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06-01 What is a Story

Savannah Gilbo

A story is about what happens externally affects someone who’s in pursuit of a difficult goal and how s/he changes as a result.

 

Mistake: Believing you can write a perfect first draft if you do just a little more research, planning or outlining before you start to write.

 

The Purpose of a first draft is to tell yourself the story.

It’s Not to write something that’s perfect.

This is why I like to call the first draft of any story the Discovery Draft.

It’s all about discovering your story and exploring hidden character motivations, budding themes, your story world, and even some surprise subplots.

 

Mistake: Believing that you need to have a rock-solid, completely original story idea before you start writing.

 

Almost every writer I’ve worked with who has gone on to successfully publish did not have everything figured out.

Not one of them felt totally confident in their idea or knew everything there was to know before they started writing.

 

The first thing to do with any new writing project is to identify your story’s main genre. Your story’s genre will help you

- create the framework for your story

- flesh out your idea and identify what’s missing

 

There’s a difference between commercial genre and content genre:

- Commercial

Genres are sales and marketing categories that dictate which bookstore shelf a book is placed, or how it’s sold, in the store or online. Example: Cozy Cat Mystery or Young Adult Fantasy

You might already know the commercial genre of your story, but this alone won’t tell you how to construct your story from start to finish.

 

Content genres describe the type of content within a story. And each content genre can give you a sense of thing like:

- What your protagonist wants or needs

- What your protagonist stands to gain or lose

- The key scenes and conventions you need to use

- What emotions your reader expects to feel

- What theme or topic your story is exploring

 

The 10 Content Genres:

- Action: Harry Potter, The Wheel of Time, Dune

- Crime: Sherlock Holmes, The Dresden Files, Knives Out

- Horror: The Shining, Halloween, Alien

- Love (Romance): Pride and Prejudice, Bridgerton, Outlander

- Morality: Old Man and the Sea, The Scarlet Letter, Wallstreet

- Performance: The Karate Kid, The Natural, Rocky

- Society: Me Sister’s Keeper, Little Fires Everywhere, Thelma and Louise

- Status: Milk, Little Miss Sunshine, The Hate You Give

- Thriller: The Silence of the Lambs, Gone Girl

- Worldview: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, The Catcher in the Rye

 

Love Story Example:

What Your Protagonist Wants or Needs: The protagonist want to find or be worthy of love, and avoid rejection. They need to overcome an internal wound or misbelief that’s making them feel inadequate or unworthy of love.

 

What about Science Fiction and Fantasy

Science fiction and fantasy are commercial genres, or consumer-facing sales genres.

If you’re writing sci-fi or fantasy, you can look to your content genres for guidance:

- an action story in a futuristic setting

- a romance that takes place in a fantasy world

- thriller that takes place at a past point in history

 

Recap:

Identify your story’s main content genre so that it can help you develop your idea and give you a framework to work in.

 

Mistake: Believing you have to follow every single writing method in existence in order to write a quality novel.

 

This behavior is rooted in perfectionism. We convince ourselves that, if we could just analyze our story through one more lens …

… or read just one more craft book, then maybe out story would be good enough to share with family and friends, or that it will be good enough to publish.

 

The truth is that all of these methods will – more or less – get you to the same place. But layering them on top of each other and trying to tick all the boxes is going to do you more harm than good.

You will likely end up feeling confused that maybe you’re doing something wrong because all the puzzle pieces don’t line up.

 

Do this instead: pick 1-2 methods that you like or that make sense to you and then stick with what you choose until you have a finished draft.

 

Many of you are here because you have an idea for a story, but you don’t know how to write it.

You might know what a story looks and feels like, but you don’t quite know how to take your little nugget of an idea and turn it into a full-length novel.

Once you determine your genre, and you flesh out your idea just a little more, it’s time to start creating a scene-by-scene outline.

 

The Notes-to-Novel 5-Step Outlining Process

1. Determine exactly where your story starts and ends

2. Plug in the key scenes your story requires for the genre

3. Fill in the gapes to create your scene-by-scene outline

4. Repeat steps 1-3 to layer in your sub-plots

5. Pressure test your outline to fill in any holes or gaps in logic

 

This outlining method enables you to:

- Keep your global story in mind

- Avoid writing a bunch of random stuff

- Cut down on the overwhelm

- Focus on one piece at a time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rev Dr E. William (Liam) Petter    -   e-mail: liam@ewpetter.net    -    Address: 2831 El Dorado Pkwy, Ste 103-443, Frisco, Tx 75033

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