“Struggling to start your first novel? Explore novel writing tips inspired by Amiya Toshiro, from crafting a strong premise and outlining your plot to developing characters, choosing a POV, writing engaging openings, and completing your first draft.”
You have characters. You have a few scenes that look incredible in your head.
You may even know the plot twist that is going to destroy everyone emotionally in chapter twenty-three. Then you open a blank document and realize you have no idea what chapter one is supposed to be. That is a very normal place to begin.
Learning a few practical novel writing tips for beginners does not mean finding a formula that guarantees a great book. It means building enough structure that you still know what to do when inspiration disappears.
In FUOMO's original guide, Amiya Toshiro (@mhfdhlh) emphasizes a few useful foundations: decide on the theme and direction, have an idea of the ending, give each chapter a purpose, create an opening that makes readers curious, and avoid overwhelming yourself with a huge first project.
A Quick Novel Planning Guide
Stage | Question to Answer |
Premise | What is this story actually about? |
Theme | What idea does the story explore? |
Character | Who is the protagonist and what do they want? |
Conflict | What prevents them from getting it? |
POV | Who is telling the story? |
Structure | What changes between beginning and end? |
Ending | Where does the character eventually arrive? |
Research | What details need to be checked? |
Draft | How will you keep moving without over-editing? |
Revision | What needs fixing once the story exists? |
You do not need perfect answers before you begin. You only need enough direction to move forward.
1. Start With a Premise
Before thinking about chapter counts, cover designs, or the perfect title, answer one question:
What is your novel actually about?
“It's about high school” is a setting.
“It's about a fantasy kingdom” is a setting too.
A useful premise usually gives us a character, a desire, and a problem.
For example: A girl who can hear every lie must decide whether exposing her family's biggest secret is worth destroying the only home she has ever known.
That single sentence already contains movement. Someone wants something. Something is at risk. A difficult decision is waiting.
Your premise does not need to sound beautiful. It needs to give the story a spine.
2. Decide on the Theme, Ending, and Basic Outline
One of Amiya Toshiro's central suggestions is to understand where the story is heading before getting too far into it.
That does not mean planning every conversation before writing page one.
Think of the ending as a destination. You can still take detours, change the route, introduce an unexpected character, or discover a better path while drafting. Knowing roughly where you are going simply makes it harder to become completely lost.
A basic structure can be enough: the beginning disrupts the protagonist's normal life, the rising action increases the pressure, the climax forces the biggest confrontation or decision, and the resolution shows what those choices changed.
When outlining chapters, ask one useful question: what changes because this chapter exists? If the answer is “nothing,” that chapter may still need a stronger purpose.
3. Give Your Characters Something to Want
An interesting plot gets attention.
Characters usually keep it.
That is why “beautiful, shy, intelligent, loves books” is not yet enough to carry a protagonist through an entire novel.
Give the character something they genuinely want. Then place something between them and that goal.
One simple character-building method is to think about want, need, and fear. What do they consciously want? What do they actually need in order to grow? What are they most afraid of losing, becoming, or admitting?
When those three things conflict, character development becomes much easier to connect to the plot.
4. Choose a Point of View That Serves the Story
Your point of view, or POV, controls how close readers feel to the character and how much information they receive.
First person can create strong intimacy because readers experience everything through “I.” The limitation is that the reader generally knows only what that character knows.
Third-person limited gives you some narrative flexibility while still remaining close to one character's experience. Multiple POVs can work well for larger stories, but every additional viewpoint adds another voice, arc, and set of information to manage.
For a first novel, simple is often useful. Choose the POV that makes the conflict and emotion clearest rather than the one that looks the most ambitious.
5. Write an Opening That Creates a Question
Chapter one does not need a murder, explosion, or dragon attack.
It does need some reason for the reader to wonder:
“What happens next?”
That is the job of a hook.
Amiya's advice on openings focuses on curiosity and emotion rather than complicated language. Start close to the moment something changes.
Instead of spending several pages describing an ordinary morning, you could write: Nadia realized her father was gone when she found his coffee still warm on the kitchen table and an envelope with her name written across the front.
Now there is a question.
Use “Show, Don't Tell” With Judgment
“Show, don't tell” can be useful advice, but it should not become a rule that makes every paragraph three times longer.
Instead of “Raka was nervous,” you might write that he wiped his palms against his jeans for the third time before knocking.
The action communicates the emotion.
But sometimes telling is faster and better. The goal is not to eliminate all telling. It is to recognize which moments deserve to slow down and become vivid.
6. Start Small and Research What Matters
A first novel does not need fourteen kingdoms, twenty viewpoint characters, six fictional languages, and a family tree going back eight centuries.
You can absolutely write that story one day.
You simply do not have to begin there.
Amiya recommends learning through smaller projects such as short stories and fanfiction before committing to something enormous. Smaller work teaches one skill that unfinished epics cannot: how to reach the end.
Research matters too, even in fiction. If your character works in a hospital, runs a café, fights with a sword, or lives somewhere you have never visited, believable details make the world feel much stronger.
The trick is knowing when to stop researching and start writing. You do not need to become an expert before drafting. Research what the scene needs, leave yourself notes where something needs verification, and continue.
7. Finish the Draft Before Trying to Perfect It
One of the easiest ways to never finish a novel is to keep polishing chapter one.
You write 600 words.
The next morning you delete 300.
Then rewrite them.
Then polish the opening sentence again.
A month later, you are still on page four.
At some point, you need to accept good enough for the first draft.
Drafting and revising are different jobs. Drafting creates material. Revision examines plot holes, dialogue, pacing, character motivation, repetition, and whether the ending actually works.
You also do not need to write thousands of words every day. Three hundred words a day still becomes 30,000 words after one hundred days. A modest target you can maintain is often more useful than one heroic writing session followed by two months of avoidance.
What Should You Do When Writer's Block Hits?
Writer's block does not always mean you have run out of creativity.
Sometimes the character no longer has a clear goal. Sometimes the scene is unnecessary. Sometimes the conflict is weak. Sometimes you are simply tired.
Go back to the outline and ask what is supposed to change in the current scene. If you still cannot solve it, write the roughest possible version, skip ahead, or leave yourself a note and return later.
A blocked scene is not automatically evidence that the entire novel is broken.
Sometimes you simply have not found the next story decision yet.
FAQ Novel Writing Tips for Beginners
How do I start writing a novel from scratch?
Begin with a simple premise: who is the protagonist, what do they want, what prevents them from getting it, and where might the story end? Then create a loose outline and start drafting.
Do I need to know the ending before I start?
No, but having a rough ending can help you keep the story moving in a clear direction. You can still change it later if the story develops in a more interesting way.
Do beginners need an outline?
Not every writer does. Some plan extensively while others discover the story as they write. For beginners, even a loose outline can be useful when the middle of the novel starts to feel confusing.
What if my first draft is terrible?
Let it be terrible for now.
A first draft is not the final product. Its job is to give you something real to revise. Plot, dialogue, characterization, and world-building can all be improved once the story exists on the page.
Finished Novels Begin With Imperfect Pages
The best novel writing tips for beginners start with one simple rule: stop waiting for the perfect moment. Build a clear premise, give your main character a goal, and outline enough to guide your story.
As Amiya Toshiro suggests, starting with short stories or smaller projects helps you practice writing from beginning to end. Your first draft doesn't need to be perfect. What matters is getting your ideas onto the page and improving them as you go.
