Writing Plan: Week One
Vision Building:
The objective: to get a better sense of the story's identity, and how all of its
pieces relate to one-another.
The purpose: to have a strong sense of the story that will make it easier to
choose what is and isn't right for it as you draft.
Every Workday (5 per week):
Aim to spend one hour, (broken up into segments throughout the day,)
seeking answers to these questions, and any others that feel important:
Main Character
* What will change about this character throughout the story?
* What about this character is unstable, or unsustainable? When will it be forced to
change?
* What makes this character the proper focus for this story?
* How do they bring out the most interesting parts of the themes, the setting, the
magic system, and the other characters?
Theme
* What patterns do you notice in the history of this fictional world? What do the
patterns mean?
* What should this story make the reader think deeply about?
* How should this story leave the reader feeling at the end?
* How could understanding the world of this story help a reader understand the
real world?
Bonus: Aesthetics
* What would it feel like to exist in this story?
* Are there colors, flavors, sounds, etc that represent the story's vibe for you?
* What are the sharp contrasts of your story? The highs and lows, the loudest
and quietest moments? The darkest and brightest, the most vibrant and the
most subdued?
Testing Strategies:
The objective: to learn which approaches make it easiest for you to write,
and write well.
The purpose: to prepare you, within 1-2 months, to start drafting with
confidence in your methods.
Day 1: The Theme Method
1) Consider a strong theme in your world. What are some ways that you could
explore it in a single scene? (Keep the scope small and manageable.) Choose a
theme or question about a theme.
2) Draft a scene, working from that theme or question. (Imagine you're writing a
short story.)
3) Write a journal entry. How did this method feel? Did it provide you enough
to work with? What else would make writing easier?
Day 2: Dealer's Choice
1) Write a scene in any way you like. You can use one of the other methods, or a
completely new one.
Day 3: The Comic Method
1) Think of a scene. Let ideas come to mind about what could happen in it, and
write them down. (Just follow the method you've used in the past to outline
sections of your comic.)
2) Draft that scene, or get as far as you can into it, up to 500 words.
3) Make a journal entry. Write down how it felt to use this method. What
worked and what didn't?
Day 4: Dealer's Choice
1) Write a scene in any way you like. You can use one of the other methods, or a
completely new one.
Day 5: The Character Method
1) Think of the ways in which your main character will change. (Hopefully,
you've thought about this quite a bit by now.) What specific moments would be
turning points along his journey? Choose one of those turning points.
2) Draft a scene in which that turning point occurs.
3) Write a journal entry. How did this method feel to use? What did it make
easier? Did it make anything more difficult?