Tag: character

Top 10 Ways to Corral Your WIPs

Writing has been a passion of mine from a young age. From the little books written on construction paper and stapled in the middle to fan fiction of movies and books before I even knew what fan fiction was to finally starting to pursue original works; I’ve always had a few projects swirling around in my mind.

While I’ve always loved the way my mind has been a fountain of creativity, the constant influx of inspiration has lead to moments of frustration, times of feeling overwhelmed, and periods of wanting to avoid writing all together. It has never been my burden to lack ideas, but in exchange I am one of the many writers who faces the conundrum of what to write when or which idea can be worked into what story.

I’ll admit, I don’t think the struggle will ever be something that I can completely do away with. That being said, I’ve come to learn a handful of ways of managing the ideas and cutting back on the negative side effects of having approximately twenty-six different story ideas floating around.

1) Keep Your Notebook or App Close by

Ideas can come from anywhere: a billboard, a conversation, a small detail in a show that is interesting but completely overlooked, a dream. Having a notebook or using your note app on your phone is a good way to record an idea or inspiration when you run into it. Whether it’s an idea for a new story or something you might add to your current project, being able to write it down and know it’s not going to disappear is a good way to cut stress out of your writing process. It also enables you to pull your thoughts away from it for long enough to give you a fresh perspective when you return to it later.

2) Lists are Your Friends

My current WIP list is in a word document that is separated by degree of completion. The categories are: currently writing, full or partial outline, and ideas only. It helps me to keep track of what I have in the works and makes it easy to know which project I should pick up next.

There are many different ways you could organize a list of projects. It could be by genera, something I note on my list. It could be by series. Alphabetical order or order you thought of them are also viable options as long as you find it understandable. That’s the main goal of making a list: easy comprehension of what you have to work with.

3) Get to Know Your Characters

What do characters have to do with WIP lists? Everything! Knowing your characters is an important step to knowing what ideas will and won’t work in a story, what kind of story you will be writing, and how long your story will wind up being. Knowing your characters will prevent you from getting bogged down by unnecessary ideas during the planning process and will keep each project heading in the right direction.

4) Outline

One of the most frustrating things about having multiple WIPs in the works is gaining new ideas to add into your novel as you think and work with it. This is probably the #1 reason I did not get a book published when I was younger. Whenever I would get an idea, it would usually be transferred onto my favorite original characters and things would swing wildly out of control.

Soon, I had a hero’s journey in a college on two different planets with aliens and there was this library with special books and also… you get the idea. I had no control, nowhere to start, and was just about ready to give up on writing all together to get rid of the terror of trying to untangle the mess that I had made.

This is why I strongly suggest making at least a partial outline for each of your WIPs, even if it’s only as far as the short synopsis. If you are using a model similar to the one I talked about in my early posts (that I would be ever so grateful if you checked out by using the outline tag in my tag nest) you will have the main five of your story—character, setting, objective, opponent, and stakes—all tied together in a paragraph for your convenience. Knowing this will help to limit what you try to squeeze into one story. So killer robots from the future? You’re going to have to go in a different story than my Victorian era romance. So sorry.

5) Write Your Stories!

This is probably the most obvious one on the entire list. The best way to cut down on your list of WIPs is to turn them into works completed. Once you have your story written and published, it’s no longer in progress.

6) The Great Big Book of World Building

Knowing my luck, there is probably a book out there with this title, but I’m not referencing it here. What I am referencing are those massive books that come out a few years after a major movie is made, most often if it was a huge process or if the fandom for the book is large and spans generations. They normally walk you through the creative process of both the movie and, if applicable, the book it was based on. One thing that many of them have in common is the added cannon lore that affected the work but never made it into the final product.

This is part of the reality of media. The mind is a massive expanse that we still are incapable of knowing fully. The imagination goes on for miles and never runs out of ideas or areas to explore. There is no real way to work every idea or every character into a story.

Once, these ideas and characters were relegated to the cluttered notes of writers that rarely saw the light of day except in the occasional appendix. Many went unknown until after the author’s death and were placed in examinations of their work. We aren’t so limited now. With social media and blogs, it’s possible to spread the ideas around and even use them to whet people’s appetite for what’s to come. Just make sure it works with and supports your story and doesn’t contradict your work to appeal to a group of individuals or a fad. People won’t like that.

7) Add a new WIP

I know, this may seem a bit counter intuitive to suggest in a post about getting your WIPs under control, but hear me out. Sometimes books need sequels. Not all the time, but some times they do. Sequels can prevent a story from coming off as rushed or from being too intimidating for many readers to pick up.

If you can’t get rid of the school, the library, the aliens, or the international politics, you are probably going to have to break it down into different stories. First a school coming of age story with a library with special books that hints at world issues. Then a sequel that makes those world issues its main focus as the different world governments try to come together to work on a solution to the alien problem. Those two books will seem far more manageable than the one mega compilation, and admitting you need two books and planning for it will help you feel better and calmer about your situation as a whole.

8) Schedule an Update Day

If you couldn’t tell, most of the previous tips are about adding to or deleting from your list of works. This is going to be a flowing process and if you don’t take the time to deal with the main spreadsheet, you’re going to have a larger mess than before you decided to organize. And if you try to organize all the time, you won’t get anything else done. This is why I would say once a month or once a quarter, go through and clean up your list. It will be up to you to decide what works best for you.

9) It’s Okay to Let Go

I never want to let go of my ideas. It’s hard, especially if I’ve held onto them for a long, long time. Sometimes, it’s for the best. Recently, I had to scrap the majority of one of my book ideas and start from scratch with nothing but my characters and an overall idea. Not only was it too busy, but when I was honest with myself, too much outside influence had crept in and it felt like I was more mashing other people’s works together as opposed to honoring ideas from those I admired. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, but sometimes, it’s for the best.

10) Don’t be Afraid to Dream

This is probably the most important one. Yes, too many works unorganized can be daunting, and yes, not everything will make it onto the page, but don’t shut down your thinking, your dreams, no matter what. Ideas are the real tool and inspiration that we work with, they power not only our writing but our view of the world. Don’t let the struggle to work on one project close you off to others. It’s easy to write down an idea and move on, it’s difficult to come up with a new idea when you’ve trained yourself to ignore them.

Subplots

While making the skeleton outline for the main story, I mentioned that some stories have subplots that run alongside their primary narrative. Not every story does, especially if you are writing a one-shot short story, and there is nothing wrong with taking a single topic and following it through without any detours. However, many (if not most) stories have subplots that run alongside the main story. From a love interest in an action piece to that pesky job that prevents the protagonist from spending as much time as she would like with her family, subplots should always contain something that is paramount to the overall story even when it pulls away from the main action.

I’ve read too many books, and I’m sure you have too, where the subplot becomes more of a side tangent. It’s not relevant plot-wise, nor is it a sub category of the main story. This is something that, even if interesting, would be better suited for a prologue, epilogue, or completely different story. Keeping the story on track means that anything you write about that isn’t one of the primary plot points should still pick your characters up and send them hurling across the pages in that direction as opposed to letting them meander their way three towns over. No reader enjoys having to slog through the storm of unfulfilled tension to grab your characters by the ear and drag them back to where the action is because the author forgot to do it for them. There’s evil afoot and dagnabit we need to be doing something about it!

If you’ve read all the preceding articles, you probably would have picked up on what I’m going to suggest to help prevent wandering plots.

Stick to Primary

During the two character posts, I mentioned sticking to PCs or primary characters while doing the exercises. The reason is simple, to help guide you through this step. The first rule to making sure your subplots stay on track is to make absolutely certain every plot point contains at least one of the primary characters doing something important. In the majority of cases, that one character will be your main character. But, if you are writing in third person omniscient, it could be any of them.

Having a primary character does not automatically assure that a thread is a worthy subplot, however, and there are more classifications.

Make it Matter

The second rule to crafting a worthy subplot is to make sure it matters to the main plot of the story. If it isn’t, it probably doesn’t belong. The one exception would be introducing something into the first book of a series that will come back later on to be important.

Sticking to the first part, keeping it relevant, I will give a quick example of what I mean. To explain for those who have never watched anime, and to re-traumatize those who have, many popular shows run into a frustrating problem comparable to this point. Manga, the Japanese comics that anime tend to be based on, are often picked up for shows as soon as their popularity takes off. This means, in many cases, that the manga itself is not fully written and is continuing to release issues as the anime is being made. Do you see where this is going? With the majority of the story already written, character designs already made, and larger teams able to work with and compile the shows, anime often times quickly catches up and surpasses the amount of material the original author has made.

There have been two routes normally taken by animators when this happens, because stopping production of a popular show is absolutely unthinkable. The first is to get a team together and scrape together a satisfying conclusion to the story that may or may not have anything to do with how the manga will end. This is used in shows that have very serious subject matter in most cases as any deviation will completely throw off the meter of the story.

The other route is filler arcs. 99% of filler arcs fall into the side tangent category as opposed to the subplot category. You don’t know frustration until you’ve sat through a twenty-episode tournament, received five episodes of plot, and were then blindsided by Tournament Zero: it’s like the last one, but the same! Don’t write a tournament zero. Also, don’t write the details of your side character’s multiple love affairs in extended detail unless a messy divorce or twenty summonses (I can’t believe that’s actually the plural) for child support are going to play into the overall plot of the story. We can know that he’s been with one of every bipedal species in the realm without having to hear about it. Unless you’re writing a bard erotica. But it wouldn’t be the side plot in that case.

From A to B

If you stick with primary characters and maintain subject matter that is important to the main plot, you’re almost guaranteed to create a working subplot. Almost. There is one last thing to keep in mind when you look over your sidelined ideas that didn’t make it into the main plot of your story. Does it keep the main plot moving, even if we’ve stepped away from it?

Sometimes, that’s easy to answer. If one of your obstacle bullet points is needing a key to get to the bad guy, a side plot where the heroes go on a dungeon crawl to obtain said key is a pretty safe bet. If well written, not only do your characters obtain the much-needed item, but they learn a new ability that will come in handy later without having to completely stop the action for a training montage.

Other times, it’s a bit harder to balance. Comedic minor villains are a great way to break up the tension and even help the hero once they realize the main baddy is too terrible to support. But if you start dissecting their tragic backstory in two in-depth chapters three chapters away from the climactic battle, you’ve probably overdone their involvement.

Put it All Together

This can be one of the more difficult parts of the process. You know what points you want to add to the main skeleton, but where do they go? The key quest clearly comes after learning a key is needed, but will it be fully complete before the villain makes their next move? Does it make more sense to put the major argument of the couple before or after the accident? How will it change the perspective of the characters and the impression the readers have of them?

You might have to do some rearranging, because if you wanted subplot x to happen between main plot b and c but subplot x needs character 3 and character 3 isn’t introduced until after main plot d, you are going to have a problem on your hands. Maybe it is possible for subplot x to happen after main plot d. If not, can character 3 be introduced sooner?

No one but you can answer these questions. After struggling with it myself, I’ve come across many different suggestions on how best to spread out your ideas to help you decide. You can use sticky notes to have easy rearrangement, a solid line to squeeze points into so you don’t over fill one part of the story, whatever you need. My only recommendation is to keep it organized so you don’t have to worry about being confused later.

Sorry this wound up being a day late. It has been storming where I live and my internet keeps kicking in and out. Thank you for reading and keep imagining!

Character In-Depth

Hello and welcome back! Last week I talked about a method for outlining the pertinent information on the primary characters of your story. The PCs include the main character, the main antagonist, and anyone else who has a major impact on the main story points in the outline. The very basics of information about them included their name and personality traits, what drives them, their goal, and the overall role they play in the story. With this information, it will be easier to map out paragraphs or lists containing ideas for not only what they will do when confronted with whatever issues you throw their way, but also how they will consistently interact with other characters. This step is very important for the writing process, even if you are not writing an outline for your entire story. I know characters don’t always start out their best, in fact it’s better in most cases if they don’t, so if you want to keep track of where they will end up at the end of the story that is a good thing to do.

Physical Description

Most stories, contain a physical description for their primary characters. Putting a name with a face can help the readers to become more invested in your character by making them seem more tangible. This information can also help to pinpoint how they will act or be treated in certain situations. If a war breaks out, a six-year-old girl and a sixteen-year-old boy will be treated very differently by everyone around them so it is important to have each of these in mind even if they are ultimately never in the work.

Here’s a list of things to consider for your description:

  • Age
  • Race
  • Ethnicity
  • Religion
  • Physical or Mental Handicaps
  • Skin, hair, and eye color
  • Height and weight

Once you have those important things listed, I suggest taking a moment to think about how your character feels about these parts of him or herself. Does he hate his hair color? Is she only still a member of her religion due to her parents? Does he obsess about his image? Does she feel there is a disadvantage to how she was born? This will all effect how they interact with others and how they treat themselves.

As an example, one of my female characters grew up in a home where old and new ideas about gender have clashed in an unhealthy way. She’s had to listen to her father complain that the women need to maintain jobs while in the same breath stating that housework is women’s work. She has spent many hours wondering if her family would have been better off if she, the eldest, was born male. This means she has a tendency to push herself to do what she feels a man would be able to do without any regard for if that makes any sense. Did she get stabbed? That’s not so bad! Her dad worked on his job all day with stitches in his hand once!

Personality Description

This step takes the primary trait from the last step and expands upon it do to the information in the personal description. If your character is a jokester, and has a background of depression stemming from losing his parents at a young age and being passed around foster homes, it’s possible that he’s sarcastic and uses dark humor to cover up how he actually feels. Or, maybe he’s more optimistic in spite of his past woes and has a bubbly sense of humor that lights up the whole room, though he might not have the best sense of timing in what others would consider serious situations. You will have to decide which option best fits the character you’re going for and stick with it.

When you’re talking about the main character or one of the “good guys” some writers are tempted to shy away from anything other than messy hair and makeup for personality flaws with these individuals. This makes for a flat and boring character without any room to grow. It’s fine for your character to be somewhat unpleasant at the beginning of the story, even your protagonist. The only thing you need to worry about is making sure they are not completely unlikable. The vast majority of people are not going to feel sorry for a serial rapist no matter how sympathetic the rest of their character arc is.

Your villain, on the other hand, is a trap for the exact opposite problem. I love a well-written villain with the potential to be saved: however, I don’t care for a wimp who shouldn’t really be a villain in the first place. So, don’t be afraid to let your villain kick puppies every once in a while to drive home that this is a vile piece of creation that your reader should be worried about. If you decide to redeem them, they can log some community service hours at the local shelter to learn their lesson but again, that’s after their character growth.

Voice Description

Some of the information for this was discussed in the personal description part. Where they are from and who they are make up the bulk of their voice. There are still a few nuanced things to think about when it comes to their interactions with others. For this section think things that are more personal than their demographics. Think of hobbies they have, the type of friend they normally spend time with, their job, things that excite or scare them. These are all things that will be carried out in their interactions with the plot and other characters. If your main character usually hangs out around the boys and is most comfortable in a classical “teen guy” type environment, he would most likely not be cool when his new stepsister needs him to make an emergency run for some tampons and Midol.

I hope you find these different steps helpful. Even if you don’t get as deep as say, the last example, knowing where your character is comfortable will help remind you when they shouldn’t be. These kinds of character outlines I, and others like me, have found to be helpful in keeping on character when writing a character so you don’t have one chapter where your character seems off script. Thank you so much for reading! Comment any questions you have and have a great day!

Characters

            If you’re following along, I’ve outlined how to go from a basic idea for a story to a full skeleton outline. That’s a lot of work and, in some short stories, that might be all you need to get your project underway. However, often times in novels you will need more to flesh out your pieces and that normally falls to side plots. So how do you choose side plots? The first thing to consider is your characters.

            The main plot is your main character interacting with the antagonist and the objective they are trying to solve. In many stories, your character can’t do it by themselves and needs help from others. While making your skeleton for the main plot, you most likely realized that there were characters, or needed to be characters, at certain points in the story. Maybe it’s a best friend, maybe it’s a mentor, or maybe it’s the guys being paid to help with the scheme. Though they touch into the main part of the story, they probably wouldn’t have enough room to be introduced and grow without a few side happenings. How do we know what scenes we need to add to keep the plot moving believably?

            First, we need to meet the characters. By this point you should already have some idea who your primary characters are. Even if you don’t have names, you should at least have some place holders like: male hero, evil wizard, protagonist’s mom, friend who wants out of the friendzone, etc. Just like in the real world, these are all different people who will have different ideas, beliefs, goals, and motivations. Knowing what all of these are will be the key to crafting a realistic set of side plots to help get everyone to the final goal.

            For this exercise, you’re going to want to stick to the main characters who are going to impact the main plot line. These I’ll refer to as Primary characters. Later, you’ll need to think through Secondary characters, those who only affect a side quest in a significant way, and Background characters, those who are there but could really be swapped out for anyone without change. But for now, we’re concerned with the big guns and not Drunk Guy Randy who lives at the local tavern because Martha left him for shoving 15 peanuts up his nose whenever he gets drunk. Unless Randy knows where the magic amulet of liver health rests. Then you can worry about him now.

            Take out a note book or a piece of paper or a Microsoft word sheet. Got it? Good. Because now it’s time to figure out who is going to be in this story and write… you guessed it: a sentence to let us know who we’re dealing with. Don’t worry, this will be expanded upon later.

Sentence should contain

            First, we need to decide your PM’s name because that’s important. No more place holders for you! Behind the name is a great tool and doesn’t carry the stigma of a sixteen-year-old girl walking into the bookstore to buy a baby name book. I swear, I’m just working on a book! Remember, unless your society is weird, parents choose names for their babies. The rich, white, Europeans are not going to name their child after an anime character and the nerdy anime cosplayers who live on minimum wage are not going to name their kid Sir Reginald III. So, make sure your name matches what their parents would have chosen, as well as your character.

            Next, we need to come up with each PM’s defining trait. How would people who know them describe them? Idealist? Jokester? Happy? Sad? Shouty? This is a snap shot of how the world perceives them that will dictate how they tend to act. If a character is going to tell jokes and play pranks, they’re a jokester or trickster. If they are a sunny ball of happiness, they are an optimist. If they think things should be done a certain way to lead to the best outcome, they are an idealist. You will want to choose something that will be easy to show at all times, unless something major happens to pull them out of their typical mood. I won’t list any dos or don’ts here because it completely depends on your own style and talent to decide what is and isn’t reasonable for you.

            Now that we know what the PM acts like, what drives them? Why do they do what they do? Is your character a dad fighting to make the world a better place for his children? Is your character like my MC: a dreamer who has a vision of a better future and wants to act on it? For your main character, this is what will get them to accept the main quest. For your villain, it will be why they are evil, even if it’s just because they want to be evil. For PMs who aren’t the MC or the villain, why do they help or hinder the hero? What do they hope to gain or are afraid to lose?

            Different from their drive, what is your PM’s main goal? This is what they are heading towards. The villain is evil because of his drive. His goal is what he hopes to achieve with his evil. The children are their father’s drive, but his goal is to topple the evil regime and make the world better.

            What is the character’s role in the story? Are they the main character? Main villain? The love interest? The Mentor? A minor villain? Why do they deserve to be in this story at all and what makes them count as a PM?

            And those are our pieces! With this, you should be ready to craft a killer one to two sentence character description that will help you know how to move forward with your story. Next Monday, I’ll talk about fleshing out those sentences and Wednesday I’ll cover creating the side plots. In the meantime, I’ll see you Friday with another bestiary entry and leave you with an example sentence. Thank you for reading and liking! Feel free to comment with any questions or other methods that you have found that work for you on each subject.

James Mooney, a hardworking immigrant with a dark sense of humor, wants to lift his family out of poverty and away from the scaffolding that his brother died working on by making quick money with good moonshine and teaching others how to do the same.

Starting the Plot

Welcome back! I want to take a minute to thank everyone who has read my last piece. I was not expecting to see so many views in just a few days so early on!

In my last post, I talked about finding the Main Five of a story: the Character, Setting, Objective, Opponent, and Stakes. These are the foundational pieces of a story; you can’t build a novel, movie, game, or anything else without knowing the who, what, when, where, and why. Now that the foundation is set, where to go from here?

The simple answer is plot. The less simple question that follows it, how do you come up with the plot? Personally, I didn’t have a great deal of trouble with this step other than having far too many ideas for any sane person to work into a story. However, I’ve had friends who will know one or two things that they want to transpire in their final masterpiece but don’t know how to string them along and link them together coherently. Between some of my own trial and error and getting a few others involved, I think I have a good two-part suggestion for anyone facing similar struggles.

Premise and Synopsis

So the first step in part one is to create a premise and a synopsis to help guide you and keep you on track. That way, when you are pulling together the main plot points later you have a cut-and-dry guideline to keep you moving in the right direction. This way, unlike me in some early cases, you don’t wind up sobbing at the cutting table when you realize you’ve written three or four books at the same time and none of them are going anywhere near a coherent conclusion.

I found many different websites offering the premise and synopsis advice, which is where I came across the concept to mull over, but none of the ones I found had what I considered to be a satisfactory answer as to what these should encapsule. I knew they were supposed to be short (a sentence for the premise and a paragraph for the synopsis) but that was the primary advice. About your story and short… not so helpful as it would turn out.

Part of the problem may be me and my over-wordiness or my uncanny ability to get sidetracked into a spiraling cyclone of writing whenever I set my hand to the pen or keys. My sister has the opposite problem, as more of an artist than a writer, yet having the need to write the basics of a story so she can craft her comic around it, she doesn’t get nearly as overblown as I do: which is where I finally realized what the answer to the issue was. In trying to get my sister to write more than three words before coming back to ask again how to proceed, I introduced her to the premise and synopsis in the following way.

For your premise, write a sentence containing all five of your main five as they will be presented in your story. If your main character is Joe the paperboy, your setting is New York during the 1920’s, your objective is helping Joe’s mother with her cancer treatment, the opponent is the loan shark who works with one of the local mob bosses, and the stakes is Joe, his mom, and his dog will all die if he fails, your premise might look something like this:

Joe needs to help his mother pay for her cancer treatments but the local mafia’s loan shark wants more than a paperboy in 1920’s New York can afford, putting the lives of him, his mother, and their dog at stake.

Simple, right? “What about the synopsis, then?” you may ask. The best way to think of it is a paragraph detailing the relationship of each of the main five to the other. This will put you a step deeper in explaining your story while still limiting what you can put in it. This was a life saver for helping me to keep on track. Don’t worry about a love interest, don’t worry about the mentor, or anything else. Just stick to those main five in a small paragraph. Here’s another quick example of what I’m talking about.

Joe is a 15-year-old paperboy who lives in New York in the 1920’s. Joe’s mother has cancer and can’t afford her treatments on her small maid salary and Joe’s paperboy money. Against his mother’s warning, Joe goes to the local mafia to get a loan from their loan shark who just so happens to be the 20-year-old bully who has harassed Joe since he was three. The loan shark is a dangerous and evil man who wants to give the loan for 350% interest with only one year to pay it off. There is no way for him to pay it back, but Joe can’t stand the thought of losing his mother so he takes the deal. Now he has to pay off the loan quickly or the shark will kill him, his mother, and their dog for good measure.

That almost sounds like it could be on the back cover of a novel or movie, doesn’t it? And we only know five things with just a bit of added information to flesh out the idea. Now we can look at this for the rest of our drafting process to make sure our story stay’s on track. If we come up with a great idea for Joe to find a wife, but it won’t happen until he’s 18, that’s going in a sequel so put it aside. If you come up with a story about some of the mafia members who don’t really factor into that exact synopsis, their story belongs in a spinoff.

The Flurry

Step one of part one is complete, but I can’t very well leave it alone at that. Don’t worry, this next part is straightforward which is why I didn’t think this needed to be it’s own part or article. I’ve made the mistake of skipping this part, possibly because it’s often forgotten or assigned to a different stage of the process, but this is the best place for it in my personal experience.

After you have your premise and synopsis on paper, you probably have a great number of ideas buzzing around in your head. After all, before the antagonist was just a loan shark and now he’s a loan shark who has made your protagonist’s life miserable for twelve years. For that reason, it’s the best time to put those trains of thought to good use before they careen off the bridge of distraction into forgetfulness cavern or get turned around and wrecked in the tunnels of overthinking plot classifications.

That’s why for the second half of this tip I want you to do the exercise of many names at this point. Some call it brain storming, other info-dumping. I’ve heard it called the morning minutes, word vomit, and a litany of other monikers. It’s like icee-pops: everyone calls them something different. The concept is completely the same in all instances. You set a timer for five, ten, or fifteen minutes (the most you can tolerate in one sitting) and you write.

Take those five foundational stones and the premise and synopsis mortar that bind them together and write about them. Just ideas. Why is the loan shark a bully? How long has mom had cancer? Why does the loan shark hate dogs? Where is dad? Why didn’t Joe find a better solution to his problem? Whatever questions come to mind, answer them. Don’t worry about anything like the hero’s journey, or three act structures, or anything that will come later. Just write like you took fifteen minutes on the first question and have fifteen minutes to answer the last three.

That is part one of the two part plot point outline: premise, synopsis, flurry of writing. The next article on Monday will pull together what to do from that point. Yes, I did say Monday and that is because Fridays are my days for building up my bestiary! I’ve always loved mythical creatures and as a fantasy author my works do and will include so many of them! I want to have a place to display my takes on these myths and legends, and will likely include other fantasy elements later on like my plants, races, languages, worlds, and the like.

Thank you again for reading! I hope to see you around and to pass on more of my writing tips and stories.

The Main Five

            Hello! In an internet full of writers and writing advise, thank you for stopping by my blog. I’m just getting started with blogging and writing so I thought the best way to get the ball rolling was to start by explaining my writing process as I work my way through it. If I’m lucky, I’ll inspire a few others along the way!

            I’ve wanted to be a writer since at least high school, maybe a bit before, but I’ve been writing down ideas and dreams for far longer than that. From writing sequels to movies like Monsters Inc or Treasure Island to trying to create original works inspired by my favorite novels like The Chronicles of Narnia and the Redwall series, I dabbled in many different projects when I first started out. Back then I could just cascade words onto a page without worry, following each new idea as it came to my head, following the story along. Going back and rereading those works, I cringe at all the dropped plot threads and magically appearing plot devices. For this reason, when I sat down to be serious about my writing, I decided that I was going to go against every fiber of my being and write… an outline. *Cue dramatic music*

            Yes, despite my younger self’s insistence that outlines were overly complicated and super boring, I found many different people who encouraged an outline to not only fix my old problem of inconsistency but also my more recent problem of knowing where I am and where I want to be, but having no clue how to get there. This is called sagging middle syndrome and it’s one of the most frustrating walls I’ve come across. To make things even more complicated, I started loathing the plot of the book I had been sitting on for so long that I had to yank out important characters and ideas and start basically from scratch.

            There I was, a huge pile of scrapped notes and a browser full of pages of advice from different bloggers and writers. I wanted to throw up and throw all my dreams of writing away as I struggled to piece together where I should even get started. Taking a step back, I started to think about every book I had read and every movie I had seen and picked up on some major points that needed to show up every time. Clicking through the web pages I had saved, I noticed they were mentioned there as well.

            It dawned on me that part of my problem was that I only had half an idea where my story was going. I was missing key elements that are so vital to a story that it was no wonder I was struggling.

The Main Character

            Who will the story be following mostly? I knew this from the beginning because I had yanked her from the smoldering heap so full of edge and angsty teen regret that I had to scrap it. It’s impossible to have a story without someone to follow, and at least one of those people should stand out above the rest as the reader’s window to the world of your novel. This character, the protagonist, will have the most page time in the book so make sure they aren’t completely unbearable.

            So, who is your protagonist? Are they a hero? A princess? An anti-hero? A villain? Yes, I did just say villain. It is entirely possible to make your protagonist a gnarly villain, bent on destruction and world domination. The preface “pro-” means “for”, not necessarily good. If the story is written for the villain and you follow the villain and their musings more than anyone else, then the chances are that your villain is your main character. That can be pretty cool if done correctly, so good luck.

The Main Setting

            Where will this story be primarily happening? Is it a modern-day high school slice of life? Are you writing a romance in the Victorian Era? Or are you fighting invaders on the moon 500 years from now? For now, you want to decide what planet, where on the planet, what year, and if there is anything unexpected about your setting.

            My WIP is set here on earth during the current time. As I am a fantasy writer, you can be sure there are a few unexpected things in the mix. Most notable for the start of the book is that people are gaining elemental powers. This is very different from my old piece and is being a bit difficult to manage, mostly because when you’re in this setting everything sounds like its political in one way or another no matter how hard you try to avoid it. It’s an interesting challenge though, trying to keep things fun while still acknowledging some of the inescapable parts of our reality.

The Main Objective

            Where will this story be primarily happening? Is it a modern-day high school slice of life? Are you writing a romance in the Victorian Era? Or are you fighting invaders on the moon 500 years from now? For now, you want to decide what planet, where on the planet, what year, and if there is anything unexpected about your setting.

            My WIP is set here on earth during the current time. As I am a fantasy writer, you can be sure there are a few unexpected things in the mix. Most notable for the start of the book is that people are gaining elemental powers. This is very different from my old piece and is being a bit difficult to manage, mostly because when you’re in this setting everything sounds like its political in one way or another no matter how hard you try to avoid it. It’s an interesting challenge though, trying to keep things fun while still acknowledging some of the inescapable parts of our reality.

The Main Opponent

Otherwise know as the antagonist. Who doesn’t want your protagonist to succeed? This is usually a villain of some sort; the big bad, the terrible rival, the deadly warlord. However, if your protagonist is a villain, your antagonist is most likely going to be a hero or king or whoever is trying to stop their plans of villainy. Does the list end there? Not in the slightest!

            There are three main types of conflict that can arise in stories: Man vs Man, Man vs Nature, and Man vs Self. Any would work as the main conflict and, by extension, the source of the main villain. For this I decided to stick with the simplest to write, in my opinion, Man vs Man. My newly created antagonist is a crusty old man who has a goal to wipe out large swaths of the population by leading them astray and playing a good guy.

The Main Stakes

            The last of the main five is the main stakes of the story. In other words, what will happen if the main character doesn’t achieve his or her objective? Will the world end? Will little Suzy get trampled by wildebeests? Will the character lose everything they have to the needle in their arm? Why should the reader care about what happens during this book? What is on the line that the main character is fighting for? In my book it’s global annihilation on an unprecedented scale, of man, beast, and plants alike. No one is safe!

            Once I had all five of these elements laced together, the plot started to unfold itself before me. Next time, we’ll talk about how I managed to find a plot thread from all of these. Thanks for reading!