Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop ✒ Writing Tips

Lesson 7: How to test your ideas?

As we had discussed in lesson 2 on how to come up with great ideas, I'm sure a lot of you must have come up with brilliant plots to write about. But there is one more thing which is equally as important as coming up with great ideas. And that is determining whether the idea would work or not.

In this chapter, I will be sharing with you how to check whether an idea is expendable into a full length fanfic or not. But first, let us discuss what are the qualities that make up an expendable idea.

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What are the qualities of an idea that works?

Well, your plot idea should have all the key elements to turn it into an interesting story. It should be unique, it should have appropriate climax and turning points in it, the characters must be faced with an equal balance of achievements and hardships etc etc.

Now you are probably thinking how can we determine that just by an idea. Yeah, I know most of you are wondering that isn't it better to start writing then finding out how everything turns out?

Frankly, I had done that myself too for a lot many years but ever since I figured out a technique of testing ideas, it has made things a lot easier and now I don't have to draft out every single idea before coming to know whether it would work or not.

So let's stop all this anticipation and get right down to the wonderful technique which has solved a lot of problems when it comes to testing ideas.

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Nutshell Technique:

And now what I am sharing with you is a technique I use while writing stories. It has a few steps in which you kinda ask yourselves questions about this story you're writing about.

Remember, if you are not able to fill all the steps then that means your story is not yet ready to be told and you should give it some time to formulate fully.

This technique is mostly used by screenplay writers for films/movies but it is equally as helpful when it comes to writing books.

Following are the steps.

STEP 1 - THE SET UP WANT:

In this step you decide how your story is going to start. You should also state the set up want of your protagonist. In simple words, the current desire/goal/target of your protagonist.

Authors tend to introduce the protagonist in the first chapter just so the readers could get a hang of his/her character. So it is best that you introduce your character as well as what your character wants.

The set up want is not usually the main objective of the protagonist. It could be anything such as a coffee, good grades or even a morning walk. Anything. You can use your own creativity from there.

STEP 2 - POINT OF NO RETURN:

In this step, the main character either gets the set up want or decides that it is quite important for him/her and has to achieve it in any way possible.

The consequences of getting the want is discussed in this part. Usually, the protagonist just gets his/her want. Just like that.

This however comes after the Act 1 of your story.

STEP 3 - THE CATCH:

This is usually simultaneous with the set up want. The protagonist got what he wanted but also get something he/she didn't want and has to deal with it.