Riting School: It Started Once Upon a Time

Once Upon A Time…

Getting your multi-chapter story off the ground.

I get comments like this a lot:

I have this great idea for a story and I really want to write it. I’ve never written a long story before, so how do I get started? Do I need to do an outline?

For you seasoned writers who know this stuff, bear with me and consider this a refresher course. I’m directing this article at first-time writers who’ve been bitten by the bug and have an itch that needs to be scratched (not that itch, pervs). So my plan is, when I (or other writers) get this question, we can simply point the inquirer to this wee lil article, complete with pretty formatting and examples.

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12 Steps to Pre-Novel Planning

In grad school, there was always an undercurrent of fear when fellow creative writers mentioned they were slated to take “The Long Project.” This class was a semester of getting that novel they’d always wanted to write off the ground, churning out chapter after chapter, then laying themselves bare for brutal feedback during peer workshops. (Some of you fanfic writers might be wondering what the big deal is. Well, congratulations—if you’ve already experienced life as a “chapter machine” and had debates with reviewers over your work, then you’ve one-upped many CW grad students.) This class also took the ideas floating in our heads and made them tangible realities—realities that often require year-long commitments, which can be kind of scary. But when your lil idea baby grows up and you complete the story, you’ll have such an incredible feeling of accomplishment and euphoria.

Before you actually begin writing your first chapter, a strong foundation needs to be laid. Trust me that doing the prep work will save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

1. Finding an Idea

They say truth is stranger than fiction. So true. The best story ideas come from simply opening your eyes and being aware of what is happening around you…

• Spend a day people-watching at an airport or a park, and let your imagination grip you.
  
  
• Visit a museum and read the displays not for information, but for story ideas.
  
  
• Scour newspapers and media sites for those odd little news bites, and build on them.
  
  
• Flip through your old photo albums, diaries, and yearbooks—mine your own experiences.
  
  
• Go to the library, pull three random books off the shelf, and weave a story with them.
  
  
• When you have interesting dreams, take note—Stephenie Meyer did (ker-ching!).

Tip: Buy a little notebook you can carry in your purse or bag to jot down ideas. They will hit you when you least expect them, so record your light bulb moments before you forget.

2. The Story Map

Your story map will shift and change as you write, but it is exactly that: your story’s map. When you take a trip with a destination in mind, you need a map to help you get there. That is the purpose of your story map—as you write, it will help you stay on course so you don’t write yourself into a dead end.

Once you have your idea, it’s time to get your basic story map down (keep in mind this will grow and shift as you develop your plot and characters). But to begin with…

• Tell your story in a general way, and freeze at moments when the story shifts. These are actions or events that cause your main character’s course to shift. Think Back to the Future and the whole parallel universe thing.
  
  
• Highlight your top ten most important story shift moments. This is the core of your story—the moments you are always building toward. (E.g., In Twilight, the first major story shift occurs when Bella lays eyes on Edward Cullen and vice-versa. That’s a game-changer.)
  
  
• Identify generic conflicts of your book (E.g., Bella loves a vampire, Cullens have a secret life).

3. Geographic Setting

Aside from theme, nothing gets ignored more than the geographic setting of a story. Remember, “place” is a character, too—an important one. The setting shapes who your characters are, the types of conflicts they might struggle with, even the style and tone of your writing. Before you start developing your characters, identify your location. And this requires research. Even if you plan to falsely depict a location (hello, trendy boutique-infested Port Angeles), at least know in what ways you are fictionalizing a place.

• Is your story set in a depression-era mining town western Pennsylvania? Find out what you can about the location—the scenery, the climate, demographics, culture, history, special events, unique characteristics.
  
  
• Find a map of the location you are writing about or patterning a fictional place after. If this is a fantasy story and there is no map, create one yourself.
  
  
• Pick a visual representation of your story which embodies not only the place, but the mood. This is your “banner.”

4. Historical Events

Another key element of developing your story’s sense of place is the time. If your story is depression era Pennsylvania, research events that are happening at a world level, then national, then regional, then local.

• List key events that were of importance to the people in the time period you are writing about, even if it’s present day.
  
  
• Have a good understanding about what events would have influenced your characters. Is this Vietnam era? Then your main characters might be worried about the draft. The Civil Rights Movement would have also had huge influences.

5. Central Characters

Once you’ve researched your setting, you’ll have a better picture in your head of your central characters (e.g., Twilight’s central characters are Edward and Bella). In fact, ideas may be flying from your brain too fast to jot down. So now it’s time to lay the groundwork for character development. I can’t stress how important this step is—having a solid sense of who your characters are and how they react will shape the rest of your story. It will make or break it. Sketching a character is a valuable way to understand a character’s personality, appearance, desires, motivations, strengths and weaknesses.

Character sketches should include:

• list of defining character traits, strengths and weaknesses
  
  
• paragraph with brief history
  
  
• 1-2 sentences on character’s primary and secondary conflicts/motivations
  
  
• picture closely resembling your character

I’ve used this character sketch example before in my “Baddies” series, but I’ll pull it up again for reference:

MILTON’s SATAN:

Character traits:

• Is evil and wicked, but sure could fool us!
• ‘Father of Lies’
• Speaks beautifully
• Oozes sex appeal
• Epic warrior qualities (brave, fierce fighter, regal appearance)
• Desires power
• Jealous
• Filled with hate, rage, vengeance
• He’s the first rebel (today, he’d ride a motorcycle, smoke ciggies, wear a leather jacket, and have a sexy bouffant ala James Dean. Dean, I said. Not the other bouffanted beauty).
• The great Mick Jagger describes him as “a man of wealth and taste, been around for a long, long year…”

Backstory: He’s been cast out of Heaven by God after leading an epic rebellion, and is trapped on a rock in the middle of a fiery lake. He was an angel of light—Lucifer—who fell after growing greedy for power. His tragic flaw is his desire for power and revenge. While he may be beautiful, speak seductively, and sometimes appears as a phallic serpent to a virginal young woman whose name starts and ends with an ‘E’, don’t be fooled—he’s sided with evil instead of good.

Character’s Primary conflict: Satan wants revenge on God for booting him out of heaven and into, literally, the fiery pits of Hades. He’s out to hit God where it hurts the most.

Character’s Secondary conflict: Adam is such a goody-two-shoes, there’s no way in hell Satan (pardon the pun) will get him to bite the forbidden fruit. Eve, on the other hand…

6. Central Theme

Once you’ve developed your basic story map, setting, and characters, you’ll start to see themes, or “subject matters,” naturally emerging. This is slightly different from your conflict, in that it’s broader (but your conflict is almost always rooted in your theme). To find your theme…

• Do some brainstorming—what would the “prom themes” be for your story? What naturally emerges when you think about your plot and your characters? (E.g., several Twilight themes include Personal Choice, Love, Isolation, Mortality, Sacrifice, Appearance.)
  
  
• Once you’ve come up with your themes, write a couple of sentences about how and why each plays a part in your story.

7. Primary Conflict

Now that you’ve explored the depths of your story’s foundation a bit more, time to revisit those initial conflicts you jotted down. Given what you now know about your characters, setting, and theme, has anything changed? Do you have new ideas?

• Write a paragraph summarizing what the main conflict of your story is and why. (E.g., the main conflict of Twilight is that Bella is human and Edward is a vampire…therefore, we have a star-crossed lovers scenario).
  
  
• How will this conflict play out? What sort of resolution will it have?

8. Secondary Conflict

You’ve identified your primary conflict, so take a look at your characters and setting, and think about what sort of secondary conflicts might develop. Take into consideration both internal and external conflicts…

• Which of your characters’ traits and motivations might cause them to clash with others? Do any conflicts emerge?
  
  
• What about internal conflicts? Perhaps one of your central characters is at war with him/herself? (E.g., an internal secondary conflict of Twilight is Edward’s abhorrence of his vampire nature).
  
  
• Now factor in the setting and time period. Does that exacerbate anything? Are outside forces brewing that might cause trouble for your characters? (E.g., an external secondary conflict of Twilight would be James’ desire to kill Bella.)

9. Supporting Characters

You’d got your central characters down, as well as your conflicts. You have a better idea of what roles will need to be filled, and by what type of character. Let’s do your casting call—sketching your supporting characters. Supporting (or secondary) characters are not your central characters, nor are they your minor characters. (E.g., Supporting characters in Twilight would include Charlie, Renee, Alice, Carlisle, James, Jacob). These are the characters that have crucial roles to play in your plot by their presence, or even absence (as in Renee’s case).

• Identify at least five supporting characters
  
  
• Do a character sketch for each
  
  
• Find a picture representation of your character (or draw one if you can’t find one)

Tip: Unless you are writing a melodrama, don’t create perfectly good (or bad) people, or your characters will be flat. Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the “heroine is victimized” trap, so be aware…everyone has flaws.

10. Exploration of Tenses and Point-of-View

We’re almost ready to dive into your story, yay! Just a few things to take care of, stylistically (for a more in-depth look at uncovering your story’s style, see a previous Riting Skool article, “Bella’s Got Style”). Before you begin writing, decide which tense fits the story you want to tell. Will you use a first-person narrator or a third-person narrator with multiple points of view?

I could go into in-depth analysis of why certain POVs and tenses work better for particular stories (again, see “Bella’s Got Style”). But here’s a very practical trick…

• Pick one of your moments from your story map and begin writing that scene in 1st person, past tense. Make sure you include both scene (dialogue and action) and summary (reflection, backstory).
  
  
• Once you’ve written an excerpt, now rewrite it using lots of different tense and POV combinations. Maybe even try telling the story in 1st person from an unlikely character’s perspective (how would Twilight change if Carlisle told the story?). As you repeat the excerpt in different tenses, you’ll begin to see which combinations come more naturally to the story you want to tell. Some spark while others feel like pounding the wrong puzzle piece into place.

It’s not uncommon for writers to get halfway through a book and find they are struggling to write their story. Often, the problem is not the plot itself, but who is telling it and how. If find yourself in this situation, experiment with tenses and POVs again. You may want to consider rewriting the entire thing from a different perspective (I did this with my thesis—the rewrite was a nightmare, but the end result was magic).

11. Visual Motif

This is another of those fancy stylistic things that sounds difficult, but is actually a very simple way to add depth and cleverness to your story. A “visual motif” (or narrative motif) is a reoccurring object, description, place, idea, or statement that reflects your story’s themes. This is not just an extended metaphor, though the use of metaphor is certainly part of creating a motif. Visual motifs intensify a reader’s experience by giving them tangible symbols to emphasize your theme.

• The trick to developing a strong visual motif is subtlety. Don’t beat readers over the head with overt symbols. A handful of well-placed variations should do the trick.
  
  
• Avoid cliché symbolism—be creative with your imagery.

A good example of an effective and creative visual motif is used in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (OMG, I can’t wait to see this movieeee!). The story takes place after the breakdown of social order, followed by the complete devastation of all living things. (Even dialogue punctuation rules have been discarded by McCarthy, which is just damned brilliant.) Thus, it is a fight for survival for those few humans who are left—a theme of “Death and Life.” Throughout his novel, McCarthy uses bleak, stark visual images of ruined wasteland, destroyed homes, cities, rural and urban civilization to emphasize his theme. Here’s just one example:

"The land was gullied and eroded and barren. The bones of dead creatures sprawled in the washes. Middens of anonymous trash. Farmhouses in the fields scoured of their paint and the clapboards spooned and sprung from the wallstuds. All of it shadowless and without feature. The road descended through a jungle of dead kudzu." (McCarthy)

In the end, as the story’s theme comes full circle, McCarthy’s series of subtle visual motifs now fit together in a stunning, completed puzzle.

As you write, consider what sort of visual motifs organically grow from your setting. How do they emphasize your themes?

12. Beginning and End

Hurrah! Are you ready to just do it already? (Geez you pervs, I swear.) It’s time to start writing. But…remember how I mentioned at the beginning of this lil 12-step program that you need to know where you are going? Well, you last step is to actually write where you are going. Before you start cranking out chapters, write your opening scene and your ending scene. Your ending is likely to need rewriting by the time you actually get there. But writing it at the onset will get it out of the way, and give you something tangible to work toward.

Having a beginning point and an ending point sets your course. Now you just have to fill in the chapters between.

There’s the meat of laying the foundation for your story. The rest of that stupid “Long Project” course is just suffering through workshops, getting feedback that makes you cry and drink, and ignoring half that feedback because it’s coming from other CWs who only skimmed your story anyway, and had to come up with something clever to say during workshop.

I’ve saved you a semester of tears and hangovers and egos. You can thank me later.

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Gondolier is officially sticking it to the MAN by sharing her wealth of wordcraft knowledge with the likes of fandom. She demonstrates her tremendous skills with every chapter she posts of her wondrous story, Hydraulic Level 5.

Admin Essay: Outline the Moon

Outlining

So, you're in the shower, or stuck in traffic, or brushing your teeth, minding your own business when the bunnies attack. Sometimes they're cute and fluffy and pink. Sometimes they're dark and ragged and horrible. But they are always interesting, different, original, and attention-nabbing. And for some reason, they always seem better than the bunnies that attacked last month, or last week, or yesterday.

What bunnies am I talking about, you ask?

The plot bunnies of course. Those shiny new IDEAS that make you stop suddenly in the shower, jump out, grab the nearest tube of lipstick/eyeliner/vial of blood and start writing things down anywhere you can find a relatively flat surface.

And then you go off and finish your day. You let the idea stew in your mind, you let the writing become permanent in the bathroom, you think about investing in a dry erase white board to have surgically attached to your neck.

After some thinking you decide the idea is good enough, you have time (ha!) and, more importantly, you really really want to! So, you sit down to write this plot bunny into a story. And then, of course, you realize that you don't have it all worked out, every idea is coming at you faster than promotional New Moon footage and you are overwhelmed.

So, what do you do?

Why, you write an outline of course!

Okay, so, some people don't like to. And there's pros and cons. I go back and forth with the whole thing, sometimes within one story. But this article isn't about the pros and cons, it isn't about making the decision. This is about outlining your story in a way that works for you.

Ummm, I tried writing this article using someone else's story (so as to promote awesomeness) but I feel weird outlining a story I didn't write, and it's distracting from writing this article. Which I'm writing late...so we're just going to use mine, sorry 'bout that.

Now remember folks, there are many different types of outlines, I'm only going to cover the ones I found useful, but really, use whatever works for you, and feel free to change these and smoosh them together, or whatever. No one needs to see or understand your outline but you. Do what works.

I've found that most outlines can be put into three categories. Theme, points, and description. I will go over one of each category, and provide some links and such to other examples.

The first category, theme, is my favourite. It is very general, very broad, and can be applied in a variety of ways. You can use it before you start writing your story to plot out your main conflict, who it affects and how you want it to be resolved. The beauty is that it doesn't really cover any plot, so it is still very open to changes that characters demand be made, as long as those changes fit with the theme. It is an excellent tool to go and check back with every now and then, to remind yourself what tone and mood you want your story to have.

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Theme: Man against Himself

Bella is lonely

A. Bella devises a plan to change her future.
B. The person she recruits for help in this, throws her for a loop
C. Bella sees that not all people will let her down/leave her on her own.
Resolution: Bella conquers fear.
Conclusion: Bella is ready to face life as a strong young woman, with plenty of love and support.

See how beautiful this is? It didn't really give anything away about my story. You wouldn't know from reading it that the story is a comedy, or what Bella's personality quirks are, or why she is lonely, or how she comes to her big revelation at the end. You just know the main points of the conflict. You can still make plenty of changes and not affect this outline at all.

Because the outline is so short and general, it also works to apply it to each chapter. Or I have found, if you don't like writing an outline before starting your story, this is a good one to use while editing a story. Once you're done writing, and have the conflict all worked out, draw up one of these and use it as a guide when deciding what you need and what you don't. It has many uses.

Also, I stole this from an author's website but cannot for the life of me find that website again thus I cannot give credit. But I didn't come up with this, I only love it.

The second type of outline, points, is the one I usually do first. It's a step past the mad rush for pen and paper (or whatever substitutes you can find) and jotting down whatever comes into your head. It's when you take all those papers, napkins, bathroom sinks, pile them together and create something cohesive.

You can break it down into scenes or characters, or plot points but I usually break it into chapters. Copy and pasted from my master google doc:

Day 1

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Bella the shy nerd, a senior in high school is determined not to graduate without losing her virginity. After overhearing a boy say something about not caring what kind of pussy he gets, as long as he gets some, she decides that she may as well approach the one guy she really wants to ask. Edward. She matter-of-factly walks up to him and asks if he would like to sleep with her on Sunday. She even has her blackberry out to schedule it in.

Day 2

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Bella is all sure he will say no and is trying to compile a list of acceptable others to ask but not having much luck.
-he says yes under the condition that they get to know each other a little
-if there's time in this one, Bella goes to the bookstore.

So, as you can see, this is much more detailed than the previous outline. Like, intensely more detailed. But it still isn't complete. It doesn't mention every single point in the chapter, just the important ones that I need to move the main plot along. It doesn't mention the four other characters I introduce or any of my secondary plot lines.

A similar kind of outline, shown here (as copied from Pastiche Pen's livejournal without permission):

Outline for If Love Could Light a Candle (first 4 chaps)

I. For Whom Do You Pray?
a. Ordinary murder – Candle Scene February 3, 1928
b. To shrink or not to shrink – face off with between the Yankee and the confederate - December 18, 2004 - Forks, Washington
c. Spying
1. on Ben
2. on John
3. on Bella - January 17, 2005 - Forks, Washington

II. Perhaps the Box is Better Left Closed
a. Starter murder
b. 1. Alice, Jasper
2. Edward, Tanya video
3. Alice statue
c. John and his technology problems
c2. January 25, 2005 - Edward Meets Bella - intrigued - personal battle with bloodlust and lust…

III. On the Differences Twixt Monsters and Men
A. Little Dorothy, Krazy Kat and Ignatz, pedophile, boat – sparkly skin – kills the man underwater - comic books...
B. Rosalie and Jasper on wanting to be human and yet not wanting to be: braying donkeys, trumpeting sneeze, oinking, squawking, lowing. Jasper reflects on time with Maria - insane asylum in Mexico. Edward reflects on what it is to be a vampire
1) that which sucks blood: mosquito, vampire bat, leech description - distended until popping - but vamps just absorb - like living rocks – coral
2) the polar nature of vampire skin - like hell below - pressure so dense but equally hungry
C. Maggie sitting outside with Charlie. Charlie uncomfortable. Conversation – her cat died. Edward reflects on domestic house cats. Charlie suggests getting a dog from the pound.
d. Bella Time
1) February 1, Edward notices tiny changes in Bella – bruise, eyelashes, dry skin, long white neck. Bella is unlike the rest of her kind – age wise, maturity, etc. – “We’re all limited in some way. We can’t be what we want to be.” Bella book conversation. “times up.”
2) February 8, Charlie missing her mother – Bella’s fears about being tied down—and yet needing to care for others. Maggie smiles at Charlie. Charlie insists on driving Bella. Edward at the piano.

IV. Beauty Hath Fangs Like a Rose Hath Thorns
a. Plays Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp on the piano. Edward the actor—a bored misanthrope being an ass, pretending as the young socialite. The sister killer. The tortured social outcast in the family below. Ostracism. Psychological Abuse. Being different. – weird how girls from his youth are his mother’s age [thought occurs as he looks at Emily and Scarlet and Norma). Game at the ouija board. Meeting and death at the piano.
b. Feb. 10, Edward at the piano. Meddling Alice, Sorcerer’s Apprentice. “But I’m not the apprentice Edward—I’m the sorcerer.”
c. Feb. 11 - Ben discusses upcoming dance; he wants to ask Angela. Meeting at basketball court.
d. Feb. 15, Appt with Bella. "pretty" - age focus,
e. Venus and Psyche. Jealous Rosalie
f. He ends the chapter sitting on the mountain; mention song; talk with Carlisle on penance and redemption. Discussion on “who notices what.” Carlisle, “some people are more open to the supernatural.”

This one, has less plot detail then mine, and more points of what each character does during a chapter. In ways it is more detailed and in other ways it is less. If you read my outline through, you would get a decent summary of each chapter, it you read Pastiche's you would know what happened in each chapter but you might miss the overall plot. But they are still very similar outlines and, key point here people, they both work for their respective authors.

The last type of outline I'm going to talk about is the description outline. I find this one works best in conjunction with the theme outline. Or works if you know what you want the inciting incident to be, or know your ending, or something like that, but are having trouble coming up with the rest of the story.

Basically it is a list of questions that force you to think about your plot and characters, and then you write down the answers in as much or as little detail as you wish. An example:

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WRITER'S DIGEST NOVEL IDEA SUMMARY SHEET

Working title:

“Type” of novel best suited to this idea:

___Mainstream (Describe):





___Category (Genre): check one (or more, if the idea might cross genre lines).
___Romance ___Western ___Fantasy ___Action/Adventure
___Mystery ___Horror ___Science Fiction
___Other Feel free to type in a different genre if you feel yours is missing. Know what readers want to see in a genre before holding yourself down to it.

(Describe):





Main Characters (list only up to three major characters)

Character #1—the protagonist (the hero or heroine of this story)

Name:

Primary Goal:

Most notable personality trait(s):

Character #2—the antagonist (the main “opposition” character)

Name:

Primary Goal:

Most notable personality trait(s):

Relationship to protagonist:

Character #3—a major supporting character

Name:

Primary Goal:

Most notable personality trait(s):

Relationship to protagonist:

Setting(s) (If your novel has multiple settings, list only the two main ones)

Setting #1:

Time frame:


Reason for using this setting:



Setting #2:

Time frame:

Reason for using this setting:





What is the main complication of the story (the central problem that must be solved by the main character)?









What are the primary obstacles preventing the main character from achieving his or her goal?







How is the story resolved for the main characters (how does it end)?





Take the rest of this page to summarize in present-tense narrative, your story idea.

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Now I'm not going to fill this one out, as the answers are usually pretty telling (Also, I'm lazy.), and these outlines are actually my least favourite kind. I'm not really sure why, but I don't normally use them. I do find them to be helpful when I am stuck. Stuck on a setting, or a character, or I did THAT last chapter which prevents me from doing THIS in the chapter I'm working on. Filling something like this helps you to take a step back from your characters' lives and look at the story as a whole. So you can think about what it needs to work, not what the characters want.

I also find that filling these out makes me give my characters faults. I am really good at giving my characters quirks and personalities, but I don't like giving them real faults. I either like them too much or understand where they are from too closely.

All in all, there are many different types of outlines (I was hoping to get a chance to try out the old school version of getting file folder, laying open and drawing a big W on it. The peaks and dips representing where your plot rises and falls and you jot down plot points along the W. Alas, I did not have time and therefore cannot give my opinions.) but whether you are outlining your full story, a single chapter or just a scene remember to do whatever works for you. A lot of authors blog about different ways of outlining, I highly recommend checking out your favourite author's site or googling around a bit. Try a couple different versions before settling on something that you like.

What type of outline do you use?

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Moon.witche is the crazy lady behind the Temptation Podcast and others. She likes YA books, refuses to read slash, and does theater crap. (Heh-heh) She also writes a funny fic How My Life Was Ruined in 14 Days. Her birthday was this past Monday. :-)