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gabrielarava said to fixyourwritinghabits: Hi! I’m in the process of outlining a young adult novel and am very adamant about avoiding cliches in the genre, especially romantic ones. What are some of the most common cliches in YA romances?
Truthfully, I’m a real sucker for a good romance my in YA novels. I’m also quite picky about what I read and ship. I feel like somewhere along the line, this answer turned into “all-the-things-I-hate-about-YA-romance,” but here we go!
The Love Not-Triangle. I don’t mind love triangles, as long as they actually are triangles, not something that looks vaguely like this from the start:
A “love triangle” that adds no suspense because we know by the end of chapter one that A is going to eventually end up with B, and B and C have no relationship other than their competition for A’s affections. It doesn’t matter how great C is, or how badly B treats A, A will end up with B.
Write a love triangle that actually has the reader guessing who your protagonist will end up with. Write a love triangle with fleshed out characters that includes other complicated non-romantic relationships interfering. Write a love triangle that is memorable.
Not-Plain Heroine. A heroine that is plain only to her eyes. Often with brown hair. Extremely pretty when she dresses up. Love Interest finds her beautiful all the time.
The Eternally Smiling White Knight in Shining Armour and the Brooding Baddest Baddass also known as your typical male love interests. Please, give the White Knight some flaws and the Brooding Baddass some reasons for being brooding. Less cardboard cutouts, more rounded characters.
Tragic Backstory. Everyone needs a backstory, but sometimes it goes too far. Sometimes, backgrounds with abuse and other very serious things are taken lightly and used for the sake of a flashy tragic backstory, to make a “broken” character that can be simply “fixed” by love.
“I’m dangerous/I’m not good for you/Stay away from me.” Please no. If they really have that level of self awareness, and really are as good as the book later makes them out to be, then they should have made the effort to stay away. If someone said that to me, I’d give the creep a look and walk away.
Unnecessary and easily solved conflict. If the problem can be solved through an easily do-able 2 minute conversation or a text, then it does not need to be dragged out into 5 chapters of angst.
Romantic Stalking. I don’t know why this is a thing. Stalking is never romantic, it’s a creepy invasion of privacy. Overly “protective” and possessive guys are not romantic, they’re abusive.
First Love at First Sight/Insta-Love. Well, we’ve all seen this one. People get crushes, people fall in lust, but two people do not fall in a deep, maddening, meaningful and heathy love within five minutes of meeting.
The Jealous Third Party who exists for no reason other than to tear the main couple apart. Usually horrible, vapid and shallow. No character development other than to hate the protagonist more and more.
Straight, cis and white. Not exactly a cliche, but you get the idea. You see a lot of YA out there with straight, cis and white people falling in love, and I’m getting a little tired of it. Of course, writing about other genders/sexualities/cultures takes a lot of work and research, but I highly encourage you to do so!
The Magical Healing C***. Sex heals wounds. Falling in love cures you of depression. Your relationship means an end to any mental illness you’ve been struggling with. Please, stop right there. Just no. Stop. Don’t do it.
Characters with extraordinary senses come up a lot. Maybe your character is of supernatural or alien origin, or maybe they were just born with a genetic quirk. Maybe they have a sensory disorder that only makes their hearing seem extraordinary. There are lots of reasons why a character might have extraordinary senses and a lot of different ways those senses might be put to use, but here are some of the drawbacks you might consider when writing a character who has a super sniffer, excellent eyesight, or high-quality hearing!
Sight: If your character has super sight, chances are that they can see farther and more clearly than anybody else, which is pretty cool except that the human eye can still only really focus on one thing at a time…so your character might want to be careful not to get distracted when they’re, say, crossing the street. If they’re watching a burglary occur a thousand yards away, they might not notice the car that just whipped around the corner behind them. Other super-drawbacks might include heightened sensitivity to light, color, or movement - and you have to remember that nobody can see three-hundred-sixty degrees at all times, so your character is probably going to have a blind spot (unless they’re an owl). Also, they may frequently look like they’re staring off into space when they’re really just watching something very intently.
Hearing: Have you ever been standing in a crowd of people who are all talking at the same time? Now imagine if you had super hearing! It can be hard to pick out individual pieces of information or even follow a single conversation when you can hear everyone in a six-block radius…and it’s not just conversations. You can also hear every car, every pet moving around, every jingle of a key, the air moving through the vents, and so on and so forth. This is another one of those abilities that may make it look like your character is just really easily distracted - it’s not that they don’t want to pay attention to their friends, it’s just that they’re playing “name that tune” with a radio four blocks to the southeast!
Smell: Think about your shower routine, whatever it might be. How many scented products do you layer on your skin? Soap, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, deoderant, maybe perfume or cologne, shaving cream or aftershave - the list goes on and on. If you had a super nose, you might be able to smell every single layer a person was wearing, and that kind of assault on the nose could be eye-wateringly overwhelming. Consider your reaction to someone wearing strong perfume! There are a lot of other types of smells in the world too, from cut grass and shoe polish to rotting garbage…and a lot of bodily functions have smells too: passing gas, excrement, or urine, menstruation, or sweating, for example. Your character might even be able to smell disease. This type of character might have to wear a mask or a scarf over their face to dull their super-sense, which might give them an odd appearance, but just imagine how much weirder it would look to be standing on a street corner sniffing at the air when all anyone else can smell is car fumes.
Taste: What’s the strongest flavor you’ve ever tasted? Maybe it was something fishy, or spicy, or sour. Everyone’s answer is bound to be different, but imagine if every single thing you ever ate or drank tasted that strong. Eventually you might get kind of tired of it and start preparing food that is more bland, right? Alternately, imagine if nothing ever just tasted like itself to you: you’re eating a french fry, but instead of tasting “french fry” you’re tasting potato, salt, oil, the metal of the fryer, the latex in the gloves used to scoop them into the paper tray, the paper tray itself…that would be pretty overwhelming! The major drawback to super taste is that your character might have trouble eating out or eating in front of other people. When you taste a lemon, your face puckers up…just think of how much more sour it would taste with a super tongue!
Touch: Did you know that every day you suffer a million tiny hurts and your brain just ignores them so that you can keep on functioning normally? If you had an enhanced nervous system, that might not be the case. Think about the number of tiny things we ignore every day: actions like walking, scratching, accidentally biting your tongue, or blinking could hurt pretty bad if you were super sensitive to touch! People with super touch might have a hard time getting comfortable all the time, and they might have to deal with not liking the feeling of clothes, being annoyed with air moving over their skin, or being extra-sensitive to physical contact. If a hug felt to me like someone was trying to break my ribs, I’d avoid them too!
So what are some things to keep in mind when writing about characters with extraordinary senses, other than drawbacks? Here are some things to consider:
Set limits. Your character shouldn’t be able to see past the curve of the earth - that’s just silly! Likewise, if they can hear something happening through the entire planet, you may want to rethink. Consider things like range and clarity when you’re setting limits on super senses: how far away can they see things and how clearly can they see them, for example. When it comes to touch, this is a little more tricky, and you might want to think more about the direct effects of pressure on the character: how much pressure does it take before it hurts?
Enhanced senses require enhanced brainpower. I don’t mean that they raise your character’s IQ level, but consider how much effort it takes to sort through and process sensory information. If your character’s brain can’t handle it, they might be in a constant state of sensory overload.
Speaking of sensory overload, that might happen to your character sometimes anyway! Everyone faces extreme situations in their lives where their brains just can’t keep up with the workload, and the threshold for that point is probably lower for people with super senses. If you’ve got a character with super hearing and four people are trying to talk to them at once, they might experience sensory overload and have to go recover for a while, so do your research into sensory overload and what to do to help them.
Finally, their super sense is going to impact how they experience and relate to other people. Maybe your character doesn’t remember a person’s name or face but they’ll never forget her voice. Maybe they just can’t even be in the house with Great-Aunt Helen because she always wears the same musty old perfume and it gives your character a headache. Maybe your character appears to be constantly zoning out when really they’re just looking closely at peoples’ jewelry. How your character perceives others, and how others view your character, is going to be impacted by their ability - count on it.
If you’re writing about a character with super senses, I hope that this has been helpful and maybe even inspiring to you, and I’d love to hear your thoughts too! Thanks for reading, and good luck!
I read a lot of writing in my line of work and while that’s amazing, I see the same flaws again and again. Below is a list of 7 common writing mistakes in fiction and how you can fix them. This list is by no means complete. In fact there’s a great list over at The Editor’s Blog that covers even more mistakes.
1. Bad dialogue
Sometimes writers can forget that they’re writing a conversation and thus not write a conversation. The dialogue can be boring, stilted and unnatural, and I’d rather listen to the territorial call of an Australian Raven than read one more word of it.
There are many things that contribute to bad dialogue, but here are the three that really get on my nerves:
Not using contractions–I’ve seen work that is modern and still doesn’t use contractions. Consider this: “You are going to be late.” Unless the speaker is trying to sound like an irritated mother and is leaving an emphatic silence between each word to sound threatening, use contractions. It sounds really drawn out and like the speaker is pointing their nose in the air. We generally don’t speak like this in real life, so neither should your characters.
Using complete sentences–Not only is it natural for your characters to chop their sentences, this can also contribute to their voice. Does your character say “I don’t know.” or “Dunno.” Would he/she say “I missed the train and had to find a lift home.” or “Missed the train. Had to find a ride.” In casual speech, we often only use the words necessary to convey our message, even if it doesn’t form a complete sentence. You shouldn’t apply this to every line of dialogue, but consider it if your dialogue sounds stale.
Using characters as a conduit for research and plot information–Sometimes writers like to show off their research (looking at you Jurassic Park), backstory, world building and plot by having their characters talk way too much. If your character says “Once this valley was home to an ancient race of elves, who looked after the land and treated it with respect. One day, the secret magic spring dried up and then the goblins came. Without their magic spring, the elves couldn’t fight back, and they were killed by the goblins. The goblins didn’t respect the land and now it’s uninhabitable.” he should probably shut up. It sounds less like a person talking than it does an audio tour. The information he’s shared could be given in a much more interesting way.
How you can fix it:
Listen to and watch the way real people talk to each other. Do they speak in full sentences with full words? Do they speak with grammatical correctness? Do they speak differently in different situations? How do hand gestures, body language and facial expressions help them communicate?
Read your dialogue out loud as if you’re practising lines for a movie. Does it sound natural? Does it flow?
Test every piece of information your characters give out. Does it all need to be said? Would your character say all of it at once? Do they need to say it all in so many words?
2. Passages of uninterrupted speech or thought
Sometimes you might want to avoid telling the reader about something and have a character tell another character instead. Sometimes you might want to avoid telling the reader how a character feels about something by having them think about it excessively instead. If this goes on for longer than a couple of paragraphs (or less), you risk allowing your reader to drift out of the scene.
The only thing anchoring your reader in the scene is your characters and what they’re doing. If the characters are talking or thinking for a long time without interacting with anyone or anything else, they might as well be floating in space, which can make the reader feel like they’re floating in space. That’s not to say that they’ve forgotten where the scene is taking place or who else is involved, just that it can feel that way if this is how the character acts.
How you can fix it:
If your characters have a lot to say, try to include the other characters as well. Have them ask questions or make comments so it feels like a scene and not a soliloquy.
If your character is around others when he/she is deep in thought, try to include the other characters in some way. If the POV character is thinking about something that the other characters can see, why not give voice to one of the other characters in between thought paragraphs?
If the character is alone when he/she is deep in thought, is there a way they can interact with their environment? Unless they’re standing in front of a wall, they should be able to see, smell, feel or hear something.
If your character is absolutely, completely lost in thought, is there a way you can bring some sort of image into it? For example, on page 216 of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Katniss is thinking about how to treat a burn she receives. Almost the entire page is a paragraph describing a memory; however, there is still action in this memory and, therefore, there is something for the reader to imagine.
3. Not knowing when to/not to use said
Some people will tell you to use descriptive speech tags and others will tell you there’s nothing wrong with said. Both are true, but when do you follow the former and when do you follow the latter? And when do you use no speech tags at all?
Using anything but said and using nothing but said both get exhausting and boring very fast.
How you can fix it:
Below is a rough guide to what kind of speech tag to use. Please bear in mind that it is only a guide and will not and should not apply to every situation.
Said is unobtrusive–a way of letting the reader know who’s talking without making a song and dance about it. Specific verbs (e.g. whispered, shouted, mumbled) give the reader information about how the words are being said. Adverbial tags can also give extra information about how something is being said, but more often than not they can be replaced with a stronger verb (e.g. she said loudly can be replaced with she shouted). Writers can also fall into the trap of telling where it’s better to show when using adverbial tags, which can make the writing bland. Sometimes telling is better, but with speech tags, it’s usually better to absorb the reader in the conversation. If you’ve used an adverbial tag, go back and have a look at it. Is there a better way you could get the message across?
What you need to pay attention to when determining what speech tags to use is the context of the speech. If the reader is already aware of the manner in which a character is talking, it won’t be necessary to remind them every time the character speaks. If there are only two characters in the conversation, it won’t be necessary to finish each quote with he said/she said. Going back to #2, you can also do away with speech tags entirely and use action to demonstrate how a character is feeling, while also grounding the reader in the scene.
The key to avoiding repetition and blandness is to find a balance between using the unobtrusive said, using something more specific, and mixing it up with a bit of action, which means you might not even need a tag at all.
4. Too much description/overwriting
Sometimes it’s better to tell and not show. Some details just aren’t important enough to warrant a lengthy description. If you want your reader to know that it’s raining, you can write something better than “It was raining”, but there’s no need to go overboard and write a poem about how the puddles on the asphalt looked like a great abyss.
Think of description like camera focus. The more you describe something, the more focus you put on it. If you put enough focus on something, you eliminate everything else. What’s this? A close-up. What does a close-up in a movie tell you? That object of the close-up is significant.
Be wary: when you write thirty words describing the way the moonlight is reflecting off the inky black lake, you might not be just setting the scene. You might also be giving the lake undue emphasis, and it’s probably going to irritate your reader when they realise there’s nothing significant about the lake at all, you were just showing off your imagery skills.
How you can fix it:
Keep it real. What would the character notice, what would they think about it and is it worth the attention? And try not to focus on sight. Your characters have more than one way to perceive their environment, and incorporating their other senses can help build a 3D setting for your reader rather than just painting them a picture. Give the reader enough to imagine the scene, and no more.
5. Not knowing when to/not to use adverbs
There’s a lot of writing advice out there that will tell you to cut all adverbs. The result is that many writers now think adverbs exist only to eat their children and wouldn’t dare to ever use one.
There is truth to the advice, but to say “The road to hell is paved with adverbs”? Really, Stephen King? And his dandelion analogy assumes there’s no editing process.
Adverbs aren’t evil, but there is such a thing as using them ineffectively. Which of the below are more descriptive?
She ran quickly or She sprinted
“It’s a long way down,” he said nervously or “It’s a long way down,” he said
He was shamefully prone to anxiety or He was prone to anxiety
She sprinted not only gets to the point faster, it also creates a more powerful image for the reader. “It’s a long way down,” he said gives no indication of how the speaker is speaking or feeling; however, “It’s a long way down,” he said nervously is telling, not showing. Rather than using an adverb here, the writer could describe the speaker’s body language. He was shamefully prone to anxiety tells you how the character feels about being prone to anxiety and there is no stronger word to replace “shamefully prone”.
How you can fix it:
Ask yourself:
How would the meaning of the sentence change if the adverb was removed?
Can the adverb and verb be replaced by a single verb?
Does the action really need clarification?
Does the adverb add something to the sentence that can’t be described in another way?
6. No conflict in the beginning
The first few chapters of a lot of stories I’ve read involve the main character plodding along in their daily life. This is a good thing as the reader needs to get a feel for your character before the big plot things happen, but that doesn’t mean the first few chapters should be without conflict. I don’t want to read about a character waking up, looking at themselves in the mirror, getting dressed, getting coffee, going to work, getting home, going on a date etc. for three chapters. It’s boring and I don’t care about any of it.
The confusion might be caused by common story structure theories that say the main conflict enters the story at the first plot point, or 25% into the story. But this doesn’t mean there should be zero conflict at the beginning! At the beginning of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Harry was told ‘no funny business’ or he’d be grounded. Not long after that, there was some vanishing glass and an escaped boa constrictor. After this happened there was a mysterious letter addressed to Harry, and he spent an entire chapter trying to get hold of it as the weirdness escalated. There’s conflict and a goal right off the bat, and the story hasn’t even really started yet. In The Hunger Games Katniss faces the Reaping. In The Hobbit Bilbo finds himself hosting a dinner party for dwarfs and being asked to go and fight a dragon.
How you can fix it:
Take a look at all the books you’ve read. Most of them (if not all) start with some sort of problem or goal. Study up on this to help you realise what makes a good beginning.
Don’t fill your first few chapters with characterisation and nothing else. Build your character in the context of a problem or goal.
Keep in mind that you find your characters more interesting than your reader does. What you like about your character might not be enough to keep the reader’s interest.
What’s going on in your character’s life? How is this going to influence what happens when the conflict or story goal takes the stage?
What would happen if you cut your beginning out of the story? Would the plot still make sense? Maybe it’s better to start the story at a later point.
7. Lack of story structure
When you write a first draft, whether you’ve planned it or not, there are going to be structural flaws. Maybe halfway through you thought of a way to solidify a character’s motivation. Maybe at the climax you thought of a way to strengthen your conflict. Maybe somewhere in the middle you had no idea where you were going with this and slugged your way through some boring scenes. It’s all good; this is how stories come together.
What should happen next is that you revise your draft with story structure in mind. There’ll be a lot of “I should add a scene here about this” and “what was I thinking when I wrote that?” and after a few goes, you’ll have a story.
Writers don’t always do this though (which, by the way, makes my job take longer and cost more). They’ll go through and fix all of the obvious problems, but what remains is a manuscript that still lacks a solid structure. It’s messy to read, it’s confusing, it’s clearly not thought out, and it feels like the writer is giving me the finger. I’ll regret paying for the book, stop reading it and leave a negative review on Goodreads. Is that worth not giving your book a good edit?
How you can fix it:
Read a lot. Make sure you have a decent grasp on different story structures. Make sure you understand the way stories progress, the way they’re paced and what keeps the reader engaged.
Re-outline. Or if you pantsed your way through the first draft, make an outline. Write a checklist for what each scene should accomplish and what each chapter should accomplish. Make a timeline of how the events progress and how the tension increases. Don’t base this on what you’ve written, base it on what you’ve figured out about your plot.
Edit ruthlessly. If a scene doesn’t measure up to your new plan, cut it. If it’s in the wrong place, move it.
like look at Smaug, look at his ears, DON’T YOU JUST WANT TO SCRATCH BEHIND HIS EARS AND TELL HIM HE’S A GOOD BOY
and look at this guy, I guess he’s supposed to be ferocious but it looks more like “whoa man chill out, I’m just saying that those shoes with that helmet was maybe not the greatest fashion decision, just a little friendly advice, no need to get defensive.”
THIS LITTLE BB ALL CURLED UP AND TAKIN’ A NAP
I want this one to live in my pocket and be my sassy talking dragon sidekick
SO SMILEY!! “gonna go terrorize some helpless villagers aw yiss”
Fiction: I hate sewing, it's so fucking pointless and lame. My sisters and my mom are so stupid, I'm smart, I'm going to go ride my pony and learn how to use a sword. Rar, I'm fierce.
History: Without my needle, you would all be naked and dead. Excuse me, I have to go throw a party and negotiate a land deal.
So, I’m taking a screenwriting class, where we’re writing a short film script. I’m writing basically a story about an RA who’s struggling through the stress of like, cyclical catching students misbehaving, writing them up, school etc. My issue is, it’s a script, and something our prof has talked about is how it’s important to actively build diversity into the story to avoid the hollywood ‘Best (white person) For The Role’ which makes a lot of sense, but on the other hand, my story idea is currently… entirely generic, i.e.
I’m at that point where I have to make a decision about whether it would be fruitful to specify the race/ethnicities of certain characters. But my problem is, some of the characters speak very little, and most of them say things basically any student would say in the same situation. Even my main character speaks mostly in a professional context using basic RA lines like ‘hand over your IDs.’
Because it’s a script, it seems really weird to me to say, okay this character is asian, but then there’s no real reason for them to be or not to be, say, black, or latina, or mixed, etc.? At this point, I have to decide moving forward whether to build my characters to incorporate some indicators of specific racial/ethnic background (linguistic quirks, etc.), but I don’t know a) whether I should or not because it seems necessary only because of trying to subvert an all white cast, and b) how I might even go about this, again, seemingly arbitrary process.
So how can I build diversity into a script that’s relatively generic without it feeling arbitrary or canned? Or without specifically indicating race/ethnicity in a context in which it wouldn’t really be addressed outwardly?
[Redacted for readability]
Your professor is correct. It’s time to normalize People of Color in scripts, stories, in all forms of media. White is still very much the default for Hollywood and clearly your script as you struggle to place us just existing without it feeling unnatural or obtrusive. You question whether it is fruitful to specify race where race won’t be addressed. I say it is. This is exactly what many of us want, just a story where we’re included and treated as human beings doing things, with agency, and not table settings and decorations for white characters to interact with.
It seems unnatural or unnecessary to specify race to you because you’re used to the default being white people who don’t need an introduction of race. It’s time to just stop feeling the need to have to explain our existence and just let us be there. Let us exist.
At this point, I have to decide moving forward whether to build my characters to incorporate some indicators of specific racial/ethnic background (linguistic quirks, etc.), but I don’t know a) whether I should or not because it seems necessary only because of trying to subvert an all white cast, and b) how I might even go about this, again, seemingly arbitrary process.
Why not add cultural and personal details, though? Even in the small ways? Honestly, if people are only speaking in professional terms and doing generic actions void of much emotion and personality, your story may come off as bland and the characters undeveloped and unmemorable. Perhaps I don’t have a full understanding of what you’re doing with this script, though.
The way people speak and the words they say, the way they react to things, it’s all informed by where we come from and who we are. You could show culture with a name, from the lunch they eat, the words they mumble in their native tongue in frustration…and those things come off as much more engaging to me than just White/Generic/Everyman does generic/ professional things.
~Mod Colette
I agree. We’d love stories where we’re the protags, but there isn’t a lot of hullaballoo about our identity. But that doesn’t mean wiping the slate completely.
(I’m thinking of a recent video featuring Martellus Bennett of the NE Patriots and how he actually has a book series with a Black protag going on adventures, and how he talked about the importance of having Black characters having their own stories that weren’t just about their identities.)
-Mod Jess
How to solve your problem: backstory.
Any generic script can be modified to PoC, depending on your definition of “generic.” If by “generic” you mean “ethnically uncoded"— well, you’re wrong. Generic is very ethnically coded. It’s white coded. You just don’t notice it because it’s the same markers in your life. If you watch something like Black-ish or Fresh Off the Boat, you’ll see the differences in ethnic coding in a family suburban sitcom.
If by “generic” you mean “uses archetypes familiar to the genre”, then you’re dealing with a situation where there really genuinely isn’t any race marker. As I mentioned— Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat are family suburban sitcoms. These are generic plots, made different by asking: what would this ethnic group experience in this context?
You don’t seem to know enough about diverse ethnic groups in order to insert them into the narrative. Black people, for example, tend to dress more professionally than is required. This is because the markers of “casual and cool” for a white person (jeans, t-shirt, sneakers) are seen as “slob and inexperienced” for a black person. There are hundreds of examples like this, if you start looking.
As Colette said: you’re used to the default being white people. All of us are! This is something you have to actively unlearn. But the way to unlearn it is to ask the same questions you do in general character building.
Things like:
- How does this character’s background impact their behaviour?
- How do others see them? (Note- cultural markers like the above dressing professionally example heavily influence this)
- How did their parents push them?
- How do they want to be seen?
In order to build race into your characters, you have to get out of your all-white box and start to understand our perspectives. Just like you learn to write a whole bunch of different white people in writing, learn to write a whole bunch of Black, or Latinx, or East Asian, or South Asian people. We’re all still people, but our experiences have shaped us for who we are— just like white people. When building characters, you have to ask yourself all of the questions about who they are and how they’re seen in order to write anything good. These are the steps for any character building, so if you’re thinking there’s too much work involved… well, sorry, no, there really isn’t. Not in this industry.
You live and die by your ability to create relatable characters, and in order to do that, you have to build backstory. And in order to build diversity in, you have to learn how to craft a PoC backstories that have just as much nuance and variety as white backstories.
About me trying to DIY the Bloodborne Sword Hunter Badge…found some spare cöay and drafted a prototype. You can clearly see that I´m not used to work on such a small scale…I will coat it with silver spray paint and age it with acrylic paint, just to see how it goes.
And nope, the red isn´t blood, it´s where I marked down stuff with a fineliner.
Maybe you are tired of all outlining techniques out there… the snowflake, the skeletal, the summary, the visual map, you’ve tried them all. And, although they are great, nothing works anymore. Or never worked in the first place. Maybe, when you outline, you feel like the magic is gone, the story has already been told, you don’t need to write it anymore. Outlining makes your bored.
Then, you try going pantser, but you get lost to where your story should be going soon after the first plot point. Not outlining makes you lost.
We need to jump outside the box of plotter and pantser. No one is 100% plotter, or 100% pantser. We are neither. In truth, we are explores, travelers, discoverers of beautiful stories, sometimes we have maps, sometimes we are following the unknown.
If we outline with fear and/or severity, we are doomed. Outlining is supposed to be on the creative side of the brain. It’s the whole picture of a drawing. Or the sketch of a sculpture. So, let’s try an artistic approach to outlining.
1. TV Series:
For a moment, pretend that you are not writing a book, but a 15-episodes TV series. Write down a small paragraph to what should happen in each episode. Don’t worry about details, make it general. With 15 episodes planned out, you’ll have a clear view of the story. As you write, use the episodes as guidance.
This exercise helps you explore plot details.
2. Hours:
Think of your story as the hand of a clock, it has to run through twelves parts to close the circle. Draw a clock, but, instead of hours, write down plot points. Every hour should change the story somehow and guide the characters to a conclusion.
This exercise helps you keep track with the main plot.
3. Branches
Picture your story as the branches of a tree. Better yet, grab a paper and draw your tree trunk. The trunk is the beginning of the story. Part the trunk into two big branches. These two branches are two different turns your story could take. From two big branches, create four smaller ones. At each split, create a new course for your story. At the end of the exercise, you’ll have many outlines to choose from.
This exercise helps you
discover new possibilities.
4. Mixing
Mix the outline of two existing stories from books, movies or games to create your own. Very simple and easy. Write down one or more paragraphs on how these two stories would merge into one completely new.
This exercise helps you unravel new angles to old ideas.
5. Tags
Make a list of 10 to 50 words of objects, colors, places, animals or even feelings. Pick three words randomly and try to incorporate them into your story.
This exercise helps you
think outside the box.
You can try your favorite exercise, or all of them.
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vikingshistory![calliestephanides:
“ A symphonic/epic metal fanmix dedicated to my favorite TV show.
[listen] [download]
“00 ……………. Twilight Horizon // Twilight Force
01 ……………. Edge of Steel // Leaves Eyes
02 ……………. Hymn // Lunatica
03 ……………. Strike like Thunder //...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/4025bf1e8a7b5abfd83f4187ba22d211/tumblr_odsmsi2mhX1tfh1dfo1_1280.png)
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