TECH: Short Story Blueprint, Step Two: Setting Up Your Story (moldy oldie B)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 26 August 2011

All right! You've got the answers to that list of questions, and you're ready...
oh, yeah. Time to check the answers. Right...

Writer's Digest, February 1992, pages 23 to 26 have the second step by Jack Bickham. Setting up your story... Planning the story. 19 questions to help you think through your story, before you start writing. And here's the points to check about your answers.

1. What kind of story? General, mainstream, whatever? Pin it down. Think about the old genres and categories -- boy meets girl romance, cowboy adventure, whatever. Is your story mostly romantic, mostly action? Knowing what kind of a story you're writing helps you pick out events.
2. Setting. Again, a specific setting that suits your plot ideas is really necessary.
3. Time setting. Make sure you are comfortable with the time setting.
4. A main character isn't just some admirable traits. This should be someone you can sympathize with, describe vividly, make come alive for the reader. Is this character vivid enough? Are they motivated? Are they active? You need someone who's going to do things for reasons that drive them.
5. You need to know this character inside and out, and be able to describe their actions, thoughts, desires... make sure you know who this character is.
6. The protagonist's goal or problem is a crucial decision. Most stories are goal driven, centered on whether the character is going to reach their goal or not. You want clear, specific goals. And once you decide what your character wants or lacks, you need a plan of action. Let the character struggle. How are they going to help themselves?
7. Why does the character want whatever it is they want? Convincing motives make readers interested. Something that's vital to your character should make sense to your reader. How can you make it vivid?
8. The antagonist is as important as the protagonist. And everyone is a hero in their own mind -- so make sure your antagonist has good reasons to act the way they do. Questions 9, 10, 11? Look at five, six, seven for the protagonist.

12. This is one where you may be a little vague to start. Don't worry, as you start writing your plot, you'll introduce characters. At this point, make sure you've got any obvious ones, such as romantic interests, helpers, victims, relatives, business people.
13. The timeframe should be as short as possible. You want to start your story as late in the action as possible, and finish as early as possible. 14 and 15 fit together. It's not just total storytime, you also want to start with something interesting. One way to find this is to look for the moment of change that kicks your character into action that leads directly to the final confrontation, decision, or discovery.

16. Research is your friend. If you're not planning any research, ask yourself whether you're not doing it because you're being lazy, or whether you really do know everything about your story already.
17. Trying to turn the story into a few onstage scenes can be hard. One way is to start with new cards, just listing the bare-bones of scenes that must be in the story. Put these in order without worrying about transitions. Now, with this short list of dramatic scenes, figure out how to get your main character from one to the next. Consider television -- quick cuts, a momentary establishing scene, rapid changes of scene without much or any bridging is almost the rule.
18. You need to pick a viewpoint character. "Selection and restriction of viewpoint in fiction is a matter of discipline." Remember, the reader always wants to know who's story it is. And the answer is the viewpoint character. So who is that?

Remember, as you work over your story, you can come back and make changes. Still, go ahead and make the decisions as well as you can at this point. Go ahead and start some of the research. If you want to do some writing about some points, that's fine. You're going to be revising and reworking in any case. But the important thing at this point is to work on the planning, answer these questions and others that you may think of to help you figure out what your story is going to be.

So. Answer the questions. And in the next segment, Jack's going to talk about making main characters vivid and interesting, and filling out the cast.