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Guide To Plot Development

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Where To Start

Start with the zero draft. Honestly, the only thing you need to know about your story in order to complete a solid zero draft is the basic timeline of events and 2-3 main characters. Zero drafts don’t need to include any minor characters, backstory, world building, subplots, anything. They’re just a rough estimate of what your story is going to be and where it’s going to go. 

This way, you have something to work with when you do approach the task of maturing your story, which is a lot easier to do when you have already gotten the garbage ideas onto paper, seen them, realized they’re bad, clipped out the good parts, and developed a better understanding of your story’s trajectory. 

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Character Development : A Collection of Resources

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Resources

Resources For Creating Characters

Resources For Describing Characters

Resources For Writing The Mafia

Resources For Writing Royalty

Commentary on Social Issues In Writing

General Tips

Guide to Character Development

How To Fit Character Development Into Your Story

Tips on Character Consistency

Designing A Character From Scratch

Making characters for your world

Characters First, Story Second Method

Understanding Your Character

Tips on Character Motivations

31 Days of Character Development : May 2018 Writing Challenge

How To Analyze A Character

Alternative Method of Character Creation

Connecting To Your Own Characters

Interview As Your Characters

Flipping Character Traits On Their Head 

Character Driven vs. Plot Driven Stories

Traits

Tips On Writing About Mental Illness

Giving Your Protagonists Negative Traits

Giving Characters Distinct Voices in Dialogue

Giving Characters Flaws

Making Characters More Unique

Keeping Characters Realistic

Archetypes

Writing Good Villains

Creating Villains

Guide to Writing The Hero

Positive Character Development Without Romanticizing Toxic Behavior

Tips on Writing Cold & Distant Characters

Balancing Multiple Main Characters

Creating Diverse Otherworld Characters

Foreshadowing The Villain

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How to Outline Effectively

– Outlining is a fairly important part of writing a longer story, especially full novels or even series, so I figured I’d create a guide to making an outline that is actually useful during the writing process so writers like me, who are more likely to write if they have a solid plan, will feel less lost. 

Outlining is surprisingly hard, and nobody does it exactly the same way. There’s no one right way to do it, but this is what is the most helpful to me and hopefully this article will help you understand what the true purpose of an outline is, how to create one that’s actually useful, and how to get everything you possibly can out of it.

Purpose Of Outlining

First, I must specify that, in this context, an outline is not simply a summary of the course of events within your story. It is also a detailed plan that will guide you in your writing process. An outline allows you to enter the task of completing a first draft with a good to fair chance of eloquently intertwining all of the essential elements of your story. Many authors do commit to creating an outline, but not an effective one. 

Not only should an outline provide a timeline for events of the story, but lay out a base plan for the execution of symbolism, orchestration of character and conflict development, introduction of world-building elements, and premeditate the domino effects that plot points will cause, whether to the main plot or subplots. These details make an outline useful, or at least more useful than the alternative, which only explains what happens without giving the Why or the How.

What To Outline

When it comes to creating an effective outline, it is important to remember that it is for you. You are free to create an outline that includes all or some or none of the things listed below. However, your story will include every single one of these things, and whichever ones are not planned beforehand will be more likely to challenge you when it comes to writing the actual draft.

Events

This one is fairly obvious, but I have some additional suggestions when it comes to creating a timeline of the events occurring in your story.

Outline the plot progression and the subplot progression. It’s helpful to outline these on the same timeline so you can see where subplots begin and end parallel to the main plot. I recommend color-coding to create a visual of your storylines.

When you plan an event in your story, make sure to specify why that scene is included and what purpose it will serve, to its corresponding subplot and the main plot overall.

Limit the amount of large events and small events that can occur. You should be able to determine which is which. I try to limit myself to 30 events total, or 10 main events and 20 smaller ones that build up to the larger. This isn’t a rigid limit, but it keeps you from biting off more than you can chew. This may seem like a lot of events, but smaller events can be things like a discussion between two characters or a scene in which a character is, say, driving to work and inwardly reflecting on something that recently happened.

It’s important to remember that more than one event can take place in a single scene. An event does not equal its own scene. Do not organize your timeline by scene. You will end up writing your story scene by scene rather than event by event, and you will regret it, because when you start telling a story based on the place it happened and when, you’ll leave out details and will be more likely to neglect opportunities to utilize subtext and symbolism.

Symbolism

Symbolism is not paid much attention when it comes to writing things outside of an educational environment, but it shows up in writing, whether intentionally by the writer or not. However, intentional symbolism adds depth and context to your story that cannot be obtained in any other way. Meaning and emotion are conveyed through symbolism, and your story will suffer if you don’t give it at least some of your time. Here’s some things you can do and some things you should remember when you’re outlining symbolism:

Find opportunities for symbolism in your story and utilize them to the best of your ability. If you want your character to have an object that they can’t live without, connect that object to something important that has happened in their life or make it symbolize a value they hold above all else or a belief that they will never abandon. 

Symbolism is best used to develop three things: plot, character, or background. 

Symbolism is best conveyed through objects, smaller events, rules, or relationships.

Specify the reason the symbol is being included in your outline. If you’re adding a symbol just so you can say that there is symbolism, you’re doing it wrong. Symbols should teach the reader something or convey a message to them, and if it does neither, don’t include it.

Development

Planning out the development of your conflict, characters, and theme of your story is one of the hardest parts of outlining because it’s not always possible to predict how your characters will turn out. Writing is a weird, personal, unpredictable process and sometimes our conflicts, characters, and themes end up developing on their own. However, it’s good to have some sort of idea what points A and B are, and which points are between them.

Conflicts develop mostly through a mixture of smaller, less significant events, and slow burning feelings that eventually bubble up in the climax. Those smaller events need to build up nicely to that climax. If you neglect this, it will result in lack of suspense due to no emotional building. The climax should feel like an explosion in the reader’s chest, not a leisurely stroll through a boring park.

Your character will be developed in the reader’s minds through the three main things we remember about a person: their actions, their words, and the way they present themselves outwardly. Any or all of these things may change over the course of the story, and that’s where the development will reveal itself. Your readers may empathize with your characters’ thoughts and feelings, but they won’t remember that as much as the three things listed above. Focus on planning the development through those three areas.

It’s very nice to have an outline that has detailed the plan for conveying the theme of your story. This is very easy to forget about while actually writing, and one or two footnotes about “This character’s action connects to the theme of subtle racism in America, because this gesture they’re described as using relates to a historical reference of blank blank blank” etc. can help a lot. Find several clever little ways to sprinkle in your theme throughout the book, but be intentional and very careful, because your theme is the easiest thing for critics and nitpickers to get snippy about.

Allow room for your story elements to develop on their own during the process. However, be aware of when these details stray from the original plan and think critically about them, because little changes can completely screw large plans.

World Elements

World building is one of the most fun parts of writing stories, mainly in the science fiction and fantasy genres, but it’s oddly strange to fit in pre-planned details while writing the draft. This is simply because you’re more focused on the plot and development of conflict and characters. There are little ways you can plan time for world development in your outline, though.

Plan short scenes that revolve around or at least rely on the reader learning details about the world, whether that be politics, magic systems, leadership in fictional worlds, or simple details that provide a sense of familiarity. 

A good example of this is Harry Potter. JK Rowling is a queen when it comes to world building, and that universe is so fully developed with locations and lore and languages and political systems. Yes, there were seven books, but that’s an astounding amount of information that was never developed in a clunky, information-overload sort of manner. She wrote several smaller scenes where the trio were simply discussing the events within the story and used those opportunities to introduce new locations, items, lore, etc. that created a world that millions still feel is a second home to them.

Remember to continue building the world as you go. There will come scenes where you find little cracks to fit in facts about the world. Use them. Just keep track of those little details in a separate place or something so you don’t contradict yourself later. You could keep a “___ textbook” or something where you organize information about your world so you can either track new details or refer back to things you’ve already specified.

Have rules for your world. Every great magic system or alternate universe in fiction has its limitations, and if you simply say “nope, no rules in this system” your readers won’t connect to the system and world as a whole as wholly and your world-building will be seen as lazy. That’s just the way it is. It’s also a lot harder to create conflict when there are no defined limits or rules in a fictional world or system.

Domino Effects

Every action, expression, or event has its own consequences. Everything in your story will have a ripple effect, and maybe your readers won’t see every wave, but they should feel most of them, and that’s a hugely neglected part of outlining. Anticipate how each scene will affect the plot progression, character relationships, emotions, etc. because readers sense when events don’t connect.

For each scene, specify what led up to it and what it leads to. An example would be, “Steve heard his mother talking to his best friend on the phone, then he drove to his friend’s house to ask him what it was about, then it leads to a fight when Steve finds out his friend and his mom are seeing each other.” This specifies the initiation of the event, the event, and how the event leads to further conflict. You can sense how Steve and his friend and his mother’s relationships will be changed, and how the characters will likely be acting for the foreseeable future.

I prefer to write down the events of my story on a single piece of paper, organized in three sections. The first being cause, the second being event, and the third being effect. This is a simple way to keep track of the domino effects in your story.

Again, you don’t need to plan every single wave that every single event causes, but you should plan how you’re going to include the relevant ones in your draft.

These domino effects are not linear all the time. Effects of some events may not show up until several scenes, or even chapters later. A lot of waves take time to build and then come crashing down at the very end, so keep those in mind too. Plan the long term effects of larger events as well.

How to Utilize Outlines

Outlines are a waste of time if you aren’t going to actually use them to their full potential. It’s also crucial to note that your outline isn’t set in stone when you begin writing your draft. You can and should be adding to and amending your outline as you go along. That being said, here are some ways you can use an outline to aid you while you write you draft.

Keep track of world-building and what limitations may be imposed on your world or characters by details you add as you write.

Use the outline to keep track of how far you are into the story so you can be intentional with foreshadowing and revealing information at the opportune moments.

Have your timeline parallel to your development trackers and sprinkle in moments that show that development.

As you continue writing your story, acknowledge the domino effects in mind so you can set up future events that might need that context.

Create little “symbolism milestones”, so you know when the height of a symbol’s importance shows up in your plot and you can emphasize on that symbol in the actual writing.

etc..

Bottom line is, you can outline however you want and use that outline however you see fit, as long as you’re using your time wisely and creating something that will be helpful to you. My main advice is to just keep the aforementioned elements in mind when considering what to plan for your story beforehand. Happy outlining!

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