#plotting methods

Okay. Full disclosure. This is how I plot, and it’s a mess--but a lot of fun, in my opinion; and if you have a lot of thoughts all at once that aren’t necessarily coming out in a logical order, it may be the method for you.

This method doesn’t really have coherent steps, because it’s just based on the natural flow of your own thoughts.

Where to Start

Start with whatever you have. For the examples here, I’m going to make something up as a I go along, exactly as I would if I were doing this in real life.

Maybe you have an idea for a character, or a scene, or a concept. Start there by just writing it down. I write it as if I’m talking to myself, in full sentences, but may you’ll do bullet points, or a mind map, or some other method.

EXAMPLE: “Story idea: a story where a guy is on the run from death. Death is looking for him for some reason, and he’s trying not to be found.”

Expanding Upon the Idea

Okay, so now you have... something. And you don’t really know where to go with it. So start asking yourself questions, and try to answer them. They don’t have to be good answers, and you don’t have to use any of what you write. You’re just brainstorming until something clicks.

EXAMPLE: “So why is death after him??? Maybe he was supposed to die but found a way not to? May he was sick, knew he was dying, and somehow found a way to hide from Death (who is like an actual being in this world). Or maybe he died in some accident and made a deal with Death to get a little more time, and now Death is here to collect after the time runs out, but in the meantime the guy has found out a way to hide from Death? I think I like the first idea better though.”

Bouncing Around

One thing that is nice about this method is that you don’t need to work chronologically. You can bounce around as ideas come to you, and then go back and rework what you’ve come up with so far to fit in with the new ideas.

EXAMPLES: “I have this image in my head of a scene where the guy has finally been caught by Death, and is standing in like this... in-between, limbo world or something. Death is all pleased he’s finally caught up with the guy, but then the guy whips out this item, like a coin, that buys his way out of death. And maybe that’s how he does it, there are these special coins that can “buy” your freedom from death, and he has some way of finding them, over and over again, and always has at least one when Death shows up to collect the next time. And maybe he keeps dying over and over again in ridiculous ways, like eagles dropping turtles on his head and having sinkholes open up under his feet, as Death keeps trying to take him by surprise.”

Give Yourself a Goal

Once you have something to work off, start asking yourself questions about the conflict, climax, character goals, etc etc. Start working on getting your plot some direction, goals, and structure.

EXAMPLE: “So I know the conflict is this guy running from and outwitting Death, but what’s the climax? Where does that lead? Maybe he has to work WITH Death for some reason? Maybe he meets someone who needs to die by the end of the story? I feel like I want the main character to have to die in the end, but he has accepted it, and is ready to let it happen. Oh, maybe he meets someone who is going to die for some untimely reason, like they weren’t supposed to, and he has to give that person his coin to save them? Like, maybe he meets this woman, and while he’s in Limbo with Death, handing over his coin and getting out of dying for the millionth time, Death suddenly feels... like, a disturbance in the force. Something has happened that wasn’t supposed to, someone’s fate has been changed. Maybe Death pulls out this hourglass and sees that someone’s hourglass has suddenly lost a huge amount of sand at once--not supposed to happen. Death go,es there, bring MC for some reason? MC meets the woman, maybe she’s a Queen or leader of a group or country, and someone is planning to assassinate her. Death has a lot of work to do obviously, but can’t have this kind of reality-altering nonsense going on, so partly out of spite, he tells the MC to fix whatever has gone wrong and protect this woman, and he (Death) will stop trying to kill MC all the time. So then it becomes this political intrigue thing.”

Inevitable Changes

Do you see what happened up there in my example? Originally, I’d started out with an idea that the main conflict was between the Main Character (MC) and Death, and that the main antagonist was, more or less, Death. But now I have this completely different main antagonist, some shadowy assassin, and Death and my MC are forced to become allies. Things change as you work and come up with new ideas--and sometimes, you might follow a thread of an idea to the end, and find out it doesn’t work after all. You may have to throw it out and start over, possibly more than once. But it also helps you avoid plot holes later, by working through them in the planning stages.

Keeping Track of it All

The biggest challenge with this method is ending up with twenty pages of rambling plot, half of which you changed or didn’t use or is just you asking yourself questions.

How I combat this is by liberal use of my word processor’s highlighter. Once I feel like I’ve hit on something I’ll use, I’ll highlight it in the document, usually according to some kind of color-coded system (e.g. yellow for plot points, orange for actual scene ideas, blue for character ideas/background/development, green for lines of dialogue I’ve just thought of, etc).

Then, once I’ve plotted out as much as I can, I’ll go back through the document, pull those highlighted bits, and put them all in their own document--et viola, I have an outline.

The beauty of this method is it allows you to plot as minimally or extensively as you like. You can use it just to get a general sense of your overall plot, or keep drilling down until you end up with a chapter-by-chapter outline.

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I have been absent from Tumblr for a while now, but some of these plotting method posts have been shared around, so I figured I ought to finish it up!

If you’ve ever participated in NaNoWriMo, you’ll have heard of “Planners” and “Pantsers”.

A Planner is someone who sits down and plots out their story to at least some meaningful degree. It might just be a rough outline hitting major plot points, or it could be a detailed, 30 page scene-by-scene, line-by-line outline.

Pantsers, on the other hand, are those brave souls that board that rickety ship held together with spit and prayers and strike out for uncharted territory, with no idea of where they are headed except a single scene, or a group of characters, or a loose concept.

I’ve been both of these people through my life, and--and this is going to upset a lot of people--and being a Planner is objectively easier. I know, I know. All you Pantsers out there are feeling personally attacked. I always felt personally attacked too when someone said that in my presence. But when I was a Pantser, I had... no finished stories. Not a single one. I had about a thousand started stories; a few chapters of a dozen different ideas that all fizzled out partway through with no real direction. Eventually, when I did follow one through to the end, the entire thing was a pretty big mess full of  pointless filler and plot holes, and required extensive rewrites I’m still working on to this day--despite the fact that I started it in 2009. Planner really does make the writing process so much easier, both to simply follow through, and to end up with a first draft you can actually work with without being intimidated by the amount of editing you’ll have to do later.

But, you say, planning a story out in detail takes all the fun out of it! All the mystery and excitement and the ability to let your world and characters develop organically without being shoehorned into pre-determined roles! 

Aaaand that’s where this plotting method comes in.

If you find yourself struggling to finish stories, or you end up with a big mushy mess full of tangent and plot holes, but you don’t want to over-plot all the fun out of the writing process, this may be a good way to strike a balance that gives your story a goal and a little more structure without boring yourself by writing what you already know is going to happen.

THE BEGINNING

You start here, obviously. This part of the story’s plotting could take form as any level of pre-planning. It could be as minimal as a single character, or you could have the entire beginning up to the inciting incident planned out. All you really have to have is somewhere to start: some characters, and a setting to let them roam in. Try to make choices you can work with later, and try to foresee elements that could leave you writing yourself into a corner later. For example, if you end up choosing a real-world historical setting, keep in mind you may end up doing a lot of research. If you start with a cast of fifteen characters, keep in mind that keeping track of that many characters can be challenging. If you have a magic system, FIGURE THAT OUT IN DETAIL. Know exactly how it works, even if it’s the softest of systems, and write the rules down, otherwise you could end up with huge plot holes later in the book that readers will 100% notice.

THE END

This is the most important part of this method. You don’t need anything else figured out going in--but you need to know how it ends, or at least where you characters end up at the climax. You need to know who or what antagonist they will be facing. It might be nice to know where the climax will take place, or why these characters end up being the ones who have to deal with it, but at minimum, you need to know the antagonist and what the antagonist is trying to do. 

An example: let’s say you’re plotting “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”. You might start with something like this:

THE BEGINNING: Four children travel through a wardrobe to a magical other land.

THE END: The climax is children with a evil witch who wants to control the magical land in a huge battle.

From there, you can fill the rest in as you write--but you know where you need to end up. You know, as you write, you need to introduce this evil witch. You need to give your characters a reason to want to fight against her, and a way to get involved with the side characters who can give them the knowledge and tools to do so. You don’t know HOW that’s going to happen, you can figure that out as you write; but you have a direction. You have a goal. You don’t even have to know how things end after the climax, you just need an ultimate location to drive your characters toward.

Just adding this single element makes a huge difference for those of you who struggle to finish what you start. Every time you reach a point where you don’t know where to do next, don’t know what your characters should do now, you can reorient yourself by your climax. “Okay,” you can say, “This is where I have them now. What is something else I need to do to make sure my characters get to this specific climax?”

Again using “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” as an example, let’s say you’ve written it through Susan, Edmund, and Lucy meeting the Beavers. Now they’ve all learned some more about the White Witch, but you’re stuck on what they should do next. 

Well, you know the ultimate goal is to get your characters in a huge battle against the witch to reclaim Narnia. So you might think, “My characters have learned about the conflict. Now I need to get them to a place where they can actually do something about it. I know--I’ll have them go to a special meeting place, and they can face all kinds of dangers getting there. And when they are there, they will meet with someone [Aslan] who can help them gather an army to battle the White Witch with.” 

And now you have somewhere for your characters to go, something for them to do, all based on knowing where they’ll need to be by the end.

Ah, plotting. As a writer, it’s either your saving grace, or the bane of your existence.

Coming out of NaNoWriMo, the distinction between “Pansters” and “Planners” is on my mind. I fall firmly into the “Planner” category--though I haven’t always. When I first started writing when I was 12 or so, I believed pantsing was the only way to go (”pantsing” is, for those of you unfamiliar with the slang, is writing a story without doing any significant planning or plotting beforehand).

Perhaps not unrelated, I never got more than a page or two into any story I ever wrote for years.

Now I don’t dare start a story unless I’ve got 90% of it plotted out in detail. But plotting is hard, and a lot of writers who are just starting out can be daunted by the task, so I thought I’d write a series of posts, one every Friday, going over a few different plotting methods in detail, hopefully turning at least one person on to a method that works for them.

In this post, I’m just going to give a quick overview of seven methods that are commonly used and/or helpful to many writers.

The Freytag Pyramid:

Developed by German novelist and playwright Gustav Freytag, the pyramid was really developed to map out the story structure of five act Greek and Shakespearean dramas, but it can often be modified and applied to short stories and novels as well.

In Freytag’s pyramid, there are five parts (acts) to a narrative:

Exposition, in which the background of characters and events that occurred prior to the plot are given; Rising Action, which is the series of events that lead up towards the greatest point of interest, or the turning point in the narrative; Climax, which isn’t the same as what other people refer to as the “climax” of a story--Freytag means the turning point that changes the protagonist’s fate; Falling Action, when the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist comes to a head (what is actually usually called the “climax” in novel writing); And Denouement, all the stuff after the Falling Action to the very last scene, in which the narrative is wrapped up for better or for worse.

The Three-Act Structure:

Similar to Freytag’s model, but this one has been developed specifically for narrative fiction. The First Act begins with exposition: the introduction of the characters and the setting. It gives the reader a sense of what “normal” is in the context of the narrative. A little ways into the First Act is the Inciting Incident, the thing that changes everything for the protagonist. The letters start coming for Harry, the Dwarves show up at Bilbo’s house. The protagonist trying to deal with this Inciting Incident leads to Plot Point A, and signals the end of the first act. Think of Plot Point A as the dramatic moment in a TV show right before the first round of commercials start (e.g. House’s first guess being wrong and the patient unexpectedly coding). The Second Act is the protag reacting to and trying to deal with Plot Point A. They don’t have the necessary skills yet however, and only continue to wind up in increasingly worse situation (this is their character arc, them gradually acquiring the skills to triumph later). The Second Act ends with Plot Point 2: the moment the protag is at their lowest. Everything that could go wrong has, and it seems as though they will never succeed, but they have to make a choice: forge ahead anyway, or give up. The Third Act commences, with the protag still trying to clean up after themselves despite the hopeless situation. They are forced to face the conflict head on in the Climax, which is the ultimate clash between the protagonist and the antagonist. One or the other comes out victorious, and the remainder of the act follows the same lines as Freytag’s Denouement, wrapping up all the loose ends.

Snowflake Method:

Developed by Randy Ingermanson, this is one that’s popular with many writers, especially because if its pick-and-choose nature in which you can skip steps, only using what works best for you. Step 1: Write a one word sentence, 15 words or less, describing in broad terms the subject of your story (”a young boy learns he is a wizard and goes to  a magical school”). Step 2: Turn one sentence into five: the first describes the set up, the next three describing the main conflicts, and the last describing the conclusion. Step 3: Write a one page summary of each main character, describing their major goals, motivation, conflicts, and epiphanies, as well summarizing the story from each of their respective points of view. Step 4: Take the five sentences from step 2 and turn each one into a paragraph, fleshing out the details of the set up, conflicts, and climax in the form of a one page synopsis. Step 5: Write one page for main characters and half a page for supporting characters describing the story from their point of view, expanding on step 3. Steps 6 through 10 continue to add more to the previous 5 steps, so I’ll skip over that for now. I’ll discuss it in more detail in the post devoted to the Snowflake Method, but you can google it to check out the other steps for yourself.

The Protagonist Fucks It Up Method:

I can’t remember where I first learned this method, so I am afraid I can’t credit the creator. It more or less plays out like the 3 Act Structure method, but with more of a character-oriented focus. An Inciting Incident occurs, which will forever change the protagonist’s life. In this event, they are passive: something has happened to them. First Reaction: the protag reacts to the inciting incident. Whatever they do, they make the situation worse. They make a new enemy, they wind up in a dangerous place, they fail in a way that leaves them with more problems than they had before. Second Reaction: the protag tries to clean up the mess they have just gotten themselves into. They, of course, fail, and wind up in even more trouble. Harry and Hermione send Norbert on his way without Malfoy getting Hagrid in trouble--but end up getting themselves and Neville detention instead. Third Reaction: In serious trouble now, the protag has a choice to make. Get the hell out of Dodge, or face the consequences of their actions, and try for one last desperate attempt at fixing everything. This leads to them confronting the antagonist and leads into the...

Climax, in which everything they have messed up comes crashing down around their head in a dramatic fashion. This is the moment in a RomCom when the main character has driven away all her friends, got into a huge seemingly irreparable fight with the love interest, and is in imminent danger of losing or has already lost her apartment/job/dog/whatever. The movie Bridesmaids is a great example of this story structure.

The Hero’s Journey:

If you were in 7th to 9th grade, you’ve probably learned about this at least once in school. This story structure can be found just about everywhere in fantasy literature, from the Odyssey to Eragon. It’s not a plotting method, but many writers have followed its structure in building their plots, and it appears in many epic myths and legends around the world. There seventeen (!) stages, so I’m going to blow through them real quick. You can google it for more info, or wait for my in-depth post about it.

The Departure (protag leaves the safety of home), which contains: The Call to Adventure (in inciting incident); Refusal of the Call (protag says “Heck no”, a la Bilbo); Meeting the Mentor (the reliable figure who coaxes the protag out and teaches them the ways of the world); Crossing the First Threshold (actually leaving home and setting out for adventure; Belly of the Whale (the protag is fully out of his element and thrust into totally new, usually dangerous, adventure). The Initiation portion of the narrative involves: The Road of Trials (a series of tests or challenges the hero faces, many of which they fail); Meeting with the Goddess (in which the hero is given an item or items that will help them in the future, see Galadriel);  The Woman as Temptress (named after the temptation of of lust knights in Arthurian tales and heroes in Greek epics often face, in which the hero faces a temptation that makes them consider abandoning their quest); Atonement with the Father/Abyss (when the hero confronts and is initiated by whatever holds power of their life and fate. See the scene with the cave on Dagobah in Star Wars for a very literal version of this); Apotheosis (the hero attains understanding, and is ready for the next more difficult part of their journey); The Ultimate Boon (the hero achieves their goal, comes out of the climax victorious). The Return consists of: Refusal of the Return (the heroes doesn’t want to go back to the way things were); The Magic Flight (the hero needs to get out of danger with the MacGuffin, e.g. Dorothy getting out of the Wicked Witch’s castle and back to the Emerald City); The Rescue From Without (other characters help the hero return, especially if the hero has been wounded); The Crossing of the Return Threshold (returning home, but retaining the knowledge and wisdom gained from the experiences of the journey); Master of the Two Worlds (the hero is now comfortable with both the inner world and outer world, in reference to both “home” and the wide world their adventure took place in, and their own inner self and everyone else); Freedom to Live (fear of death or anything else is cast off, giving the hero the freedom to live life to the fullest).

Beginning, End, and Nothing Else:

This one is nice if you’re a “plantser”, half planner, half pantser. You like to know where you’re starting from and where you want to end up, but you want everything in between to remain a mystery, and discover it as it happens.

It’s pretty straight forward: you come up with a premise, maybe a setting or a plot or some characters, or all three. Then you decide where you ultimately want the story to end up. To fall back on Harry Potter an an example (which most everyone is at least familiar with), it would look something like this: “A boy discovers he is a wizard, and goes away to a magic school. The climax is him having to face the evil wizard who killed his parents, preventing that wizard from regaining power.” It could be more detailed than that of course, the point is, you start out with only location and destination, and work out the rest as you go. This method is nice, because it automatically forces you to come up with a conflict to drive the story forward, and minimizes the likelihood that you’ll end up with a rambling, plotless story.

Stream of Consciousness Plotting:

Uuuugh I’ve put off doing a write about about this one because it’s long and I’m lazy. But one of my new year’s resolutions is to quit being such a lazy ass, so here I am. Lucky you.

Okay, THE HERO’S JOURNEY. Hero myths can be found in mythology in virtually every culture, throughout human history.Many, many many many, of these hero tales follow similar structures and deal with similar themes; so much so that Joseph Campbell eventually described the hero myth pattern in his 1949 work “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, outline the steps that are so often seen repeated in the Hero’s Journey across time and cultures.

Of course, The Hero’s Journey isn’t some universal standard for hero myths, and there are many myths that don’t follow the pattern at all, or that only encompass a few of the “steps”, or incorporate the steps in different orders. It is just that Campbell and other historians and anthropologists noticed broad degrees of similarity in themes and narrative structure that often crop up in epic tales involving heros and the supernatural.

Similar plot structures are very popular in certain genres of fiction: modern myth (obviously; though inverting the structure and themes is just as popular as following them); epic fantasy; sword-and-sorcery fantasy; some high fantasy; space operas (Star Wars is a classic example); and epic sci-fi. It also pops up in quite a bit of classic literature. Think “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens, or “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë, which involve characters suffering in a way that inspires goals and motivation, eventually going off on wild journeys where they face temptations that they must resist in order to achieve those goals; facing the “Dark Night of the Soul” where all seems lost; and finally achieving those goals and completing the hero cycle.

No quick rundown today, I’ll be jumping right into a detailed overview since there is so much to cover. You’ll notice many parallels to the Freytag pyramid, as the subject of most Greek plays are hero myths, and to the 3 Act Structure, which is itself as adaption of Freytag’s pyramid. The Hero’s Journey, however, is the most complex and detailed of the narrative structures, with seventeen (!!) parts in Campbell’s version (less in other version of the same concept, but I’ll be basing this off Campbell’s work, and leave the option to scale back, rearrange, and cut down to you). So buckle up, it’s going to be a long ride.

The Hero’s Journey

ACT I: DEPARTURE Five major plot point are found in Act 1. They are as follows: The Call to Adventure: The hero begins in a state of everyday normalcy, but receives information that calls them into the unknown. The call itself can take a while to manifest. Frodo isn’t compelled to leave the shire until almost seventy pages into the “The Fellowship of the Rings”. Other times, it can happen fairly quickly. In “The Hobbit” (which is a children’s book, while The Lord of the Rings is not), Bilbo receives his call to adventure about ten pages in. On the other hand, in Beowulf, we receive a few lines about who Beowulf is, and then the story shifts almost immediately to the situation with Grendel and Hrothgar. We, the reader (listener originally, but few people are introduced to Beowulf orally these days) travel with Hrothgar to find Beowulf and to present him with the Call, rather than the narrative starting with our hero as is the custom with many Greek Myths. The Refusal of the Call: In many (not all) hero myths, once the hero has been presented with the call, the resist. They don’t want to abandon everything and go on some crazy adventure, they are content the way things are (Bilbo). Or, perhaps, they are too frightened (Frodo), or they feel obligated to remain where they are out of duty (Luke Skywalker). Again, these plot points aren’t set in stone. Beowulf does not refuse the call when Hrothgar begs him for assistance in defeating the monster Grendel. It does, however, add interesting characterization and depth to motivations when your hero is forced into a situation they don’t want to be in. How a character deals with a situation they’ve been thrust into against their will will speak volumes on its own. Meeting the Mentor: Once the hero is embroiled in the quest, by choice or against their will, the wise, often magical, mentor will appear to help guide the hero along the way. The mentor will often give the hero tools or talismans that will aid them on their quest. This step is where you find the most variation in the ordering of these plot points. In Sailor Moon, Luna’s appearance combines “Meeting the Mentor” and “Call to Adventure” into one event. As does The Hobbit with Gandalf. In The Lord of the Rings, you could make a strong argument that Lady Galadriel serves as the Mentor if you look at the trilogy as a whole, giving the hobbits sage advice, firming their resolve to pursue the quest, and providing them with magical gifts that save their lives on more than one occasion. And she doesn’t appear until the very end of Fellowship, after Gandalf (unquestionably the Mentor in The Hobbit) has been lost. In Star Wars, Luke meets Obi Wan and receives with “magic talisman” (his lightsaber) after his Call to Adventure, but before his Refusal of the Call. The order laid out by Campbells is more often followed in classic Greek myths than in modern version of the hero’s journey, wherein the hero, such as Perseus, have already accepted and set out on their quests before their Mentor, often gods such as Hermes and Athena in the Perseus myth, makes an appearance and provide their magical gifts. Crossing the First Threshold: The hero finally leaves the world he knew before completely and utterly. He has officially left his old life behind in pursuit of his quest and, this is important, stepped into the unknown. For Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, this is when they leave Bree with Stryder (Aragorn). They’ve well and truly left the world of Hobbits behind, from that point on, no one they encounter has ever even heard of hobbits before. From that point on, the dangers they face become much more serious. Oh sure, the Black Riders pursued them in the Old Forest, but at Weathertop, their attack leaves Frodo mortally wounded. When they make it to Rivendell, it is a place of the utmost difference to the sleepy little world of the Shire they left behind. For Luke Skywalker, he gets into a spaceship and leaves his actual, physical world behind. You can’t get much more literal than that. The hero has left, the dangers are more serious than ever before, and usually, going back isn’t an option. Belly of the Whale: And this is the moment, right after Crossing the First Threshold, where things usually go tits up for the first time. If Crossing the Threshold for Frodo is leaving Bree, the Belly of the Whale is getting stabbed on Weathertop by the Nazgûl. This is the hero’s first test, their first trial. Instead of leaving their old life behind with their held held high and full of pluck, they are immediately knocked down. This is when their commitment to their quest is seriously tested for the first time, and they are forced to show their willingness to transform, change, and overcome their own weaknesses to pursue their goals. They are metaphorically “killed” by this challenge; but are reborn when they get back up, more determined to complete their quest. It is right around this point that the hero begins collecting allies (see: Han Solo and Chewbacca).

ACT II: INITIATION Act 2 has six parts. There are as follows: The Road of Trials: Of course, the hero isn’t done facing trials yet. And the Belly of the Whale is only a trial of conviction. For the rest the hero will face, they will have to be an active agent. The hero needs to change, but in order to begin their transformation from Zero to Hero (see: my second favorite song in Disney’s Hercules), they need to face a series of trials that puts them to the test, physically and emotionally. More often than not, these come in threes, and they fail one or all of them. During these trials, the hero continues collecting allies (see: Princess Leia). This takes up most of the story. Now, this is where things get weird/confusing depending on what version of the Hero’s Journey you are looking at.  Campbell’s version continues on with Meeting with the Goddess, which is like reiteration of the Mentor: a wise, powerful, often female character appears, bearing more gifts to help the hero on their way. If you look at “The Fellowship of the Ring” on it’s own (rather than as part of a whole with the next two books), this would be the meeting with Galadriel. Next, for Campbell, comes Woman as Temptress, in which a character, often female in true myths, uses lust to try to sway the hero from his quest. See Circe, who keeps Odysseus and his men on her island for years, and later, in a similar vein, the Lotus Eaters who do the same. In modern hero’s journey stories, the same idea of temptation to abandon the quest frequently appears, though at what point in the narrative varies greatly. For Frodo, it’s when he arrives as Rivendell, and the burden of the Ring is technically off his shoulders. For poor Sailor Moon, it’s literally every single time a monster appear and she just wants to abandon her duty and go back to a normal, peaceful life as a carefree teenager. For Luke, he’s briefly tempted by the power of the darkside Campbell follows with Atonement of the Father/the Abyss, which is the moment the hero must confront the thing which holds the most control or power over his life at the moment (usually facing the conflict). They must face it head on (though usually in a metaphorical way, as a lead up to preparing to confront it physically in the climax). This moment is famously represented when Luke literally gains atonement for his father and the antagonist, Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, calling him back from the darkside. Next comes Apotheosis, the moment the hero reaches a state of clarity. The ultimate challenge is coming up, and the hero knows what they must do. They have a greater understanding of the situation and of themselves. They have been made wiser by their experiences, and now, finally, they know how to use that wisdom to their advantage. This is the moment after the beloved sidekick dies tragically in the main characters arms, when the main character lies their friend gently on the ground and then rises to their feet, steely eyes with  fists clenched after shedding a single tear, and you know some serious ass is about to be kicked. See pretty much any episode of Dragon Ball Z. And now we finally have our Ultimate Boon! This is the achievement of the quest, usually in the form of a success after a dramatic climax. The antagonist is overcome, the macguffin is claimed, the throne is won, the Death Star is destroyed, the Ring is cast into the fires of Mt. Doom. And here’s the most important part of all of this, every step listed above: every single step is vital in preparing the hero for this moment. Without the challenges, successes, and failures that the hero faced before, they would not be ready or able to achieve their goal. They have learned something, gained something, or released something in every step that has shaped them into what they are by the end of their quest and made them capable of seeing it through to the end.

Now, here’s the dealio. Campbell’s “Temptress, Atonement, Apotheosis, Boon” stages are classic, but really focused on actual real mythologic heroic epics. They are based off common themes in stories that are thousands of years old, from cultures whose value and views don’t always aligned with contemporary ones. And most modern epics tend to stray pretty far from these steps, as they just don’t quite apply so neatly in our modern narratives. So if “Atonement of the Father” just doesn’t make sense in the context of your story, dont’ worry about it, here are the modern equivalents, listed by Christopher Vogler in 2007:

Tests, Allies, and Enemies: The equivalent of “The Road of Trials”. The same thing, essentially. The hero gains new allies, meets their enemies for the first time face to face, and must face a series of tests which they usually fail to “forge them in the heat of battle”, if you will. Approach to the Innermost Cave: The Hero must approach and enter the place of danger. Luke, Han, Chewbacca, and Obi Wan must sneak into the Death Star to rescue Leia. Sam and Frodo must make their way into the heart of Mordor with Golem’s aid. Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts must face Queen Beryl in her own lair. Beowulf descends in the lair of Grendel’s mother. And this is the key: the hero isn’t playing on their own home turf. The antagonist has the upperhand, this is their realm. The Ordeal: Usually the climax. The Hero must face a final, and ultimate test. They must rely on the skills and knowledge they have gained through the rest of their journey to see them through, and to achieve their quest. This is the struggle itself, Frodo being overcome by the ring on the edge of Mt. Doom; the actual process of rescuing Leia and the challenges they face in doing so; The Battle of the Five Armies. Reward/Seizing the Sword: Now we come back around to “The Ultimate Boon”. This is the hero’s moment of success. Luke, Chewy, and Han flee with Leia. The ring is cast into the mountain and Sauron is toppled. The Sorcerer’s stone is saved, Garfield gets his lasagna. The goal of the quest is achieved.

Back to Campbell’s version. Now comes: ACT III: THE RETURN The third and final act has six parts. There are as follows: The Refusal of the Return: The Hero is enlightened. He has found success, even fame. He’s a big fish now, and his old life, his old world, seems like a very small pond. Sometimes, the hero will not want to return to the way things were, and to bring his wisdom back to those he left behind. You see this most often in YA contemporary urban fantasy, in which a teenage girl is swept up in a world of magic and adventure, and, when given the option to return to her old ordinary, non-magical life at the end, she refuses, unwilling to go back. This does not always manifest. The Magic Flight: Sometimes, the moment the prize is won is a moment of extreme danger. Sometimes the hero must flee immediately, lest they be killed by an antagonist who has not been defeated. Perseus beheads Medusa, but he quite literally take a magic flight away with his boon (Medusa’s head) using the winged shoes given to him by Hermes as Medusa’s gorgon sisters come after him. Again, this scene is not present in every hero’s journey. Rescue from Without: Sometimes, the hero is in such a state that they cannot return to their old world on their own. Outside help need to come to their aid, to get them back to the world they knew. Return of the King is a great example of this. Frodo and Sam lay, exhausted and dying, on a rock surrounded by lava flow after destroying the ring. They need to be rescued by the eagles to return to a state of safety. The Crossing of the Return Threshold: But no matter how they do it, unwillingly, in a madcap flight, or with outside help, the hero must return from the world of adventure, to the everyday world. They don’t necessarily need to return to their original starting point, but they need to step out of the state of “quest”. The most important point here is that when they return, they return with all the knowledge and wisdom they have gained on their journey. At this point, they should be qualified to be the Mentor in the quest of the next generation. They should be able to become a part of ordinary life again, and maybe share their wisdom with others. The Master of Two Worlds: This is the hero actually doing just that. They have seen so much, done so much. They have lived in an ordinary, mundane world, and they have lived in one full of magic and adventure and danger. Ideally, by the end of their journey, they feel comfortable and confident in both. A young hero returns to a village where he was once an outcast, but now feels no reason to fear his old bullies as he had grown stronger and wiser. Bilbo Baggins returns to the Shire laden with treasure and bitten by the adventure bug, but lives quite comfortably in his hobbit hole writing his book in between the travels he makes. This isn’t just in reference to their physical state, thought. The hero also strikes a balance between the inner world, and the outer world. The material world, and the spiritual one. The hero is at peace with themself, is confident in themself and their abilities and knowledge. They are no longer plagued by fear, self doubt, uncertainty, even the fear of death, which they have faced and conquered. They are in control of their physical world, and their inner one. Freedom to Live: The hero has faced death. They have lost those close to them. They have nearly lost themselves. They have had to accept the fact that they may die, that they probably will die, and yet they have chosen to go forward anyways, to pursue their goals or die trying. They no longer fear death, and in that freedom of one of the most basic and deepest mortal fears, they have gained the freedom to truly live, unfettered by “what ifs”. They’ve already seen the worst, and it didn’t keep them down.

New discovery!! I have thoughts within me about plotting methods and these are those!!

It seems to me that all the classic/conventional plotting methods make a lot of assumptions that are simply not true, and I think this is the reason I’ve struggled to find a plotting method that is useful for more than just being smart-looking wallpaper while I work on my WIP. If we can acknowledge those wrong assumptions, I think this will help us adapt methods that work better for us in the future.

1. Plotting methods assume that there is, in fact, one single chain of events on one single scale that is the most important to The Story.

Here are some chains of events that are playing into each scene that are not “the plot.”

The internal progression of emotions (emotional arcs) that each character is going through

The causal chain for each and every prop/resource in the scene

The causal chain for each and every social influence that happened prior to the scene

I guess you could think of the plot as being the intersection of all of these things that we are able to reasonably pay attention to during the scene. It’s not a problem that The Plot takes precedence over all those other contributing event chains, but it is a problem if we forget those event chains are what makes up the plot. In doing this, we turn The Plot into its own isolated entity, making it much more inflexible than it should be.

If The Plot is not working, a whole plot point doesn’t necessarily need to change. There may be a causal chain for something inside the scene that needs to change instead. Same with building the plot: only following a few key causal chains could take you farther than tackling the whole Plot at once.

2. Plotting methods often put you in the mindset of building the plot in relative isolation from character and/or setting.

The plot happens because of what each of the characters’ wants and needs are. The characters’ wants and needs are often a result of social factors (the social end of worldbuilding) or practical factors (the physical end of worldbuilding.) Of course it’s harder to come up with the events if you’re trying to do so before you’ve thought through the characters’ arcs or the setting.

It’s not 100% a matter of which order to develop these things in. They can all be developed simultaneously, and I think they should be.

3. A lot of plotting methods ask you to build the plot like it’s a self-contained machine that needs to be propelled by the main character and their motivation.

In actuality, although many think the main character should very much be acting on the plot, the story should actually be driven by causal chains. A boulder fell, causing bears to flee their home, putting one in the path of the characters, causing them to climb a tree, causing the tree to fall, causing the casket that contains the magic to be unearthed, etc etc. And while the protagonist’s motivation dictates how that most important character acts during all of this, that isn’t necessarily the thing that’s forcing the story to move along.

So I guess my tl;dr is this: conventional plotting methods are not as effective as they should be because they don’t incorporate other vital story elements, most notably the characters’ arcs and the chains of events within the setting.

Ah, the “Protagonist Fucks It Up” Method.

I have to start this post that way, you see, because I’ve just realized that I started two of the three previous posts in this plotting method installment that way, so now I guess I’ve made it a pattern. Can you guess what one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer is? Yes, it’s repetition of phrases and expression, oftentimes multiple times in the same paragraph, because I immediately forget I’ve already used a sentence only a few lines before. I’m afraid all of my novels and short stories are just different arrangements of the same three sentences.

Moving on. This plotting method is really a variation of the Three Act Structure, but with a little more character agency added. If you don’t like the purely reactionary aspect of the beginning of the three act structure method for the main character, then this might be a good alternative. Here’s the quick-and-dirty (which I believe is a phrase I used in the previous post as well. Case and point.):

The Protagonist Fucks It Up Method:

I can’t remember where I first learned this method, so I am afraid I can’t credit the creator. It more or less plays out like the 3 Act Structure method, but with more of a character-oriented focus. An Inciting Incident occurs, which will forever change the protagonist’s life. In this event, they are passive: something has happened to them. First Reaction: the protag reacts to the inciting incident. Whatever they do, they make the situation worse. They make a new enemy, they wind up in a dangerous place, they fail in a way that leaves them with more problems than they had before. Second Reaction: the protag tries to clean up the mess they have just gotten themselves into. They, of course, fail, and wind up in even more trouble. Harry and Hermione send Norbert on his way without Malfoy getting Hagrid in trouble–but end up getting themselves and Neville detention instead. Third Reaction: In serious trouble now, the protag has a choice to make. Get the hell out of Dodge, or face the consequences of their actions, and try for one last desperate attempt at fixing everything. This leads to them confronting the antagonist and leads into the… Climax, in which everything they have messed up comes crashing down around their head in a dramatic fashion. This is the moment in a RomCom when the main character has driven away all her friends, got into a huge seemingly irreparable fight with the love interest, and is in imminent danger of losing or has already lost her apartment/job/dog/whatever. The movie Bridesmaids is a great example of this story structure.

Now in a little more detail. The key here is that everytime something happens, the protagonist, your main character, is proactive. They come up with a solution and take action--and in doing so, they only make their problem worse.

This type of story can be particularly emotional for readers, in either a good way or a not so good way, in watching the protagonist make attempt after attempt to improve their situation and inevitably backfire, and it’s all their own fault. This can frustrate readers, so it’s important to strike a balance between “misinformed” and “stupid” in your protag’s mistakes.

Another difference with this method is that each time the protag is faced with a conflict, they take an action that makes the situation worse and raises the stakes, thereby driving the plot forward. This method is a good one for stories of political intrigue, and a variation of it can be seen in pretty much all the Song of Ice and Fire novels. Almost every major plot point arises out of one of the characters making a choice in response to a  conflict they’ve been faced with--and that choice resulting in terrible consequences.

In my example above, I used three reactions, but you could add in any amount. Again, looking at Game of Thrones, there are about a half dozen different character arts and plot threads reaching different peaks as different times in each novel, and at any given point, each of those characters is making about five decisions that will come back to bite them in the ass later. If you personally want to go with something a bit less convoluted, stick to two of three reactions that worsen the conflict of your novel.

Before I sign off, I’ll give a couple of concrete examples of how a character is faced with a conflict, and their choices put them in a worse situation, raising the stakes. The best example I can think of is the movie Bridesmaids. Literally every single choice Kristen Wiig’s character makes makes the situation go from bad to worse. She picks a restaurant that gives everyone food poisoning. The entire flight to Vegas, while not exactly her fault, still arises from a series of choices she made rather than events happening to her outside her control (her booking a seat in economy, then taking the pills Helen offers, then having several drinks). Wiig reacts negatively to a kind gesture made by her sort-of-boyfriend and drives him away. Wiig is rude to a customer and gets fired from her job, and then gets kicked out of her apartment. She has a meltdown at the bridal shower and ends up at her lowest point with no friends, no job, no boyfriend, and it is all because of actions that she took.

Another obvious example, and a more literary one, is Bilbo’s meeting with the Trolls in “The Hobbit”. He and the dwarves are presented with a conflict: they are cold, tired, and hungry, with nothing to eat and no comfortable place to sleep. Bilbo observes the trolls, and is faces with a choice: go back to the dwarves and warn them to keep their distance, or try to steal a coin purse to prove his worth a burglar. He of course chooses the latter, and that action he takes (not a reaction, mind you--he isn’t reacting to anything that has happened to him, he is actively pursuing a goal) puts him and the dwarves in an even worse situation than they were in originally when he and they are captured by the trolls.

Now, this scene is inherently different than the next time they get into serious trouble, when the crack in the cave opens in the night and Bilbo and the Dwarves find themselves in the underground realm of the Goblins. That is an example of the protagonists reacting to conflict that has been thrust upon them. They got into this new trouble through no fault of their own, and they are merely reacting to it.

The scene with Bilbo and Golem is of another style as well: Bilbo is more proactive, taking action rather than reacting to events thrust upon him, but it ends positively. His actions solve the conflict, they have a positive outcome.

The final third of “The Hobbit”, however, more or less follows the “Protagonist Fucks It Up” method I’ve outline above, as long as you include the dwarves as our protagonists. Bilbo wakes a sleeping dragon--never a good idea at the best of times. Their ponies are chased away, their supplies lost. Then, he tries to be clever with his riddles, but accidentally gives Smaug a clue that results in the dragon wreaking havoc upon Laketown. Whoops. He and the dwarves are forced to hole themselves up at the risk of starvation in Thorin’s ancestral halls.

Eventually, the threat of the dragon is gone, but now the wood elves and the men of Laketown have come for their due. The wood elves are already their enemies, due not in small part by Thorin’s bad attitude. The dwarves refuse their demands, and under the threat of a siege, Bilbo makes another choice: he barters with his one-fourteenth share of the treasure via the Arkenstone. This choice results in his ostrication from the dwarves’ party, and the loss of his new friends.

Ah, the Snowflake Method! You’ll hear this one mentioned a lot if you’re looking for help with plotting, and it can be very helpful if you have a vague outline of an idea, but are struggling to expand upon it. However, it does involve coming up with elements like main conflicts and character motivations very early on in the plotting process, which some writers prefer to let emerge later after they’ve had the chance to actually familiarize themselves with the characters. In short, this method works for a lot of people--but not for everyone. Give it a try, but if it’s not your cup of tea, don’t worry about it. Here’s the quick and dirty:

Snowflake Method:

Developed by Randy Ingermanson, this is one that’s popular with many writers, especially because if its pick-and-choose nature in which you can skip steps, only using what works best for you. Step 1: Write a one word sentence, 15 words or less, describing in broad terms the subject of your story (”a young boy learns he is a wizard and goes to  a magical school”). Step 2: Turn one sentence into five: the first describes the set up, the next three describing the main conflicts, and the last describing the conclusion. Step 3: Write a one page summary of each main character, describing their major goals, motivation, conflicts, and epiphanies, as well summarizing the story from each of their respective points of view. Step 4: Take the five sentences from step 2 and turn each one into a paragraph, fleshing out the details of the set up, conflicts, and climax in the form of a one page synopsis. Step 5: Write one page for main characters and half a page for supporting characters describing the story from their point of view, expanding on step 3. Steps 6 through 10 continue to add more to the previous 5 steps, so I’ll skip over that for now. I’ll discuss it in more detail in the post devoted to the Snowflake Method, but you can google it to check out the other steps for yourself.

Now to expand upon it a little.

Step 1 is easy if you barely have an idea at all (“all I know is I want to write a book about a talking dog who solves mysteries”), and much harder if you already have a more in depth idea of your novel. Condensing a 150,000 word novel into a 15 word summary is hard for most writers, but it’s an important skill to have, and it does become easier with practice. This 15 word summary is frequently called an “Elevator Pitch”, the idea being that is you end up in an elevator with a big name agent, you could pitch them your novel in a single sentence (maybe three at the most) that will catch their interest. A really good Elevator Pitch covers the core element of your novel. The conflict in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the search for the stone and Harry’s eventual confrontation with Voldemort, but a large portion of the book is about Harry’s experiences at Hogwarts and learning about the Wizarding World. If you were writing a 15 broad description of The Sorcerer’s Stone using the Snowflake Method, you could either writer “a boy discovers he is a wizard and is sent to a magical school”, or “a wizard boy tries to uncover the mystery of a magical artifact before and evil wizard can”. Okay, my examples aren’t the prettiest, but you get the idea, both are accurate, succinct descriptions of the book. So if you don’t have a concrete conflict in mind to begin with, that’s fine, start with the general subject of your novel instead. Don’t get too comfy though, because figuring out your conflict comes next.

Step 2 is expanding the single sentence you just wrote into five. The first describes the set up, the next three describe the conflicts, the last describes the conclusion. Here’s an example: Original sentence: “A boy discovers he is a wizard and is sent to a magical school.” Expanded 5 Sentences: “1) An orphaned boy is raised by his ordinary aunt and uncle until his 11th birthday, when he discovers he is actually a wizard and is sent to a magical school. 2) He learns his parents were murdered by an evil wizard and his survival has made him famous, which comes with challenges from both his peers and his teachers. 3) He suspects one of his teachers is trying to steal a magical artifact for the evil wizard, and decides to investigate. 4) The evil wizard enacts his plan to steal the artifact, and the boy and his friends are forced into action themselves to save the day. 5) The boy and his friends get through a series of challenges, the boy faces the evil wizard and defeats him, saving the artifact and gaining respect and glory by winning the house cup for his bravery.” Don’t feel forced to come up with 3 conflicts, or feel limited to 3 conflicts. On the other hand, having a main conflict and two conflicts for subplots can help add a little extra depth to your story, and having too many competing conflicts can make your story muddled and confused. If you don’t have much experience with writing long novels, stick to 3 if you can until you have a good feeling for building a workable plot. Now, if you’re more of a panster, this is a good point to stop and just jump into your novel. You know how your story begins and how it ends, and you know the main conflicts to guide you, but how you will get to each point is still up to you to discover during the writing process. If you like more structure to work with, continue on. That’s the beauty of the Snowflake Method, it’s made to be picked apart, so you can use only what elements work for you, and drop those that don’t.

Step 3 shifts from plot to characters. It asks for a one page summary for each of the main characters. That’s one page total, not one page each, so just a paragraph or three, depending on how many main characters you have. Stick to main characters here (e.g. Harry, Ron, and Hermione; maybe Voldemort and Quirrell since their motivations affect the story so drastically). You really want to nail down their motivations before you start delving into secondary characters, because it’s character motivations that drive the plot. For each character, briefly describe their  major goals, motivation, conflicts, and epiphanies, as well summarizing the story from each of their respective points of view. For example: HARRY POTTER-- Goals: to find his place in the wizarding world and a place where he feels like he belongs, and to keep the Sorcerer’s Stone safe from Voldemort. Motivation: He always felt like an outsider in his life with the Durselys’ and had no friends; and he is horrified by the idea of the man who murdered his family coming back into power. Conflicts: characters like Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape make him doubt himself and feel like an outcast; and getting the Sorcerer’s Stone involves overcoming challenges related to what he has learned during his year at Hogwarts. Epiphanies: Bravery is about doing the right thing to help those you love even if your are afraid. And the summary would just be a brief summary of the your five sentences from above from Harry’s POV. Since the book is in third person limited, it would be pretty much the same as your summary--but imagine a summary of the book from Quirrell’s POV. That’s going to be a very different summary, and can help give you an idea of how Quirrell (or your own antagonist) would react to certain parts of the plot and conflicts.

Step 4 turns back to your summary. Take the five sentences from step 2 and turn each one into a paragraph, fleshing out the details of the set up, conflicts, and climax in the form of a one page synopsis. So you are turning five sentences into one page by adding in more details, going more in depth to the set up and the conflicts, a paragraph for each. This is when you (if you were writing Harry Potter) might add in that Dumbledore drops Harry off at his aunt and uncle’s after his parents are killed, and that it’s Hagrid who shows up on his 11th birthday. You would mention the characters Snape and Malfoy as being the ones who give Harry the hardest time integrating into the wizarding world. You might describe a little more exactly what Harry has to do to discover the Sorcerer’s Stone. What you won’t have are the minor subplots yet, like Norbert or Hermione and the Troll, or any Quidditch stuff. All the subplots will come later. By the end, you will have a one page synopsis that covers all the main conflicts and the climax/conclusion of your novel. This is extremely helpful to have, since many agents want to see a one page synopsis in the query letters you send them. You may end up tweaking it once the novel is actually finished since it’s quite rare that a completed novel totally reflects the outline, but hopefully all the bones will still be there.

Step 5 returns to characters. Now you’ll take your one paragraph for each main character and expand it into one page. Really go into depth here and try to get a good handle on their personalities, goals, and motivations. You want to have a clear vision of what they want, and how they would go about getting what they want. Nothing is quite as disconcerting in a novel as reading a character acting wildly out-of-character, just because the author decided they needed “A” to happen and made the character behave in a way that doesn’t align with their previous established personality to make it happen. This part, especially writing a summary of the novel from each character’s POV, can help keep that from happening before you’re knee deep in the climax and realizing that your main character’s motivation shoots a big ol’ plot hole in the life raft that is your story. This is also the part where you get more into subplots and supporting characters. You may have mentioned in step 3 that Hermione is not friends with Harry and Ron until the rescue her from a troll, and here is when you’ll really go into more detail about that, and about all the ways she specifically helps during the search for Nicholas Flamel and the Sorcerer’s Stone, as well as what she brings to the table during the climax. You’ll write about a half a page for Neville, Hagrid, Filch, and all the other supporting characters who appear to the story, and nail down their roles and motivations in relation to the plot and any subplots.

Feel free to stop here, but if you like to plot every scene down to the dialogue, continue on with steps 6 through 10. I’m going to copy the descriptions of steps 6 through 10 from the Advancedfictionwriting.com article on the Snowflake Method, which is Randy Ingermanson’s (the guy who invented the Snowfl;ake Method) own website, because he clearly does a better job of explaining it than I do, and because I have guests coming over soon and need to rush through the rest of this post. Check out the original post, it’s a good one.

“Step 6) By now, you have a solid story and several story-threads, one for each character. Now take a week and expand the one-page plot synopsis of the novel to a four-page synopsis. Basically, you will again be expanding each paragraph from step (4) into a full page. This is a lot of fun, because you are figuring out the high-level logic of the story and making strategic decisions. Here, you will definitely want to cycle back and fix things in the earlier steps as you gain insight into the story and new ideas whack you in the face.

Step 7) Take another week and expand your character descriptions into full-fledged character charts detailing everything there is to know about each character. The standard stuff such as birthdate, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. Most importantly, how will this character change by the end of the novel? This is an expansion of your work in step (3), and it will teach you a lot about your characters. You will probably go back and revise steps (1-6) as your characters become “real” to you and begin making petulant demands on the story. This is good — great fiction is character-driven. Take as much time as you need to do this, because you’re just saving time downstream. When you have finished this process, (and it may take a full month of solid effort to get here), you have most of what you need to write a proposal. If you are a published novelist, then you can write a proposal now and sell your novel before you write it. If you’re not yet published, then you’ll need to write your entire novel first before you can sell it. No, that’s not fair, but life isn’t fair and the world of fiction writing is especially unfair.

Step 8) You may or may not take a hiatus here, waiting for the book to sell. At some point, you’ve got to actually write the novel. Before you do that, there are a couple of things you can do to make that traumatic first draft easier. The first thing to do is to take that four-page synopsis and make a list of all the scenes that you’ll need to turn the story into a novel. And the easiest way to make that list is . . . with a spreadsheet.For some reason, this is scary to a lot of writers. Oh the horror. Deal with it. You learned to use a word-processor. Spreadsheets are easier. You need to make a list of scenes, and spreadsheets were invented for making lists. If you need some tutoring, buy a book. There are a thousand out there, and one of them will work for you. It should take you less than a day to learn the itty bit you need. It’ll be the most valuable day you ever spent. Do it.Make a spreadsheet detailing the scenes that emerge from your four-page plot outline. Make just one line for each scene. In one column, list the POV character. In another (wide) column, tell what happens. If you want to get fancy, add more columns that tell you how many pages you expect to write for the scene. A spreadsheet is ideal, because you can see the whole storyline at a glance, and it’s easy to move scenes around to reorder things.My spreadsheets usually wind up being over 100 lines long, one line for each scene of the novel. As I develop the story, I make new versions of my story spreadsheet. This is incredibly valuable for analyzing a story. It can take a week to make a good spreadsheet. When you are done, you can add a new column for chapter numbers and assign a chapter to each scene.

Step 9) (Optional. I don’t do this step anymore.) Switch back to your word processor and begin writing a narrative description of the story. Take each line of the spreadsheet and expand it to a multi-paragraph description of the scene. Put in any cool lines of dialogue you think of, and sketch out the essential conflict of that scene. If there’s no conflict, you’ll know it here and you should either add conflict or scrub the scene.I used to write either one or two pages per chapter, and I started each chapter on a new page. Then I just printed it all out and put it in a loose-leaf notebook, so I could easily swap chapters around later or revise chapters without messing up the others. This process usually took me a week and the end result was a massive 50-page printed document that I would revise in red ink as I wrote the first draft. All my good ideas when I woke up in the morning got hand-written in the margins of this document. This, by the way, is a rather painless way of writing that dreaded detailed synopsis that all writers seem to hate. But it’s actually fun to develop, if you have done steps (1) through (8) first. When I did this step, I never showed this synopsis to anyone, least of all to an editor — it was for me alone. I liked to think of it as the prototype first draft. Imagine writing a first draft in a week! Yes, you can do it and it’s well worth the time. But I’ll be honest, I don’t feel like I need this step anymore, so I don’t do it now.

Step 10) At this point, just sit down and start pounding out the real first draft of the novel. You will be astounded at how fast the story flies out of your fingers at this stage. I have seen writers triple their fiction writing speed overnight, while producing better quality first drafts than they usually produce on a third draft.You might think that all the creativity is chewed out of the story by this time. Well, no, not unless you overdid your analysis when you wrote your Snowflake. This is supposed to be the fun part, because there are many small-scale logic problems to work out here. How does Hero get out of that tree surrounded by alligators and rescue Heroine who’s in the burning rowboat? This is the time to figure it out! But it’s fun because you already know that the large-scale structure of the novel works. So you only have to solve a limited set of problems, and so you can write relatively fast.This stage is incredibly fun and exciting. I have heard many fiction writers complain about how hard the first draft is. Invariably, that’s because they have no clue what’s coming next. Good grief! Life is too short to write like that! There is no reason to spend 500 hours writing a wandering first draft of your novel when you can write a solid one in 150. Counting the 100 hours it takes to do the design documents, you come out way ahead in time.About midway through a first draft, I usually take a breather and fix all the broken parts of my design documents. Yes, the design documents are not perfect. That’s okay. The design documents are not fixed in concrete, they are a living set of documents that grows as you develop your novel. If you are doing your job right, at the end of the first draft you will laugh at what an amateurish piece of junk your original design documents were. And you’ll be thrilled at how deep your story has become.”

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?

Well, it’s a meeting in the middle of a badass fight scene. And I think I’d just rewatched that one where Bobbi charged into the SHIELD safehouse in Belgium and KICKED ASS. So I wanted her in there twirling her batons and ready to take everyone down, and then feeling kinda disappointed when she realises someone got there ahead of her. It’s a headcanon of mine that Bucky has been hunting down Hydra cells since he left Steve on the riverbank, trying to wipe out some of the red in his ledger. Having the two of them meet in the middle just seemed like the right play :)

9. Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

No. There rarely are with the Shorts, unless I get a few paragraphs in and go ‘you know what, this just isn’t working’.