PLOT A STORY | Story Structure for Serials + FREE TEMPLATES (Scrivener)

PLOT A STORY | Structure for Serials + FREE TEMPLATES (Scrivener) - hey writers if you're looking for a way to plot or outline your story my friend jane from fiction technician and i are bringing you two different ways to do this plus we're giving you the exact templates we are using including ones for word doc users and scrivener users whether you are live with us right now or in the comments on the replay let us know what kind of program you use to plot your novel as we go into this um first which i also want to know which kind of story you are writing are you writing a full-length novel or what we're gonna what we call a serial which i'll explain in a minute if you're writing a full-length novel um it's sort of more like i want you to think of like a movie where it is a longer form story with one complete story arc and can stand alone or be the first of a longer series you're definitely going to want to watch jane's video if this describes your story and get her save the cat scrivener template after this video and that will be linked down below i'm also going to try to get through the content today a little quicker than i usually do because her video is going live at 5 30 so i definitely want to make sure we're going to get to that and i'm just going to say hi real fast everybody in the comments um and i'm going to try to get to uh as many of your comments as possible at the same time um but while many of the tips and methods i'll be sharing in this video could also work for novels or novel series i'm going to be focusing more on plotting what's called a cereal which as you can see um feels more like a tv show with a series of shorter episodes with both an arc for each episode and the entire season so if you think of it like the first episode or pilot of a one of your favorite tv shows and then it reaches all the way to the season finale the exciting point these are fast released usually over the span of a few months to create bingeable bingeable content um for your readers to get excited about and um to really build momentum with a continual story and as i just showed you a sneak peek of um if this is your first time hearing about cereals you might want to check out the playlist i've linked below where i share more about different kinds of cereals the benefits of writing them as well as my own journey as i write and publish my young adult fantasy serial project handmaidens but if you're one of the amazing patrons who helped request this video thank you guys so much you're amazing or have been subscribed to my channel for a while and thank you guys you guys are amazing as well um and you're already excited to see the plotting method i've been using let's get into it because i can't wait um and i just wanted to say hi to a bunch of you guys in the comments who are joining live i see martin and cam and bethany and donya and amanda and sarah and ali and mary oh a bunch of you are loving scrivener yes and let's see cool and then let me know guys yeah which one so some of you are writing cereal some of you are writing novels and jane is here with us as well i'm just going to pop up her comment so you guys know who she is and where to head next after this video and again that will be linked down below hi bethany um so okay let's get into this because like i said even though serials are a little similar they're also um different than a normal novel or series novel so i knew i needed two things i needed to have some kind of outline that would work well for a serial and then i needed to figure out what method i would be using and what program would help me plot it best right so to just get right into it um when it came to the outline i first reviewed the story beats in my favorite plotting resource save the cat writes a novel by jessica brody um surprise surprise if you've been here any length of time you know i love that that resource because the story beats in there are just so foundational and great for any story arc but because cereals are similar to tv shows i also thought it would be really helpful to study tv show structure too and the most helpful resource i found was shonda rhimes five act story structure which she shares in her master class on masterclass.com that again um gears more towards writing a tv show so the episode outline that i'm about to show you um i just want to preface it's not perfect it is a work in progress it is experimental because i'm still figuring out what works but i found it really helpful so far so i wanted to share it with you guys in the hopes that it would help you along the way if you're writing a serial or considering writing one um and maybe some piece of it you'll grab onto and want to try out yourself so let me pull it up this is the outline for a single episode and then i'll talk about the whole series as a whole so for a single episode um if you're familiar with save the cat at all and let me know if there's any save the cat lovers in in the uh comments right now you'll probably recognize many similar story beats like the opening image um which is actually in the set up the setup um fun and games and all is lost which i'll touch on more in detail in just a minute but i really liked how shonda rhimes broke down her tv episode outline into five acts instead of the normal three um that most novels kind of center around and each act has two main beats um within it and it can have like a lot of other more specifics and multiple kind of beats within those beats as well um but i like how simple she sort of described it so she said there's usually like this first beat that contains like the meat of what's going on in that part of the story and then um and that often takes up multiple scenes so for example the setup and and save the cat that also has multiple scenes in it while the second beat was a single scene beat that she called the turn um so for example in act one we'd have the inciting incident which is that turn uh scene basically you can think of the turn scene as the twist or the cliffhanger moped moment that happens right before a fade out to a commercial right you don't always see commercials that often anymore if you're watching netflix a lot um but there you'll see when it sort of reaches that kind of um end of a segment of that particular episode and it sort of fades to black and it's like that done like what's gonna happen um and this sort of moment hooks the viewer into needing to stick around for the next part of the story um instead of shutting off the show or going to watch something else so i wanted to mimic this method in my serial episodes to ensure the story kept moving at a quick pace and kept the reader hooked every few scenes and also you can see too because there's less beats there's less for your brain to sort of think through and try to over plan because again these episodes generally the average that i've seen is about 17 to 25 000 words as opposed to like over 50k um so while i tested out this outline with a single episode i also have to think about how to outline the entire series of episodes or season right and this is um something that i've been asked a lot recently so i'm going to pull up the series outline and you'll see a lot of similarities there right um to do this i thought about what overarching storyline would extend throughout the entire series and stretched over um stretch that over the series of five episodes so you know like when you watch a tv show there's usually like something specific that's happening in that episode and then it wraps up by the end but then there's this continual thing that's sort of going through the entire story that you have to wait till the season finale to wrap up so that's the overlying story arc that you're also outlining um that follows a similar structure in each episode so you can see instead of act one act two ac3 etc you see episode one has the setup and the inciting incident of that overarching uh plot and then scene episode two has the fun games and the things heat up of that overarching plot does that make sense let me know in the comments if it does or doesn't i can try to explain it some more i'm also going to show you it in more detail once i get into my scrivener program in a second um you can also have more or less episodes like some people have like 20 episodes in a series and some people have like three or four um and that would just mean that you'd be like extending certain beats you know and parceling them out a little bit more or combining them so just to answer that question in case anybody was thinking that through i'm just going to check the comments um as i'm also previewing that we're going to talk about what method i use to actually fill out this outline and i'm going to show you that um in more detail i see some fans of say the cat and jessica brody awesome yeah a lot of fans love it and um ali says i do like save the cat but i think i like it better for revisions the beats are good to have in mind as i draft but i don't follow them strictly and allie this is something too that i really um liked that this outline that i just showed you is like a lot more streamlined and and less to think about and less to like be so methodical about um and then i actually sometimes think of some of those beats that i don't list in that other outline uh to then add in afterwards or maybe not just to not get so over complicated um cool jody's gonna post her serial on wattpad that's so exciting and um ingrid i definitely have changed the save the cat formula in my work in progress but using save the cat was super helpful for me just to get a foundation love it yes and now he's excited about the snowflake method so um yeah as for the method i uh actually filling out the outline i chose to do a kind of snowflake method where you start with a very simple idea and then you expand the story little by little so this actual method no matter if you're writing cereal or a full-length novel you could actually use so um practically this looked like this first i wrote a one-to-two line pitch of my story idea and this is the simple sort of seedling of it of an idea that i started with then i would take out the 5x story structure outline and use the following steps to um then like sort of flesh out different levels of the story going forward so the first level would be write a one line summary for each of the story beats in each act so i wouldn't get over complicated and write too many notes just a one line then i would brainstorm scene ideas from that one online summary for each act and then the next level would be write a one paragraph summary for each act there thereafter and then by then i would sort of have like a five paragraph if i had five acts a five paragraph synopsis of the entire story usually ends up being one to two pages long and then you start drafting which we'll talk about drafting and editing and all that kind of stuff in a future video i'm sure because that's the part that i'm in and it is let me just tell you if it's hard it's hard i'm struggling but um i don't know if you can see my shirt it says enjoy the journey can you see that i'm just i'm just trying to nope enjoy the journey so that's what i'm trying to do right now um but this was all really helpful to get my first draft done so if you're just trying to outline and get that first draft done i definitely um suggest using this method okay in a minute i'm going to take you into scrivener real quick to show you how i did this in action but whether you have scrivener or not i'll be giving you templates so you can use um these different templates with any of the programs that are on the screen right now at the end of the video um and as i switch over to scrivener let me know which program you use to plot and write your stories is it one of these is it something completely different let me know and um i'm going to pull up um my scrivener let me see my stop screen here and pull it up okay here we go all right so what you should be seeing on the screen now i'm going to take my face off just so this is even bigger and you can see it um is that i created a template for you guys um so that you can sort of go through everything uh real easy you can also set this up completely yourself um but if you want to use any of these templates they're going to be available to anyone who subscribes to my newsletter um on my website so what you'll see first is this how to use this template so i'm going to like verbally go through this myself but um if you've downloaded it and you're at all confused at any point you can come back to um this first how to use this template page and it'll take you step by step and it even has little clickable links that'll take you to the different parts of the template so hopefully that is helpful for you guys but um overall you're really going to want to come to let's start over here to um episode one plotting so this is where i would start with episode one and you could use all of this kind of stuff to um use as a template to copy and paste over to use for an entire series as well so instead of act one this would be episode one and act two episode two i hope that makes sense but let's just talk about doing one episode at a time and um what i would start right i said the first step was to come up with your one to two line story pitch so i have a section here for you to type that in and then you can also um always go back to view instructions in case you need to know more about writing a story pitch um the second thing is i would sort of over go over the um five act outline that i was telling you about and if you are confused about any of the terms that i was using before and you're like what is the opening image what is the fun and games i give you a very short um sort of summary of what each of these beats generally do and then if you want even more detail on each of these story beats i've included links to some helpful resources um that i've mentioned that you can dig into even more but this um i didn't want to overwhelm you guys with like all the details so um i just created a very simple kind of uh overview sheet for you then this is where i start building it out and so while this is like a reference sheet i actually start building it out um in this folder here the five act plotting folder folder and um we're gonna go into corkboard mode which is here so you can see these are like index cards and each of them represents a different act now um this is the summary view so you would go into each of the index cards and just write a one line summary for each beat um and so you do that here and then you would do that here and just keep it really really simple don't overwhelm yourself and you can just brainstorm the setup the inciting incident the fun games all of those different kind of things based on your main character and your pitch then after you have one line summary for each story beat then um what i really like to do is brainstorm scene ideas based on that summary because within that summary there's a lot of details going on so the feature that i really like to use in scrivener and again if you use word doc or google doc i'm going to show you a different template that you can use instead but in scrivener i like using the inspector which is right up here at the top right corner and you can click the blue eye for the inspector and it's first going to show you the synopsis which we started filling out here and then it has a section for notes and what i've put in there for you guys is just scene ideas and then a few bullet points for you to start putting idea number one and then idea number two and so this is again um just you brainstorming but you have the different levels of brainstorming so the summary and then the more specific scenes so you can do that as you click for each one it takes you to the different plotting places i also have another index card here for you to put any additional notes that you want to and then um the next level that i talked about was um writing a one paragraph summary for each act so what i would do at this point is either double click on the icon of the act you want to brainstorm or you can just go um in to the outline here so either there i'm gonna go back here and just double click in here and you can see as you keep the inspector open you still have your one line summaries for each of your beats you still have an idea of just different scenes that you can incorporate and then this is open as you write your one paragraph summary okay and i want you to keep it real simple so that you don't have like a ton of words to um sort of overwhelm yourself with or details just keep it simple because what scrivener will do automatically with this template which is really fun is after you write your one paragraph for each of these acts here you can then go back to the five act plotting and instead of viewing in corkboard mode everybody see it up here you can go to this right here and it will show you basically a summary of all of those act summaries and create a synopsis for you right away so uh like a one to two page kind of deal with the five paragraphs of your story and what i love about this is it just makes it super simple that once you have this you can get rid of the inspector if you want and you can actually split the screen again and choose one of the panes to go to your draft so here you can actually have the um where you're going to actually type in the scenes uh the pros for your story while you're looking at your summary which is just when i figured all of this out a lot of you who have used scrivener for a long time are probably like this is old hat i know this but for me this was like a game changer because i used to have so many different documents open at once and it was just a headache and now everything isn't just in one place and i i didn't include it in this template but in future videos if you guys want let me know in the comments um because jane and i have been thinking about doing even more of these scrivener type um videos for you guys and temp sharing templates with you so this is where you could put your characters um if i started over here and this is where you could put um in world building or setting and have different templates for that uh so i if you guys would be interested in seeing some of those definitely let me know but what i would do with the draft is actually once you've done all your plotting through um all of all of this then you can actually right click and say um copy to and then you can copy it directly to the draft section so now you don't just have your title page you have all of your summaries here and then um under each summary you could add let me see if this will work here you could add a scene this would be your first scene and i'm going to drag this on top of that and now you can see that um it has a scene under it so then i can add another scene oops add a couple scenes there so this is where i would start sort of um having this open with my scene ideas and i could even i think i could do this yes and so i could do this have my scene summary at the top have all the details that i've copied over um the summary here and the scene ideas and then i can start my story from there and then eventually you can get rid of um some of these summaries and some of these other details but it's i love it it's all there so that you can really um see everything cool so let me go back to the comments i know i just threw a lot at you um i love i see totally do more scrimmage videos thanks barry um i jump between scrivener and google docs after i definitely use google docs for a few things as well mary says i have to i love this oh good um let's see jane says i've never worked like that in scrivener but i like it yes and so guys again if you missed in the beginning jane is going to be doing a part two of this with her own template that she's created um that's more for novels and i'm super excited to see um hers as well and you guys get to compare and maybe learn from each of us so definitely stay tuned in a few minutes we're going to pop over to her channel um ann says scrivener looks so complicated though it's probably really awesome once you get around to it and that's the thing um and i almost gave up on scrivener the first actually did the first time i tried it and then i really took the time recently to figure some of this stuff out um and now i i love it so that's why we jane and i have been thinking about doing some more scrivener um type type things i'm just checking back in the comments previously here um bethany likes the snowflake method i'm having trouble choosing a direction oh i know it bethany and i think that something else that's cool with scrivener is sometimes um i'll do like uh version one and then i'll like copy all of this and i'll do like version two um so there's definitely and you can keep it keep everything in one place so that's what i sort of like about that too all right um this is amazing says anna yay um would this work for any scrivener version i think i have enough basics in here that it should um but i would definitely definitely check out the template and if not you can go to whatever version you have and sort of watch this video and place the things that i have in the places that you have if that makes sense okay i'm going to take this off because i do want to show you before we end hi everybody um a couple more things so if you do not have scrivener and where do i need to go i need to go here um if you do not have scrivener um but you have word or google docs what i'll also have if you sign up for my newsletter is here let's see what happens if i hold on one second guys bear with me okay um does this work haha okay so this is the google doc um that i will be giving you guys a link to and you can download this oh i see i think a few of you already there um and so it has the basic steps here and then it has the outline so you can just go in and like write your pitch and then in here you can write um your one-liners and then you can add scenes and then you can add the one paragraph summary however you want to break this up that is all there and then i have the other resources linked here for you as well so no matter what program you have you should be able to use this if you don't know where all this is hiding just making sure you guys can still see the screen good um on my website authorbritneywing.com if you go to the members section um you can um sign up to be a member of my newsletter which it doesn't give you a login or anything crazy that you need to come up with i just give you a simple password that everybody uses to access the free downloads and other fun things that are there and then it'll bring you to this page where all you need to do is click on get resources under writer resources and that will bring you to this page where you just go to um this the same thumbnail for this video two ways to plot your story and you can watch this video at any time by clicking here but then you can get the doc template and also the scrivener template and that gives you the instructions about how to download the template um and use it and everything like that so i'm gonna come back here over there so many moving parts you guys thanks for being patient with me um anna that makes sense thank you you're welcome um esther says i just need the plot points while i write uh so scrivener is good for that but with the header sets and the comments on google doc i can do the same thing so that's how i jump back and forth yes and i loved before i um did uh scrivener that's what i would do too i would do headers because that's basically what scrivener uses a lot um so yes so this is where you can get the templates if you would like and then um yeah in just a couple of minutes um at 5 30 my time so like in can i do math six minutes um we're gonna pop over to jane's channel and she is going to show her save the cat template um in her premiered video um which you can grab as well and we'll talk a little bit more about novel plotting which is going to be really fun so that is linked down below um but i also just want to say don't forget to set your calendar as well to be back here next wednesday at five to do our monthly writer plan with me where we celebrate our wins from this month and plan our goals for the next so i'm trying to do this um once a month at the end of the month and it's been really fun so far you guys have really enjoyed that so i want to keep doing that anyway that's all i have for you guys i know i threw a lot at you and again if you um if some of the the story beats were a little unclear um i think that jane is gonna go a little more in depth um in her video so again you don't want to miss that um but until we sort of head over to jane's channel i have a few minutes of about five minutes to answer any questions or i could go back into scrivener or go back into the outline and give you any more um kind of clarity on things but i'm sort of rushing through it because i want to make sure that i didn't go over time and we all get to go to jane's channel together um let's see okay i'm gonna pull a couple comments up on the screen mary says thank you for this template you're so welcome i hope it helps i'm gonna remember there's that top um file at the top of the binder there for scrivener that gives you all the instructions so hopefully that's helpful in case you get there and you're like what do i do again uh you're welcome sarah love it abigail says i love all your serial content because i'm planning cereal right now thank you so much you have no idea how helpful this content has been that makes me so happy and we have to like get like i have a subsect of um people in my patreon that are also writing cereals and we're giving each other like feedback and helping each other out but um i feel like yeah we need some kind of guild or some kind of place that all the cereal people um serial writing people can connect and when everybody's cereals comes out we can help promote each other and um spread more like awareness of what cereals actually are i think that's gonna be super fun so let me know if you want me to set something up or where you guys would like that setup because i think we need it um anne says this stream was really fun definitely worth staying up for oh i'm so excited and thanks for coming and being here live um yourselves all this talk about cereals makes me want to write one too yes join join us join us um jane me too yay jane's um also writing um some short fiction not necessarily a serial but i'm excited to read it when it comes any tips for going from pantser to plotter that is a great question and it honestly even though i say that like i'm a plotter um i think we all have a little bit in us uh honestly and uh a little bit of both um but what i would say is to definitely yeah check out any videos i have a whole like playlist about plotting i believe on my youtube channel so you can check that out but um i always suggest reading save the cat writes a novel um if you haven't gotten that you can get an ebook or the physical copy that is just so foundational for getting some plotting ideas together and she talks about how you can use it as a pantser um and she just writes like she talks so it's not like super technical and like over your head it's really easy to understand i hope that helps um i love writing cereals but do you recommend releasing them once a week like cable or all at once like netflix i would build off that momentum and do at least once a week if not every other week or every other month because then you have time for people to check out the first one and get excited for the second one and do continual marketing um bethany there's a whole playlist about serials um in the description below with some interviews from people who have already written and published cereals that give a lot of tips um and so i would definitely go watch those because uh there's a lot of really helpful information if you haven't already oh everybody remember to like the video i love that thank you you're so welcome donya alright i'm going to end this here by just wrapping up this will be helpful for later cereals all right yes listening and trying to watch thanks martin um you have five episodes per book which counts as one season for me yes some people go as many as 20 episodes i may even just go for three or four for this first cereal we'll see okay i'm going to just put all of these up on the screen so i can make sure to um respond to you guys maybe in the comments down below um be after because we need to head over to jane's channel so again her video is right down below linked in the description and um i would love to see you guys there we would love to see you guys there and so we'll see you there in just a minute bye everybody

Channel: Author Brittany Wang

Views: 1,073

Rating: 4.9574466 out of 5

Keywords: brittany wang, author brittany wang, authortube, author tube, plot a story, outline a story, plot a novel, outline a novel, writing a serial, serial fiction, short fiction, Jane Kalmes, Fiction Technician, writing, how to write a book, how to write a novel

Id: s463z7gOFvg

Length: 29min 24sec (1764 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020