What's up, my friend? Abby here, and welcome back to Writer's Life Wednesdays, where we come together to help you make your story matter and make your author dreams come true. Today is kind of a special day because it's the first Wednesday of October, also known as Preptober for all of you beautiful writers out there about to embark on NaNoWriMo. Whether this is your first time taking on the challenge of writing a novel in 30 days or... you've been doing NaNoWriMo for years, the time has come to prepare.
But you might be wondering how. A lot of writers ask me, Abby, what is your first step to writing a new story? Do you create your characters first or write your outline first?
Do you fill out all of your character profiles and scene cards before you start writing the first draft? How long does my outline need to be? be? These are all great questions. And since my outlining process has evolved so much over the past few years, I thought now would be the perfect time to share with you a behind the scenes look at my Preptober process.
In this video, I'm going to share with you the very first steps I take when I set out to write a new story. These are the methods that I'm currently using and that I would recommend to any writer out there who's feeling a little bit lost and overwhelmed. So without further ado, grab a notebook and let's get started.
Why does your story matter? Good question. What if I told you that there's a science behind every great story?
I don't just teach you how to write. I teach you how to change the world with your story and make your author dreams come true. Okay, first, things first. The idea.
Whenever I get a new story idea, I write it down. I write down every single thing I can possibly think of related to this idea. Usually I write it in my giant Scrivener project called plot bunnies, which has basically just become this chaotic orphanage for stories that I haven't written yet.
When I first write down a story idea, it does not need to be coherent. It doesn't need to have a structure or a theme or even any names for the characters. It's just a vague and messy thought. If I'm really excited about it, I usually can't stop myself from getting more ideas, at which point I start a Scrivener project for this story. At this point, all I have is a brain dump.
which is all my messy ideas tossed together in no particular order, but it's something to work with. That's why I'm such a huge advocate for writing down all of your ideas, because then, when you show up at the stage of outlining, you're not just staring at a blank page. You have some really good ingredients to play with. So gathering ideas is kind of step zero.
Step one is making sense of those ideas. So taking the mess and figuring out How it can support a story. That means making rough sketches of my premise, my characters, the vibe, the themes, the subplots, the tone, and keeping all those things very tentative and open to change.
It's kind of like a pitch meeting between me and myself. Hey! Hey, what's that? It's a new story idea.
I'm kind of busy at the moment, so... Yes, I know, but this is a really good idea. You're gonna love it, trust me. No, I mean I'm busy.
I'm working on like five books at the moment. It's about Tessa and Weston. Okay, tell me. So it'd be kind of a sequel, but it would also be a Christmas story.
Mmm, I don't know if there's sequel potential. I mean, 100 Days of Sunlight was kind of like a one-shot, so... Yeah, but everyone likes West Tess, and they want more.
That ending was so abrupt, we only got like one kiss. Kiss scene. There were two kiss scenes actually.
And everyone loves Christmas. Yeah, but seasonal books are harder to market. Just imagine Tessa and Weston baking Christmas cookies together and having snowball fights and doing cute Christmasy things. That would be kind of cute, I guess. And I'm thinking that we can have Tessa's mom come into it because in the first book there was that conversation where Tessa clearly had some unresolved angst about her mom, who didn't even come to see her when she almost died in a car accident.
It might be kind of hard to make her mom a sympathetic character. And I'm thinking there should be a puppy in it. Oh my God, yes. I'm sold.
Okay, when are we writing this thing? Tomorrow. Once I've sold myself on the idea, I move on to the next.
step of the developmental process, the rough sketch. This is all about finding the story in the mess, exploring the main conflicts that my characters are going to face. And basically I cover four areas here. Who, what, How and why? The characters, the plot, the journey, and the theme.
So first, who are the characters? What are their internal conflicts and their misbeliefs? Why do they each have individual reasons for being a part of this story? What is the basic premise of the story?
If you had only 30 seconds to tell someone what this story is about, how would you describe it? How are these characters going to go on an internal and external journey? What are they going to learn and how are they going to transform as a result? Why are you passionate about this story's theme?
What is the truth you want to shout from the rooftops? What are some big ideas you want to explore through your characters journey? So let me show you what this rough sketch looks like in action. So this is actually taken straight from my Scrivener project for my Christmas sequel to 100 Days of Sunlight. I was using this exact preparation method when I wrote this book, so I want to show you a look at my raw notes from my Scrivener and show you what this rough sketch looks like.
So here's my rough sketch for Tessa and Weston, The Best Christmas Ever. Okay, so this is going to be a sequel that revolves around Christmas. It will be super cute and cozy and fluffy, but also meaningful and bittersweet. Tessa's main conflict. Her mom comes to stay for two weeks and it stirs up some unresolved angst.
Tessa doesn't know how to be around her mother and finds it difficult to open her heart and forgive mom for her past mistakes, but she eventually learns to forgive and trust. Weston's main conflict. Weston struggles with navigating a romantic relationship and feels like he's not enough for Tessa. He's already learned the truth that he is worthy, but his why still hangs on and when Tessa seems ashamed of him, it sparks doubt and conflict. that isn't quite resolved.
Now Weston feels like he has to go above and beyond to be a really great boyfriend and make Tessa happy because he's secretly afraid of losing her love. In the end, he learns to trust Tessa's love and see that he's already the person he wants to be. Now from there, I took that rough sketch and moved on to step three, the bullet point outline. You've probably heard me talk about the bullet point outline before. It is my go-to method for plotting without getting super, super detailed.
Basically what I do is I take the rough sketch and I start to break it down into story beats using the three-act story structure. For some of you, this will be all the outlining you'll ever do. And that's totally fine. If you're more of a discovery writer and you're not a fan of writing a 20,000 word outline, I get it. This would be the next best thing.
because the bullet point outline gives you a sense of your character arcs and how the internal conflict and transformative journeys fit into your story's timeline. It's simpler than it sounds. So let me show you the bullet point outline from my Scrivener again for Tess and West in the Best Christmas Ever.
Spoiler alert, the hook. Cozy Christmas vibes, cute West Tess things, etc. Inciting incident.
Mom comes to stay for two weeks. Enter awkward tension between Tessa and her mom. Also awkward first meeting between mom and Weston. First plot point.
Tessa is bitter about the past, so she plans to avoid mom a lot. She just wants to have a good Christmas with Weston. Pre-midpoint reactionary hero. Tessa does a lot of Christmas stuff with Weston's family. It's cute, but she's really avoiding unresolved conflict with her mom.
Game-changing midpoint. Weston calls Tessa out about avoiding her mom and they have a mini fight leading to unspoken tension. Something has changed. Post-midpoint action hero. Tessa goes out of her way to spend more time with Weston and less time with mom.
Disaster, dark moment. Weston realizes that Tessa has been using him as an excuse for being absent and feels hurt and deceived. Misbelief returns full force. Now they're in a bigger fight and Tessa feels like it's all her fault. Aha moment.
Tessa realizes that nobody's perfect and she needs to forgive her mom and let the pain of the past go. Weston realizes that he's been trying to become someone he's already been all along. Climactic confrontation. Tessa apologizes to her mom and heals their relationship. Weston and Tessa make up and resolve their conflict.
Resolution and on Christmas Eve, Weston and Tessa swap gifts and have a cute romantic moment. They feel hopeful for their future together. How easy was that?
I just went from having a bunch of messy ideas to narrowing down my main character's internal conflicts to fleshing out a short and sharp outline that hits every compelling point of the three-act story structure. Boom. This is my favorite way to outline because it's so customizable.
If you want to go a step further and continue outlining and get deeper into each story beat. You can do that or you can start drafting with what you have because you know that this outline, even though it's really short and to the point. It's solid.
Like I said before, you might be more of a discovery writer and you don't want to write a huge detailed outline because then you feel like you've already wrote the whole book and the thrill is gone. I get that. But everyone, everyone can benefit from a little bit of foresight, especially when it comes time to edit this thing. You're going to be glad that you did the work ahead of time to make a really solid story structure and character arcs so that you don't have to do a bunch of rewriting.
So obviously I am that person who needs to go many steps further and write a super detailed long outline. But first, before I do that, I dive into crafting my characters. And that's what next week's video is going to be all about. Yes, of course, this is a Preptober series. What did you expect?
Next time, we're going to explore character building basics, and I'm going to share with you my new and improved Character profile which includes some questions that I have not yet shared anywhere else so stick around for that In the meantime, you can learn more about my Preptober process as a whole by checking out my recent live training on how to prepare to write a novel in 30 days. This training was super loaded, diving into my novel prep methods in greater detail, and I also shared my best tips and hacks for creating writing time and staying focused. All of that and more in the Preptober live training, which you can watch by joining my Patreon at the Live Training Pass level.
You can find that at patreon.com slash abby. Emmons. Smash that like button if you liked this video and be sure to subscribe to this channel if you haven't already because I have more Preptober videos coming at you super soon and I would love to have you here in the community. Until next week, my friend, rock on. Stories, it's so valuable to notice those stories that really tug on your heartstrings and really make you capture your attention.
Yeah, make you fall in love with the characters and to ask yourself, okay, what is it about that? Like, what are those ingredients? Is there a science to that?
Can we break that down?