- What's up, my friend? Abbie here and welcome back
to WritersLife 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,
"Abbie, 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?" 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 thing's 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 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 of
those things very tentative and open to change. It's kind of like a pitch
meeting between me and myself. (keyboard clicks) - Hey! (laughs) - Hey, what's that? - It's a new story idea. - I'm kinda 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. (awkward music) - 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 Westess, and they want more. That ending was so abrupt, we
only got like one 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 kinda 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, you know, who didn't even come to see her when she almost died in a car accident. - Hmm, it might be kinda
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 onto 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 the 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 character's 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 lie 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 is already
the person he wants to be. Now, from there, I took that rough sketch and moved onto 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 "Tessa and Weston:
Best Christmas Ever." Spoiler alert. The hook: cozy Christmas vibes, cute Westess things, et cetera. 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/end: 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 flushing 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 gonna 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've 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/AbbieEmmons. 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. (whooshes) (calm electronic music) Stories, it's valuable to notice those stories that really
tug on your heartstrings and really make you-- - Capture your attention. - Yes.
- Yeah. - 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?
