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@mariam I also did OYAN! My novel got to the 2018 semi-finals, it was very exciting.

What you should do next works differently for every author. I like plotting out the story before I get started. I make a list of all the characters and list physical and character traits. I write down what summery of the story I have. Generally, this will be enough to start giving me snippets of dialogue that I build up into whole scenes. Sometimes I write these scenes down, but that generally bogs me down into picking just the right word when I already know the scene in my head, so mostly I just imagine them.

By now, I have a pretty good idea of the characters, world, and story problem. If the world is particularly complicated, then I will spend more time working on that. Then I start at the first scene. Where does this story start? Where does the first scene end? I think of what I want the midpoint twist to be, the moment of darkness, and the eventual victory. Then I think of what I will need to get characters to these points, drawing from the scenes I made up earlier.

But not everyone writes like this. If some people planned everything out beforehand, they would lose steam before they got started. Do what works best for you, but know that if you don’t plot before, you are going to be doing a lot of revisions. A story naturally evolves as it is written, but it is so much easier to write things right the first time instead of going back and trying to make it work once you have gotten all attached to the words.