Lesson 5 Hacking the First Draft
Planning your story is like tilling the ground and getting things ready to plant. Think of all the things you need for your veggies to grow. Good soil, irrigation, and plenty of sunshine. Likewise, your plan for your story should have a decent premise, interesting characters, and a healthy plot.
THE PLOT
First off, let's discuss just exactly what a plot is.
A plot is the main group of events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence that has a beginning, middle, and an end.
In other words, your plot is your premise worked out. Remember Lesson 2? Remember that little one-sentence ditty that we wrote out at the beginning of this workshop? The one that most instructors tell you to write after your novel is done? Well, guess what? You're three steps ahead of the game. You have your premise!
And you have your characters. So now all you have to do is figure out
1. How is your main character going to overcome their obstacles and reach their goals?
2. How is the antagonist going to try and stop them?
3. What events will take place to present the problem?
When you have those three things decided, you have a PLOT.
So let's look at some of the details you'll need to begin your story and this string of events.
You’ll need to introduce your characters, primarily your protagonists and antagonists, and their strengths and weaknesses in live action at some point in your story so answer these questions on a notepad for both of them
Who are they?
Where are they?
What is their relationship which each other?
How does the obstacle or crisis affect each of them individually?
How do they overcome (or are overwhelmed by) the crisis that they are faced with?
Now comes the fun part! The story. This is putting your premise, your characters, and your plot all on one page. So fill in the blanks with the instructions given for each line. You're going to want to do this and save it so fill in the spaces.
MAKE SURE YOU WRITE YOUR PREMISE AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE SO YOU CAN REFER TO IT.
Once upon a time there was _____________
who was _____________
but had to ___________
and then _______________
but much to their surprise they ________
Until finally they _________________
Introduce the character.
Give us a description of their strengths.
Introduce us to the problem.
Build the problem with the antagonist.
Take us to a climax.
Resolve the issue.
A good story will have some subplots going on with your supporting characters so work on their characters, but they should never take away from the main premise.
Next step tomorrow we'll talk about fleshing this out.
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