Tag Archives: writing process

Writing Process 3: Planning and Plotting in Theory

June 25, 2024 Michael Leave a comment

**This is blog post number 3 on my revised writing process.**

Okay, I’ve so I’ve got an idea. Normally, I’d write the first scene and just start running with it, but I want to run it through this process. I was originally just going to go through the steps and explain it, but I decided that if I’m going to go through this process, I’m going to do it with an example project. So, this post will go over the step in detail, and then next post I’ll apply it to a project.

The goal is to end this step with an outline of the story, and a list of things to World Build, Research and Game out.

There are five processes to this step:

Flesh out the idea.
Answer the 5 W’s
Prepare act list
Work out scenes
Build the B, R and G lists.

These are not ‘finish one and then move on to two and you can’t go back to one.’ These are happening simultaneously. I’m making notes on BRG lists while I’m prepping the 5 W’s, and I’ve got scenes in mind as I’m processing the ideas. Back and forth, over and over again.

So, let’s go over the processes.

Process 1: The Idea

First, I think about the idea. Now, you may wonder if I’m starting too simple, but I’m serious. I take my idea, and I challenge it. Is this a good story? Is it unique, or is it too much like another story I’ve written?

These are serious questions I need to ask. Too often I’ve had to make changes to a story, or even abandon an idea, because I realized it was taking the same character from Story A and putting them in a different genre. Or that two narratives were too similar to each other, and they both lost their unique flavor.

This process can take a couple of rounds until I get the idea down to something I’m comfortable moving forward with. And I have to accept that no story will be 100% different from other things I’ve written. There will be some overlap. The challenge is to emphasize what’s new with each story.

Process 2: The Five W’s (and that pesky H)

If you’ve forgotten what these are, it’s the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of a story. At this point, I’m still looking at the broad strokes, without getting into the acts and scenes of the story.

Who	Who is the main character? Who are the other big players in the story?
What	What are the big events of the story? What are the personal events for the characters?
When	When does this story take place? How long will it cover?
Where	Where does this story take place? How much area will it cover? What sort of terrain should I plan for?
Why	Why is this story happening?
How	How will the story develop? How will the characters?

The basic questions.

There answers need to be as long as I need them to be. Some will be pretty simple. Others may be entire paragraphs. But I need good answers to the questions.

Here, I’m also taking several passes. What sounds good one day might sound poor the next. But ideas that pass through several iterations are good enough to keep.

Process 3: The Acts

Process four is to divide the narrative into Acts.

In my process, an Act is a distinct section of the story, designed to advance the narrative through one leg of its journey. I plan acts to either provide information to the reader, allow the characters to respond to the story, or cover a major event of the narrative.

Broadly speaking, I’ve found my acts can divide into five categories:

Introduction: Introduce the characters, location, story, challenges.
Development: The characters interact with the world, things change.
Major event: these acts could cover battles or political conflict.
Recovery: the characters react and respond to a major event.
Conclusion: the last act, which wraps everything up.

Most of my stories have between 8 and 12 acts total.

For this process, I take a look at where the story begins (the introduction act), decide where it ends (the conclusion act), and then I focus on the middle parts. I look at the five W’s, especially the events, and plug them in, trying to keep track in my head of the pacing of the story.

I usually take several passes at this part, playing with different combinations. It’s important to pay attention to the flow. Multiple event acts in a row may overwhelm the reader. Too many development acts and the story doesn’t go anywhere.

At the end of this process, I will have my act list. And then I move on to scenes.

Process 4: The Important Scenes

I say important scenes because I’m not going to know every scene I will add into the story. I’m aware that as I write, there will be inspiration and ideas that pop-up and get added. So, this isn’t a final list. It’s a guideline.

With each act I have a series of questions and considerations I have to take into account. The overarching question is ‘does the scene advance the narrative?’

It may take several passes before I’ve got a good list on hand. To start, I aim for three scenes per act, minimum.

Introduction Act

This act includes a gimme; the first scene, which sets the tone for the book. Do I want this intro to be a prologue, or a first chapter?

I need to introduce the main character(s), the setting, and the plot elements. Are these different scenes? Usually, yes, because I need to be wary of dumping too much information onto the reader. But I’ll make that consideration here.

Development Act

A development act is simply an act where the characters progress and build themselves (or the narrative) up for the events of the story. Think of it as the downtime between big events.

These scenes will have a lot of little things that lead to the big things.

Event Act:

An event act centers around an important occurrence in the story. This could be a single action (the death of a character) or a longer process (a battle).

These scenes involved the immediate lead up, execution, and draw down of the event. Lots of action and excitement.

Recovery Act:

A recovery act is like a development act, but it has to do with the characters responding to the event. They’re learning and growing, making decisions and acting on what happened.

These scenes should include a lot of introspection and decision making.

Conclusion Act:

This is the second give me of the act process. Every story ends. This is where the consequences come clear and the loose ends get tied up. We say goodbye, and look to the future.

These scenes need to wrap things up, so more introspection and moving on.

Process 5: The B, R and G lists

This process I’m writing last, but in truth it’s been happening the entire time. I’m making lists of the World Building, Research, and Gaming I expect to need to finish before I write.

World Building items are background items that I will need to prepare beforehand. This list will include character biographies, maps of nations, cities and regions of the story, and organizational details. Science fiction stories will include technology and rules of physics. Fantasy stories will include rules of magic, mythology and races.

Research is a list of topics I cannot build but have to discover. In the past this list has included military trains, movements times for horses across various types of terrain, and lots of research into historical military and political organizations.

Gaming is not always going to be something I have to do, but I’ve learned from previous projects that it can be extremely helpful for sequences with a lot of moving parts. In the past, I’ve gamed out land campaigns and space battles. I’ve considered gaming out migrations, civil wars, and political maneuvers.

Conclusion

At the end of this process, I have an outline of the story I want to write. I have lists of items to world build, topics to research, and games to play.

Of course, this outline and these lists are not set in stone. The story will adjust as I review it. The lists will shrink as I cross things off and grow as new ideas reveal themselves. It’s a process that doesn’t end until the book is published.

So, that’s my Planning and Plotting process. Next blog post, I’ll take this process and apply it to a tertiary project I’ve had on my mind for a while.

Until then, keep on writing. Cheers!

Michael

Writing

Writing Process 2: PBRG

March 26, 2024 Michael Leave a comment

**This is the second post in a series on my writing process, how I’ve analyzed and adjusted it over the last few years. More posts will follow.**

Okay, I’ve acknowledged I have a problem: I am not writing efficiently. I’m spending too much time stopping to work out something I could have done ahead of time, but I failed to do so because I’m too much of a pantser. I want to become more of a plotter. How do I do that?

The system I worked out I call PBRG for short, after the four steps of the process. This article will give a quick overview of the process and how it works.

What is PBRG?

PBRG are the four steps of the new process. they stand for:

P – Planning / Plotting
B – (World) Building
R – Research
G – Gaming

The process is simple enough. I start by planning and plotting out my story, working out the who, what, when, where, and why’s of the story. then I build, research, and game out anything I need to flesh out the plot.

The overall idea is that when I get to actually writing, I have everything I need to just pound out the words for a good first draft.

P – Planning or Plotting

Planning or Plotting means to work out the Who / What /When / Where /Why / How of the story.

I already start all my projects with planning and plotting, but it’s been very simple. I figure out the overall acts of the story, the important characters, and a few other bits I need to know.

In the new process, I want to plan or plot out as much as possible down to the scenes if I can. I want to know every location I have to prepare, character I have to name, and event I have to plan out. And then to sit down and prepare, name and plan out everything listed.

B – (World) Building

World Building means to create the world beyond the story.

World building is fun. I do world building almost every day, taking one of any number of fantasy and fictional worlds and working on part of it. I even sell world building services on Fiverr.

In this process, I mean to identify what I need to build before the story gets going. It could be the history of a region, the specifications of a space ship, or the type of artwork a race idealizes. The idea is to have everything ready and worked out so I don’t leave myself a ‘come back to this’ note.

R – Research

Research, but don’t forget to take notes.

Research means to learn the knowledge I need but don’t have readily available.

This is one thing that tripped me up a lot in earlier drafts of stories. I’d stop mid-story to research trains or steamboats, or to research how far horses can move in certain conditions. There are plenty of notes in earlier drafts of me saying I’ll come back and fix you later (as I did with world building)

In this process, I mean to identify what i need to research, conduct the research, and have an answer prepared for writing.

G – Gaming

You shall not pass . . . until the plot demands it.

Gaming means to find complex portions of the story, and to work through them step-by-step to determine how they would work.

A game in this step is about consistency. It’s about making sure the units are all moving the same speed, and recording what conflicts happen where. It’s about identifying important choices various decisions makers had to make, and considering what they would do in that situation. I’ve done it a few times for the books I’ve written, but only after a first draft has seemed to go by too quickly.

In this process, I mean to work out the course of a complex activity ahead of time, and then write the story to conform to the process I worked out.

A Positive Test

Has this process been helpful? So far, yes.

I have a story project I call ‘Contrition’, a science fiction story set in the far future. It’s more of a secondary or even tertiary project, but it’s one I like to work on. For the first act, I applied this process.

Planning / Plotting: I planned and plotted out the scenes. I identified what characters were needed and named them, preparing their personalities and impact on the story. I worked out place names.
(World) Building: I build the geography, culture and economy of the planet the first act takes place on. How do the people respond to technology? How does the economy work?
Research: I answered questions I knew I would need to ask. How hard it is for low-tech societies to build trade goods? How much space does a herd of cattle need? How fast to steamboats move?
Gaming: Okay, this step didn’t come up with the first act, but I’m using a gaming process to work out how the decade in space before the story begins worked out. To make sure I’m consistent.

The result was; I wrote about 8,000 words in four days. I breezed through it. The first act, as prepared as I was, flew by. And then when I hit the first scene of act two, where I wasn’t prepared; boom. Like hitting a wall.

The process definitely has merrit.

This was a quick overview of the PBRG Process, how I use it and how it’s worked so far. Next post, I will look at the Planning/Plotting step in detail, how I take an project from starting idea to scene breakdown.

Thanks for reading; I look forward to seeing you next blog post.

Cheers!

-Michael

Writing

Writing Process 1: Too much pantsing

January 25, 2024 Michael Leave a comment

**This is the first post in a series on my writing process, how I’ve analyzed and adjusted it over the last few years. More posts will follow.**

Over the last few years, as I’ve worked to bring more titles to publication, I’ve had to face the fact that I’m not an efficient writer. My process involved too much stopping, too much re-writing, too much back and forth. I’m not happy with it. But this is not a question of writing more or writing harder. It’s about creating more efficiently.

I want to write more, and I want to write better. I feel like most creators understand how life and interrupt the process, sucking up our time and our energy, until we are looking for ten or fifteen minutes to sit down and do something for ourselves.

In this first post, I will look at how I found my writing process to be lacking. I will discuss what I found my problems were. And I will mention some initial steps I took to improve it.

2024: Planned and Actual

When I was publishing my first book, Renaissance Calling, back in 2017, I made up a list of everything I wanted to publish. It was — and still is — an extensive list. 30 plus books, including short story collections. The list included six sequels to my book, two prequel books and three short-story collections. There were three different science fiction universes, and two fantasy worlds. Many historical fiction stories and series spanning the course of human history.

Like I said, extensive.

I sat down and created a schedule built on the idea that it would take me six months to write a rough draft, and six months to revise a rough draft for publication. When I finished one rough draft and moved it to the revision phase, I would start another. Under the plan, I would publish two books a year, every year, basically for the rest of my life.

So, as 2024 starts, I was scheduled to have published at least thirteen books.

I’ve done two.

What went wrong?

Pantser vs Planner

Creative Carl goes with the flow (Panster)

Most discussions of writing process include the descriptions of pantsers and planners. This post will also discuss the difference. If you don’t know what those words mean, let me explain.

A pantser is someone who writes off the cuff. They let the story surprise them, developing in the moment as they write, They may have an outline they follow, but it’ll be broad, and subject to change in the moment.

A planner is the opposite. They plan extensively before they write a single word. Every scene will be plotted and planned, and when they write they’re just executing the outline.

Most people fall between these extremes. As a writer, I tend to fall to the pantser side of the equation. I write and let the story develop.

And that was my problem. A poor writing process.

There go my pants

The benefit of a pantser is that I often inspired while writing. Just this morning, I was writing a scene that I expected to end with the character making a decision, but while writing I realized she had a different option available that made more sense. Great, right?

Sure, in this case.

The problem arises when I hit something that makes me stop writing completely. What is this character’s code name? How does this historical process work? Why is this event I just mentioned important and what does it mean?’

These sorts of questions will stop me cold. I one spent an entire lunch hour contemplating one character’s code name. Not efficient whatsoever.

The pants fell down and tripped me up.

Making changes

Logical Lou follows the outline (Planner)

Between my first book and second, I made several changes to my writing process that started shifting me away from pantser. I would work out characters names beforehand. If I knew something was important for the story, I would research it and be ready. Little things that planners do naturally.

Little changes are good, but if I want to publish more, I need to be much more efficient. A book every four or five years isn’t enough. My main series (planned for seven books) would take thirty years to publish. And I have other stories I want to tell. Science Fiction. Fantasy. Historical.

I need to make bigger changes for the future.

I need better plans.

PBRG

Acknowledging that my writing process isn’t working, I developed a system for my future projects that I call PBRG. Next post, I will describe this new system and give an overview of what it looks like.

Until next time, keep writing.