Monday 3 March 2014

Planning Your Story: A Checklist for Success by Roz Morris

Roz Morris, author of the wonderful Nail Your novel series of books for writers, has generously offered this guest post for the Chapter Book Challenge.


You’ve got an idea, but will it make a story? 

Some writers leap off the blocks the moment they get an idea. Inspired by a situation or a character or an overheard conversation, they fire up the laptop, dive on the keyboard, rattle off the pages... After a while they run dry because they don’t know where they’re going. A few might bluster through and find their mojo again, but most find it too hard. They give up, disheartened - and so a lot of terrific ideas get abandoned.

Where did they go wrong? Why didn't the idea fulfil its potential?

Usually, it was missing certain cornerstones.

Now, some writers hate the idea of planning. If that’s you, listen a moment. You don’t have to create lengthy dossiers of the story world, the characters, or the music that’s charting at the time the novel is set. Or spoil your journey of discovery by mapping out the plot in advance. But if your story does not have certain ingredients, it’s likely that you’ll lose your way.

Here they are.

Brainstorm the big picture

Try to establish these basics: 
  • Who are the characters and why is the story situation such a challenge for them?
  • Where is the story set and does that present interesting problems or add to its appeal?
  • What are the characters trying to do (their goals) and why is it worth telling a story about them?
  • What is at stake if they fail?
  • Why will it be a long story, not a short one?
  • What could go wrong and provide plot twists? 
  • What three major disasters could be the pivotal turning points?
  • How will the characters’ feelings about the story goals change?
  • By the end, what has changed and why does that provide a feeling of resolution?

This skeleton can be expanded if you want a detailed outline, or you can use it as a rough compass and get typing immediately. The choice is yours. But this is enough to ensure that, even if you’re good at inventing on the fly, you have a frame to throw your ideas onto and you’ll recognise how to use your ideas to make a satisfying story. It will also stop you getting in a muddle because you've invented too much to keep control of. And if you've got a book that’s already run aground, you can use these questions to salvage it. 

More than anything, you’ll fulfil the potential of your idea because you’ll know you have a cracking tale to tell.




Roz Morris's fiction has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide, although you won't have seen her name on the covers as she ghostwrote for high-profile authors. As an editor, she has mentored award-winning writers and her book, Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books & How You Can Draft, Fix & Finish With Confidence  http://nailyournovel.wordpress.com/nail-your-novel-books/nail-your-novel-%E2%80%93-why-writers-abandon-books-and-how-you-can-draft-fix-and-finish-with-confidence/  is now recommended by creative writing tutors.  She is now writing acclaimed fiction under her own name - My Memories of a Future Life and Lifeform Three. She  is a writer, journalist, fiction editor and the author of the Nail Your Novel series for writers. Her website is here, her writing blog is Nail Your Novel and you can find her on Facebook  and on Twitter as @Roz_Morris 


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Comment on this post by March 7th, to be entered into the drawing for a paperback copy of Roz Morris's 
"Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books and How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish With Confidence." Winner will be chosen by a random number generator on March 7th at noon GMT. You must be signed up for the challenge to qualify. 

37 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing your checklist Roz. It's a lot like the way I plan my chapter books, rather than having a detailed plot :)

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  2. Thanks for the advice. I definitely need to plan out my chapter book this year.

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  3. I suck at planning. I scribble ideas so that I don't lose them but planning is something i haven't grasped yet.

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  4. Thank-you for these tips to help me move forward on some of my ideas. I especially liked why is this a long story? and why is it worth telling this story about these characters? I can't wait to apply these questions to some plots I have simmering.

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  5. This was very helpful.. I can already answer several questions and will think more about others...

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  6. Thank you for sharing your checklist, Roz. I'm a "Fly by the Seat of my Pants" writer but I will sometimes sketch out a very rough paragraph for each chapter and this checklist will help me focus even more

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  7. Thanks, Roz! Good checklist to remember as I plan my story . . .

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  8. Great questions to consider. Hopefully when all is said and done I will have answered these questions for myself. Thanks for the help!

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  9. Gah my comment went away when I signed in! Great questions to consider. I know they'll help me out.

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  10. Love this, Roz! Thank you so much for sharing this with us. I know what you're saying about loosing the way. It's happened to me before. This is a great start. :-)

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  11. I used this outline to get my head around what my characters want from this story and it has helped tremendously. Thank you Roz Morris and Becky Fyfe

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  12. Thanks, guys! We all differ in the amount of planning we need. Some of us pack a big trunk, others travel light! In fact it's fun to try to pin down just what these essentials are. I could go on for ever with the metaphors but I guess this is the capsule wardrobe. Thanks for having me, Becky!

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  13. Perfect. Simple, but covers all the bases. I've got several ideas that I'm going to check against this list and refine. Thank you!

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  14. You are a source of inspiration and a fount of knowledge! Or is that font? ... Thank you!

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  16. Great checklist. It works with stories of any size - short, novella, novel, etc. I'm printing a copy to stick in my novel's writing notebook.

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  17. Great list!!! I'm bookmarking it and running my books through this sieve. Ideally, I suppose it'd be best to go over at the START of a novel. Ha. :)

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  18. Great list!! I've bookmarked it, and it'd be good to run my books through the sieve of this list. :)

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  19. Great checklist I will have to utilize it for my next project!! Woot Woot!!

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  20. Thank you Roz for the checklist and for your good advice. I tried my first story years ago "flying by the seat of my pants" and it never got finished. With giving outlining a try, I'm now nearing the point where I can start writing the first draft of my current story! And thank you, Becky Fyfe, for inviting Roz to post.

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  21. Thank you, Roz, for some good advice, and thank you, Becky Fyfe, for inviting Roz to post.

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  22. Hi Roz; Blake Snyder is big on what-if in his Saving The Cat. Steven King is big on an idea popping into his mind that occurs somewhere in the story. Neither know, at first, if they have something big enough to carry a story, or a novel.

    I think I tend toward an idea, or a scene occurring somewhere, usually in Part 3. The "only" thing I have to do is find Parts 1, 2, and 4. Oh, and the characters, too.

    Thank you for your article.

    Silent

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  23. Thanks for the checklist, Roz. I'm in the process of re-doing my NaNo novel and I think this will help.

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  24. That's a great list to keep a writer honest. I then recommend going through the answers to those with a round of "HOW?" and "WHY?" like a persistent 3 year old - if an idea has gold behind it, you should quickly see a sparkle beneath the rough surface.

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  25. Thanks, Roz - the checklist has come at just the right time for me, as I was puzzling over a lightbulb idea and whether it would stand up as a story.

    Fab checklist - I'm going to use it today.

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  26. Roz, that's an interesting checklist. I recently experimented with the two techniques and found that it took me longer to get to a piece I was happy with if I did 'seat of the pants' writing. The more planning I do, it seems the faster I can come up with something I think is competent, the problem is, I don't enjoy the process so much :-( Any advice?

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  27. I tend to jump in and write without thought of why the characters are there or what they want, and then end up half way through the story not knowing how to continue. This checklist will help. Thank you!

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  28. I start out plotting, but I always seem to stray by the midpoint. I suspect my problem is that I haven't set enough goals for my characters. Your checklist looks like a great place to start.

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  29. Hello, my name is Mona and I'm a pantser. I try to explore an idea before I start writing but your "brainstorming the bigger picture" are tips that generate much more material. Thank you for sharing.

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  30. I tried something like this for NaNoWriMo in November. I think it worked, although since then I've been working on other projects, letting the "novel" simmer. I pantsed my first novel, not really having any idea I was even writing one when I started out, but it's been many years and many versions and I'm still rewriting bits and pieces of it. I still enjoy pantsing the first version of shorter pieces and loved having lots of flexibility to take my NaNoWriMo novel down unexpected lanes, but also liked having a crude outline and detailed character and landscape sketches before I started. Now that I know how much I love the writing process, I'll probably always plan at least a little before writing something longer than 5000 words.

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  31. I begin my current novel as a screenplay and I followed a similar strategy of preplanning each "scene" using short inspirational lines written on index cards. One of these short lines was so difficult of a concept to explain within the confines of a screenplay that I decided to expand my story into a full novel. That was many years ago, even more so than my own slow writing pace should endure. Yet, I continue on still inspired be the outline I created, long before I understood the arduous nature of my task.

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  32. A great checklist Roz, that'll come in very handy. funnily enough, I published a blog post yesterday looking at exactly the kinds of problem writers run into by not planning. And I have to confess, I didn't plan the first novel and am now having to work harder than seems fun to fix it!

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  33. Thank you for the checklist!!

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  34. Thank you for the list. I'm not sure if I'll finish my chapter book this month, but at least I could work on some story planning! :)

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  35. Your novel Bringing Characters to Life had excellent questions and points to really think about what you are writing. I wish I had read and planned as well before I started writing as I keep putting editing aside and it's been probably two years or so since I finished writing my story. Thanks to you, I have created a beat sheet, just need to go through it now.

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  36. Great Post, Roz. We writers can use ALL the help we can get.

    In our writing, too... :)

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  37. Thanks for the list - it will be really helpful, even as an editing checklist for stories I've already written.

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