For the longest I have wanted to become an author or a poet, just wanted to have a book published under my name. I have had ideas, but after writing a few paragraphs, I would think that I am done for the day and would come back to this tomorrow, only to find the idea a disaster the next day. Some days, I couldn't move the idea forward. Nowhere did I find someone saying write out of order, maybe in academia by my professor, but not in creative writing. God knows what crept into my mind this month and I began writing poems, just poems, with no sense and rhyme, and now I am sitting on a 150 page manuscript for a book, which I shall hopefully bring forth, Lord give me the strength, and you, dear reader, whoever you maybe, look forward to it.
Part of the issue you raise is caused by the misconception that people have as to what they think of as "Writing". Pantsers (those who like to jump right in to the 'act of writing' - putting words down on the page) use the 'act of writing' itself (i.e. creating that bad first draft) as their means to explore the things that you are exploring when you are creating your web. Your 'web method' is really just a personalized method of outlining (combined with the step just before 'outlining', which is brainstorming). Architects (those who like to have the structure planned before they engage in the 'act of writing') do their 'first draft' in the form of 'outlining' the story, i.e. coming up with the various parts of the story and then putting it in order before engaging in the 'act of writing'. Outlines don't have to look like the "formal outline" you might think of from school, with Roman numerals and subparts, etc.; outlines can look like your web, or any number of other shapes and designs. So, when you have expanded your definition of "writing" to include the period of brainstorming and outlining (let's call it development), then you are correct, most authors don't begin developing their story or novel from 'chapter one' through the 'end of the book'; Novels get developed from all kinds of different inspirations which can be at any point in the story, including scenes (like a visualization of the climax of a story), characters, setting (like a school for wizards), languages (like Tolkien), ideas, events (like the discovery of the dire wolves in GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire), etc. After the development, I would speculate that most authors then begin the 'act of writing' (putting words on the page in the form of scenes and chapters) in order, from beginning to end, but I imagine that there are many who do not; they put their novels together more like a movie director, shooting (writing) scenes they are ready for, and then stitching them together (like editing a movie) in the order that makes most sense after the 'act of writing' is done. Your video is a good reminder that development of a story can begin anywhere in the process, with any of the story elements as they come to you.
Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and I like this breakdown. Yeah, I definitely didn't invent this method. I'd like to believe I'm just bringing it back to the forefront of discussion.
Thank you for all of this--and especially for not only not bashing on pantsers, but explaining our "method." A lot of people think we're just chaotic know-nothings, but for example the first draft of my novel had over 100k words, I cut it by 30k due to adding a new major character and cutting a couple of storylines. Now, halfway through the rewrite, I'm looking at cutting another 20-25k to make room for the evolution of the new material--and boy is it fun! (Being a bit facetious on that last...😂)
I think the whole "write down every idea you have" thing is some of the best advice I've come across. I know it's old advice (I'm certain that I've heard it before, just don't remember where/when), but too often I come up with ideas that either don't merit writing down, or that I promise myself I'll remember when the time comes, and the result is that I end up writing nothing. Bad habit that I'm now realizing I need to break.
Yup, been carrying around a notepad, as well as having my laptop at the ready when I can. Even if I am feeling lazy, I write if I can. Result has been 4-5 months of (almost) daily material. I cut a lot of it, and then come back to it, and then cut it again... BUT I actually have a functioning draft emerging... so that's that.
@@TheSongBirdRainStar It would probably look batshit. At least, my notes do. Most of what I write down/type on my phone arises previous trains of thought (whether it's about the plot, the world, dialogue, etc.) and so each thing starts in the middle of the actual idea. As an aside, The Silmarillion is basically an organized version of that. I mean, it's much more complete and coherent, but it was scavenged from notebooks and other random/incomplete stuff.
You might benefit from reading James Scott Bell's "Writing Your Novel From the Middle." Also see "The Idea" by Erik Bork, and "Plot Gardening" by Chris Fox.
What a unique method and beautiful description of it. I have not heard much advice on this “organic” story structure method. I’d love to hear more about this. Are you planning future videos on it?
lol. Your book background destroys me.🤣 But I agree with this method. It's what I'm currently doing with my first book. I gave up trying to plot every detail before starting. I know my beginning, middle, ending. Just getting to those points is the harder part. And while I work on it, I'm just hopping everywhere. If I write a scene, I might stop before going forward with the next and backtrack to try to fill out some scenes that might help prop that future scene up, etc. It's been working so far. lol. If I get stuck, I just go work on another scene and come back later. It's the first draft, I can get away with some incoherence.
I personally feel a good thing to do is have a theme or message that is important for the end, think of the end, and come up with what gets you to the end and what has to happen for the ending to feel as satisfying as you want it to be.
This is similar to how I am writing my debut novel as I've discovered my best writing method. I don't do "daily" writing word counts either (I write an entire scene or chapter in one sit down and just keep doing that and quickly have the weekly word counts I need + the scenes/chapters have specific goals/purposes and it flows nicely with quick pacing). And, I edit when I want to (it often helps me fix plot issues so I can have a clearer direction in writing future scenes, saving me time/hassle/confusion/insecurity). This is similar to the Snowflake method, but I love how your version is much more free and loose. You have room to play, while also having an idea of signposts you need to hit along the way. And if you think of a cool scene, it's just plugged in where it best fits along the way (and can be moved still). Very nice!
This was a wonderful video, and this is the way I write as well. My first book was a dream in the middle of the story. I wrote it down and then started searching for images of places close to the scene in my head. From there, the story wrote itself. Inspiration doesn't always happen on a blank page. Sometimes is comes out of nowhere.
I kinda use a mix of traditional outlining and your method. I don't think they don't go together. Before I start my first draft I need an outline which guides me through the story. But to get the outline I work just like you described here. And even when I have the outline ready and start my first draft I sometimes write out of order. For the frist draft I usually tell myself that there is no right or wrong to clear my mind and silence any doubt that could hold me back. So when I wanna write the climax or the epilogue first, I do so. But I really like your approach! It is so important to show writers (especially new ones that seek help on the Internet) that you don't have to follow all the strict rules and do everything in order. Writing is art afterall and not an Ikea shelf you build using on a manual.
This is how I write. It is un-constraining and leaves possibilities endless from a natural stream of consciousness. Knitting it all (most of it) together is the other half of the fun. The bits you leave out are the notes Mozart threw away but Beethoven picked up, i.e. your sequel.
Japanese storytelling does something similar. They see stories as connecting episodes that are moving towards an outcome . You can often rearrange the episodes or remove some to make it a better story . You might have different outcome points that are twisted with new information that takes the story in a different direction. This is why alot of japanese stories can feel like a wandering in the woods . While in the west we are told to focus on goal and conflict and payoff.
This is very well put! I can't write in order to save a life. All of my story ideas sparked from somewhere in the middle. When at work, or on a walk, I get glimpses of scene ideas and I jot them down. When it's time to write, I pick the one that excites me the most and write it without thinking about the order or if it makes sense or if it will be good, etc... which ALWAYS leads to me discovering something vital about my world or merges into another scene of the book itself. I've tried writing stories in order and it completely stunts my creative flow and I get stuck somewhere around chapter 3-4. I've been writing my most recent first draft of a new story I started a few months ago and I'm already 26K words in without writing a single scene in order! Once I have them all written, I give that chapter a brief title so I know what happens in it, and then I sort them out in the order it makes sense (to see visually). Then, I can go in and write the in between scenes or the scenes that came before/after, and suddenly I have what looks to be a fuctional story.
Thank you, I love this. Very similar to what I've done without realizing I was doing it. Now I can give it a name and repeat it more easily. Much appreciated!
I heard JK Rowling in an interview say that Harry’s parents were not dead when she started writing HP on the train in the summer of 1990. It was mostly a Hodge podge of notes about a boy at a magic school, the odd world, the spells, and his friends and rivalry at school. Then her mother passed away at the end of December 1990, and the story changed totally.
Brilliant method! I've watched other Story outline videos and they've pretty much all said the same thing, the beginning will determine your end. Obviously that's how it works, but my mind doesn't always start there. I'm so happy there are other published authors who share their creative freedom methods. I struggle with the premise, but I gravitate to the climax, the conflict, you know the juicy part of the story. Also, just wanted to say how refreshing this video is. I feel the most inspired when I'm not in an anxious, stressed, mindset so the calming tone of this video really helped 😅
Thank you for sharing this. I write fan fiction sometimes, and I feel so much better about it tonight because of what you have described. I have had some great ideas, only to find that they might make a great paragraph or chapter, and then I think - so now what? It’s a relief to know that the way I naturally think isn’t strange, and your Web method gives me a different way to think about it all 🙂👍🏻
Yeah this is how I write, I’m not a perfectionist that follows my plans in order lol as long as my book has a particular theme I don’t overthink and I just keep my brainstorming ideas in connection
I've never heard of the web method! Thank you for sharing! I may have to try this!! I love the visual. I've used the Snowflake method with some success as well--starting with a sentence summing up the idea and then slowly adding on to it.
Really enjoyed your clear and well-illustrated explanation of your method of structuring a new novel. It's skin to something I've been doing, which is writing out of sequence and as I deepen my knowledge of the characters, changing my plot and the steps to the climax and all that follows. Thanks for your podcast!
I write out of order! My current WiP, I started with the inciting incident. And I basically did what you did, but the way you did it was way more orderly! Thanks so much!!!
I'm toying with a novel that started out with 2 characters that seemed so real to me. I set them aside. Another scene popped into my head and somehow it fit with my characters. So far the characters seem to run the show. Every time I set down to write this book, another scene pops out. Nothing is in order, but it all comes together and real story is coming out of this.
Great video. As you asked here are my thoughts on how to write: There are no rules. There are no genres through which craft can be objectively judged to be good or bad. You are free to write absolutely anything. You can even invent the language you write the novel in. See _Finnegan's Wake_ by James Joyce, or _Feersum Endjinn_ by Iain M. Banks, or write a novel so you have a setting for your language as in _The Lord of the Rings_ by J.R.R.Tolkein. You can write a whole novel without using a letter of the alphabet. You can make this extra difficult by avoiding all uses of the letter 'e'. George Perec did this in _A Void._ You can make it as complicated and contrived as you wish to the extent that it contains puzzles and palimpsests, or you can strive for simplicity like the writings of Italo Calvino. Science Fiction or Fantasy tend to be popular genres with new writers and in both cases stories tend to benefit from the author knowing how the world and its civilisation got the way it is at the beginning of the story. This is optional, but working on the world building that you the author need to know so you can project confidence to the reader as they suspend their disbelief and have their imagination inspired by important selective character relevant details that show the top of the iceberg and hint at the coherent world building you know, but don't bore them with the details of helps a lot here. It is also useful to appreciate that chiaroscuro technique that was used by Rembrandt: "Rembrandt used lighting effects to achieve an impression of depth. He came up with the use of a spotlight in painting - a beam of light lightens the head and shoulders of the main figure, while leaving everything else in shadow. This creates a dramatic theatrical effect. The _Man in Oriental Dress_ of 1632 is one of the first paintings where this approach was used. Here are other examples: _Portrait of Joris de Caullery, Portrait of Antonis Coopal_ and _Portrait of Philips Lucasz._ Such chiaroscuro was also used in history paintings, where the center of the composition is lit with light and the periphery with background is in shadow." Source: oldmasters.academy/old-masters-academy-art-lessons/rembrandts-visual-effects-chiaroscuro It may seem completely unrelated to writing, but I believe that by putting a spotlight on your main character and letting the light spill somewhat onto those around them and the parts of the world the main character comes in contact with you avoid an alienating info dump of everything you may be quite passionate and proud about your detailed world building. As storyteller you need to come across as confident, you don't have to paint in every detail in stark illumination, if you were to see a bad magician they would stumble through their routine and it would be cringe, but an illusionist would transcend the legerdemain to charismatically enrapture you into a suspension of disbelief, where you were momentarily fooled into thinking you were in the presence of inexplicable magic. It is also possible to write in the negative, to say what is not, or how it no longer is. To have a character wistfully remember their childhood under the old regime where people could speak their minds and there were not queues to look at bread. There. I haven't said how the authoritarian regime that is now implied to be in power controls speech, and whether it is like the Stasi of East Germany. That might not even be the main focus of the story. It could be a romance. It could be a poignant story of unrequited love. It could be black comedy. It could be about a novelist struggling to write about the human condition with a fountain pen and hiding his manuscript and writing materials beneath the floorboards during the day when he left his apartment to work in the munitions factory. I didn't even need to say that there was a war, but your imagination now fills in the potentiality for there being a war where there wasn't one before, and maybe some shred of sympathy for the regime who would be on guard for traitors undermining the war effort by writing reports they sent back to the enemy by carrier pigeon. Are there pigeons, or have they been eaten? Did they die from exhaustion due to a mad policy to keep birds off the crops? By saying what is not you at least ensure that the reader's imagination is constrained from imagining something that will later be fleshed out in a way which conflicts with their earlier assumptions about the world. You need to stimulate their imagination, but also be wary of what they could imagine wrong without your guidance through use of where you not only keep things in shadow, but assert isn't the case. I recall a novel called _Idlewild_ which was an alternative history, and the title was the old name of the JFK airport which was named after the President when he was assassinated, only in this timeline he was not assassinated, so it remained Idlewild. Less is more, and the reader engages with interesting characters and the challenges they face as the story unfolds around them to a climax, and the art will be improved by it conveying some implicit coherent underlying theme, although it doesn't need to end with a explicit traditional moral as that could seem heavy handed to modern tastes and was more a feature of older books. There may be information the characters know about their world which you don't which explains how their world is not like our own, and so if they speak some bizarre, ridiculous invented language, let's call it French, then it isn't bizarre and ridiculous to them, and a table having a gender is quite a normal concept. As a result they actually think a little differently, culturally. For example, an analysis of an established political thriller if that is the genre you intend to write inwill reveal all of the references to historical events that happened decades before the events covered by the story or its immediate framing narrative context. Same goes for _Star Wars_ fan fiction, which depending on when it is set, some understanding of the prior historical events helps, and then if you were to make your own visionary space fantasy you would do well to think about the prequels that set up the originals, just as Tolkein worked on _The Silmarillion_ before _The Hobbit_ although, _The Two Towers_ turned out better than _The Last Jedi._ You don't need to go to the trouble J.R.R. or J.K. did with their books: th-cam.com/video/3qTKRZ9qilU/w-d-xo.html - I think this is the video of her that you referred to
Continued... At some point you will have to face the realisation that you are just procrastinating, and need to stop having fun in planning out your imaginative fictional world and actually work out, I would suggest, where the story ends, and work progressively backwards constructing an outline of plot points that your characters must navigate. John Grisham only needs three sentences of outline per chapter, but he iterates what they contain a whole lot before he gets down to writing: th-cam.com/video/mGeDe1PtJOM/w-d-xo.htmlsi=MkizLz55k5Q6d3RD - John Grisham video The plot can transform them so that they are credibly changed by the climax at the end of the book, but starting off with some characters and just letting them interact like they are ants in an ant farm is unlikely to yield great results. It certainly won't easily get wrangled to a satisfying conclusion. What you are more likely to get is a simple Soap Opera that never presents an opportunity of a resolution as there are multiple parallel storylines involving each of your characters and you don't want to stop covering all of them at a point when only some of them feel like their stories are ready to be resolved. Is it going to take up the last page saying this-that-and-the-other happened to each minor character as a crude sloppy way to wrap up loose ends? If you are happy with a Soap Opera, or the TV adaptation of _Game of Thrones_ then this might be acceptable for you. It is after all your choice. What is great is if your easy to change outline leads you to an opening where your characters are efficiently introduced in a manner where their traits are economically and memorably portrayed. The larger the cast the harder it will be to remember who is who. Avoid names that are homonyms. Consider names that are unique letters of the alphabet, so your outline can just be "P and J went to the well with the bucket" rather than you having to type Peter and Jane umpteen times. By working backwards from the final chapter to the first and expanding the now fixed outline, you can have plotted the spine of the story and not get lost, or run into pacing issues, and also pants through a chapter at a time with your characters in mind, aware of the world building and what lore they would know about it and what aspects would be a mystery to them, with the Grisham outline ensuring you get to the next plot point ready to start into the following chapter as everything that needed to happen before that chapter starts has happened in this chapter, and as you go then to the previous chapter, again working backwards from the end, you are unravelling the entanglements and dramatic tension that compel your characters to face challenges that force them into character growth or degeneration that reveals more about their essential natures, and then you can even go beyond the beginning into the cultural lore they would each know and then firm up details of the world building to support that and make reminders to weave those details in to a second draft. This is where writing backwards in the first draft makes sense. It not only FORCES you to outline, but it means that when you read your book before you start your second draft you have never read it! As a result this is incredibly valuable as you spot all manner of tonal issues which you would acclimate to having written it conventionally forwards as you would be distracted by all manner of other issues and not see the wood for the trees. Developing it as a web is quite similar to this, and could well be superior if your story has a climax at its centre, rather than as I prefer at the end, where those final dramatic scenes and climax-resolution leave the reader thrilled and enthralled and wanting more and recommending to their friends how great it made them feel. Having a central climax which is then resolved by the end of the book can dissipate this engagement and feel like the tying up of loose ends. You will likely empathise with characters which have come from you as they are in some sense a part of you, or what you would imagine you would do (if you were them) in that scenario, and consequently this can inhibit you from giving them a hard time, as you end up giving yourself a hard time emotionally when you write about them in pain, even if it is not physical pain. However, without compelling drama the reader isn't engaged. No one wants to read about a couple of blissfully happy characters talking about the fine weather. Luke Skywalker is a whiny teenager who when offered the opportunity of adventure to rescue a beautiful princess held prisoner in an enemy fortress says he can't go. He is boring. People forget that. Yet a lot of people are huge fans of the character because of what he "becomes" as a result of his persistence in the face of successive failures and gradually accepting some measure of wisdom to address his character flaw of "impetuousness". The Hero's Journey in _Star Wars_ has Luke as its hero and it is a journey from normal, boring, ordinary and known into the unknown, extraordinary, exciting, and abnormal (like finding out the man you were told killed your father is your father, and the princess is your twin sister separated at birth who your murderous father will corrupt to do evil things if you don't figure out a way to stop him, which is all backstory, including the fact your father can actually revert to being a good guy like he was "before" in stories unseen that reside initially in the prequel lore episodes). I'm picking _Star Wars_ here as I feel they will be familiar examples to illustrate how not to wrap up loose ends. The same applies in the negative to the main character arc in _Game of Thrones._ Having mad Daenerys with the silhouette of the dragon wings behind her make her entrance and tell her troops she will be conquering everywhere else has her character degenerate from nice Danny to evil Danny over the course of the Seasons, so ending the final episode half an hour earlier would have been better than what they did with her leaving herself open to betrayal by Jon and Jon not being crisped by Drogon and Bran "having the best story", HBO were keen to give D.B.Weiss and David Benioff ten episodes in Season 7 and 8, but they rushed it, so Daenerys' slow descent into paranoia and vengefulness over Missandei's murder wasn't credible for some of the audience, and many thought Daenerys "wouldn't do that" or the inhabitants of King's Landing didn't deserve their fate, when the entire series has wiped out main characters you had every reason to think would continue to feature in the story, which is what made the Red Wedding so shocking, as it was as if George Lucas had Vader decapitate Luke in _Episode V_ rather than just cut his hand off, so there is nothing wrong with "mad Danny" _per se_ it is just that Season 8 needed to have four more episodes, to sell this degenerative character arc), or how to hold back the reveal of important parts of a character's foundational backstory to make them seem an ordinary relatable everyman like yourself, then once you are empathetic toward them, pay off on the set up in the scene where the lightsaber is first ignited in _Star Wars_ and Obi Wan's weaves a fiction which is true from a certain point of view.
I started with an idea, and explored it adding characters and settings to that idea. Then put it all together in a scene. It was a slice of life, my protagonist normal everyday routine before everything falls apart and launches the story. Then worked out in all directions from there I just sort of randomly went all over the plays, adding ideas or characters or settings or scenes and then adding what other elements required depending on which one I had started with. Eventually I created a chronology and started deciding where my sets of idea-characters- settings-scenes fit on the chronology. This helped me decide which sets I should leave as they are, put them on the chronology and forget about them. So I can concentrate on the sets that were most important to my story with centered around the original scene, and how to integrate it. Refining each of the sets by, why are the characters here why are they behaving as they are what was the path to it who is it besides the characters that needed to be part of that path. I've written in the context of school and church, and never gotten a bad review, unfortunately. I'm now launching on something that very well may be for public consumption, like professional, without ever having been properly criticized. Well, I'll see how it goes.
Of the 6 novels I've written so far all but one were written out of sequence and I did that before reading James Schott Bell's book, Writing From the Middle. Some of my books were well plotted while others were plotted on one sheet of paper. Knowing how structure works is the key to threading it all together. My upcoming NF was done the same way and organized later. Most of the short stories in my anthologies were not done out of sequence--different animal.
Not only can stories be written out of order; they can be told out of order. Two of my favorites are Pulp Fiction and Robert A. Heinlein’s All You Zombies (faithfully retold in the movie Predestination). I got your book on writing and look forward to reading it.
Two years ago I did the web method with my chapter. I just wrote whatever I thought should happen and always asked questions on positive or negative next? I asked so many questions about the characters and how things affected them. And I had a specific goal in mind for the chapter. Eventually, I put all the pieces together. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!
This is exactly how I think and create. Thank you for validating my natural uneducated method. I’m working on a novel as a new writer, and though there’s tons of good advice on TH-cam, it has all become rather overwhelming. I didn’t realize how badly I needed to know that someone else does what I do. 🙂
I clicked because I thought it was super funny that you used the Tree of Life from Jewish mysticism in your thumbnail, but then I was not disappointed! You used it really well to illustrate how your plot points should be connected to produce a logical ending, not just a series of rising and falling action. I usually start by picturing a beginning and end, maybe some scenes in-between, and then think about how the two can be connected. I don't start a story if I can't see the ending scene. That's not necessarily, "oh, I know exactly how the plot threads will be unwound in the end," but rather an image to close the book on.
Yes! I've written quite a few novels in chronological order, and they were all really bad. I always struggled to get my story to be long enough to be a full novel, the middle always dragged and it was really hard for me to transition from one event to the next. I just kind of gave up, and assumed that all my stories were going to be really bad and amateur-ish. Then for the first time, I tried writing my most recent novel in non-linear order, and it's going great! It's super easy to expand the story, in fact, the story I'm writing has gotten too big and now I need to divide it up into a few books. Every event naturally flows from one to the next, the story is balanced and the pacing is good too. I really wonder why it took me so long to try this method?
Great observations. You are logical and inquisitive. Thank you for sharing your ideas and observations. I’ll definitely check out your book. Good job! Subscribed.
Writing fiction is all about bringing an idea to fruition. Your outline should serve your ideas, not the other way around. Although I rely on outlining because I can't wing it, I try my best to avoid rigidity and keep my options open as much as possible. When starting with the initial idea(s), I write it down in its entirety and brainstorm several possible extensions of it, in terms of plot, character, worldbuilding, and theme. Consuming fiction and non-fiction really helps here. It can take a while to gather interesting ideas, but there's no point in forcing details that you don't want to write about. I just keep drawing from the creative well until I have enough interesting puzzle pieces to make a basic framework of story aspects. When I'm worldbuilding, developing a character, or whatever, less is more. Adding details constrains your creative vision, making it harder to adjust and harder to avoid inconsistencies. For every idea that I put down, I brainstorm multiple possible extensions and contexts for it, and they grow like plants putting out roots. When I can't extend that idea any more, I jump to a different idea and repeat. I prune the options that are boring, don't fit well, or clash with the other ideas. Over time, commonalities and internal structure emerge, and I start to see how I could fit some ideas into a plot thread, character arc, etc. Although I have a vision for my story, not much is set in stone at this point, so I just gather a bunch of ideas and arrange them how I see fit. It's time to start making specific decisions about how I want the story to be, and transition to full-on outlining. As I assemble my outline, there are a lot of pieces missing to make a complete character arc, story arc, setting, etc. I refer to a guide on that specific thing (ex.: a character arc) to fit my ideas onto that framework and see what I'm missing. Some details are straightforward to fill in, but others are still unclear, so I leave them blank unless I have some good options to write down. The story skeleton is being filled in, so there's less brainstorming and more connect-the-dots with the already-set details of the story. It's tricky for me to keep everything harmonious and avoid plot holes, but careful strategy and editing can take care of that. Plus, I still have a lot of options left from my brainstorming. By the time the outline is finished, I can focus on writing prose without worrying about losing steam or running into a dead end. There are only minor details that need changing, so the subsequent rounds of editing are just about improving the prose. I haven't actually made it to this point in any of my story drafts yet, but I expect that I won't need to do any major rewrites if I follow this method. It's strange that you're the only writer I've seen that has explicitly detailed an organic writing process like this, but I suspect that it's actually fairly common, if not quite the same as my version. Are there any more tips and tricks that I should be aware of? I feel that this can be polished into a powerful writing method that emphasizes both creativity and efficiency.
Very useful; it's seemingly straightforward advice, but I think we are so often daunted by the idea of having to create all of the setting before, instead of just following the white rabbit and then figure the rest out. I'm gonna keep this in mind for the story I''m working on!
i used kinda same method for my webtoon outline. I used Miro board and put various events that i wanted to have on a virtual sticky notes and started to add more sticky notes to fill up the gaps and connect them. I liked this metod because miro also allows to add images and hyperlinks and connections to some random dialogues samples etc.
Very cool. I was fascinated by your screwy warped bookcase (until I realized it was a cloth backdrop. Sue me-I was distracted by this really pretty girl in front of it). I have a story that's similar, yet different. I'd prepared my whole life to be a writer yet never had a desire to be one (!), until one day I tried it as a lark and discovered it was the most fun I'd ever had with my pants on. I was retired, so I wrote for 11 hours a day, and 12 days later I had 60,000 words (most of which have been replaced) which all seemed to fit into a single story. I had no idea that could ever happen. It was like a dam burst. So I kept writing, maybe 7 hours a day. Scenes were surprisingly easy for me. Ideas just kept coming, and from where, I have no idea. 14 months later I had the entire framework of the story written, a giant stack of completed scenes. I naively assumed they would just butt up together in the timeline like a row of dominoes, even though I wrote them out of order, like you recommend. But then-uh-oh-I realized that was not going to be the best way to structure things, and I also realized I had no idea how to structure things, so that became my chief goal that I worked on the hardest for the next 7 years. I did kind of 'start at the beginning', but not really. I was all over the place. If I had an idea, I just banged it out right then, regardless where it fell on the timeline. I started life as a total pantser, having no idea where I was going, and turned into a 'reverse plotter', meaning all the plotting happens after the fact, after the drafting. No Scrivener corkboard, no lists, no outlines (but lots of spreadsheets). I didn't imagine it would become a novel for an entire year. I had no idea it ever would. That was not my original goal. And it eventually became a trilogy, and is not my only novel. How in the world could that have ever happened when it was something I'd never dreamed of doing? So out of order works. I can't imagine trying to write any other way. Noted great author and teacher James Scott Bell has a book entitled 'Write from the Middle', which is a similar philosophy. Check it out. The guy's brilliant. There are people who recommend writing the ending then writing backward toward the beginning. There are people who recommend reading what you write paragraph by paragraph in reverse as a form of editing. Do any of those work? Maybe. I ignored everyone and just did what felt right. All I know is what worked for me, and writing a story in chronological order is not what worked for me.
I kind of combine this method with a basic bullet point outline. So, like you, when I get an idea I write that the scene down on paper before typing it up and saving it on my laptop in its own folder. Then, I will wait 24-48 hours and sit on the scene. After that timeframe goes by, I plot out scene by scene. Once I have 6-8 major scenes plotted out, I print them off and lay them out in whatever makes the most logical sense chronologically. For my "true" outline, I will create bullet points of what I feel should happen in between the scenes I fleshed out. Finally, I am ready to draft and will use the bullet points to connect the dots. These are never things that HAVE to go in the story, simply because as I write so many things like to change on me. 😅
I use a similar method, I start at the ending or climax, jotting down notes, and asking myself who are everyone and why are they there. I try to unravel everything all the way down to the beginings for every character or plotline. And I always try to write down every idea I have, regardless of whether I end up using it
This method is prolly one that is accidentally being used a lot without being aware of. For the experts, they are usually hired or told to do something, but for amateurs, teenagers, they usually do stuff with passion, meaning they always have some sort of inspiration to go with at the start of their writing which leads to the climax being the one first appear in their mind most of the times. With that, it can be seen that it is very tempting to use this method as it is so convenient and inspiring. That's why i think people are using it, just without really knowing it. And so do i.
The Web Method is a fascinating idea! I'm currently in the last 20% of my novel, but I'm going to try it for that remaining part. Question: when building the event web, how do you handle events that have multiple cause/effect links? You rapidly run out of linking options when limited to two dimensions. What you have is an organically-grown (i.e. not top-down) causal flow chart. Like in a programming flow chart, or a warehouse-operations work-flow flow chart. When a program command or a task impacts another command or task on the other side of the flowchart, the old standby is always a set of labeled "connecter-dots." But using these, I think, makes "grokking" the overall work more difficult. But avoiding connecting dots necessarily molds the outline into a more linear storyline, which may not be where you want to go. Thoughts?
I should certainly expand on this in a part two video. As for the general answer to your question: if an event has multiple cause/effect links, I will usually put a note in red saying where those links are, instead of visually representing them. Maybe I will make an improved version of the web method outline. This one is very general.
Not going to lie, that title made me chuckle. Not many secrets to writing a book that no one is talking about. Most of us have that down to a fine art.
I have a question: I’ve run into the issue of starting a notebook of notes, writing an initial spark idea, losing the notebook, buying a notebook, writing an initial spark idea, losing the note book… then I find the MULTIPLE notebooks with the same initial spark in each one… is there a way to make those multiple “initial spark idea” notes come together into something more productive than “I just wrote the same thing and thus was not productive”?
Are they all the same idea? If so, the best advice I can give is to keep the notebook, so you don't write the same thing over and over (or keep a log of what you've written). If they're all different ideas, I've been there. I used to get really excited about an idea, write it for a little bit, and then get bored. The way I combat that is simple: when I have a new idea, I don't try to write it immediately. I put down the basics somewhere, and if I'm still interested in it in a month, most likely I'll be able to see it through.
Another good example of this is Ender's Game. Orson Scott Card wrote the short story about the Battle Room, the zero-g laser-tag game that Ender dominates. It was only after the success of that short story that he fleshed it out into a full novel.
*Inspiration:* On her DVD "Live at Brixton Academy" Dido tells a story before singing "Sand in My Shoes". While that performance of the song is on YT, the story has been omitted. Other live performances available here have a story, but not that story. She simply says the song is about a vacation affair, and that when the vacation is over you never see that person again. However the lyrics of the song speak of longing to reconnect. On the "Brixton Academy" DVD she says this: “Whenever I get home from holiday I always convince myself, for about twenty-four hours, that I could in fact marry a sailor, work in a bar, and live on an island. And it lasts-but not long. This song is about that time before said sailor turns up, in marbled jeans, on my doorstep. Which is not good. It’s called ‘Sand In My Shoes’.” I though, "Hey, wait a minute. There's a novel in there!" And so I started thinking of how _I_ might write that story. Since my last project was multiple POV, I'd do this as a single first-person POV telling. Intrigued by Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat" and Jessica Brody's "Save the Cat Writes a Novel" I thought I'd give that specific story structure a shot. I open with Protag leaving her vacation bungalow, her sleeping lover, and returning to London. There are scenes that show her present life, lack-luster boyfriend, etc. Is there enough motivation to change her life? Then vacation Lover shows up, followed a day later by his Sister to "rescue" her crazy brother---never before has he shown more than a passing interest in any tourist. Through overheard whispered arguments Protag learns Lover and his Sister have a superpower, and he followed Protag across the Atlantic because he has detected that superpower in her. According to Snyder that makes my genre a super-hero story. Protag discovers they have a superpower, learn to use it, something happens, they use their new superpower to save the day. Also, I discovered that when Lover shows up in his marbled jeans, that is only half-way through Act I (the 1/8 point in the story). I have a ton of story creation to flesh this out. *Act I* ends with the overheard argument between Lover and his Sister. *Act IIa* then becomes "Fun and Games" where Protag (with help of Lover, his Sister, and Protag's Mother (who also has this superpower, but had been hiding it)) learns to use her new power. Lover and Sister cannot stay in England long, so at the end of *Act IIa* they return Central America (home) and Protag returns to her job in London. She has a lot to think about. *Act IIb* opens with old Boyfriend confronting Protag (he's seen Lover and his Sister, but assumed they were a couple). Boyfriend wants to spend more time with Protag, but she's not interested. Bad things happen, Protag performs a self-rescue, and discovers Boyfriend was behind the badness. He'd planned to swoop in, "save" Protag, and win her back. But things have gone wrong so she saves his life, but at the cost of revealing her superpower to him. *Act III* Boyfriend is shocked and disgusted. He imprisons Protag, with plans to sell her life to the highest bidder. In Snyder's outline (adapted for the novel by Brody) there's a big section in *Act III* called "Finale". Digging into "Finale" we discover sub-sections: "Gathering the Troops", "Executing the Plan", "High Tower Surprise", "Dig Deep Down", and "Executing the New Plan." Since Protag is completely helpless (Boyfriend is _not_ careless) she needs a team. Sister learns of Boyfriend's evil idea, recruits Lover and Mother, and the three of them show up to do battle and save Protag. Except this story is Protag's POV and she is clueless any of this is happening. *So I turned these sub-plot-points around.* "Gathering the Troops", "Executing the Plan", and "High Tower Surprise" is all on Boyfriend. It's he who gathers the troops (murders who bid on Protag's life). It's he who sets the plan in motion. And finally the surprise is not Protag's team entering the villain's lair being surprised by some trap, but Sister's team dropping in on the villains' murder party and taking out bad guys. *TL;DR* An account of my first attempt to use Blake Snyder's beat sheet to plan my story. How it helped me recognize what kind of story I was writing, fill in plot holes, and how I had to flip sections of *Act III* to make it fit my story.
Outlining exists to capture and order all the ideas you are having or fragments you have already written. It also helps you to imagine the connections between the parts, how things got there. I think this method you are showing is basically what most people intinctively do when writting. Its not the same as structure, though.
I've had some fun trying to write from start to finish, but I inevitably end up skipping around and writing down interesting scenes that I want to have happen. Whether or not they're major plot points (if they are I type them in the manuscript, and if not I just write them on paper to worry about later), they give me goal posts to write towards to keep my story on track. Otherwise my plot would just wander about with no clear aim.
I've been trying to get my first book off the ground, but I just can't seem to come up with a satisfying climax. I've got the start sorted though. Wondering if there are any other good midpoints I could branch from with a story that doesn't so much climax as flow.
What I heard about J K Rowling is that she came up with the idea on a train and didn't have anything to write with. So she just had to think about it. She had 4 hours to think up a bunch of ideas. King Kong started out as the scene where Kong fights the T-Rex. It was just a test scene. So they just added scenes till they had a whole movie. Yeah that's how a lot of authors work. They Build the middle then work out the beginning leading up to it. then they let the characters take over to create the ending. It's probably good to write down ideas for the ending all the way through though. Also if you start with the middle you don't have to worry about a saggy middle. Especially if you come up with an exciting scene. You might as well, It's sort of the exciting scene that makes it a story. Quentin Tarantino and Clifford D. Simak use this technique.
Thank you so much! I may be in love with your brain (I don't say this lightly 😂) This method just makes so much sense, tackle the beginning once you're in the flow. It's like how you should never start a sketchbook on the first page, always come back to it. Please excuse my life affirming Aha moment, thank you! (I need to breathe into a paper-bag... damn 🤯😶🌫)
I’m both an artist and writer who is struggling to create a webcomic, but let me give you a small history lesson about artwork and comic books: Frank Frazetta was one of the most talented artists of his time, but his greatest masterpiece was the Death Dealer painting, which was so awesome that it got several novels, comic books and games based on the same painting. So I think it’s possible to do the same thing with my own storytelling, basically drawing a picture first and then writing a story around that picture. Does that make sense?
Perfectionist? Nope. Nicely logical and solving puzzles. It’s a great life skill. I want my epithet to be: She passed curious and learning. Thank you. There is advice out there for realizing there is a story behind every character before they are on the page but you audition of the web is great. It expands thinking beyond purely linear. Nice.
Usually, when I have a strong idea, the first thing I ask myself is if this is the inciting incident, the midpoint, or the climax. Then, I start making questions.
I've tried writing the most fun scenes first, but when I try to fill in the gaps, I write boring scenes that "tell" instead of "showing." I also have scenes that may be condemned to the cutting room floor because I took the story in a different direction. Last month, I started a new project, and tried to write it (mostly) in order. I think it went better. I still have a lot to fix, but only one scene that I'll probably have to re-write entirely.
I always create my stories from the middle or the end, too, and all those authors' success seem to confirm that's a good idea but I wonder, isn't it what literally every author does? Do we know of authors who started from the very beginning and failed? Or any authors who started from the beginning for that matter?
You might need to straighten your bookcase 😬Good advice and very true (at least for some). You can start a story from one idea and then flesh it out, but it should not be your only idea, or the whole story hinges on that one idea which might not hold water. I have had many ideas that flounder in the unfinished drawer, but I still think it's the best way to write for me. To just go with the flow and not edit it too much, as this hampers the creativity (like nitpicking the sentences/grammar/typos).
This is exactly how I write. Discovery writing. Way more creative and exciting than plotting a story. But one does need an intrinsic understanding of plot structure lurking in the background.
You start from the point of inspiration--which may, in fact, occur at the beginning of the story. The creative mind is too wild to pin it down to a formula.
i didnt really follow what i was taught in school ,i just have this random story i want submerged into my main story, so i set it apart for later, i dont know how my brain does it, i end up writing something where i can fit that random story i thought of months ago
I was writing out of order, some idiot prayed for me to stop, and I got too much stress to get on with my novel. A fan fic on Susan Pevensie. Probably the most ambitious Susan fic to this date.
It's easy to write a book that no one is talking about. Read every writing advice book, watch every writing video on every famous internet video website and then write your book. Rewrite it, then rewrite it again. Even if you're lucky enough to be published traditionally, people still won't be talking about it. Write because you love it and write in your own voice, in your own way. Learn all of the rules, and then, for the love of all creativity, discard them and write what you want in your own way.
This sounds awkward. I JUST got down contemplating that I write a scene based on what wrote for the previous scene, and how crazy it would be to write a scene without writing the previous scene to use as a basis for the current scene. Otherwise, think I will be doomed to rewrite and redo things as nauseum. I think if I write a story out of order, I will constantly be writing scenes that are like square pegs, and no scenes will be round holes to put them in. The scenes won't fit together. I think I would struggle and hate what I'm doing. For me, part of the enjoyment of writing is finding out what happens next as I write it. Writing the story in order is about exploration and discover. Sometimes I have to stop and brainstorm and analyze what I'm doing. For hours. But when I have a breakthrough, it feels like an accomplishment! Further, I think If I don't write scenes in order, I will never have a sense of "this part is done!" because I know I will have to come back later and threat some kind of needle and stick two scenes together. And I am not confident about writing a glue scene to stick two other scenes together.
How weird, the project I'm working on is formed as a series of scenes I envisioned and then trying to write the links that join those key scenes. On top of that the whole thing started with notes and stories about a created mythology and then wondering what the world that lived with that mythology would be like. Seemed to me like a terrible way to write but maybe its not so bad afterall and I should get back to it (I seriously slacked off on the writing when Covid hit and disrupted my life routine)
I couldn't do that. River of time has one direction, just like letters and words that make this sentence. I could write a prequel, but it is a different story just like a sequel. At the start I don't know what will happen in the climax, which of my characters will survive that long - although I know more than them, because I know everything about their present and they have only limited perception. Just like 2d people are amusing 3d people with their limited perception. Just like 3d people are amusing 4d people with their limited perception.
Someone said something like, "Readers start a book at the beginning and go on to the end. Writers start in the middle and fight their way out."
Yay! Like minded. I am fighting my way out.
For the longest I have wanted to become an author or a poet, just wanted to have a book published under my name. I have had ideas, but after writing a few paragraphs, I would think that I am done for the day and would come back to this tomorrow, only to find the idea a disaster the next day. Some days, I couldn't move the idea forward. Nowhere did I find someone saying write out of order, maybe in academia by my professor, but not in creative writing. God knows what crept into my mind this month and I began writing poems, just poems, with no sense and rhyme, and now I am sitting on a 150 page manuscript for a book, which I shall hopefully bring forth, Lord give me the strength, and you, dear reader, whoever you maybe, look forward to it.
This is wonderful to hear. Congrats on that breakthrough!
Part of the issue you raise is caused by the misconception that people have as to what they think of as "Writing". Pantsers (those who like to jump right in to the 'act of writing' - putting words down on the page) use the 'act of writing' itself (i.e. creating that bad first draft) as their means to explore the things that you are exploring when you are creating your web. Your 'web method' is really just a personalized method of outlining (combined with the step just before 'outlining', which is brainstorming). Architects (those who like to have the structure planned before they engage in the 'act of writing') do their 'first draft' in the form of 'outlining' the story, i.e. coming up with the various parts of the story and then putting it in order before engaging in the 'act of writing'. Outlines don't have to look like the "formal outline" you might think of from school, with Roman numerals and subparts, etc.; outlines can look like your web, or any number of other shapes and designs. So, when you have expanded your definition of "writing" to include the period of brainstorming and outlining (let's call it development), then you are correct, most authors don't begin developing their story or novel from 'chapter one' through the 'end of the book'; Novels get developed from all kinds of different inspirations which can be at any point in the story, including scenes (like a visualization of the climax of a story), characters, setting (like a school for wizards), languages (like Tolkien), ideas, events (like the discovery of the dire wolves in GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire), etc. After the development, I would speculate that most authors then begin the 'act of writing' (putting words on the page in the form of scenes and chapters) in order, from beginning to end, but I imagine that there are many who do not; they put their novels together more like a movie director, shooting (writing) scenes they are ready for, and then stitching them together (like editing a movie) in the order that makes most sense after the 'act of writing' is done. Your video is a good reminder that development of a story can begin anywhere in the process, with any of the story elements as they come to you.
Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and I like this breakdown. Yeah, I definitely didn't invent this method. I'd like to believe I'm just bringing it back to the forefront of discussion.
Thank you for all of this--and especially for not only not bashing on pantsers, but explaining our "method." A lot of people think we're just chaotic know-nothings, but for example the first draft of my novel had over 100k words, I cut it by 30k due to adding a new major character and cutting a couple of storylines. Now, halfway through the rewrite, I'm looking at cutting another 20-25k to make room for the evolution of the new material--and boy is it fun! (Being a bit facetious on that last...😂)
I think the whole "write down every idea you have" thing is some of the best advice I've come across. I know it's old advice (I'm certain that I've heard it before, just don't remember where/when), but too often I come up with ideas that either don't merit writing down, or that I promise myself I'll remember when the time comes, and the result is that I end up writing nothing. Bad habit that I'm now realizing I need to break.
Yup, been carrying around a notepad, as well as having my laptop at the ready when I can. Even if I am feeling lazy, I write if I can.
Result has been 4-5 months of (almost) daily material. I cut a lot of it, and then come back to it, and then cut it again... BUT I actually have a functioning draft emerging... so that's that.
I've been carrying a notepad since forever cuz my head keep giving me ideas when I least expected. I never know that's a method for writing😂
I wish I could view the notebooks of a person who actively does this.
@@TheSongBirdRainStar It would probably look batshit. At least, my notes do. Most of what I write down/type on my phone arises previous trains of thought (whether it's about the plot, the world, dialogue, etc.) and so each thing starts in the middle of the actual idea.
As an aside, The Silmarillion is basically an organized version of that. I mean, it's much more complete and coherent, but it was scavenged from notebooks and other random/incomplete stuff.
You might benefit from reading James Scott Bell's "Writing Your Novel From the Middle." Also see "The Idea" by Erik Bork, and "Plot Gardening" by Chris Fox.
"plot gardening" really speaks to me! Plant your scenes, some grow, prune some, pull some weeds...
@@stevecarter8810 Go for it! IT is a good book and not too expensive.
This is great, this is how I've always written my stories. I have clear wonderful scenes in my head and then try to get to them haha
What a unique method and beautiful description of it. I have not heard much advice on this “organic” story structure method. I’d love to hear more about this. Are you planning future videos on it?
I certainly am. People really seem to like this one, and I do love talking about it.
lol. Your book background destroys me.🤣
But I agree with this method. It's what I'm currently doing with my first book. I gave up trying to plot every detail before starting. I know my beginning, middle, ending. Just getting to those points is the harder part. And while I work on it, I'm just hopping everywhere. If I write a scene, I might stop before going forward with the next and backtrack to try to fill out some scenes that might help prop that future scene up, etc. It's been working so far. lol. If I get stuck, I just go work on another scene and come back later. It's the first draft, I can get away with some incoherence.
Thank you for posting this video, I've been wondering how to write this way.
I personally feel a good thing to do is have a theme or message that is important for the end, think of the end, and come up with what gets you to the end and what has to happen for the ending to feel as satisfying as you want it to be.
This is similar to how I am writing my debut novel as I've discovered my best writing method. I don't do "daily" writing word counts either (I write an entire scene or chapter in one sit down and just keep doing that and quickly have the weekly word counts I need + the scenes/chapters have specific goals/purposes and it flows nicely with quick pacing). And, I edit when I want to (it often helps me fix plot issues so I can have a clearer direction in writing future scenes, saving me time/hassle/confusion/insecurity). This is similar to the Snowflake method, but I love how your version is much more free and loose. You have room to play, while also having an idea of signposts you need to hit along the way. And if you think of a cool scene, it's just plugged in where it best fits along the way (and can be moved still). Very nice!
This was a wonderful video, and this is the way I write as well. My first book was a dream in the middle of the story. I wrote it down and then started searching for images of places close to the scene in my head. From there, the story wrote itself. Inspiration doesn't always happen on a blank page. Sometimes is comes out of nowhere.
I kinda use a mix of traditional outlining and your method. I don't think they don't go together. Before I start my first draft I need an outline which guides me through the story. But to get the outline I work just like you described here. And even when I have the outline ready and start my first draft I sometimes write out of order. For the frist draft I usually tell myself that there is no right or wrong to clear my mind and silence any doubt that could hold me back. So when I wanna write the climax or the epilogue first, I do so.
But I really like your approach! It is so important to show writers (especially new ones that seek help on the Internet) that you don't have to follow all the strict rules and do everything in order. Writing is art afterall and not an Ikea shelf you build using on a manual.
This is how I write. It is un-constraining and leaves possibilities endless from a natural stream of consciousness. Knitting it all (most of it) together is the other half of the fun. The bits you leave out are the notes Mozart threw away but Beethoven picked up, i.e. your sequel.
Japanese storytelling does something similar. They see stories as connecting episodes that are moving towards an outcome .
You can often rearrange the episodes or remove some to make it a better story .
You might have different outcome points that are twisted with new information that takes the story in a different direction.
This is why alot of japanese stories can feel like a wandering in the woods .
While in the west we are told to focus on goal and conflict and payoff.
This is very well put! I can't write in order to save a life. All of my story ideas sparked from somewhere in the middle. When at work, or on a walk, I get glimpses of scene ideas and I jot them down. When it's time to write, I pick the one that excites me the most and write it without thinking about the order or if it makes sense or if it will be good, etc... which ALWAYS leads to me discovering something vital about my world or merges into another scene of the book itself. I've tried writing stories in order and it completely stunts my creative flow and I get stuck somewhere around chapter 3-4. I've been writing my most recent first draft of a new story I started a few months ago and I'm already 26K words in without writing a single scene in order! Once I have them all written, I give that chapter a brief title so I know what happens in it, and then I sort them out in the order it makes sense (to see visually). Then, I can go in and write the in between scenes or the scenes that came before/after, and suddenly I have what looks to be a fuctional story.
Thank you, I love this. Very similar to what I've done without realizing I was doing it. Now I can give it a name and repeat it more easily. Much appreciated!
That's wonderful!
I heard JK Rowling in an interview say that Harry’s parents were not dead when she started writing HP on the train in the summer of 1990. It was mostly a Hodge podge of notes about a boy at a magic school, the odd world, the spells, and his friends and rivalry at school. Then her mother passed away at the end of December 1990, and the story changed totally.
Dude, good job! 👏
Team Reulerverse 🎉
Excited to catch you so early in your YT journey. Keep sharing ❤
I sure will! Thanks for commenting. It helps a lot.
Brilliant method! I've watched other Story outline videos and they've pretty much all said the same thing, the beginning will determine your end. Obviously that's how it works, but my mind doesn't always start there. I'm so happy there are other published authors who share their creative freedom methods. I struggle with the premise, but I gravitate to the climax, the conflict, you know the juicy part of the story. Also, just wanted to say how refreshing this video is. I feel the most inspired when I'm not in an anxious, stressed, mindset so the calming tone of this video really helped 😅
I was just thinking about this the same day this video was released. I finally get a chance to watch it and it’s exactly what you’re saying .
Glad to know that! I try to deliver on my thumbnails and titles.
So simple and yet so effective. Even as I draw your web epicenter, I can see the events of my story(-ies) on the nodes
Thank you for sharing this. I write fan fiction sometimes, and I feel so much better about it tonight because of what you have described.
I have had some great ideas, only to find that they might make a great paragraph or chapter, and then I think - so now what? It’s a relief to know that the way I naturally think isn’t strange, and your Web method gives me a different way to think about it all 🙂👍🏻
Yeah this is how I write, I’m not a perfectionist that follows my plans in order lol as long as my book has a particular theme I don’t overthink and I just keep my brainstorming ideas in connection
This is Gamechanging advice ! Thank you 😊
I've never heard of the web method! Thank you for sharing! I may have to try this!! I love the visual.
I've used the Snowflake method with some success as well--starting with a sentence summing up the idea and then slowly adding on to it.
Really enjoyed your clear and well-illustrated explanation of your method of structuring a new novel. It's skin to something I've been doing, which is writing out of sequence and as I deepen my knowledge of the characters, changing my plot and the steps to the climax and all that follows. Thanks for your podcast!
please tell me there are books behind that backdrop cloth
I write out of order! My current WiP, I started with the inciting incident. And I basically did what you did, but the way you did it was way more orderly!
Thanks so much!!!
earned my sub with your effort at showing the logic to your lessons so we can pick it up. Nice one
I'm toying with a novel that started out with 2 characters that seemed so real to me. I set them aside. Another scene popped into my head and somehow it fit with my characters. So far the characters seem to run the show. Every time I set down to write this book, another scene pops out. Nothing is in order, but it all comes together and real story is coming out of this.
Thanks. I really needed this. You just brought me out of something I have been trying to come out for quite some time. Cheers
Thanks for sharing your insight on this. Hadn’t thought much about this method before. I think it could be used well in writing for video games too!
Glad it was helpful!
Great video. As you asked here are my thoughts on how to write:
There are no rules.
There are no genres through which craft can be objectively judged to be good or bad.
You are free to write absolutely anything.
You can even invent the language you write the novel in. See _Finnegan's Wake_ by James Joyce, or _Feersum Endjinn_ by Iain M. Banks, or write a novel so you have a setting for your language as in _The Lord of the Rings_ by J.R.R.Tolkein.
You can write a whole novel without using a letter of the alphabet. You can make this extra difficult by avoiding all uses of the letter 'e'. George Perec did this in _A Void._
You can make it as complicated and contrived as you wish to the extent that it contains puzzles and palimpsests, or you can strive for simplicity like the writings of Italo Calvino.
Science Fiction or Fantasy tend to be popular genres with new writers and in both cases stories tend to benefit from the author knowing how the world and its civilisation got the way it is at the beginning of the story. This is optional, but working on the world building that you the author need to know so you can project confidence to the reader as they suspend their disbelief and have their imagination inspired by important selective character relevant details that show the top of the iceberg and hint at the coherent world building you know, but don't bore them with the details of helps a lot here.
It is also useful to appreciate that chiaroscuro technique that was used by Rembrandt:
"Rembrandt used lighting effects to achieve an impression of depth. He came up with the use of a spotlight in painting - a beam of light lightens the head and shoulders of the main figure, while leaving everything else in shadow. This creates a dramatic theatrical effect. The _Man in Oriental Dress_ of 1632 is one of the first paintings where this approach was used. Here are other examples: _Portrait of Joris de Caullery, Portrait of Antonis Coopal_ and _Portrait of Philips Lucasz._ Such chiaroscuro was also used in history paintings, where the center of the composition is lit with light and the periphery with background is in shadow."
Source: oldmasters.academy/old-masters-academy-art-lessons/rembrandts-visual-effects-chiaroscuro
It may seem completely unrelated to writing, but I believe that by putting a spotlight on your main character and letting the light spill somewhat onto those around them and the parts of the world the main character comes in contact with you avoid an alienating info dump of everything you may be quite passionate and proud about your detailed world building. As storyteller you need to come across as confident, you don't have to paint in every detail in stark illumination, if you were to see a bad magician they would stumble through their routine and it would be cringe, but an illusionist would transcend the legerdemain to charismatically enrapture you into a suspension of disbelief, where you were momentarily fooled into thinking you were in the presence of inexplicable magic.
It is also possible to write in the negative, to say what is not, or how it no longer is. To have a character wistfully remember their childhood under the old regime where people could speak their minds and there were not queues to look at bread. There. I haven't said how the authoritarian regime that is now implied to be in power controls speech, and whether it is like the Stasi of East Germany. That might not even be the main focus of the story. It could be a romance. It could be a poignant story of unrequited love. It could be black comedy.
It could be about a novelist struggling to write about the human condition with a fountain pen and hiding his manuscript and writing materials beneath the floorboards during the day when he left his apartment to work in the munitions factory. I didn't even need to say that there was a war, but your imagination now fills in the potentiality for there being a war where there wasn't one before, and maybe some shred of sympathy for the regime who would be on guard for traitors undermining the war effort by writing reports they sent back to the enemy by carrier pigeon. Are there pigeons, or have they been eaten? Did they die from exhaustion due to a mad policy to keep birds off the crops?
By saying what is not you at least ensure that the reader's imagination is constrained from imagining something that will later be fleshed out in a way which conflicts with their earlier assumptions about the world. You need to stimulate their imagination, but also be wary of what they could imagine wrong without your guidance through use of where you not only keep things in shadow, but assert isn't the case. I recall a novel called _Idlewild_ which was an alternative history, and the title was the old name of the JFK airport which was named after the President when he was assassinated, only in this timeline he was not assassinated, so it remained Idlewild.
Less is more, and the reader engages with interesting characters and the challenges they face as the story unfolds around them to a climax, and the art will be improved by it conveying some implicit coherent underlying theme, although it doesn't need to end with a explicit traditional moral as that could seem heavy handed to modern tastes and was more a feature of older books. There may be information the characters know about their world which you don't which explains how their world is not like our own, and so if they speak some bizarre, ridiculous invented language, let's call it French, then it isn't bizarre and ridiculous to them, and a table having a gender is quite a normal concept. As a result they actually think a little differently, culturally.
For example, an analysis of an established political thriller if that is the genre you intend to write inwill reveal all of the references to historical events that happened decades before the events covered by the story or its immediate framing narrative context. Same goes for _Star Wars_ fan fiction, which depending on when it is set, some understanding of the prior historical events helps, and then if you were to make your own visionary space fantasy you would do well to think about the prequels that set up the originals, just as Tolkein worked on _The Silmarillion_ before _The Hobbit_ although, _The Two Towers_ turned out better than _The Last Jedi._
You don't need to go to the trouble J.R.R. or J.K. did with their books:
th-cam.com/video/3qTKRZ9qilU/w-d-xo.html - I think this is the video of her that you referred to
Continued...
At some point you will have to face the realisation that you are just procrastinating, and need to stop having fun in planning out your imaginative fictional world and actually work out, I would suggest, where the story ends, and work progressively backwards constructing an outline of plot points that your characters must navigate. John Grisham only needs three sentences of outline per chapter, but he iterates what they contain a whole lot before he gets down to writing:
th-cam.com/video/mGeDe1PtJOM/w-d-xo.htmlsi=MkizLz55k5Q6d3RD - John Grisham video
The plot can transform them so that they are credibly changed by the climax at the end of the book, but starting off with some characters and just letting them interact like they are ants in an ant farm is unlikely to yield great results. It certainly won't easily get wrangled to a satisfying conclusion. What you are more likely to get is a simple Soap Opera that never presents an opportunity of a resolution as there are multiple parallel storylines involving each of your characters and you don't want to stop covering all of them at a point when only some of them feel like their stories are ready to be resolved. Is it going to take up the last page saying this-that-and-the-other happened to each minor character as a crude sloppy way to wrap up loose ends? If you are happy with a Soap Opera, or the TV adaptation of _Game of Thrones_ then this might be acceptable for you. It is after all your choice.
What is great is if your easy to change outline leads you to an opening where your characters are efficiently introduced in a manner where their traits are economically and memorably portrayed. The larger the cast the harder it will be to remember who is who. Avoid names that are homonyms. Consider names that are unique letters of the alphabet, so your outline can just be "P and J went to the well with the bucket" rather than you having to type Peter and Jane umpteen times.
By working backwards from the final chapter to the first and expanding the now fixed outline, you can have plotted the spine of the story and not get lost, or run into pacing issues, and also pants through a chapter at a time with your characters in mind, aware of the world building and what lore they would know about it and what aspects would be a mystery to them, with the Grisham outline ensuring you get to the next plot point ready to start into the following chapter as everything that needed to happen before that chapter starts has happened in this chapter, and as you go then to the previous chapter, again working backwards from the end, you are unravelling the entanglements and dramatic tension that compel your characters to face challenges that force them into character growth or degeneration that reveals more about their essential natures, and then you can even go beyond the beginning into the cultural lore they would each know and then firm up details of the world building to support that and make reminders to weave those details in to a second draft.
This is where writing backwards in the first draft makes sense. It not only FORCES you to outline, but it means that when you read your book before you start your second draft you have never read it! As a result this is incredibly valuable as you spot all manner of tonal issues which you would acclimate to having written it conventionally forwards as you would be distracted by all manner of other issues and not see the wood for the trees. Developing it as a web is quite similar to this, and could well be superior if your story has a climax at its centre, rather than as I prefer at the end, where those final dramatic scenes and climax-resolution leave the reader thrilled and enthralled and wanting more and recommending to their friends how great it made them feel. Having a central climax which is then resolved by the end of the book can dissipate this engagement and feel like the tying up of loose ends.
You will likely empathise with characters which have come from you as they are in some sense a part of you, or what you would imagine you would do (if you were them) in that scenario, and consequently this can inhibit you from giving them a hard time, as you end up giving yourself a hard time emotionally when you write about them in pain, even if it is not physical pain. However, without compelling drama the reader isn't engaged. No one wants to read about a couple of blissfully happy characters talking about the fine weather.
Luke Skywalker is a whiny teenager who when offered the opportunity of adventure to rescue a beautiful princess held prisoner in an enemy fortress says he can't go. He is boring. People forget that. Yet a lot of people are huge fans of the character because of what he "becomes" as a result of his persistence in the face of successive failures and gradually accepting some measure of wisdom to address his character flaw of "impetuousness". The Hero's Journey in _Star Wars_ has Luke as its hero and it is a journey from normal, boring, ordinary and known into the unknown, extraordinary, exciting, and abnormal (like finding out the man you were told killed your father is your father, and the princess is your twin sister separated at birth who your murderous father will corrupt to do evil things if you don't figure out a way to stop him, which is all backstory, including the fact your father can actually revert to being a good guy like he was "before" in stories unseen that reside initially in the prequel lore episodes). I'm picking _Star Wars_ here as I feel they will be familiar examples to illustrate how not to wrap up loose ends.
The same applies in the negative to the main character arc in _Game of Thrones._ Having mad Daenerys with the silhouette of the dragon wings behind her make her entrance and tell her troops she will be conquering everywhere else has her character degenerate from nice Danny to evil Danny over the course of the Seasons, so ending the final episode half an hour earlier would have been better than what they did with her leaving herself open to betrayal by Jon and Jon not being crisped by Drogon and Bran "having the best story", HBO were keen to give D.B.Weiss and David Benioff ten episodes in Season 7 and 8, but they rushed it, so Daenerys' slow descent into paranoia and vengefulness over Missandei's murder wasn't credible for some of the audience, and many thought Daenerys "wouldn't do that" or the inhabitants of King's Landing didn't deserve their fate, when the entire series has wiped out main characters you had every reason to think would continue to feature in the story, which is what made the Red Wedding so shocking, as it was as if George Lucas had Vader decapitate Luke in _Episode V_ rather than just cut his hand off, so there is nothing wrong with "mad Danny" _per se_ it is just that Season 8 needed to have four more episodes, to sell this degenerative character arc), or how to hold back the reveal of important parts of a character's foundational backstory to make them seem an ordinary relatable everyman like yourself, then once you are empathetic toward them, pay off on the set up in the scene where the lightsaber is first ignited in _Star Wars_ and Obi Wan's weaves a fiction which is true from a certain point of view.
This is so liberating! It makes so much sense!!
I started with an idea, and explored it adding characters and settings to that idea. Then put it all together in a scene. It was a slice of life, my protagonist normal everyday routine before everything falls apart and launches the story. Then worked out in all directions from there I just sort of randomly went all over the plays, adding ideas or characters or settings or scenes and then adding what other elements required depending on which one I had started with. Eventually I created a chronology and started deciding where my sets of idea-characters- settings-scenes fit on the chronology. This helped me decide which sets I should leave as they are, put them on the chronology and forget about them. So I can concentrate on the sets that were most important to my story with centered around the original scene, and how to integrate it. Refining each of the sets by, why are the characters here why are they behaving as they are what was the path to it who is it besides the characters that needed to be part of that path.
I've written in the context of school and church, and never gotten a bad review, unfortunately. I'm now launching on something that very well may be for public consumption, like professional, without ever having been properly criticized. Well, I'll see how it goes.
Congrats! That's hard to do.
Of the 6 novels I've written so far all but one were written out of sequence and I did that before reading James Schott Bell's book, Writing From the Middle. Some of my books were well plotted while others were plotted on one sheet of paper. Knowing how structure works is the key to threading it all together. My upcoming NF was done the same way and organized later. Most of the short stories in my anthologies were not done out of sequence--different animal.
Not only can stories be written out of order; they can be told out of order. Two of my favorites are Pulp Fiction and Robert A. Heinlein’s All You Zombies (faithfully retold in the movie Predestination). I got your book on writing and look forward to reading it.
Web method. Nice!
Dots only connect later. Reminds me of a thought from Steve Jobs.
Thanks for the insight!
Two years ago I did the web method with my chapter. I just wrote whatever I thought should happen and always asked questions on positive or negative next? I asked so many questions about the characters and how things affected them. And I had a specific goal in mind for the chapter. Eventually, I put all the pieces together. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!
This is exactly how I think and create. Thank you for validating my natural uneducated method. I’m working on a novel as a new writer, and though there’s tons of good advice on TH-cam, it has all become rather overwhelming. I didn’t realize how badly I needed to know that someone else does what I do. 🙂
I clicked because I thought it was super funny that you used the Tree of Life from Jewish mysticism in your thumbnail, but then I was not disappointed! You used it really well to illustrate how your plot points should be connected to produce a logical ending, not just a series of rising and falling action. I usually start by picturing a beginning and end, maybe some scenes in-between, and then think about how the two can be connected. I don't start a story if I can't see the ending scene. That's not necessarily, "oh, I know exactly how the plot threads will be unwound in the end," but rather an image to close the book on.
Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.
THIS...this is really cool. Thank you for sharing, sincerely. I might have to try this immediately.
Yes! I've written quite a few novels in chronological order, and they were all really bad. I always struggled to get my story to be long enough to be a full novel, the middle always dragged and it was really hard for me to transition from one event to the next. I just kind of gave up, and assumed that all my stories were going to be really bad and amateur-ish. Then for the first time, I tried writing my most recent novel in non-linear order, and it's going great! It's super easy to expand the story, in fact, the story I'm writing has gotten too big and now I need to divide it up into a few books. Every event naturally flows from one to the next, the story is balanced and the pacing is good too. I really wonder why it took me so long to try this method?
Great observations. You are logical and inquisitive. Thank you for sharing your ideas and observations. I’ll definitely check out your book. Good job! Subscribed.
Writing fiction is all about bringing an idea to fruition. Your outline should serve your ideas, not the other way around. Although I rely on outlining because I can't wing it, I try my best to avoid rigidity and keep my options open as much as possible. When starting with the initial idea(s), I write it down in its entirety and brainstorm several possible extensions of it, in terms of plot, character, worldbuilding, and theme. Consuming fiction and non-fiction really helps here. It can take a while to gather interesting ideas, but there's no point in forcing details that you don't want to write about. I just keep drawing from the creative well until I have enough interesting puzzle pieces to make a basic framework of story aspects.
When I'm worldbuilding, developing a character, or whatever, less is more. Adding details constrains your creative vision, making it harder to adjust and harder to avoid inconsistencies. For every idea that I put down, I brainstorm multiple possible extensions and contexts for it, and they grow like plants putting out roots. When I can't extend that idea any more, I jump to a different idea and repeat. I prune the options that are boring, don't fit well, or clash with the other ideas. Over time, commonalities and internal structure emerge, and I start to see how I could fit some ideas into a plot thread, character arc, etc. Although I have a vision for my story, not much is set in stone at this point, so I just gather a bunch of ideas and arrange them how I see fit.
It's time to start making specific decisions about how I want the story to be, and transition to full-on outlining. As I assemble my outline, there are a lot of pieces missing to make a complete character arc, story arc, setting, etc. I refer to a guide on that specific thing (ex.: a character arc) to fit my ideas onto that framework and see what I'm missing. Some details are straightforward to fill in, but others are still unclear, so I leave them blank unless I have some good options to write down. The story skeleton is being filled in, so there's less brainstorming and more connect-the-dots with the already-set details of the story. It's tricky for me to keep everything harmonious and avoid plot holes, but careful strategy and editing can take care of that. Plus, I still have a lot of options left from my brainstorming.
By the time the outline is finished, I can focus on writing prose without worrying about losing steam or running into a dead end. There are only minor details that need changing, so the subsequent rounds of editing are just about improving the prose. I haven't actually made it to this point in any of my story drafts yet, but I expect that I won't need to do any major rewrites if I follow this method.
It's strange that you're the only writer I've seen that has explicitly detailed an organic writing process like this, but I suspect that it's actually fairly common, if not quite the same as my version. Are there any more tips and tricks that I should be aware of? I feel that this can be polished into a powerful writing method that emphasizes both creativity and efficiency.
Very useful; it's seemingly straightforward advice, but I think we are so often daunted by the idea of having to create all of the setting before, instead of just following the white rabbit and then figure the rest out. I'm gonna keep this in mind for the story I''m working on!
i used kinda same method for my webtoon outline. I used Miro board and put various events that i wanted to have on a virtual sticky notes and started to add more sticky notes to fill up the gaps and connect them. I liked this metod because miro also allows to add images and hyperlinks and connections to some random dialogues samples etc.
Thank you so much! I really needed to see this!
You are so welcome!
Using this method to write a western manga for fun, thanks for the tips!
Of course!
Very cool. I was fascinated by your screwy warped bookcase (until I realized it was a cloth backdrop. Sue me-I was distracted by this really pretty girl in front of it).
I have a story that's similar, yet different. I'd prepared my whole life to be a writer yet never had a desire to be one (!), until one day I tried it as a lark and discovered it was the most fun I'd ever had with my pants on. I was retired, so I wrote for 11 hours a day, and 12 days later I had 60,000 words (most of which have been replaced) which all seemed to fit into a single story. I had no idea that could ever happen. It was like a dam burst.
So I kept writing, maybe 7 hours a day. Scenes were surprisingly easy for me. Ideas just kept coming, and from where, I have no idea. 14 months later I had the entire framework of the story written, a giant stack of completed scenes. I naively assumed they would just butt up together in the timeline like a row of dominoes, even though I wrote them out of order, like you recommend.
But then-uh-oh-I realized that was not going to be the best way to structure things, and I also realized I had no idea how to structure things, so that became my chief goal that I worked on the hardest for the next 7 years.
I did kind of 'start at the beginning', but not really. I was all over the place. If I had an idea, I just banged it out right then, regardless where it fell on the timeline. I started life as a total pantser, having no idea where I was going, and turned into a 'reverse plotter', meaning all the plotting happens after the fact, after the drafting. No Scrivener corkboard, no lists, no outlines (but lots of spreadsheets).
I didn't imagine it would become a novel for an entire year. I had no idea it ever would. That was not my original goal. And it eventually became a trilogy, and is not my only novel. How in the world could that have ever happened when it was something I'd never dreamed of doing?
So out of order works. I can't imagine trying to write any other way. Noted great author and teacher James Scott Bell has a book entitled 'Write from the Middle', which is a similar philosophy. Check it out. The guy's brilliant. There are people who recommend writing the ending then writing backward toward the beginning. There are people who recommend reading what you write paragraph by paragraph in reverse as a form of editing.
Do any of those work? Maybe. I ignored everyone and just did what felt right. All I know is what worked for me, and writing a story in chronological order is not what worked for me.
So useful! Thank you 😊
I kind of combine this method with a basic bullet point outline. So, like you, when I get an idea I write that the scene down on paper before typing it up and saving it on my laptop in its own folder. Then, I will wait 24-48 hours and sit on the scene. After that timeframe goes by, I plot out scene by scene. Once I have 6-8 major scenes plotted out, I print them off and lay them out in whatever makes the most logical sense chronologically. For my "true" outline, I will create bullet points of what I feel should happen in between the scenes I fleshed out. Finally, I am ready to draft and will use the bullet points to connect the dots. These are never things that HAVE to go in the story, simply because as I write so many things like to change on me. 😅
I use a similar method, I start at the ending or climax, jotting down notes, and asking myself who are everyone and why are they there. I try to unravel everything all the way down to the beginings for every character or plotline. And I always try to write down every idea I have, regardless of whether I end up using it
I really like how your outline naturally mimics a Kabbalahistic structure
This method is prolly one that is accidentally being used a lot without being aware of. For the experts, they are usually hired or told to do something, but for amateurs, teenagers, they usually do stuff with passion, meaning they always have some sort of inspiration to go with at the start of their writing which leads to the climax being the one first appear in their mind most of the times. With that, it can be seen that it is very tempting to use this method as it is so convenient and inspiring. That's why i think people are using it, just without really knowing it. And so do i.
The Web Method is a fascinating idea! I'm currently in the last 20% of my novel, but I'm going to try it for that remaining part. Question: when building the event web, how do you handle events that have multiple cause/effect links? You rapidly run out of linking options when limited to two dimensions.
What you have is an organically-grown (i.e. not top-down) causal flow chart. Like in a programming flow chart, or a warehouse-operations work-flow flow chart. When a program command or a task impacts another command or task on the other side of the flowchart, the old standby is always a set of labeled "connecter-dots." But using these, I think, makes "grokking" the overall work more difficult.
But avoiding connecting dots necessarily molds the outline into a more linear storyline, which may not be where you want to go. Thoughts?
I should certainly expand on this in a part two video. As for the general answer to your question: if an event has multiple cause/effect links, I will usually put a note in red saying where those links are, instead of visually representing them.
Maybe I will make an improved version of the web method outline. This one is very general.
@@reulerverse_stories Thank you.
Not going to lie, that title made me chuckle. Not many secrets to writing a book that no one is talking about. Most of us have that down to a fine art.
I have a question: I’ve run into the issue of starting a notebook of notes, writing an initial spark idea, losing the notebook, buying a notebook, writing an initial spark idea, losing the note book… then I find the MULTIPLE notebooks with the same initial spark in each one… is there a way to make those multiple “initial spark idea” notes come together into something more productive than “I just wrote the same thing and thus was not productive”?
Are they all the same idea? If so, the best advice I can give is to keep the notebook, so you don't write the same thing over and over (or keep a log of what you've written). If they're all different ideas, I've been there. I used to get really excited about an idea, write it for a little bit, and then get bored. The way I combat that is simple: when I have a new idea, I don't try to write it immediately. I put down the basics somewhere, and if I'm still interested in it in a month, most likely I'll be able to see it through.
Another good example of this is Ender's Game. Orson Scott Card wrote the short story about the Battle Room, the zero-g laser-tag game that Ender dominates. It was only after the success of that short story that he fleshed it out into a full novel.
*Inspiration:* On her DVD "Live at Brixton Academy" Dido tells a story before singing "Sand in My Shoes". While that performance of the song is on YT, the story has been omitted. Other live performances available here have a story, but not that story. She simply says the song is about a vacation affair, and that when the vacation is over you never see that person again. However the lyrics of the song speak of longing to reconnect. On the "Brixton Academy" DVD she says this: “Whenever I get home from holiday I always convince myself, for about twenty-four hours, that I could in fact marry a sailor, work in a bar, and live on an island. And it lasts-but not long. This song is about that time before said sailor turns up, in marbled jeans, on my doorstep. Which is not good. It’s called ‘Sand In My Shoes’.”
I though, "Hey, wait a minute. There's a novel in there!" And so I started thinking of how _I_ might write that story. Since my last project was multiple POV, I'd do this as a single first-person POV telling.
Intrigued by Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat" and Jessica Brody's "Save the Cat Writes a Novel" I thought I'd give that specific story structure a shot. I open with Protag leaving her vacation bungalow, her sleeping lover, and returning to London. There are scenes that show her present life, lack-luster boyfriend, etc. Is there enough motivation to change her life? Then vacation Lover shows up, followed a day later by his Sister to "rescue" her crazy brother---never before has he shown more than a passing interest in any tourist. Through overheard whispered arguments Protag learns Lover and his Sister have a superpower, and he followed Protag across the Atlantic because he has detected that superpower in her.
According to Snyder that makes my genre a super-hero story. Protag discovers they have a superpower, learn to use it, something happens, they use their new superpower to save the day. Also, I discovered that when Lover shows up in his marbled jeans, that is only half-way through Act I (the 1/8 point in the story). I have a ton of story creation to flesh this out.
*Act I* ends with the overheard argument between Lover and his Sister. *Act IIa* then becomes "Fun and Games" where Protag (with help of Lover, his Sister, and Protag's Mother (who also has this superpower, but had been hiding it)) learns to use her new power. Lover and Sister cannot stay in England long, so at the end of *Act IIa* they return Central America (home) and Protag returns to her job in London. She has a lot to think about.
*Act IIb* opens with old Boyfriend confronting Protag (he's seen Lover and his Sister, but assumed they were a couple). Boyfriend wants to spend more time with Protag, but she's not interested. Bad things happen, Protag performs a self-rescue, and discovers Boyfriend was behind the badness. He'd planned to swoop in, "save" Protag, and win her back. But things have gone wrong so she saves his life, but at the cost of revealing her superpower to him.
*Act III* Boyfriend is shocked and disgusted. He imprisons Protag, with plans to sell her life to the highest bidder. In Snyder's outline (adapted for the novel by Brody) there's a big section in *Act III* called "Finale". Digging into "Finale" we discover sub-sections: "Gathering the Troops", "Executing the Plan", "High Tower Surprise", "Dig Deep Down", and "Executing the New Plan." Since Protag is completely helpless (Boyfriend is _not_ careless) she needs a team. Sister learns of Boyfriend's evil idea, recruits Lover and Mother, and the three of them show up to do battle and save Protag. Except this story is Protag's POV and she is clueless any of this is happening. *So I turned these sub-plot-points around.* "Gathering the Troops", "Executing the Plan", and "High Tower Surprise" is all on Boyfriend. It's he who gathers the troops (murders who bid on Protag's life). It's he who sets the plan in motion. And finally the surprise is not Protag's team entering the villain's lair being surprised by some trap, but Sister's team dropping in on the villains' murder party and taking out bad guys.
*TL;DR* An account of my first attempt to use Blake Snyder's beat sheet to plan my story. How it helped me recognize what kind of story I was writing, fill in plot holes, and how I had to flip sections of *Act III* to make it fit my story.
Outlining exists to capture and order all the ideas you are having or fragments you have already written. It also helps you to imagine the connections between the parts, how things got there.
I think this method you are showing is basically what most people intinctively do when writting. Its not the same as structure, though.
I've had some fun trying to write from start to finish, but I inevitably end up skipping around and writing down interesting scenes that I want to have happen. Whether or not they're major plot points (if they are I type them in the manuscript, and if not I just write them on paper to worry about later), they give me goal posts to write towards to keep my story on track. Otherwise my plot would just wander about with no clear aim.
I've been trying to get my first book off the ground, but I just can't seem to come up with a satisfying climax. I've got the start sorted though. Wondering if there are any other good midpoints I could branch from with a story that doesn't so much climax as flow.
this is great!
GREAT EXPLANATION
Do you have a PDF of that?
I honestly feel like you've just given me permission to do what I've been fighting against myself all this time
What I heard about J K Rowling is that she came up with the idea on a train and didn't have anything to write with. So she just had to think about it. She had 4 hours to think up a bunch of ideas. King Kong started out as the scene where Kong fights the T-Rex. It was just a test scene. So they just added scenes till they had a whole movie. Yeah that's how a lot of authors work. They Build the middle then work out the beginning leading up to it. then they let the characters take over to create the ending. It's probably good to write down ideas for the ending all the way through though. Also if you start with the middle you don't have to worry about a saggy middle. Especially if you come up with an exciting scene. You might as well, It's sort of the exciting scene that makes it a story. Quentin Tarantino and Clifford D. Simak use this technique.
Thank you so much! I may be in love with your brain (I don't say this lightly 😂)
This method just makes so much sense, tackle the beginning once you're in the flow. It's like how you should never start a sketchbook on the first page, always come back to it.
Please excuse my life affirming Aha moment, thank you! (I need to breathe into a paper-bag... damn 🤯😶🌫)
Love the art comparison. I was actually an artist first, before a writer. That might have been the inspiration for this method.
I’m both an artist and writer who is struggling to create a webcomic, but let me give you a small history lesson about artwork and comic books:
Frank Frazetta was one of the most talented artists of his time, but his greatest masterpiece was the Death Dealer painting, which was so awesome that it got several novels, comic books and games based on the same painting.
So I think it’s possible to do the same thing with my own storytelling, basically drawing a picture first and then writing a story around that picture.
Does that make sense?
As an artist and writer (and Frazetta fan), I can see that, yes.
As an artist myself, it makes perfect sense.
Perfectionist? Nope. Nicely logical and solving puzzles. It’s a great life skill. I want my epithet to be: She passed curious and learning. Thank you. There is advice out there for realizing there is a story behind every character before they are on the page but you audition of the web is great. It expands thinking beyond purely linear. Nice.
Love this comment. That's exactly what I was going for with this video.
Usually, when I have a strong idea, the first thing I ask myself is if this is the inciting incident, the midpoint, or the climax. Then, I start making questions.
I've tried writing the most fun scenes first, but when I try to fill in the gaps, I write boring scenes that "tell" instead of "showing." I also have scenes that may be condemned to the cutting room floor because I took the story in a different direction.
Last month, I started a new project, and tried to write it (mostly) in order. I think it went better. I still have a lot to fix, but only one scene that I'll probably have to re-write entirely.
Great, thank you
Good to see you on here! Yeah, so far, TH-cam is giving me great vibes, and I'm much happier.
The Drenai novels by David Gemmell aren't written in order either 😊 those are my favourite books for adventure and dwindling magic 🥰
The Snowflake method has some similarities to your approach. Not plotting in a linear path makes a lot of sense for the initial brainstorming.
I start my stories knowing the Beginning & End i just work in the middle
If that works for you, then that's great!
I always create my stories from the middle or the end, too, and all those authors' success seem to confirm that's a good idea but I wonder, isn't it what literally every author does? Do we know of authors who started from the very beginning and failed? Or any authors who started from the beginning for that matter?
You might need to straighten your bookcase 😬Good advice and very true (at least for some). You can start a story from one idea and then flesh it out, but it should not be your only idea, or the whole story hinges on that one idea which might not hold water. I have had many ideas that flounder in the unfinished drawer, but I still think it's the best way to write for me. To just go with the flow and not edit it too much, as this hampers the creativity (like nitpicking the sentences/grammar/typos).
😂😂😂😂
This is exactly how I write. Discovery writing. Way more creative and exciting than plotting a story. But one does need an intrinsic understanding of plot structure lurking in the background.
hey you're brilliant
Brilliant
Thank you! Going in order feels forced and uninspired to me.
This might actually help with some of my ADHDness when it comes to writing/planning.
You start from the point of inspiration--which may, in fact, occur at the beginning of the story. The creative mind is too wild to pin it down to a formula.
i didnt really follow what i was taught in school ,i just have this random story i want submerged into my main story, so i set it apart for later, i dont know how my brain does it, i end up writing something where i can fit that random story i thought of months ago
Another author who writes out of order is Janet Fitch. (White Oleander)
I was writing out of order, some idiot prayed for me to stop, and I got too much stress to get on with my novel.
A fan fic on Susan Pevensie. Probably the most ambitious Susan fic to this date.
It's easy to write a book that no one is talking about. Read every writing advice book, watch every writing video on every famous internet video website and then write your book. Rewrite it, then rewrite it again. Even if you're lucky enough to be published traditionally, people still won't be talking about it.
Write because you love it and write in your own voice, in your own way. Learn all of the rules, and then, for the love of all creativity, discard them and write what you want in your own way.
You should call it the Tree of Life method, it looks like the Kabbalah symbol
Can I quickly say that your bookshelf is wild?
It's a curtain with the photo of a bookshelf
This sounds awkward. I JUST got down contemplating that I write a scene based on what wrote for the previous scene, and how crazy it would be to write a scene without writing the previous scene to use as a basis for the current scene. Otherwise, think I will be doomed to rewrite and redo things as nauseum. I think if I write a story out of order, I will constantly be writing scenes that are like square pegs, and no scenes will be round holes to put them in. The scenes won't fit together. I think I would struggle and hate what I'm doing. For me, part of the enjoyment of writing is finding out what happens next as I write it. Writing the story in order is about exploration and discover. Sometimes I have to stop and brainstorm and analyze what I'm doing. For hours. But when I have a breakthrough, it feels like an accomplishment! Further, I think If I don't write scenes in order, I will never have a sense of "this part is done!" because I know I will have to come back later and threat some kind of needle and stick two scenes together. And I am not confident about writing a glue scene to stick two other scenes together.
I have no doubt about my ability to write a book that no one is talking about.
How weird, the project I'm working on is formed as a series of scenes I envisioned and then trying to write the links that join those key scenes. On top of that the whole thing started with notes and stories about a created mythology and then wondering what the world that lived with that mythology would be like. Seemed to me like a terrible way to write but maybe its not so bad afterall and I should get back to it (I seriously slacked off on the writing when Covid hit and disrupted my life routine)
It’s not terrible at all! It’s actually how many professionals do it. I’m surprised it’s not talked about more.
I sometimes write songs this way…
I couldn't do that. River of time has one direction, just like letters and words that make this sentence. I could write a prequel, but it is a different story just like a sequel. At the start I don't know what will happen in the climax, which of my characters will survive that long - although I know more than them, because I know everything about their present and they have only limited perception. Just like 2d people are amusing 3d people with their limited perception. Just like 3d people are amusing 4d people with their limited perception.
Goldmine
Not even the most dedicated plotter gets ideas in order, but it doesn't mean that they don't put them in order before writing