Hi. I have an idea and a very rough plot, i.e. roughly where I want my story to go and very broad ideas of what I want to happen. As a very new beginner though I am wondering what the next steps should be? What, in your opinion, should come first? In what order should the following steps be completed? What do you do first? Building/planning the world/setting of your story. Building your characters into actual people. Working out your character arcs. Working out your narrative arc. Creating a detailed plot. Researching elements of your story for realism.
How extensive is the world building? I mean, is it a really different world from the one we're familiar with? I assume so, or you wouldn't have mentioned worldbuilding. Just to let you know right off the bat (but you'll figure it out real quick) I'm not a big plotter/planner. I like to wing it. But I don't think there needs to be any particular order to those things, aside from to some extent doing worldbuilding before you get too far in. Maybe even that doesn't need to come first. I really haven't done any heavy sci-fi or fantasy stuff (the stuff that requires worldbuilding) since I was much younger, and my stories weren't really up to snuff then. They were my learning stories. But I just had loose ideas for the world in mind and let it develop as I wrote and as I developed characters etc. I'm a big believer that these things happen organically, and that that's exactly the way they should happen. You never know what's going to affect everything else—some idea you have in a flash of inspiration about a character or an element of the setting will suddenly change everything, and determine how everything else needs to adjust to make it work now. But there's no predicting how it will all happen, it's way too complicated and chaotic for that. Just as you can't consciously figure out exactly how to play every note of a song—you just need to learn the part and practice it and let the unconscious work its magic. Parts will fall into place and you do it by feel, after you've thouroughly learned your instrument and absorbed the music into your very soul. That's the perview of the unconscious, which juggles all the balls at once. The conscious can't do that, it can barely handle one ball. And the way you learn to write—or to plot—is to just keep doing it, gradually getting better and better, same way you learn to play an instrument. You need to be able to let go and trust a lot, and learn when that works and when to grip it tight and do things consciously. It all comes with time logged, ya gotta get in those 10,000 hours of good practice after a lot of study and learning.
I prefer to think of characters as being revealed rather than built. They don't need backstories, lists of special powers, or inner thigh measurements. They need a voice, motive, relationships, attitudes, and preoccupations. Research - when lived experience is counted (the best type of research!) - is probably half the overall work. The other points are just tools for revealing character. World-building as actually practiced is often detrimental. Arcs are theory being unnaturally superimposed on the storytelling. And plots can be planned, but I don't think they should be. The reader shouldn't be able to detect "aha, that was the second turning point, we must be coming up for the climax." When a story is written to a plan it often makes the armature-wires more obvious, because we'll forget to cover all of them up afterwards. I should qualify that: the problem isn't having structure, it's that I think a pre-conceived structure from a simple outline is more likely to over-extend what "covering-up" the writer will able to finish with subsequent wordcraft, whereas a structure that has had each new event joined closely-naturally to the last and has been covered as it's gone along, can become closer to reality, where there are always loose ends and confounding factors and the unexpected. This probably makes the drafting process harder, since the subsequent tellings of the story are also having to refine the structures underneath. But just like tables, if someone is making stories for a living, they might want a pre-conceived blueprint for efficiency. But this waffle brings me to a useful contribution:- the plotting and planning should be thought of in unity with the drafting and editing. The way a story is planned changes how it will have to be revised.
D4ve has made me realize I should also mention— I did study plotting for a few years (since joining this board in fact) using several different books/methods. The idea is to learn several so I don't get stuck in one and slavishly follow it all the time. I wanted to absorb the information, let it all marinate together for a while and gradually simmer in the crucible of my unconscious until I develop an intuitive understanding so I can then just write. I believe it's imporatnt to know how to plot (I mean really know it, have it memorized so it lives inside you) and then you can just write. Afterwards is the time to make charts and graphs, track turning points and inciting incidents and rising action and all that. Not rigidly—organically. Don't make sure you've got them all in the right places or anything, just make sure it all feels right. Shuffle or move things until it works.
I can't say I've really read writing books. I did read King's On Writing probably three times because I found it interesting. But I can't think of another. Instead I just read. Been a reader all my life. I think reading actual stories is what created that intuition for me. Story structure isn't something that even crosses my mind when I'm writing. And I do feel like story structure is one of my strong points. I never learned the rules or different ways to outline a story. I actually didn't even know a lot of writers actually fit that. Maybe some of the writers I learned from are big potters. I didn't learn to plot pre say, I learned how to write stories, though. To the OP @J-J I think you want to start with a situation. Come up with something that will make your characters react and do something. From there I would suggest playing the "what if" game to help you draw out your plot. This could lead into creating your characters since you know the roles they will be playing in your story. Through these two steps I think it should be apparent what your world is like and if you actually need to do anything more or not. Good luck.
we had reason to believe the OP was a duplicate account . We asked nicely for an explanation but were ignored. This is the result
