, and update it afterwards to reflect what the story actually became. It’s a living map of the narrative rather than a fixed plan, which means it can accommodate the changes and discoveries that happen during the writing itself.

Timeline blocking: the Gantt chart approach to novel structure

Anyone who has worked in project management will be familiar with a Gantt chart, a visual timeline that maps tasks or deliverables against a calendar. I use exactly this approach to block out my novels.

Once I have my chapter summaries mapped out in Miro, I transfer everything into Excel and map it against a real world calendar year. The year itself is arbitrary, chosen purely as a structural guide rather than having any significance to the story. What it gives me is a visual representation of the novel’s internal timeline, chapter by chapter, section by section, with the pacing and sequencing laid out clearly in front of me.

This is where I catch timing problems before they become writing problems. If two things need to happen simultaneously on opposite sides of the story, the calendar shows me that. If the pacing feels off, too much happening in one period and not enough in another, the Gantt view makes it visible.

For my first five novels I plotted at the chapter and section level. For The Conclave, the sixth and final book in the Old Blood Saga, I have worked at the chapter level throughout.

Into Scrivener: where the writing actually happens

Once the Excel timeline is complete, I transfer the chapter summaries into Scrivener, one summary per chapter, each annotated with the relevant dates from the calendar. When I sit down to write each day I know exactly what happens in the chapter I am working on and when it takes place in the story’s timeline.

I write linearly, start to finish, chapter one to the end. The outline means I always know what comes next, which removes the single biggest obstacle I used to face as a writer: not knowing where the story was going and losing momentum as a result.

The first draft of The Weaver took four months. Every book since has followed the same process.

Why this works for me

I want to be clear that this is my process, not a prescription for writing. There are brilliant writers who plot nothing and discover their stories entirely through the writing itself. I am not one of them. For years I tried to be, and I have a folder of unfinished manuscripts to show for it.

What changed when I started applying design thinking to my writing was that I stopped fighting my own instincts. I am someone who needs to understand the whole before I can work confidently on any part of it. That is true of how I approach design problems and it turns out to be equally true of how I write novels.

If you are early in your writing journey and finding that your stories stall before they finish, it might be worth asking whether the way you are approaching the planning side is actually working for you. The tools and techniques don’t have to come from design. But having a process, one that suits how your mind works, makes more difference than almost anything else.

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