27 Steps to Plotting Your Novel, Memoir, Screenplay Complete

We did it. The Plot Series is complete! 

We're not finished with our YouTube channels. A cool idea for a new plot tips series is floating in my head that pushes off from these first 27 steps and dives deeper -- a new plot series that shows what the first 27 steps tells.

The new segment is still in that fragile place between inspiration and application. Following my own advice of not showing anyone the first draft and another pearl -- don't talk away the energy, I'll leave the new series for now and move on to the real celebration.

The last quarter of the Plot Series deals with the elements needed to create the final quarter of your novel, memoir, screenplay. The end of a story is reflective of everything that comes before in the beginning and the end, which makes holding an understanding of the elements at play in this most critical phase of your story important.

Writers often write the beginning quarter of the story one hundred times while the final quarter of the story is lucky to get a complete rough draft let alone any rewriting or refinement.

Beginnings hook readers. Endings create fans.

Whether you are in the honeymoon stage of writing the beginning of your story, muddled in the middle, or powering your way through to the end, the better your grasp the significance of the end of the universal story both metaphorically and pragmatically the better your ending and overall story.

For tips on keeping the dream of your story lingering in the minds of your readers long after they put down your book, watch Step 27: The Resolution.

Click on green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video. Each time a concept is referenced you are directed to new information.

To watch the entire Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay? go to my YouTube channel. A directory of all the steps to the series is to the right of this post. Enjoy!

Thinks Like in Fireworks!

Terrific comment from a writer I work with -- she thinks like in fireworks with ideas going off in all different directions. No wonder she has difficulty pinning down her story. It's as if in every writing session she embarks on yet another story. Yet, it's obvious that her themes remain consistent throughout. Based on that we begin our work.

For her, the process is not about generating scenes. For this writer, her process involves analyzing what she does have. We begin with key scenes at energetic markers: 

• The End of the Beginning
  
• The Halfway Point
  
• The Crisis
  
• The Climax

Since she has revealed to me all the defining traits of a classically right-hemisphere dominate writer, such a task of analyzation brings up all sorts of resistance from her. 

As we work our way through the maze, her next toughest assignment is to hone in on her story and begin to commit to one route over another. She searches for assurances that the process will lead her to a publishable book in the end, which is impossible to determine until she reaches the end of the process and finds out what her story truly is all about. So, rather than commit, she continues to flit from one idea to another. 

No amount of reassurances from me or anyone else about believing in and relying on the beauty of her writing brings her peace. Such a belief has to originate from inside herself. Something in her back-story seems to be preventing this. And, just like with the protagonist, as this writer writes her story, she also embarks on a personal, emotional and spiritual journey to determine how her back-story negatively affects her front story and writing life.

No wonder writing a story from the beginning all the way through to the end can take so long and become so difficult.

Even so, and setting aside her dream of publication, I still believe to my core that the process of writing and the self-discovery writing brings us are worth the time and effort. Always... 

How does your back-story negatively and positively affect your front story and writing life?

Click on green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video. Each time a concept is referenced you are directed to new information.

To watch the entire Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay? go to my YouTube channel. Currently, there are 26 Steps -- only one more to go. A directory of all the steps is to the right of this post. Enjoy!

Back-story Informs Front Story

Fascinating consultation today. The back-story the writer has developed becomes a clear motivating force behind the protagonist's actions and goal setting throughout the entire front story. The back-story serves as a beacon for the writer to filter her decisions through to bring more depth and emotionality to the story. 

Readers connect to the story through the character. 

Readers identify with the characters through the characters' emotions.

During the consultation, the back-story develops in such a way to bring more emotionality into the story as the protagonist reacts, sometimes inappropriately, based on the pain she suffered as child and continues to feel, though basically unconsciously so.

Not wanting to give the writer's story away, I give examples here to show you what I hope to convey.

To begin with, the back-story is the time when and the reason why the protagonist's innocence is lost. This can be at a young age years before the actual story begins or more recently but still before the actual front story begins. 

This defining moment may be something the character overheard and took to heart and has lived her life by ever since. This moment may be some sort of negative treatment toward the protagonist earlier in her life that she now carries with her, unconsciously or not, and that interferes with her capability to achieve that which she most longs for. 

Back-story provides brilliant motivation for the character's actions even when the character is virtually unaware of it or believes her motivation comes from elsewhere.

In other words, if the protagonist was betrayed at some point in her past (back-story), she from that point forward feels betrayal in the actions of others now in the front story. If she was abandoned in her back-story, she feels the same pain she felt as a child even now as an adult and even if the current behavior by another is actually benign and insignificant to others but never to her. Perhaps she was lied to, physically abused, emotionally bullied, neglected... you fill in the blank for your character. 

This WOUND then becomes what she must become CONSCIOUS of and overcome in order for the sense of perfection to be restored in the final 1/4 of the story. 

The back-story never has to be revealed in the story at all. However, so long as you as the writer knows the protagonist's back-story, you then have compelling motivation for the protagonist's actions in the front story. 

Just remember, the back-story is not the story. 

The front story made up of the primary plot and that is the story. 

Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay? is playing on my YouTube channel. Currently, there are 22 steps. A directory of the program is to your right. Each link takes you to a video that explains that particular plot concept about the universal story.

Benefits of watching the Plot Series:

(Directory of all the steps so far is to the right of this post.)

1) Become a better writer

2) Play along on The Santa Cruz Traveling Mystery Tour and win a free plot consultation with me

Enjoy!

Directory for Plot Series

To the right of this post is a list of the 22 Steps in the Plot Series: How do I Plot a Novel, Memoir and Screenplay? (a few more coming soon complete the series)

Now that I posted the directory of the YouTube series, I wish I started the list with the last one and encourage you work your way forward. Perhaps this will work as a strategy for the writer who never reaches the end, finishes, accomplishes her goals. Perhaps beginning at the end will help you stay true to the cause of writing your story.

Whether by conventional means and you begin at Step One or the unconventional way of beginning at Step 22, my intention is to provide you with a series of videos to guide you step-by-step through the plot elements that create a pleasing form, one that mirrors the universal story. 

Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay? is playing on my YouTube channel. Currently, there are 22 steps. A directory of the program is to your right. Each link takes you to a video that explains that particular plot concept about the universal story.

Benefits of watching the Plot Series:

1) Become a better writer

2) Play along on The Santa Cruz Traveling Mystery Tour and win a free plot consultation with me

Enjoy!

Writing Deadlines

Nothing worse than when a writer commits to a deadline and then is unable / unwilling to accomplish the feat. Well, that's a bit extreme but too often, I see what happens when writers fail to meet deadlines. 

Such a failure frustrates me personally because rather than move forward in our consulting sessions, even if the writer tells me how much research she accomplished or thought she gave or plotting she did, if she is not writing, we are standing still. 

Two, a writer's writing time is just that. Time to write. Not to brainstorm with others or to organize your space or to read internet news or play solitaire on your computer. Your writing time is time to write.

When breaking deadlines is chronic, though I can always cancel sessions until productivity improves, the writer's disrespect of herself costs her spirit (energy). 

Once or twice is to be expected but when a writer comes up with more excuses than writing, such an abuse signals a problem. 

There are two kinds of writing deadlines:

1) Deadlines imposed on you by another professional 

2) Deadlines you set for yourself 

Meeting the first kind of deadline is a critical if you wish to be a successfully published author. Book and magazine publishers, acquisition editors and critique groups expect you to be true to your word. Do that and you become a trusted  and reliable team member. 

Meeting the deadlines you set for yourself is great practice for when you are asked to keep a deadline for someone else. Also, meeting the deadlines you set for yourself is a personal message that you think enough of yourself to do what you commit to do and that you are able to count on yourself. 

Be realistic when you commit to a deadline with others and with yourself. 

Breakdown the total number of scenes or chapters or words you need to write overall 
Divide by the number of writing days you have between now and the deadline
For every working day, schedule how much productivity is required for ultimate success

Show yourself and the muse that you are to be trusted. 

Only make promises to yourself you know you can keep. 

Show up for yourself. 

Live up to your commitment and write.

Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay? is playing on my YouTube channel. Currently, there are 21 Steps. Step 22 goes up later this weekend. A directory of the program is to your right. Each link takes you to a video that explains that particular writing concept. 

Benefits of watching the Plot Series:

1) Become a better writer 

2) Play along on The Santa Cruz Traveling Mystery Tour and win a free plot consultation with me

 

Enjoy!

Goals versus Need

Goals create the front story or dramatic action plot of novels, memoirs, and screenplays. 

A goal tied to a need is even more emotional (readers and audiences connect to characters through honest "shows" of emotion). 

Tie that need to a higher good is even better.

The exotic world of the film, Winter's Bone, adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's novel and screenplay by Debra Granik, and the protagonist mesmerized me to the very last moment, though rarely am I attracted to dark and bleak movies. 

The protagonist with a goal to find her father drives the story. That her goal is tied to a desperate need to save the house and care for her younger siblings and an ailing mother sends the intensity of the story higher and creates thematic significance.

Haunting story with compelling action makes for a satisfying story...

Click on green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video. Each time a concept is referenced you are directed to new information.

To watch the entire Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay? go to my YouTube channel. Currently, there are 21 Steps. Enjoy!

Behind the Veil

Personal themes pulse from the belly of the novel, memoir, screenplay you're writing.

One of my own I wrote in the thematic significance section of the up-coming Plot Whisperer book:

Speaking up and speaking out come at a price worth paying.

Now, with the book nearly finished, I find the gem promised in stories waiting there in real life for me.

Speaking up and speaking are not punishable. Silence is.

Speaking out and speaking up are living one's truth, a truth from behind the veil.

Write down a theme of your own and perhaps you'll spot from behind the veil a personal wound you have come here to heal...

Click on green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video. Each time a concept is referenced you are directed to new information.

Three Key Scenes

There is the holy trinity in the Christian religion, the holy trinity as a culinary term in all sorts of cuisine and, I hope it is not sacrilege, the holy trinity in stories. Perhaps it's a bit wacky to use the term in plot... what can I say? 

The three cornerstone scenes in all novels, memoirs and screenplays are:

• The End of the Beginning
  
• The Crisis
  
• The Climax

However, there is another trio that is my very favorite in the Universal Story because of the power these three scenes produce in stories and in our lives as writers and people.

• The build-up to 
  
• The Crisis
  
• The threshold 

I've been admonished for being a bit heavy-handed in these three videos. Please forgive me. My passion often overtakes me.

Click on green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video. Each time a concept is referenced you are directed to new information.

Writing the Crisis

The Crisis of a story hits about 3/4 of the way through the page or scene count and marks the highest intensity scene in the entire beginning and middle of the story. On the plot planner, this highest point signifies the dramatic action plot though keep in mind it is the lowest point in the story for the character emotional development plot.

The crisis can be thought of as the climax for the antagonist.

I've got two new videos on the youtube Plot Series: How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay. One talks about the scenes building up to the CRISIS and the next one discusses the CRISIS SCENE itself.

I am under a deadline for a new book that I have been patiently waiting to reveal while the negotiations for the contract are finalized. I am thrilled to be asked to write my passion and excited for the chance to tell you about it and am having a ball writing it but find that with that and everyone and their mother requesting plot consultations lately (which I feel honored about in that so many writers are willing to trust me to help them with their work), it is difficult to fit in everything daily. Therefore, I rely on the youtube series to lend you support in the interim until I again have time to write out an entire post.

Hope you will bear with me during this exciting time. This too shall pass and I will be back to writing posts, but until then, I hope you'll follow the series for support. I plan to include an index and brief description of each step here in the near future. We will see when that happens. Soon, very soon...

Great good luck with your writing goals for the year!

Click on green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video. Each time a concept is referenced you are directed to new information.

More than One Draft

Do you understand that writing a novel, memoir, screenplay involves not just writing one draft but many?

Therefore, the quicker you write a draft the better. 

Each time you write a draft all the way through to the end you have a better sense of what the story is truly all about. 

Do NOT make every word perfect in the first draft, especially not the beginning one quarter of the project. Until you have written a couple, or more, drafts all the way to the end, you have no idea of what is needed in the beginning.

I've said it before and I think it's worth repeating again - the end defines the beginning. Therefore write all the way to the end .

Get your ego out of the way. The more you are able to tolerate imperfection, the more quickly you can finish a draft and every draft makes the story better. The perfection comes along with the process of writing draft after draft. 

If it takes you years to write a draft, think how long it's going to take to get your manuscript ready to submit. If it takes you months to write a draft, it's going to happen more quickly. 

Click on green highlighted plot concepts for further explanations via video. Each time a concept is referenced you are directed to new information.