So you have lots of ideas, characters and main scenes for your novel, but you don't know how to bring them all together.
Creating the story and more importantly the reasons that connect each part of the story is one of the hardest challenges of novel writing for any plotter.
Here is what you do.
Get a piece of paper, turn it sideways. You are going to write three sentences:
- This story is about…..
- The characters are prevented in doing this by…..
- The characters overcome this by doing…..
Those three sentences are the premise of your story, you may need to take some time thinking about them.
Now write three headings, evenly spaced, across the page: Reveals, Plot, Desire.
Write in your ‘important situations’ in chronological order - I suspect these will fall mainly under the heading ‘plot’ - leave plenty of space between each situation.
Under the Desire heading, beside each situation, write what it is that the main characters want out of that situation - this may well be a feeling or emotion. Different characters will want different things out of the same situation, so they will be in conflict - this is good, because conflicts are the building blocks of story.
On the other side, under the Reveals heading, record what is motivating each character to be involved with or to drive the situation. These are the things that your situation reveals about your characters or story.
Now you need to fill in the blank spaces between your situations:
To get from one situation to the next, on the Reveals side, there should be a logical sequence of events that characters are motivated to drive. However. different characters will be driving the story towards their own outcomes, so there will be some conflicts.
There are other things you might want to reveal to your readers, like a secret on which the story pivots or some character change you want the audience to witness. If so, slot these under the Reveal heading and work out what scene(s) in the plot will serve this purpose and what emotions are involved in getting to and from this scene.
On the Desire side, there will be emotional motivations driving the characters, and as is often the case with emotions these may not be logical at all. Under the Plot heading try to decide which of the characters has the most logical or emotional reason to drive the next scene the way they want and record what that scene will be.
In addition to the premise, your story will need to fit into a Story Arc (more about story arcs in my next post) so there may be some plot situations you need to include under the Plot heading for which you need to work out how the characters motivations and desires get them from the scenes before and to the scenes after.
This sort of exercise is messy, requires a lot of thought/imagination, could take a long time to complete, and you will re-start many time. Once you are finished though, you will have a motivational, emotional, and plot driven map of your story. You will then know where you are headed and why.
Nick
I have such a difficult time with this in my writing. Your explanation seems like at least a slightly less painful way to do it. Ill try it out, thanks! Following!
Hi @wylde, some people seem able to do this sort of thing 'on the fly', but I've always has to sit down and work it all out. In fact, I don't see how you can include all this sort of stuff in your novel unless you do plan it out - all the strands just get too complicated otherwise. Other people are able to splurge a first draft and then 'fix' all this stuff afterwards, but I find I lose the big picture if try that.
Of course, have made detailed plans, it doesn't mean I don't stray from the plan or have good ideas to add in later or anything, or get pulled in a certain direction by my characters, but at least I know where I am headed and where I strayed from the plan.
I'll blog about more of this sort of stuff in the next few posts.
Good luck. Nick
Already happy i followed you thanks Nick!
Awesome, you are welcome. I'm just happy anyone finds what I write interesting.
You can find more of my posts, articles, and stories in My Steemit Library:
Nick
(The link will take you away from Steemit.com, but the library links bring you back again)