Story Mapping Blog (Read 199 times)

[heroicmuse]

As promised, I wrote a blog about how to plan your story this week. Next week I'll tackle reverse engineering.

www.jackaori.com/2021/10/13/story-mapping-for-people-who-dont-usually-plan/

[Kpatch]

This is awesome and so helpful. Plottr looks like a fantastic tool.

[booksoapwriter81]

Great blog, heroicmuse!  I am not really an outliner either, so I totally understand about letting the story develop on its own because that's what I do most of the time.  That is the fun part!  Seeing where the characters take you instead of planning every move for them.  Sometimes I will outline the next chapter if I know what needs to happen but know I won't get back to writing for a few days.  I mostly do it as a way of remembering what the characters have told me should happen next for them though.  I rarely know the whole book when I sit down to start it, but it slowly reveals itself to me as I write.  Sometimes the next chunks of a storyline that I've been stuck on for a while will hit me as I'm laying in bed thinking about it at night.

The part about knowing your characters is very true.  In my current novel, I think that is why I keep getting stuck on one of the storylines.  I don't know the characters involved in that storyline as well as I know the ones involved in the others just yet.  For characters who have been around since my very first book, scenes develop very quickly because I know them so well now.