A guide full of tips and tricks that hopefully doesn't recount the same old stuff in every other writing book under the sun, Wattpad and published alike. Covering everything from helpful resources like Susanna's Pacemaker to treating setting like ch...
Being the huge Pinterester that I am, I see the Tumblr story idea screencaps all the time, culminating a bunch of ideas with the declaration of 'WRITE A BOOK'. And the thing is... a good idea, the concept of soul mates having tattoos that glow when they're near their destined lover or a villain and a hero who are roommates and don't realize it... these are ideas. They're cool, but a good idea does not a story make. Before you hop off to the plot bunny races, know that a cool concept can only carry you so far. Characters going through a change is what holds a story together and until you have conflict, that high concept ain't goin' nowhere.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
So how do you turn your high concept genius into an actual story? How do you go from idea to thing developed enough to find success in narrative form?
Well, I do not have all the answers. I have my techniques, developed from my days as full-on spontaneous scene-writing machine and married to my present planning success.
The One-Shots
You've probably started with one of a handful of building blocks: you have a character, you have a possible inciting incident or hook, you have a conflict, you have a setting. You've gotta have something. Whatever inspired you, write it. The way I personally merge the glory of 'pantsing' to structure is by starting out writing little scenes between characters. I've filled entire notebooks with out of context scenes that didn't make it into the plot. Sometimes I discovered the direction wouldn't work by writing them in the first place. Plenty of them won't make it into the book, but I learn a lot about the characters that way. I figure out how they play off each other. Maybe what I originally envisioned for their personalities doesn't match what ended up on the page and transformed into something else.
The Research/Inspiration Board
In a few short chapters, I'm sure I've established my obsession with Pinterest. If you have a different method for reaping inspiration from the internet, via Tumblr or maybe you have a physical corkboard of character and plot inspiration, images of derelict dystopias or Indiana Jones-esque artifacts, that's cool. I suppose Research could also be considered part of this stage. It's the stage where you discover things that might launch your plot into a whole new direction. Maybe you learn about tattooing techniques used by Himalayan monks and think what if my MC was the tattoo artist in this world of glowing soul mate tattoos?!
I've pinned a ton of stuff on my Team Spirit Pinterest board for inspiration, ranging from quotes to rodeo images for Sam and weird/cool fashion DIY for Lars. This kind of stuff blossomed into hobbies and plots points and action within the story. Some of it just exists to keep my brain tuned into the story. If I'm pinning stuff for it, I'm thinking about it. If I'm thinking about it, I might happen to solve a particular problem.
Before this turns into a chapter of shameless self-promotion for Team Spirit, you might be thinking, so what's the next step? I've got all these scenes and all this inspiration.
Let me introduce you to the idea of deliverables. This is most often used for television or film. In this stage, you can lay out the story, but when you get feedback to make the story better, you're only rewriting a few lines and not huge swaths of prose. This is used to introduce the story to your producer in stages, allowing for easy changes before you pen entire scenes. There are a bunch of these deliverables, but the one we are going to focus on is
The Beat Sheet
A beat sheet is a document that goes through the story 'beat' by beat. Jot down the plot points you have to start. From there, you have a starting point. You know what needs to happen, you just have to connect the dots to figure out how to get from point A to point B.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Your beats should be brief and general. This is not the stage to dive into the little details. In the example, my bullet points are pretty bare bones. They touch a little on action, they touch a little on emotional content, but mine have gotten as ridiculous as simply everyone is sick of Llewellyn's shit.
Your beat sheet is a roadmap. From there, you decide which giant balls of elastic bands you stop to admire. From here, you can break it down further into which beats occur in which chapters, which is a pretty great shortcut into the spreadsheet I showed y'all earlier. Don't sweat it if you start writing and you detour away from your original route. If you lose your way, stop, take a deep breath, and jot down the beats appropriate for your new course. You don't have to remain glued to your original plan.
Alternatively, if you set out to start your beat sheet and you can't manage to connect what few plot points you have in mind, maybe that idea needs to roll around in your head or in those one-shot scenes a little longer.
PS wooooah. Thanks for already ranking this book almost into the top 100 in Non-Fiction ALREADY. I hope I can continue to be helpful.
