Planning a story: My process for your reference! · 3:35am Dec 9th, 2015
So one of my favorite readers asked me not long ago if I could go over the process of planning a story... Now, for this, I'm just going to go over my process. Keep in mind, it varies from person to person. When I start planning a story, I use the same process for pony, and non pony stories. Yes, that's right, I write more than just fanfiction. In fact, that's how I got into fanfiction; I was expanding on my writing capabilities, and I wanted to open it up to an audience to get feedback and to evolve. Fun fact about me: I've written a novel. Unfortunately though, life happened, and as I'll cover later in this blog, I was unable to finish it.
Now when I start a story, there's a couple of ways to go about it. Usually I start with a thread of an idea. It can be a word or several, a phrase or even a paragraph. That word or phrase sums up what the story is about; its the situation the characters find themselves in. Most of my stories I can't remember how they came about. SkyBorn, for example. I vaguely remember it. Basically I had just finished reading my favorite book ever, Airborn (you can already see the reference) by Kenneth Oppel. Now Airborn is a book set in the turn of the 20th century, just after the birth of flight and when it was still (still is mind you) a marvel and captivated the world. The idea behind it is that instead of sea faring ships: cargo ships, luxury liners like the Titanic; instead of those taking over the worlds trans-oceanic transportation, it's airships. Big massive ships of the sky. Its about a cabin boy who grows up on one. Go read it, I assure you you'll enjoy it.
Now what happened was I took that idea I loved so much and altered some of the parameters. I started incorporating it with other things, like Fallout for example. A post-apocalyptic world with societies cocooned away in shelters, cut off from everything. And I combined them. And that's usually how my stories are born. I come up with a vague idea and it begins to evolve.
Usually my stories go through an "incubation" period. Where all I do is think about them. For weeks, I'll latch onto that idea. Without writing anything down but maybe a title or the climax of the story (Those are usually the first things I come up with) then I'll spend days and weeks day dreaming about them, in this case school, or now at work or while I'm trying to sleep.
I"ll use SkyBorn for example. When I first came up with it, one of the things that came to mind was some of the major climatic scenes. One of those I'm in the process of writing. And being a strong and powerful thought, I latched onto it. Using another example you all enjoy so much: Frozen North. For this story, it was born from an image. All you have to do is go on DeviantART and look up the super Rainbow Dash where she's all white and amazing and stuff. I saw that and after reading a story where Dash becomes a villain to fight Mare-Do-Well, my mind (I say this like it did this on its own because that's what happened, that's how my mind works), combined the two. The first thing I saw of Frozen North in my mind was Dash being transformed into this super Dash Villain. And from there, I worked backwards.
That's how most of my stories started. Broken Feathers being one. I start at the end and work backwards, planning a route to get there and building that road.
As for explaining earlier: Yes, I've written a novel. No, it's not published. No, it probably will never be.
Novels...
FIMFiction is great and all, but most of these stories are novelettes. Short versions of Novels. Yes you can find them and they tend to be incredibly long, as novels are. So here's what happened with me...
In 7th grade, I finished a book. Everest. I can't remember the author... Anthony Hawkins maybe... Regardless, after that I sat in study hall in silence trying to find something to do. Bored out of my righteous mind, I pulled out my notebook and wrote. I just started writing. What I imagined was one of the first levels to Call Of Duty, Modern Warfare 2. The arctic one if you've played it. I remembered what I saw and I translated those into words so others could reproduce that image in their head.
Well that didn't satisfy me. I eventually finished that, and day dreamed as I did. Then the thought occurred to me: Write my day dreams. And from there, my writing evolved. I had watched the movie SWAT, and integrated it into my writing. I started writing about a unique SWAT team, making the characters based off of my real life friends because I'm awful at creating unique characters. I kept daydreaming and it kept growing. Overtime, small things changed. I needed a title... A Task force designed for a specific goal... that's it! Task Force!. But then I thought: "They usually have numbers.." so I, being lazy, used my favorite number. 247. I'm sure you've seen it, those of you who knew me by my original user name. I don't know why its my favorite, it just has an appeal to me. There's also an inside joke between me and my friends when we see it we like to point it out. Anyway.
My story finally had a title. But there was a problem... it still wasn't original. So revision after revision passed. This is where people, I especially, get discouraged. This process took years... I started writing this story originally in 7th grade as I stated... I didn't reach its final revision until sophomore year of high school. That's four years... Freshman year it looked similar to how it'd be finally, but it still kept changing. And this story had radically changed. The only real character of my own in it was Aurora Light. (That name's familiar, eh?) And she was my favorite.
So... after 6 years of work. Drawing, planning, talking, writing, deleting, restarting, crying, yelling, breaking things, smiling at the end result. It was nearly done. Something unfortunate happened... I got tired. I discovered what I called writer's fatigue; far worse than writer's block in my opinion. The idea of working on 247 repulsed me. This started happening my Junior year. And I would take breaks, writing something else, different stories. This is also when I got into MLP after battling some depression. Before I knew it I had up to five stories going at once. Most of them were related to 247 actually. I finished 247's sequel and started working on a third and making plans for a fourth, fifth, and sixth story in a saga before I was done with the first.
What happened was I grew up... I saw my young self in my writing in 247 and I could fix it. I became my own worst enemy, my worst critique. And it still happens. I hate my writings, I don't believe when people tell me I did good! And I got sad and mad all at once. I tried editing it, preparing it for print. I got programs to turn it into a book format, I had a cover. But I couldn't do it. So one chapter short of the end, which I already fully wrote, and 28 other chapters waiting to be edited, I gave up.
To this day, 247 sits alone on a flash drive I carried in my pocket for six years with a long as hell password I'll never forget. Battered a bruised it sits locked away.
But, 247 taught me so much. You can't give up on your writings... That's why you guys help me so much. I'll read my own work and hate it, then I'll read your comments and remember how good it really is, and how good it makes me to bring you all that joy. That's why I continue to write. You. S'probably why 247 died.
Maybe I'll create a google document with a few chapters from 247, and some other non-pony works and link them to you all. Just to see what you think if you want.
Seriously though, don't give up. Take breaks, by all means, but don't give up. Your work will sit there and eat at you until you finish it, and finish it right and on your terms. You may be your worst enemy, but find allies to help you fight it.
Look at me! So far on FIMFiction I've written thousands more words than I did over six years with the 247 series combined. Mind you I wrote those stories with the intention of publishing them.
Please, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Y'all know I'm good at getting back to my Loyal readers :P
-With the sincerest thanks,
-Samuel Ward.
Wow.....that was a beautiful blog post.
I really enjoyed reading this, and I think I'll even bookmark it. I have attempted to write a novel in November for NaNoWriMo, and I got 150 pages before quitting. I experienced a similar problem, where I borrowed all sorts of ideas from different books that I've read, and tried to put my own twist on them. The idea seemed good enough. But by the 10th chapter, I wasn't feeling it. And I think it's because I was trying to hard to make it perfect, and I felt as if I was nearly copying everyone else's ideas and elements. Now, I actually gave myself a break, and I have come up with a new idea that is in the development phase, where I'm just jotting down notes . And this is really inspiring.
Thank you so much for your time and effort to making this blog post!!