This Is Why It Hurts The Way It Hurts. You Have Too Many Words In Your Head. There Are Too Many Ways

“This is why it hurts the way it hurts. You have too many words in your head. There are too many ways to describe the way you feel. You will never have the luxury of a dull ache. You must suffer through the intricacy of feeling too much.”

— Iain Thomas

Prompt #509

“Being evil is not as easy as you think it is.”

“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” - Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

This needs to be heard. So helpful advice.

A logline is a one (or occasionally two) sentence description that boils the script down to its essential dramatic narrative in as succinct a manner as possible.

So you have some characters, maybe even a world… now what?

World building addicts, prolific character creators, I’m looking at you!

Yes, it’s very tempting to just carry on creating characters and expanding your world until the plot magically hits you, but let’s get real. It probably wont. 

So how do I come up with a plot?

There are two key elements to coming up wit a plot, the problem and the call.

The problem is your characters goal. Every character needs a goal. Something they want to do, something they want to fix, something they want to achieve. This doesn’t have to present itself straight away, but the character will often find it along the way. In Harry Potter, it’s getting the philosophers stone before Snape. 

Okay, but what do I do until they find the problem?

This is where the call comes in. Every good book follows the same structure in the Beginning:

For [MC], life was their version of normal, until….

Harry potter? Goes to Hogwarts

Hunger games? Prim get’s chosen

Six of Crows? Kaz is hired to go to the ice court

All of these things came and put the story from neutral into gear. It takes the characters from just existing to being in a story. Your characters backstory is not a story. Your characters mundane life is not a story. Your characters hope for the future is not a story… unless you make it hard to get. 

The call is the moment the character either has no other choice but to involve themselves in the story, or finally get the chance to.

So go forth and actually write a book with all your brilliant characters and world building.