Part 2 can be found here: 10 Step guide to turn your idea into a coherent story (Part 2) : writing (reddit.com)

Let me begin by saying this is not my original process. This is my interpretation of another process that I have used over and over and tweaked slightly to suit my own personal success. The original process is from (don't judge, the damned book has been a godsend), "Writing Fiction for Dummies". By using this method, my daily word count has skyrocketed, and I just hope that it helps somebody else as much as it has helped me.

The process is aimed for people who need help with story structure, and is based off of the traditional 3-act structure. I'm not sure if it will work with any other types of structures, because I've never tried any other type.

**I do want to talk about one thing that I thought of while writing this, and it's a situation I've been in before and most likely something many other writers are going through: If you have a brand new idea that is just rockin and rollin in your head, GET IT OUT OF THERE. My way to do this is to either grab a pen and paper, or just open a word document and start writing EVERYTHING i know about the story. Just start writing with no structure, no care in the world, just write it out of your head. It may not even make sense after you've written it, but it gets all that junk out of your head, and trust me, it helps later on. I do this all the time, and I rarely even go back and look at the original brain dump. Just writing it down freehand, puts a jumble of thoughts in my brain into something that can be molded into a coherent story.

So with that being said, let's begin with the actual process.

To me, a storyline is the one to two sentence summary of your book. It is usually the initial idea for my novels, and presents a character or two with the main story question. If I was to create a storyline for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, it might go something like, "A boy who lives with abusive family members discovers there is a secret world of magicians, and he has just been invited to become a part of that world" Or The Lord of the Rings would be, "A hobbit learns that destroying his magic ring is the key to saving Middle Earth from the Dark Lord."

Obviously that is simple, and it serves a couple of purposes. The first being that this one line summary of your book can be used as an "elevator pitch" for your book (once conventions bounce back from YOU KNOW WHAT). The next being that it keeps you focused on the central core of your entire novel. It just helps to start off knowing what the book is about using one sentence. Just know that this can be harder than it sounds, especially if you are working with a fresh idea. Just write it down, and you can always change/edit it later on!

So now that you have your main story boiled down to a single sentence, you need to take the essence of that statement, and turn it into a paragraph, making it out of 3 acts. I do this in 5 sentences, outlined in the book "Writiing for Dummies".

This is another step that is harder than it sounds, but TRY to stick to 5 sentences. I know our natural instinct, especially when working with a new idea, is to explain EVERYTHING in graphic detail. But don't worry. This is the framework and the foundation of the story. You need to keep it simple at first.

Now at this point, maybe characters you didn't originally think of start to crop up. Also this step helps take a break from Plotting and Scheming. At this point I begin making Character sheets for all the major characters I can think of. I start with my protagonist, but it doesn't matter what order you do it in, because sometimes your original protagonist turns into a supporting character later because another character's arc becomes even MORE interesting. This is a simple process, and super helpful.

Name: What's your character's name?

Ambition: Think of general, abstract motivations. Money, world peace, solitude, etc

Story Goal: This is the concrete thing that your character wants to accomplish by the end of the novel.

Conflict: List anything that is preventing your character from achieving the story goal.

Epiphany: What event causes your character's internal change?

One sentence storyline: This is just step one of the whole process, but act like this character is the MC of the story now.

One-Paragraph summary: Now using that storyline, it's time to convert it into another paragraph that consists of 3 acts. This may seem tedious at this point, but TRUST ME. It makes every single one of your characters believable and 3 dimensional. Everyone is the protagonist in their own lives. This might be hard for some characters. THATS GOOD! If it is hard, this gives you an opportunity to flesh out a one dimensional character. You will thank yourself later down the road, and your readers will thank you way later down the road.

Okay, now we should have enough fleshed out character work to begin to put some meat on the skeleton we created in step 3. Take your single paragraph, 3 act structure, and expand each sentence into an entire paragraph. Again, keep it at 5 paragraphs and try your best to focus on the highest plot levels here. And write this in the present tense. This is where things start getting exciting for me, because once i finish this step, I feel like I am really making some progress, and I begin to get really excited about my story.

I will continue this post later today, but hopefully this is a great start for some of you. Let me know if you have any questions and I would be glad to help if I can! :)

This is really helpful.

I use a similar tactic (modified snowflake method) which is character sheets -> one sentence summary -> wordbarf as much as I can about the environment and the magic/science system if there is one -> main conflict, and each character's motives and effect on it -> list of all possible character matchups and how they change (ex. X + Y are neutral to enemies to mutual respect, while Y + Z are static friends) -> bullet points of each plot/subplot -> outline -> first draft

And oh yeah, beginning to finally get hyped about your story is THE feeling. Love it.

Saving this to read (and re-read) later right before i sit down to write.

This is genuinely going to really help me, thank you so much!

we all know this stuff and we still spend our time browsing reddit help