Resources For Describing Characters



Resources For Describing Characters

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Resources For Describing Emotion

Emotions
Specific Emotions
Emotional Wounds

Motivation

Guide: How to Outline a Plot

The best way to write out a plot isn’t the same for everyone, and sometimes it’s even different from story to story. There are lots of different methods, and most writers use a combination of them, so you just have to try different things to see what works best for you. Here are some of the most common methods:
1. Just Write
Some writers are what’s known as “pansters” meaning that once they have a story idea in mind, they prefer to “fly by the seat of their pants” and start writing without any planning in place. The key to making this method work is to remember that you’re only writing the first draft. Nothing you’re doing is set in stone, so don’t feel the story has to be perfect in one shot. Follow your gut and write the story to the best of your ability. Worry about tightening and polishing in subsequent drafts.
2. Synopsis
Some writers prefer to start by writing beginning to end summary of the story, describing all the important details and events in the order that they unfold. Summaries can be a great way to flesh out an idea for a plot, and they can also serve as a nice guideline if you want to “just write” your story but need a bit more structure first.
3. Old-Fashioned Outline
Do they still teach academic outlining in school? I don’t even know… when I was a kid, we learned how to do outlines with Roman numerals for the main points, capital letters for the minor points, and numbers for sub-points. If you’re good at outlining, this can be a great way to outline your plot.

Edit: to clarify, it looks like this:

I. Main Idea   
   A. Minor Idea    
     1. Sub-Idea        
        i. sub-idea        
       ii. sub-idea    
     2. Sub-Idea        
       i. sub-idea        
      ii. sub-idea
  B. Minor Idea      
    1. Sub- Idea          
       i. sub-idea
       ii. sub-idea…

… and so on. And no, I don’t mean the “seven step story structure outline.” This is an academic outline. It can be used for anything, including outlining a story. :)
4. Timeline
Creating a timeline for your story can be a great way to map it out. All you need is a beginning event, climax event, and end event. From there you can start filling in the events that follow and precede those events. Even if you don’t know the exact date for when a scene takes place, you can still mark it down in the right general place.
5. Scene List
If you have a pretty good idea of the scenes that need to take place, or at least a good number of them, you can start by writing out a scene list. It’s nice to do them in a table if you can so you can organize important details, like chapter, scene number, date and location, who’s in it, and then a short summary. Though, how you organize it is up to you. If you prefer, you can just write the scene number and then a brief summary.
6. Story Structure Map
Some writers like to map out their story according to whatever story structure they want to follow. They’ll pull up a graphic or chart of the structure, transcribe it onto paper or into a document, and then note each relevant event for each structure “mile marker.”
7. Subway/Tube Map
This is a new one I recently heard about. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but I think it’s fascinating. And there are even subway map creators you can use if you don’t want to draw it out. Ultimately, the goal is to map out the events of your story in the style of a subway/tube map. This method makes it easy to illustrate subplots and see how they relate to the rest of your story.
8. The Mind Map
Mind maps can be a fantastic way to get the most important parts of your story out on paper, and to start figuring out where other parts fit in and how they relate to everything else.
9. Index Cards
Some writers have luck writing out key scenes, moments, bits of dialogue (or anything else they have in mind) on individual index cards, which can then be laid out in order on a table, allowing for cards to be easily moved around, added, subtracted, etc. until a more complete story starts to emerge. Some writers even invest in giant cork boards for this purpose. Others use a dry erase board and draw out the “cards” instead. A lot of story writing software, such as Scrivener, even includes digital bulletin boards and index cards that you can use to visualize your story.
10. Method/Theory/Template
There are numerous methods/theories/templates dedicated to building/fleshing out plots. Some to look into:
- The Snowflake Method
- Dramatica Theory
- Save the Cat! for Novels
- The Hero’s Journey

If one of the above doesn’t work for you, you’re sure to find even more ideas online. Try doing a search for “how to outline a plot” or “outlining a novel” to see what comes up. You might even try searching for your favorite author’s name plus “outlining” to see if they’ve done any posts sharing their own methods. You may also want to look into books, software, and apps/web sites that offer ways to help you plot your story.

Good luck!

Guide: How to Turn Ideas into a Story

1) Fill your “creative well” and keep it full.

Our storytelling brains need fuel just as a car needs gas. If you’re not constantly feeding other stories and inspiration into your brain, writing a story is like trying to drive a car on only gas fumes. You’re not going to get very far. Luckily, there are lots of things you can do to continually fill your “creative well” and keep it full.
  • Consume other stories by reading a variety of fiction, poetry, and short stories. Watch TV shows (not just an episode, but entire series), movies, and documentaries. Learn history, ask family members and friends to tell you stories about their childhoods or interesting things that happened to them, and research your ancestry/family history. Stay up-to-date on local, national, and global current events. Play board games and video games. Listen to music, really paying attention to the lyrics and thinking about their meaning. Listen to storytelling podcasts like This American Life and Radio Lab. Always be observant of the stories unfolding all around you.
  • Get out to see the world any which way you can. Even if that just means paying attention to your surroundings during a bus ride or taking a walk around the block. If you can travel, travel. If you can’t travel, explore your town if you can. If you can’t explore your town, do some armchair travel by reading travel books, looking through coffee table books about different places, watching travel shows and documentaries about places. Get onto web sites catering to people who want to visit different places. Send away for free travel guides and brochures to interesting places. Look online for web cams in cool places, or for interactive web experiences, such as on museum web sites. Use Google street view to explore places “on foot.” Go to YouTube and look for video tours of different places and attractions.
  • Actively pursue new information about the world. Watch documentaries or videos on a variety of subjects. YouTube, Vimeo, OnDemand, and streaming services like Netflix and Hulu are great resources for this. Learn how people did their hair or dressed in different time periods. Learn about the different foods or cooking methods in a certain time or place. Learn different dance and music styles. Learn about myths, fairy tales, and folk tales. Learn survival tactics, what the future of space travel might be like, or what it’s like to be homeless in a big city.
All of these things will get filed away in your mind. And then, when you’re trying to think of a plot for a character idea or ways to flesh out a concept, you’ll have all of this amazing information to pull from. Ideas will be popping into your mind faster than you can write them down.

2) Understand how basic stories generally work.
There are all different kinds of stories, different structures, different “rules” and methods. A story can be anything you want it to be, but understanding a basic story structure can help you put a story together, even if you eventually stray from the basic formula.

Most stories are about a person who wants something (the protagonist), why they want it (the motivation), what they do to try to get it (the action), someone or something throwing obstacles in the protagonist’s path (the antagonist), and the protagonist’s struggle to overcome those obstacles (the conflict). As long as you have all of these things in place, you should be well on your way to having a basic story.

Basic story structure looks like this:
Introduction - we meet the protagonist in their every day life, possibly meet a few other important characters, and learn important basics about the setting. We learn about the protagonist’s internal conflict.
Complication - aka “the inciting incident.” Something happens that turn’s the protagonist’s life upside down. This is usually when we meet the antagonist or antagonistic force, or at least some facet of them/it. The situation forces the protagonist to declare a goal, and they formulate a plan to reach this goal, or get sucked into someone else’s plan to reach it. 
Middle - the protagonist pursues their goal while the antagonist/antagonistic force throws obstacles into their path, which the protagonist must then overcome. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail and have to try again or find a way around it.
Climax - this is the “big showdown,” where the protagonist faces the antagonist head-on, and usually (but not always) defeats them. 
Denouement - this is the aftermath of the big showdown, where the dust settles and all the final pieces come to rest. Most of the story’s loose ends will be tied up here if they weren’t tied up already.
End - this is where the story is wrapped up once and for all. We see the protagonist (and other characters) settled back in their old life or getting used to a new normal. If there is a moral to the story, it is revealed here. If the story is leading into a second book, a little bit of set-up for the new story will occur here.
3) If necessary, use tools and resources to help get your story off the ground.
If you’re still having trouble, don’t be afraid to use different tools and resources like plot generators, inspiration dice, the Writer’s Toolbox, the Storymatic, writing prompts, existing stories (myths/faerie tales/folk tales/ghost stories/legends), real life, etc. as inspiration and to give you ideas.

4) Keep a writer’s notebook to collect ideas, dreams, and other inspiration.
Every writer should have a dedicated notebook where they can write down character and plot ideas, interesting dreams, fun snippets of overheard conversation, beautiful words or descriptions, favorite quotes, inspiring song lyrics, etc. Notebooks such as these can be immensely helpful when you’re stuck fleshing out a story idea.


5) Be patient.
This is probably the most important. Great story ideas sometimes take time to percolate. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t come up with the perfect plot after a few minutes of thought. Try writing about your character in their every day life. Follow them around through an average day or week as though you’re a reality show camera crew. Write about what they do, who they talk to, and what weird things happen to them. Sometimes this kind of free writing can lead to plot ideas that wouldn’t have occurred to you otherwise. And if worse comes to worse and you write a whole week of their life and no plot occurs to you, just figure out the worst thing that could happen to them and do that. A lot of the time, the story was just there waiting for you all along.

Fleshing Out Plot Ideas

If you’re writing a short story, original or fan-fiction, you really just need a point or story goal to tie it all together. What are you trying to accomplish with this story? What are you trying to illustrate about the world or the character to the reader? When you figure out what that is, it’s easier to hammer a plot into something that accomplishes that goal.
If you’re writing longer fiction, such as a novella or novel, there are a few things that need to happen in order to take your idea from a “plot idea” to an actual plot:
1. Character Arc/Internal Goal - Your protagonist or their world (or both) needs to transform throughout the story. Most stories follow a positive change character arc, meaning that something negative about the protagonist transforms into something positive by the end of the story. For example: a character who is timid and afraid of the world learns to be bold and courageous.  This thing that needs to change for the better represents their internal goal. Sometimes, with darker stories, the protagonist will go through a negative change arc, meaning that they start out with positive traits (ie: they’re confident and successful) which, through the course of the story, turn negative (ie: they become insecure and unsuccessful). In this case, they may have a lofty or undesirable internal goal which precipitates their downfall. Once in a while, you’ll see stories with static character arcs, meaning that the protagonist themselves doesn’t change, but they create change in their world or another character. In this case, their internal goal is represented by their need to help/change the other character or the world.
2. Inciting Incident/External Goal - Longer stories can’t just be a bunch of random events that happen to your character. These events need to help bring about whatever change you decided upon in #1. The best way to kick off this life changing chain of events is to turn your character’s world upside down. This is the inciting incident… the moment when something happens that changes your protagonist’s normal life forever. In The Hunger Games, it was Prim’s name being chosen at the Reaping, which caused Katniss to volunteer in her place. In Harry Potter, it was Harry getting his letter to Hogwarts. In Twilight, the inciting incident was multi-part, beginning with Bella’s move to Forks, meeting the Cullens, and ultimately figuring out Edward was a vampire. In response to this life disrupting incident, your protagonist needs to form a goal… willingly or because they have no other choice… and this goal is what’s going to carry the rest of the plot. This is called the “external goal” because this isn’t anything to do with what’s inside themselves, this is a real, tangible goal they want to accomplish. In Twilight, Bella’s external goal was to stay alive despite the nomads being after her. In The Hunger Games, Katniss, too, wanted to survive so she could go home and take care of her mom and sister. In The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Frodo needs to take the ring to Mount Doom so it can be destroyed.
3. Antagonist/Obstacles - Your story also needs to have an antagonist or antagonistic force. This can be a literal “bad guy” with “henchmen,” it could be a creature like a rampaging dragon or escaped dinosaurs, a natural disaster like a flood or asteroid, or it could even be your character themselves, wherein they’re their own worst enemy. Whoever or whatever your antagonist is, they or it will create obstacles that make it harder for your character to reach their goal. If the inciting incident was an alien invasion, and your protagonist’s external goal is to escape the occupied city to reach a huge safe zone the where the Earth military is amassing, the aliens (and any agents acting on behalf of the aliens) will be the source of problems or obstacles that your protagonist has to overcome on their way to achieving their goal. Sometimes they will be successful in overcoming these obstacles, sometimes they’ll fail and have to try again or find a workaround. But this struggle to overcome obstacles on the way to achieving the external goal is what creates the action of the story.
4. The Final Showdown - Somewhere in the last quarter of your story, your protagonist is going to have to confront the antagonist/antagonistic force in a big final showdown. If your antagonist is an evil wizard, this will be the big magic battle. If your antagonist is a fire-breathing dragon tormenting your protagonist’s village, this is the moment when your protagonist is going to unleash everything they’ve got to try and kill the dragon once and for all. If the antagonist is a bunch of zombies in a zombie apocalypse, this is the moment when your character leads all the zombies into a field and sets it ablaze. Whatever happens, this is also the moment for your character to demonstrate how they’ve changed. For example, if they were timid and afraid of the world at the beginning, this is the moment where they prove they’re bold and courageous.
5. The Denouement and Ending - In most stories, the protagonist is going to be successful in vanquishing or surviving the antagonist/antagonistic force, though in some stories the protagonist will fail. Either way, the denouement is where all the dust settles following the final showdown. Injuries are tended to, losses are mourned, a promise to rebuild is made. Then, the very last thing we should see is what your character’s life is like afterward. In the beginning of the story, before the inciting incident, we see the character in their normal world, before everything turns upside down. This is the opposite of that. Now you show what our character’s life is like after their world was turned upside down and they tried to right it again. In many stories, this will be a happy ending. I some stories, this will simply be a hopeful ending. In fewer stories, it may be an all out sad or tragic ending.

If you take all of these things into account, they should guide you not only through the action of the story, but lead you to a natural ending as well. Good luck!

Where to Find Story Ideas

Thank you for writing in!
Plot ideas can come from lots of different places, and as writers, we should always be on the lookout for inspiration. It helps a lot to keep a “plot bunnies” notebook or document on your desktop, so that you’ll always have someplace to write down new ideas, and someplace to go when you need ideas.
In the meantime, here are some places you can start looking for ideas:
1) Your favorite books, movies, and TV shows can provide great inspiration. What elements do your favorites have in common? You can also try making a list of your three favorite books, TV shows, and movies, then choose three favorite elements of each and write them in a long list. Now, look at all of those elements and see if there’s a way to combine them into a new and interesting story.
2) Writing prompts are another great way to find story inspiration. The internet is full of writing prompts, or you can find writing prompt books in stores, libraries, and Amazon. You can even find entire tumblrs dedicated to writing prompts. Try choosing a few prompts from a few different sources. Write a little flash fiction or short story for each one and see if any of them open up to a bigger story. If not, isolate your favorite elements of each story and see if they can be combined into a new story.
3) Memories and family stories can provide a unique source of inspiration, no matter what type of stories you like to write. This is a great opportunity to talk to older family members and learn about family stories and history. Bring a notebook so you can take notes, and see if you can suss out the oldest existing story in your family. Ask about childhood memories,or if people remember any childhood stories belonging to their parents or grandparents. Often, at the heart of these stories, you can find a kernel that can be spun into a whole new story.

For example, my grandfather grew up in a big city in the 1920s, and he said he used to ride the trolley all over the city, all by himself, when he was just four or five years old. Can you imagine the adventures he must have gotten into? Now, imagine someone else in his shoes–perhaps a boy in a fantasy version of feudal Japan, catching a ride in a hay cart over to the next village. What happens to him there? What about space station dwelling teenager who hops aboard a shuttle and ends up in a city on a whole new planet. How does she get home again?
4) Current events and history are also good sources for story ideas. Try watching some interesting-sounding documentaries on YouTube or Netflix. A TV show about the gold rush might inspire a sci-fi story. A documentary about some crazy conspiracy theory might inspire a medieval fantasy version of a similar conspiracy. An intriguing bit of data or a mystery in a current news story might serve as an interesting plot element in a whole new story.
5) Songs and song lyrics end up being a major source of inspiration for me and a lot of other writers I know. While you can’t use the exact elements, plot, or imagery of a song, you can use them as inspiration for new ideas. Maybe the imagery in Taylor Swift’s “End Game” lead you to the story of a futuristic heiress who is romantically (and ideologically) torn between the rival heiress who wants to bring her father’s empire to its knees, and the ruthless business woman who is vying for a seat at her father’s table, hoping to sway him to her own sinister plans for his company’s future.

6) Plot inspiring tools are not all that hard to come by, and they can be really helpful when you need plot ideas, or you have a plot idea that needs to be fleshed out. Some of my favorites are: inspiration dice (these seem to be no longer made, but if you can get your hands on some, they’re great!), Rory’s Story Cubes, The Storymatic, The Writer’s Toolbox, Writer Emergency Pack. You can also find “prompt generators” and “story idea generators” online. The ideas they offer up are usually kind of out there, but sometimes they’ll inspire whole new ideas to form in your head!

How to Move a Story Forward

When your character is just milling about in their world describing what they see, what they’re doing, and what’s happening to them, that’s not really a plot. It’s just a random string of events happening to your character, and typically it doesn’t make for very interesting reading. This kind of story moves slowly because nothing’s actually happening. Imagine following an average person through their average day versus following Katniss Everdeen through day three of The Hunger Games. It’s a big difference. And that’s not to say every plot has to be as exciting or dramatic as The Hunger Games, but there does need to be a conflict.
So, the first thing you have to do is sit down and figure out what your story is really about. What is going on in this person’s life that is worth writing about? Is there some sort of inner conflict they’re struggling with? Or is there an external conflict of some kind? Usually there are both with the focus being more on one than the other.

How stories begin…

Most stories start when a character’s life is still normal but just about to change. Katniss was getting ready to go hunting with Gale. Bella was settling in at her new high school after moving in with her dad, and Harry Potter was just living life as the boy in the cupboard.

What happens next…

And then something happens. This is called the “inciting incident” because it “incites” the conflict and brings on the important events of the story. Katniss volunteers as tribute when her sister is drafted into The Hunger Games. Bella meets Edward Cullen and an instant attraction develops between them. Harry Potter receives his letter to Hogwarts.

The character responds and forms a goal…

The character’s normal life has been turned upside down. Now what? For Katniss, the most important thing in the world to her was the safety and well being of her sister and mother, and since she is the one who keeps them safe and fed, her survival of The Hunger Games is vital. That’s her motivation, and her goal is to win the game. Bella becomes obsessed with learning more about Edward and who, or what, he is, and she falls for him and the magic his world brings into her otherwise boring life. Being part of that world is her motivation, staying alive in the process is her goal. Harry finally has a ticket out of his life of being abused and unloved, and he has a chance to connect with the legacy his parents left behind. Leaving his old life behind and embracing this new one is is motivation. Surviving his first year at Hogwarts is his goal.

But goals aren’t supposed to be easy to reach…

If the character can just sail smoothly right up to their goal, mission accomplished, that makes for a pretty boring story. You never hear people say, “WOW! THAT WAS AN INCREDIBLE GAME!” when the score was 20 to nothing. What makes the game exciting is when the teams are neck and neck, one getting ahead for a little while, then the other one being ahead for a little while. It’s the trying, and often failing, to get over obstacles that makes the conflict more interesting. In a lot of ways, that struggle actually is the conflict. What obstacles stand in the way of your character and their goal, and who (or what) put them there? For Katinss, the obstacles were the other tributes and all the frightening things added to the game by the gamemakers. For Bella, it was the nomad vampires who caused trouble at first for fun, and then later for revenge. The obstacles Harry faces are partly due to conflict with other students and teachers, and partly due to the first “shots fired” in what would become the overarching battle against Voldemort.

You win some, you lose some…

And it’s important that you show some wins along with the failures. Sometimes the character tries to overcome an obstacle, fails, tries again and succeeds. Sometimes they fail and have to come up with a work around. Either way, the fails add to the tension and drama while the wins add excitement and interest in what happens next.

The final showdown…

Eventually you get to the big showdown, aka “the climax.” This is when your character faces down the biggest challenge that stands in the way of reaching their goal. This could be an epic battle between your character and the villain. It could be the moment where your character realizes they’re in love with their best friend and they chase them to the airport to admit their undying love for them before they move away. Or it could be surviving one last night of a terrible storm before crawling out of hiding to assess the damage. Whatever it is, the culmination of that moment is achieving or failing to achieve their goal.

The dust settles…

Whatever crazy chain of events was set off by the inciting incident, they’ve come to an end now thanks to the actions of your protagonist and their friends. Or, if they haven’t come to an end, they’ve at least been waylaid for now, or things are at least moving in a better direction. Now your characters can clean up, rebuild, mend wounds, tie up loose threads, and get back to life as normal. Or, in the case of a series, they can re-group and figure out what happens next. And that’s the end.

… But some stories happen on the inside.

Some stories are more about people and their experiences than about any big crazy thing that happens to them. Stories like these are more emotional and are more about dealing with the inner conflict than an outer one. But even in stories like these, you’ll still have a similar structure to what I laid out above. It’s just a lot looser and tied up with an emotional journey rather than the physical one. Which isn’t to say they can’t have a parallel physical journey, but the important stuff is happening on the inside.
Whichever kind of story you’re writing, if you make sure you’re hitting the important points I’ve laid out above, whether they relate to an internal conflict, an external conflict, or a little of both, you can be sure you’re writing a story that is moving forward and will keep your audience engaged. Everything I’ve outlined above is the “something” that needs to happen to make your story interesting.

Coming Up with Plot Twists

It sounds like you’re off to a great start on that story. It sounds fascinating! I can’t help you with ideas, but I can give you a tip that might help. When you’re stuck in a story or simply need to spice things up, one of the best things you can do is ask yourself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen to my character right now?” Then, do that thing!
Often, the worst thing that could happen to a character would be an unexpected obstacle popping up between them and their goal. So, for example, an athlete training for a marathon that they’re determined to win. What’s an unexpected obstacle to keep them from winning that marathon? They get into an accident that requires a huge recuperation period and they have to learn to walk all over again. Or, maybe someone is working really hard for a promotion at the company where they work, because they want a better job so they can ask their significant other to marry them. So what obstacle could threaten that possibility? Maybe they get fired or the company goes bankrupt, so they lose the possibility of the promotion as well as their job.
Sometimes, the worst thing that could happen is something that raises the stakes of the story. Like when someone is trying to diffuse a bomb, and all is going well, but then they accidentally snip the wrong wire and the countdown timer goes from 5 minutes left to 1 minute left. Or maybe a police detective has spent years trying to track down a killer, and then the suspect kidnaps the detective’s partner, potentially becoming the killer’s next victim. That’s an unexpected twist AND it raises the stakes!
So, spend a little time looking at your character and thinking about the worst thing that could happen. You might even make a list of a few things, and try to consider different areas, like what’s the worst thing that could happen in their personal life, social life, work life, etc. This kind of brainstorming session is bound to produce something that will be just perfect! :)

Creating a Detailed Story Outline

For years after I started writing seriously, I thought “outlining” meant doing one of those academic outlines you’re taught in school, with Roman numerals and nested points. And I’m terrible at those, so I tended to avoid outlining my stories at all, or I’d get halfway into an outline and give up, writing the rest of the story on the fly. Thankfully, I eventually learned that outlining a story just refers to whatever method you use to flesh it out from beginning to end.
One of the best ways you can flesh out a story is to use a story structure template as a guideline. “Guideline” being the key word here, because you never want to force your story into an existing template, but they can be very helpful when you’re trying to figure out how to make your story work.
There are a few that I think work well, depending on the needs of your story. Ultimately, they break a story down into its major plot points, showing you what those plot points need to accomplish. Then you figure out what that plot point would be in your story, and flesh out your story that way. Here are some to try:
1. Larry Brooks Story Structure
You can usually find this one for free online. Author Jami Gold has a worksheet for it (among others) on her web site. This method breaks your story down into parts and milestones, showing you approximately what percentage into the story they should happen. It hits on all the major high points like the inciting incident, midpoint, and “all is lost” moment as well as some of the smaller but still important plot points and pinch points.
2. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel
This one is based on the Save the Cat! method of writing a screenplay, but has been adapted specifically for novels. You can generally find versions of this online for free (just make sure you’re looking at the novel writing version rather than the screenwriting version), but if you can manage $12.00 for the book, I genuinely can’t recommend it enough. I know so many novels of all different skill levels who have saved floundering novels using this method.
3. The Snowflake Method
I have to admit, this is one that has never worked from me, but several of my writer friends swear by it. Essentially, the idea is that you start with your central idea and branch out from there, adding ideas until the story starts to grow before your eyes, much like drawing a snowflake. Once again, this is one you should be able to find for free online.
4. Dramatica Act Structure
This is one I’ve never used, but again one which many people seem to have success with. There’s actually software that goes along with it, but you can generally find an explanation of the actual structure in various places online.
5. The Hero’s Journey
This is a pretty general/basic story structure, and it works best in “save the world” type stories, but you can find it all over the internet. For any of these, in fact, you can typically type it into Google Image Search and find graphics breaking them down.
Again, remember that you should never feel like you have to make your story fit a template exactly. The idea is to use the template as a sort of road map to help you navigate the story that’s waiting to be told. Stray from it in whatever ways are necessary, but follow the basic points to stay on track.

Can Come Up with Back Story but Not Plot

If you’re good at creating back stories for your characters, but for some reason can’t come up with plots, it’s probably because you’re not thinking about the components that make up a story.
That’s the thing about writing novels that many writers, especially newer ones, seem to miss–stories aren’t just an account of random things that happen to a person. Stories need to have a purpose, and that purpose has to do with four things:
1. What your character wants to change in their physical world (external goal)
2. What your character needs to change in their internal world (internal goal)
3. The flaw that holds your character back from changing internally
4. The antagonist that holds your character back from reaching their goal
These are the first things you need to think about when drafting a story, and if you know your character’s back story, you should have a pretty good idea of what they need to change internally and the flaw that’s holding them back. The external conflict, goal, and antagonist is the framework upon which this internal struggle can play out. They go hand-in-hand.
So, you know where your character has been (back story). Where are they now? What is their life like when the story begins? How has their past affected where they are, what they’re doing, and how they feel? Now, what’s something that would really shake up your character’s world? It could be the loss of a job, the end of a serious relationship, losing a loved one, getting transferred to a new city, meeting a new love interest, a natural disaster or major weather event, an alien invasion, the apocalypse, a hoard of zombies–it can be anything. All that matters is that two things happen:
– your character is forced to settle on an external goal to pursue in order to change their external circumstances
– your character is put on a path that will force them to do internal battle with their flaw so that they have no choice but to change/reach their internal goal (though sometimes they might try to change but fail–and sometimes a character doesn’t change themselves but another person or perhaps their society)
The point is, it’s this push and pull of conflict, goals, triumphs, and failures that creates the action of your story. We need to see your character living their status quo life. We need a glimpse into what needs to change for them, even if they don’t really know it. We need something big to happen to turn their whole world upside down, forcing them to get off their butts and change their circumstances. We need to see them trying to reach a goal, but getting knocked down again and again because of the external antagonist/s and their internal flaws. We need to see them hit rock bottom, certain that all is lost after a big loss in the pursuit of their goal thanks to their internal flaw. We need to see them sulk, debate, regroup, understand their flaw, and ultimately come to a resolution about how to proceed, come hell or high water. We need to see them take one final big swing at their goal, going after it the right way this time–no longer hampered by the thing the internal thing that was mucking things up. They may successfully reach their goal or they may fail spectacularly (because not every story has a happy ending), but before the story ends, we need to see them in their new status quo as the dust settles around them. We need to see that their world has changed, good or bad, and maybe even catch a little light of hope off in the distance that maybe, just maybe, your character and their world will be okay in the long run.

Avoid Revealing Backstory Too Soon

When it comes to revealing backstory, you always want to dole it out a little at a time. So, what happens when you feel like your reader needs to know all the backstory very early on?
Map it Out
Any time you have a story where there’s a lot of backstory that correlates with the main story, you really need to get a bird’s-eye view of your story to figure out what backstory will be relevant at which points. My favorite way to do this is to plot the story out on a straight line, marking each scene (or at least the really important ones), starting with the first scene and ending with the last. It might look something like this:
image
Next, write out a list of backstory events that will need to be revealed at different points throughout the story:
- Ariel’s life at the palace
- Ariel entrusted with the diamond
- Liam at Scotland Yard
- How Sam and Liam met Ted
Now, consider the first item on the list and look at your scene timeline. At what point is it imperative that the reader know this information? When is the moment that it’s vital for them to know that bit of backstory? Mark it on the timeline and label it with the bit of backstory that’s relevant. Now you know that’s the latest point at which that detail can be revealed. Now do the same with all the other items. When you’re done, you should have something like this:
image
Now you have a clear map for when each bit of backstory needs to be delivered, which will help you pace it all out and keep you from revealing too much, too soon, or revealing it all at once.
One thing to keep in mind: if you have a significant moment or event that occurs prior to the beginning of the story that you feel needs to be delivered early in the story in a short amount of time, that’s definitely a point when you’d be right to consider a prologue. :)

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