On Planning Longer Stories · 3:42am Nov 25th, 2017

Very productive day today, in that I completed the mapping for Exchange's 3rd bonus arc. Looks like it'll be 7 chapters or so unless something drastic changes. I'm also kicking around the idea of releasing it standalone since it actually has a separate set of genre tags from the main story, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there!

But that's all still a ways down the road! The reason for this particular post is to answer a question I've gotten on a few occasions, namely "How do you plan out your stories?". Well, the answer is, I don't always plan them out! Small oneshots, unless they're of serious subject matter, are really not worth planning. But for longer stories it definitely helps. I'd like to share a tool that I've used that's helped me tremendously: story maps. What are they, you ask? Well, let me save you a thousand words or so with a picture:

Exchange's 3rd Bonus Arc - click for bigger. No worries, spoilers are already censored!

Basically it's an Excel spreadsheet that tracks the critical path of the characters as the story progresses. The leftmost column (blurred out in this image) is a list of key locations. The top row indicates chapter divisions and time / date within the story. Thus, each cell represents what's happening at a certain place & time, from the first chapter to the last.

I posted this first because in this case it's very simple. Only the reader's path (ie, what we directly show the reader) has been filled in - the rest will come later. This one also exclusively takes place in linear time - no flashbacks, flash forwards, or other time trickery here. You may think something like this is overkill, but trust me, it's a godsend when you're trying to keep track of everything that's going on over a long story. Let's look at a more complex one:

Story Map for Homemade Kites and Whatnot. Potential spoilers if you haven't read it yet!

In this story, we have 3 main protagonists + some support characters, and in a lot of instances they're all doing different things simultaneously in different locations. The story can only follow one perspective at a time, so having a map like this helps keep this mess in check. It also catches plot holes before they appear - if you know where everyone is and what they're doing at all times, it's far less likely that you'll write in contradictory or impossible events.

Naturally, due to the space constraints of the spreadsheet format, we can't add a lot of detail, nor every single detail. That's better served by an actual story outline and notes. Also, these maps are never set in stone - as I write, things will change on a whim due to necessity or just because I thought of a better idea, but in those cases I simply update the map as I go. It should be a tool, after all, not a limitation! The map only comes after I have a general idea of the story's themes, background, and intended emotional beats. With all that in place, my story notes are already fairly detailed, so mapping is an act of putting it all together to make sure it makes sense.

I hope this helps out those who've asked in the past! Writing can be a lot of fun, but just like with everything else - to improve you have to put in the work.

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