In Step 2, we described the purpose of and methods for clearing your mind by jotting down any initial ideas you may have before trying to further develop your novel.  In this step, your goal is to be able to write a single sentence that expresses the essence of what your story is about.

What’s the Big Idea?

Having a core concept will provide you with a creative beacon – a lighthouse by which to navigate your creative efforts so they stay on course to your ultimate purpose: a completed novel.

While this seems fairly simple, it can be a lot harder than it looks.  It is the rare writer who has a focused concise story concept right from the beginning.  Most discover the essence of their novel during the development process or even as they write.

As described in step 2, most writers fall into two categories: those with a general sense of what they want to write about and those with a collection of story elements they’d like to include.  Some writers have both, but still no solid center to it all.

Without a core concept, the first inclination is to try to pull all the good ideas they have for their novel into a single all-encompassing story.  Problem is, people think in topics more easily than they think in narratives.  And while all the material may belong to the same subject matter category, more often than not it doesn’t really belong in the same story.

Still, no one likes to abandon a good idea – after all, they aren’t that easy to come by.  And so, writers stop coming up with new ideas as their attention turns more and more toward figuring out how to connect everything they already have.

This can create an every growing spiral of structural complexity in the attempt to fit every notion and concept into a single unifying whole.  And before you know it, your inspiration and enthusiasm have both run dry to be replaced by creative frustration with a candy coating of intellectual effort that is not unlike trying to create a single meaningful picture from the pieces of several different puzzles.

To determine that central vision for your novel try these techniques.  First, shift your focus from what your story needs, and ask yourself what you need.  More precisely, consider why you want to write this story in the first place.  What is it that excites you most about this subject matter?  Is it a character, a plot line, a thematic message or topic, or just a genre or setting or timeframe or…?

Refer to the list you created in step 2 of your general concept and/or all the elements you have been pondering to possibly include in your story.  Next, consider your own personal interests and prioritize that list, putting the items you most want to include at the top and those less compelling at the bottom.

(Tip: sometimes it is hard to pick the most interesting and it is easier to start at the bottom of the list with the least interesting and work up!)

Now, block the bottom half of the list to see only the top items.  These are the aspects of your story that are most inspiring to you and represent the heart of your story.  Think about them as a group and see if you can perceive a common thread.

In screenwriting, this common thread is called a log line.  Click on that link to find examples of both good and bad log lines.  Using these as a guide, try to write a sentence that describes the core concept you see in your work from step 2.

If your material is too wide-ranging or unfocused to easily see the thread, try writing several log lines, each of which touches on one aspect of what you see in your step 2 work.    Each of these will help focus a different part of what you’d like your story to be.  So, rather than trying to find the core in your original list, try to see the central concept outlined by your collection of log lines.

Hopefully, by using some or all of these techniques, you’ll be able to answer the question, What’s the Big Idea?  But if you can’t, don’t worry.  Some writers need to add to their collection of story elements before the big picture emerges.

In step 4, we’ll walk through a really useful method for using your existing concepts as seeds from which to grow new ideas.  So, if you don’t yet have a log line, you soon will as you begin to integrate this additional material into your evolving story.

This article was based on  our StoryWeaver Step-by-Step Story Development Software that guides you through more than 200 interactive Story Cards from concept to completion of your novel or screenplay.  Just $29.95 for Windows or Macintosh.

Click here for details, demo download or to purchase.

In Step 1, we outlined the four stages of story development that nearly every author follows in the process of carrying a novel from concept to completion.  In this step, we’ll begin with the first stage, Inspiration, and learn how to clear the decks and set a good foundation for all your work to come.

Get Out of My Head!

When beginning a new novel, writers are often faced with one of two initial problems that hinders them right from the get go.  One – sometimes you have a story concept but can’t think of what to do with it.  In other words, you know what you want to write about, but the characters and plot elude you.  Two – sometimes your head is swimming with so many ideas that you haven’t got a clue how to pull them all together into a single unified story.

Fortunately, the solution to both is the same.  In each case, you need to clear your mind of what you do know about your story to make room for what you’d like to know.

If your problem is a story concept but no content, writing it down will help focus your thinking.  In fact, once your idea for a novel is out of your head and on paper or screen, you begin to see it objectively, not just subjectively.

Often just having an external look at your idea will spur other ideas that were not apparent when you were simply mulling it over.  And at the very least, it will clarify what it is you desire to create.

If, on the other hand, your problem is that all the little thoughts, notions or concepts that sparked the idea there might be a book in there somewhere are swirling around in a chaotic maelstrom….  well, then writing them all down will make room in your mind to start organizing that material by topic, category, sequence, or structural element.

For those whose cognitive cup runneth over, the issue is that one is afraid to forget any of these wonderful ideas, or to lose track of any of the tenuous or gossamer connections among them.  And so, we keeping stirring them around and around in our minds, refreshing our memory of them, but leaving us running in circles chasing our creative tales.

By writing down everything your are thinking, not as a story per se, but just in the same fragmented glimpses in which they are presenting themselves to you, you’ll be able to let them go, one by one, until your mental processor has retreated from the edge of memory overload and you can begin to pull your material together into the beginnings of a true proto-story.

Whether you are plagued by issue one or two, don’t try to fashion a full-fledged story at this stage while you are jotting down your notions.  That would simply add an unnecessary  burden to your efforts that would hobble your forward progress and likely leave you frustrated by the daunting process of trying to see your finished story before you’ve even developed it.

Sure, before you write you’re going to need that overview of where you are heading to guide you to “The End”.  But that comes later.  For now, in this step, just write down your central concept and/or all the transient inspirations your are juggling in your head.

In step 3, we’ll look at what to do with what you’ve written down…

This article was drawn from  our StoryWeaver Step-by-Step Story Development Software that guides you through more than 200 interactive Story Cards from concept to completion of your novel or screenplay.  Just $29.95 for Windows or Macintosh.

Click here for details, demo download or to purchase.

Announcing our biggest project ever! This is the first in a series of more than 200 planned articles to come that will guide you from concept to completion of your novel, step by step! Each article will outline a single step in the process. Simply follow the instructions and by the time you are finished, you will have have written your book.

This series is based on our StoryWeaver software, which has over 200 interactive Story Cards to guide you through the process, but with lots of additional material.  So, it is valuable not only for those who don’t have our software, but for those who do as well.

Some steps are informational, and other ask you to write, re-write, or work out a concept for your story.  This first step is an informational one and outlines the four key stages in the story development process.

Stages of Story Development

Writers often begin the story development process by thinking about what their story needs: a main character/protagonist/hero, a solid theme, a riveting plot and, of course, to meet all the touch points of their genre.

Because this is just the beginning of the process, they usually don’t have much of that worked out yet.  And so, they are faced with the daunting task of figuring out their story’s world, who’s in it, what happens to them, and what it all means before they even write a word.  This can throw a writer into creative gridlock right out of the gate and can get so frustrating that the Muse completely desserts them.

Fortunately, there’s a better way.  Rather than asking what the story needs, we can turn it around and ask what the writer needs.  What is the most comfortable sequence of activities that will lead a writer from concept to completion of their novel or screenplay?

As varied a lot as we writers are, there are certain fundamental phases we all go through when coming to our stories.  In fact, we can arrange the entire creative process into four distinct stages:

1.  Inspiration

2.  Development

3.  Exposition

4.  Storytelling

The Inspiration Stage begins the moment we have an idea for a story.  This might be an overall concept (computer geeks are transported to the old west), a plot twist (a detective discovers he is investigating his own murder), a character situation (Ponce de Leon still lives today), a thematic topic (fraking), a character study (an aging rock star who is losing his licks) a line of dialog (“Just cuz somthin’s free don’t mean you didn’t buy it.”), a title (Too Old To Die Young) or any other creative notion that makes you think, that’s a good idea for a story!

What gets the hair on your writerly tail to stand up isn’t important.  Whatever it is, you are in the Inspiration Stage and it lasts as long as the ideas flow like spring runoff.  You might add characters, specific events in your plot or even write a scene or two.  A very lucky writer never gets out of this stage and just keeps on going until the story is completely written and sent out for publication.

Alas, for most of us, the Muse vanishes somewhere along the line, and we find ourselves staring at the all-too-familiar blank page wondering where to go from here.  Where we go is to Stage Two: Development.

In the Development Stage we stand back and take a long critical look at our story.  There are likely sections that are ready to write, or perhaps you’ve already written them.  Then there are the holes, both small and gaping, where there’s a disconnect from one moment you’ve worked out to the next one, bridging over what you can intuitively feel are several skipped beats along the way.  There are also breaks in logic when what happens at the beginning makes no sense in connection to what happens at the end (like the Golden Spike if the tracks were a mile apart).  There’s characters that don’t ring true, unresolved conflicts, and expressed emotions that seem to come out of nowhere.  You may find thematic inconsistency or may even be missing a theme altogether.

And so, the work begins – tackling each and every one of these by itself, even while trying to make them all fit together.  By the end of the development stage, you’ll have added detail and richness to your story and gotten all the parts to work in concert like a well-turned machine, but it probably wasn’t easy or pleasant.

Eventually (thank providence) you’ll have all the leaks plugged and a fresh coat of paint on the thing.  You now know your story inside and out.  But, your readers or audience won’t.  In fact, you realize that while you can see your beginning, ending and all that happens in between in a single glance, all at once, your readers or audience will be introduced to the elements of your story in a winding sequential progression of reveals.  You also realize your have quite unawares stumbled into Stage Three: Exposition.

You know your story, but how do you unfold it for others?  Where do you begin?  Do you use flash backs or perhaps flash forwards?  Do you mislead them?  Do you keep a mystery?  Do you spell things out all at once, or do you drop clues along the way?

There are endless techniques for revealing the totality of your story, many can be used simultaneously, and each one adds a different spice to the journey.  Like a parade, every float and band has a position designed to create the greatest impact.  And when you have all that figured out, you are ready to write as you begin the Storytelling Stage.

Storytelling is all about word play and style.   Whether you are writing a novel, a screenplay or a stage play, there are media-specific manners of expression and conventions of communication, but within those there is plenty of room to maneuver artistically.

Before we send it out the door, we writers shift and substitute and polish until (almost regretfully) we let it go, just like a parent bundling up a child for school.  In the end, as Da Vinci’s famous saying goes, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

So, Inspiration, Development, Exposition and Storytelling are the four stage of story development that nearly every writer travels through on the way from concept to completion.

In Step 2, coming in  the next article in the series, we’ll enter Stage One: Inspiration and provide tips, tricks and techniques for coming up with ideas for your characters, plot, theme and genre.

This article was drawn from  our StoryWeaver Step-by-Step Story Development Software that guides you through more than 200 interactive Story Cards from concept to completion of your novel or screenplay.  Just $29.95 for Windows or Macintosh.

Click here for details, demo download or to purchase.