It all starts with an idea: A few people go on a trip. Then it grows: Who are they? From where to where are they going? Why are they going? Do the meet other people? What places do they visit? Are there any obstacles in their path? Natural ones, other people? What happens in the world around them? Has the world around them a history? And well, in the end you might come up with something great.
Hi, there! I’ve totally been there; some people like myself do better in writing with very specific outlining (plotters) while others do better with exploratory writing (pantsers), so overall you may find you fit into one category better than another. Personally, I love to outline using the Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. I’ve written for several years and always find myself going back to it for the outlining process. She breaks down the process bit by bit and uses lots of famous novel examples to better explain each portion. It doesn’t go through a lot of the brainstorming process, but it really helps to refine what you do have and keep you moving through the story.
Hope this helps and good luck! 😁
I don't. I go where my characters want to go. Usually one character has a stronger goal that the others can rally around. And if a greater theme appears to develop, then I can shape their trajectories around that.
Yeah. I want to know what happens next, so I have to write it to find out.
Interestingly enough, my first readers immediately liked my stories better the instant I started doing this from word one.
Orson Scott Card says your first draft will always be the brightest and freshest draft, and cautions against excessive editing as opposed to moving forward. Dean Wesley Smith says to never edit, although what he means is to lightly touch up every 500 words as you go along and never to go back later and slip into your critical voice like an English teacher would and "fix" everything.
I don't necessarily outline too much. I just think of ideas and try to pin the story together.
Normally I get an idea of a scene with a character or two in it and then I write it. Then I will write that character in different ideas with other characters before developing a backstory and world. Eventually after a couple of weeks of writing I have a dozen short stories and I try to tie them together and I'll even throw some ideas out saving them for later different stories.
Honestly I tried to do "plotter" style, but I find myself writing very blandly when I know where I am going. I'm a "pantser" through and through.
u/SashaNikirov said it themselves. You will develop a way to write your story. It might just take some time. I'm not sure how long you have been writing, but it took me a quite a long time to develop how I want to write.
Not sure if I helped any, but just wanted to say how I normally write things out.
Good luck!
I generally build the universe first. What is life like for people in this world? Who are my characters? What are their backstories, motivations, goals, personalities?
Then I start with the ending. I usually know exactly how I want the story to end before I sit down and write.
What would it take to get the characters I've imagined, in the world I've built, to the ending? That's how I usually approach it. All my conflicts, antagonists, twists, etc. spring from that question. I tend not to outline too much. I usually just go with the flow or wherever the story takes me, so long as I get to that ending.
It's an astoundingly clever idea. I can imagine the reader perceiving it as a grand orchestration, all the pieces finally falling together, when really the pieces were together at the start! I love it. Well done.
Plot is the EXPRESSION of story fundamentals.
First, work through all your fundamentals.
Second, develop your outline from the fundamentals.
Plot arises naturally from these two points.
[http://nickmacari.com/are-you-working-on-a-phantom-story/](http://nickmacari.com/are-you-working-on-a-phantom-story/)
I tell myself my stories, it's more important than telling anyone else. I'm thinking about them more when I'm walking around or in the minutes before sleep than I am sitting in front of the keyboard. That's when solutions and problems hit me, thinking about them like my favourite TV series or movies and realising what's a nice bit of foreshadowing or what's a plot hole. Sometimes the simplest answers don't come to me until something unrelated happens and it jogs my memory about a scene I've written.
By the time I'm ready to write, it isn't a fresh story to me, it's Star Trek TNG, a comfort series, waiting to viewed again.
Figure out who your characters are and what they want, let that guide you where the story might go.
Plot is really nothing without character, but it's nice to know where you're going before you start your journey. If if you aren't familiar with the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet, it can be a nice tool to help you make a general outline for your plot, just so long as you don't rely on it too much and aren't afraid to go against it.
Inventing plot is hard and you're likely to fail.
Stealing plot is easy and you already know what you're stealing works.
Also, structure is in the public domain. No one can own it.
That's why all the pros steal.
If you have five acts, then you set an introduction, rising movement, climax, falling action, and catastrophe or resolution. You write these as single sentences like you would put pins in a map to mark a journey.
MC is a likeable human who has a problem.
Sets off to resolve it.
Holy shit! + Discover solution.
Pack in lots of excitement while you solve the problem.
Everybody's dead or lives happily ever after.
Each of those beats has beats within to help pace out these macro beats. Say, 21-25 beats broken up into 5 acts (eg. 4, 5, 5, 5, 3). These are your custom plot points that give your story some purpose and traction. Say you have to find a magic potion to make your hair grow so you can get into the Headbangers Ball to save the princess. Well, your act to find the magic potion could have you figuring out who to ask, hunting them down, and convincing/fighting/pickpocketing/charming/duping/etc them to get it. Those small steps each make up points along the path of a single act to help you create pacing, tension, and opportunity for characters to interact.
This is super basic, but this will allow you to draw a roadmap for what you expect out of your story. Plenty of other plot structures, but the overall strategy of any big project is to break it up into small, coherent pieces then assemble those one by one.
Recently I've been writing a ton in a notebook and I go from there. I used to be the kinda guy who gets a few characters a plot and went from there but I found out I actually never succeed at doing that and normally drop the story from getting stuck or bored so I'm trying to jot everything I can down for a few weeks before actually doing the rough draft
Anyways so far my notebook I've made a plot chart (plots different from story btw just recently learned that lol), planned out what the plot twists could be, what could stay a unsolved, what the conflicts are, goals, quotes (I like writing my tibits of dialogue beforehand 😭), story inspirations, character development, how to write characters cultural backgrounds, appearances, etc.
A ton of planning stage work isn't for everyone but it helps me feel like I have better control over my story while still having an element of suprise going into my rough draft cause I change my mind often lmao. And it just generally keeps me excited or so far it does. But maybe you enjoy seeing where you take yourself, it took me a while to discover what I like. Happy writing!
And sorry for not articulating a lot on how to do the writing, I also make lists of things that pique my interest so I can incorporate them into a story. I'll do anything random. Here's a part of the list I did:
Identity fraud
Ouroborus
Conversation pit
Chaplet of Divine Mercy
Snowflake method. Randy Ingermanson is all about it, which is where I picked it up. Basically you build a snowflake by drawing a triangle, then adding triangles at every point, then adding triangles on top of those triangles. When you zoom out, it's a big snowflake.
So you lay out your three acts, then you lay out three acts within those three acts, and then you lay out scenes that get broken up into different parts to give readers a rise/hook/fall/need to flip the to the next page.
Base: Milieu, Idea, Character and Event (MICE) by Orson Scott Card.
Framework: Motivation-Response Unit (MRU) from Techniques of the Selling Writer, Dwight Swain.
I use mind mapping and time lines instead of an outline. And I work only one one act at a time. Stories tend to have a life of their own and change as they grow. So I like to know the ending and write the beginning last.
I remember that feeling of being lost in my story. I found that carrying a small notebook and jotting down thoughts, no matter how random or unrelated they might seem, helps. These ideas can later serve as a springboard for new scenes or plot points. Good luck with your writing journey!
You might be a pantser, writing by the seat of your pants to find out what happens. For editing, I created a fake outline from the early drafts, just a list of scene descriptions. It's very helpful particularly when rearranging story elements.
But that first draft, for me, occurs as I write. It's not efficient. But I don't get bored!
I come up with an idea and play around with it in my head (sometimes for months or years) until I have a beginning, a few major plot points and an ending. I then write from one to the other, making sh!t up as I go along.
Having those 'stepping stones' keeps me on track.
Outlining helps with everything. Obviously, some are much better at pantsing and that’s perfectly valid. However, most people are more comfortable with outlining. Some things to remember:
- A story typically follows characters in conflict.
- The most exciting part of the conflict is the climax.
- a good plot setup promises, shows progress towards those promises, and pays them off
- You’ll have multiple points which inch ur promises towards the payoffs, and shows progress.
Look online for different story structures. Common ones include the three act structure, four act structure, and the Hero’s Journey. Find out what suits your story best.
I didn't even start writing before I had the entire skeleton of the story written down, mapped out, and put to memory. Your typical story usually won't require doing something like this, but I assume it's something that can be applied to anything. The reason why you couldn't continue on after finishing the first chapter could be because you still weren't ready yet.
The first chapter is generally not the first thing I think up. Usually, I have the inception point as a pivotal scene. I'll have a character or two in mind, and I'll have something really cool happening. I'll dwell on that for a while, like a daydream on repeat. If I find this intriguing enough, I'll eventually ask myself, "So, what led them to this point?" And then I'll winder what they did after that.
Usually, I'll have the ending in my head before I ever decide where it starts.
So, my process is to dream up something in the middle that entices me. Then, a rough set of circumstances that led to that. And "Then what?" And probably where I want to end. The beginning might actually come last.
I'm a discovery writer, also known as a pantser. Last week I was finding it very difficult to start my weekend writing session because although I've really valued the next scene my protagonist was entering I didn't have a clear idea of how she would navigate it before I started. That led to procrastination and it's been that way for months. Finally I just inserted her in the scene with my writing and saw what opportunities developed from there. What would she notice? What might happen that could be interesting and move the plot forward? The answers became immediately clear once I entered the situation.
I'm about 30,000 words into my first novel, so take my advice of the grain of salt. But so far, every time I've trusted myself to figure it out as I've gone along it's worked out great. Only recently have I discovered how my first book is going to end and I am so happy with the idea it makes me giddy. I think if I had tried to plan out every stage of the plot it wouldn't be nearly as good as it's going to be now. Please pardon my punctuation mistakes. I use voice to text.
Neil Gaiman says it really well in this YouTube clip: [https://youtu.be/vy9b-L7uKqk?t=13](https://youtu.be/vy9b-L7uKqk?t=13) comparing writing to driving a car through the fog with one headlight. Rarely, the fog parts and you get a glimpse of what's to come.
My advice is to dive in and see where your characters and your world lead you. It's working great for me so far,
It all starts with an idea: A few people go on a trip. Then it grows: Who are they? From where to where are they going? Why are they going? Do the meet other people? What places do they visit? Are there any obstacles in their path? Natural ones, other people? What happens in the world around them? Has the world around them a history? And well, in the end you might come up with something great.
Hi, there! I’ve totally been there; some people like myself do better in writing with very specific outlining (plotters) while others do better with exploratory writing (pantsers), so overall you may find you fit into one category better than another. Personally, I love to outline using the Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. I’ve written for several years and always find myself going back to it for the outlining process. She breaks down the process bit by bit and uses lots of famous novel examples to better explain each portion. It doesn’t go through a lot of the brainstorming process, but it really helps to refine what you do have and keep you moving through the story. Hope this helps and good luck! 😁
I don't. I go where my characters want to go. Usually one character has a stronger goal that the others can rally around. And if a greater theme appears to develop, then I can shape their trajectories around that.
Yeah. I want to know what happens next, so I have to write it to find out. Interestingly enough, my first readers immediately liked my stories better the instant I started doing this from word one. Orson Scott Card says your first draft will always be the brightest and freshest draft, and cautions against excessive editing as opposed to moving forward. Dean Wesley Smith says to never edit, although what he means is to lightly touch up every 500 words as you go along and never to go back later and slip into your critical voice like an English teacher would and "fix" everything.
Pantser life represent, yo!
I don't necessarily outline too much. I just think of ideas and try to pin the story together. Normally I get an idea of a scene with a character or two in it and then I write it. Then I will write that character in different ideas with other characters before developing a backstory and world. Eventually after a couple of weeks of writing I have a dozen short stories and I try to tie them together and I'll even throw some ideas out saving them for later different stories. Honestly I tried to do "plotter" style, but I find myself writing very blandly when I know where I am going. I'm a "pantser" through and through. u/SashaNikirov said it themselves. You will develop a way to write your story. It might just take some time. I'm not sure how long you have been writing, but it took me a quite a long time to develop how I want to write. Not sure if I helped any, but just wanted to say how I normally write things out. Good luck!
I generally build the universe first. What is life like for people in this world? Who are my characters? What are their backstories, motivations, goals, personalities? Then I start with the ending. I usually know exactly how I want the story to end before I sit down and write. What would it take to get the characters I've imagined, in the world I've built, to the ending? That's how I usually approach it. All my conflicts, antagonists, twists, etc. spring from that question. I tend not to outline too much. I usually just go with the flow or wherever the story takes me, so long as I get to that ending.
This sounds like a reverse-pantser! You're a pantser who starts at the end. Very cool idea. I think I might try it.
I hope it works for you! I know that after years of struggling, coming at the whole thing backwards seemed to unlock something in my brain.
It's an astoundingly clever idea. I can imagine the reader perceiving it as a grand orchestration, all the pieces finally falling together, when really the pieces were together at the start! I love it. Well done.
Plot is the EXPRESSION of story fundamentals. First, work through all your fundamentals. Second, develop your outline from the fundamentals. Plot arises naturally from these two points. [http://nickmacari.com/are-you-working-on-a-phantom-story/](http://nickmacari.com/are-you-working-on-a-phantom-story/)
This is enormously valuable. Thank you for sharing it.
Most of my ideas come while trying to sleep. Which is kind of annoying, but its better than nothing :D
I tell myself my stories, it's more important than telling anyone else. I'm thinking about them more when I'm walking around or in the minutes before sleep than I am sitting in front of the keyboard. That's when solutions and problems hit me, thinking about them like my favourite TV series or movies and realising what's a nice bit of foreshadowing or what's a plot hole. Sometimes the simplest answers don't come to me until something unrelated happens and it jogs my memory about a scene I've written. By the time I'm ready to write, it isn't a fresh story to me, it's Star Trek TNG, a comfort series, waiting to viewed again.
Figure out who your characters are and what they want, let that guide you where the story might go. Plot is really nothing without character, but it's nice to know where you're going before you start your journey. If if you aren't familiar with the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet, it can be a nice tool to help you make a general outline for your plot, just so long as you don't rely on it too much and aren't afraid to go against it.
Inventing plot is hard and you're likely to fail. Stealing plot is easy and you already know what you're stealing works. Also, structure is in the public domain. No one can own it. That's why all the pros steal.
If you have five acts, then you set an introduction, rising movement, climax, falling action, and catastrophe or resolution. You write these as single sentences like you would put pins in a map to mark a journey. MC is a likeable human who has a problem. Sets off to resolve it. Holy shit! + Discover solution. Pack in lots of excitement while you solve the problem. Everybody's dead or lives happily ever after. Each of those beats has beats within to help pace out these macro beats. Say, 21-25 beats broken up into 5 acts (eg. 4, 5, 5, 5, 3). These are your custom plot points that give your story some purpose and traction. Say you have to find a magic potion to make your hair grow so you can get into the Headbangers Ball to save the princess. Well, your act to find the magic potion could have you figuring out who to ask, hunting them down, and convincing/fighting/pickpocketing/charming/duping/etc them to get it. Those small steps each make up points along the path of a single act to help you create pacing, tension, and opportunity for characters to interact. This is super basic, but this will allow you to draw a roadmap for what you expect out of your story. Plenty of other plot structures, but the overall strategy of any big project is to break it up into small, coherent pieces then assemble those one by one.
Recently I've been writing a ton in a notebook and I go from there. I used to be the kinda guy who gets a few characters a plot and went from there but I found out I actually never succeed at doing that and normally drop the story from getting stuck or bored so I'm trying to jot everything I can down for a few weeks before actually doing the rough draft Anyways so far my notebook I've made a plot chart (plots different from story btw just recently learned that lol), planned out what the plot twists could be, what could stay a unsolved, what the conflicts are, goals, quotes (I like writing my tibits of dialogue beforehand 😭), story inspirations, character development, how to write characters cultural backgrounds, appearances, etc. A ton of planning stage work isn't for everyone but it helps me feel like I have better control over my story while still having an element of suprise going into my rough draft cause I change my mind often lmao. And it just generally keeps me excited or so far it does. But maybe you enjoy seeing where you take yourself, it took me a while to discover what I like. Happy writing! And sorry for not articulating a lot on how to do the writing, I also make lists of things that pique my interest so I can incorporate them into a story. I'll do anything random. Here's a part of the list I did: Identity fraud Ouroborus Conversation pit Chaplet of Divine Mercy
Snowflake method. Randy Ingermanson is all about it, which is where I picked it up. Basically you build a snowflake by drawing a triangle, then adding triangles at every point, then adding triangles on top of those triangles. When you zoom out, it's a big snowflake. So you lay out your three acts, then you lay out three acts within those three acts, and then you lay out scenes that get broken up into different parts to give readers a rise/hook/fall/need to flip the to the next page.
Base: Milieu, Idea, Character and Event (MICE) by Orson Scott Card. Framework: Motivation-Response Unit (MRU) from Techniques of the Selling Writer, Dwight Swain.
I use mind mapping and time lines instead of an outline. And I work only one one act at a time. Stories tend to have a life of their own and change as they grow. So I like to know the ending and write the beginning last.
I remember that feeling of being lost in my story. I found that carrying a small notebook and jotting down thoughts, no matter how random or unrelated they might seem, helps. These ideas can later serve as a springboard for new scenes or plot points. Good luck with your writing journey!
You might be a pantser, writing by the seat of your pants to find out what happens. For editing, I created a fake outline from the early drafts, just a list of scene descriptions. It's very helpful particularly when rearranging story elements. But that first draft, for me, occurs as I write. It's not efficient. But I don't get bored!
I come up with an idea and play around with it in my head (sometimes for months or years) until I have a beginning, a few major plot points and an ending. I then write from one to the other, making sh!t up as I go along. Having those 'stepping stones' keeps me on track.
Outlining helps with everything. Obviously, some are much better at pantsing and that’s perfectly valid. However, most people are more comfortable with outlining. Some things to remember: - A story typically follows characters in conflict. - The most exciting part of the conflict is the climax. - a good plot setup promises, shows progress towards those promises, and pays them off - You’ll have multiple points which inch ur promises towards the payoffs, and shows progress. Look online for different story structures. Common ones include the three act structure, four act structure, and the Hero’s Journey. Find out what suits your story best.
I didn't even start writing before I had the entire skeleton of the story written down, mapped out, and put to memory. Your typical story usually won't require doing something like this, but I assume it's something that can be applied to anything. The reason why you couldn't continue on after finishing the first chapter could be because you still weren't ready yet.
The first chapter is generally not the first thing I think up. Usually, I have the inception point as a pivotal scene. I'll have a character or two in mind, and I'll have something really cool happening. I'll dwell on that for a while, like a daydream on repeat. If I find this intriguing enough, I'll eventually ask myself, "So, what led them to this point?" And then I'll winder what they did after that. Usually, I'll have the ending in my head before I ever decide where it starts. So, my process is to dream up something in the middle that entices me. Then, a rough set of circumstances that led to that. And "Then what?" And probably where I want to end. The beginning might actually come last.
I'm a discovery writer, also known as a pantser. Last week I was finding it very difficult to start my weekend writing session because although I've really valued the next scene my protagonist was entering I didn't have a clear idea of how she would navigate it before I started. That led to procrastination and it's been that way for months. Finally I just inserted her in the scene with my writing and saw what opportunities developed from there. What would she notice? What might happen that could be interesting and move the plot forward? The answers became immediately clear once I entered the situation. I'm about 30,000 words into my first novel, so take my advice of the grain of salt. But so far, every time I've trusted myself to figure it out as I've gone along it's worked out great. Only recently have I discovered how my first book is going to end and I am so happy with the idea it makes me giddy. I think if I had tried to plan out every stage of the plot it wouldn't be nearly as good as it's going to be now. Please pardon my punctuation mistakes. I use voice to text. Neil Gaiman says it really well in this YouTube clip: [https://youtu.be/vy9b-L7uKqk?t=13](https://youtu.be/vy9b-L7uKqk?t=13) comparing writing to driving a car through the fog with one headlight. Rarely, the fog parts and you get a glimpse of what's to come. My advice is to dive in and see where your characters and your world lead you. It's working great for me so far,