The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 4 August 2009

So how does Jim Butcher at http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/ suggest that you put together all the bits and pieces? I think of his approach as the top down version. Here's what he lays out:

Page 1 has the basics. Three key parts. What is the story question? The protagonist -- in particular, the tags and traits that identify this person and their introduction. The antagonist, again with tags and traits and introduction. That's it. What is this story about, and who are the two key characters? Pretty simple, right?

Page 2 is where Jim Butcher lays out the story arc or plot. He apparently starts by actually drawing an arc. On the left side, he writes a brief phrase about the opening scene. On the right side, he writes a brief phrase describing the climax. On the top of the arc, he writes down the big middle -- an event or scene that starts the march to the climax -- what knocks down the first domino? In between those, you can mark in any scenes that you want or know that you are going to do. You may want to add phrases that describe scenes connecting it all, getting characters from one point to the next point.

This reminds me of the stepping stone approach, with the opening scene at the top of the page, the climax at the bottom, and other scenes in between. His arc provides a little more organization.

Page 3 on, Jim Butcher does subplots. He uses the same kind of story arc for each and every subplot, defining where they begin, where they end, and what event leads to the resolution.

Character profiles. He does short profiles for every significant character.

Next, he takes each of the scenes from the various arcs and outlines the scenes and sequels -- what is the action in the scenes and what is the reaction from the characters? For every mark and every phrase on each of the arcs, he outlines the scene and the sequel.

He does a rough sketch of the climax.

That's Jim Butcher's skeleton. Admittedly, he seems to mostly be doing novels, often in series, but he says he does this sort of skeleton even for a short story. He lays out all of this before he starts to write.

Clearly Jim Butcher is a plotter, laying out the outline in some detail before he starts writing. There are also pantsers or discovery writers who prefer to do their thinking by writing. I'm not sure that either way is automatically best, but it is worthwhile to explore what works for you. And reflect on it from time to time, deciding whether you need to add something or perhaps drop some pieces of your personal process.

Anyway, we have a contest. A quest, a quest.
Write!