So, I decided to look up some templates. Any recommendations? I know about Character Templates and Plot Templates. Any other kind I should check out?
Usually when you find fiction writing templates they'll be grouped together on a page. Just grab them all. Once you start filling them out it becomes clear how they can help. If you find what look like some decent templates google for instructions on how to use them. You should be able to find some blogs or websites or videos showing how people have used them for their projects.
personally i find that using templates leads to templated unoriginal writing - better to just plan and execute yourself
I had never even heard of templates or character sheets or any of that stuff when I started writing. But I will say you can learn a lot about structure my reading a lot of stories. I think subconsciously your brain starts to understand the working parts of a story and how to put them together. Once that's ingrained in you, you can focus on telling your story without worrying so much about following a template. Outline your story if you have to, but I agree with @big soft moose with his warning about relying on templates. I don't think you really want someone else to plan out your story. It just won't be the same story. Writing is an art. Painting by numbers is not art. Just my take on it.
I haven't used them through the entire writing of a story yet, but it seems to me they're just ways of organizing your thoughts. The ones I've used are totally flexible, you can change all the words, add or subtract rows or columns, anything you want, so it become whatever you need to help you get your thoughts in order. I've totally restructured some of the templates I downloaded and changed the headings, so it now works the way I want it to, nobody else designed it.
