Developing story ideas and plots from “What if?”

Walk down any street, read any headline or listen to any conversation and you will find plenty of opportunities to ask, “what if?”

Your question, along with the answer, could be funny, tragic, dramatic, romantic or any other theme you choose. You can be as outrageous as you want because as you develop your theme even the most unlikely occurrence can make for a good story.

Consider these:

What if an alien landed in your back garden? Not a new idea but maybe you could develop a new slant on this. Is this a funny story about how you try to communicate with the aliens and keep them hidden as they accompany you throughout your day? Maybe this is about trust; you try to help the aliens but they have a plot to destroy your town. When you discover this you realise you have inadvertently helped them with their attempts and now you have to defeat them.

What if a woman overhears a conversation where another woman talks about her upcoming wedding? This could be a thriller with the groom already being married to the first woman. What does she do? Is this about revenge. Maybe the second woman is making up the whole story. This could be a short story where the first woman is in her seventies and recalls her wedding and how her husband died shortly afterwards. Perhaps the first woman is the natural mother of the woman getting married but she gave her up for adoption as a baby.

What if electricity supplies are lost for two weeks? You decide if this is one house, an entire city or even the world. What impact would this have? Could there be a romance here as everyone pulls together? Maybe there will be crime, even murder, as people try to get hold of resources that have become limited (no freezers, no fridges, limited cooking facilities, limited heating). This could form part of the plot for a larger story, for example, an organisation could be aiming to control a nation by controlling its essential resources and services such as electricity, water, collection of waste etc.

What if you came home and your whole house had been decorated? A nice surprise? A sign of dementia? Maybe someone is trying to convince you that you have a mental health condition.

What if you look in the mirror and the reflection isn’t you?

You can ask “what if?” continuously as you develop your scene or story. What if you find treasure in a cave by the beach? What if the tide comes in and you are trapped? What if you decide to dive to escape (research how long someone can hold their breath)? What if you misjudge the exit, squeeze through an opening, and end up in another cave where you find a skeleton? What if the water is still rising? You might decide this would make a great climax for a story and work backwards to decide why you are in the cave in the first place.

Exercise

Asking “what if?” is a really useful way of coming up with story ideas and developing your plot. Keep a notebook and write at least ten “what ifs?” each day. At the end of a week select one (or more) and write at least three possible story ideas. Select one of these story ideas and write a brief outline for a novel, short story or a piece of non-fiction. Remember your question and answer could be the main story or be one part of your story. Over time you will have plenty of ideas that you can use in your writing.

Happy writing.

Using real life locations for settings and plot development

If you are setting your novel in a real location then, if your novel is set in current or historic times, most readers expect your descriptions and details to be accurate. Even if you are setting your novel in the future it is still important to consider details relating to anything that remains the same such as the distance between streets or towns. That said you can use a real location, or multiple locations, as the basis for a fictitious place and also use details from those locations to aid development of your plot.

Your novel may be set in a city of contrasts. Some people live in expensive apartment blocks with clean streets and easy access to shops and facilities. Others live in crumbling high rise flats with littered streets, playgrounds with broken equipment and high streets where the shops are mostly boarded up. Such a city may or may not exist. If it does it may not be easy for you to travel to – although online access to maps, street views and photos can be useful. You may already have a good idea about what these locations look like but detail from real life can bring your setting to life.

If you take a walk, with a camera and notebook, around your nearest town or city you will most likely find examples of some of the places and details you imagined for your book. They may not be exactly as you imagined but they will have features you can describe. For example, you may find an office block that has features that would be useful when describing your expensive apartment block – a view across the river, underground parking with security. You then might find a three-storey block of flats with balconies full of plants. A restaurant could have a courtyard area. A city park might have a pathway suitable for runners. All of these can be put together to create the apartment block and its surrounding area. It is all these tiny details from multiple places that enable you to build a picture and create a sense of place (wealthy, happy, convenient, stressful, lonely etc). This detail may also provide potential ways to add to your plot – the security guard could be a witness to a crime or the only person a resident has a friendly conversation with, the river could become a hazard or an escape route.  

Similarly, you might want to create an area that appears depressing. One boarded up shop in an otherwise modern and busy shopping centre might have some of the detail – the colour of the boards used or the way it makes you feel. The graffiti you noticed on a bridge could be transposed onto the shop front. That one broken paving slab could become many broken or raised slabs along your fictitious street.

Take notice of the detail and you can add a richness to your writing.

Exercise

1) Take a walk around your neighbourhood and make some notes about little details, also take some photos. This could be a hedge that hides the house beyond it, a pothole that cyclists have to avoid, an obstruction on the pavement that causes walkers to step into the road, peeling paint on a door, a garden full of topiary, a single shoe left on a wall, one building that is dwarfed by its neighbours, an unusual door knocker, weeds growing in the middle of a lane, a bench in a street.

2) Write an outline for a fictitious setting using elements from your notes and photos. Make it different from the actual location. That one large house might become a whole street of large houses, the small patch of untended garden might become a deserted village.

3) Write some notes that could be used in a short story or novel based on what you have seen. For example, that tiny building might be there because the owner refused to sell to developers or the bench could be a meeting place for romance or crime.

Happy writing

Increasing your productivity

Finding time to write is one thing, using it effectively to get your words written is quite another. If you often find yourself getting to the end of a writing session only to realise you’ve written fifty words in the last hour then, unless you are writing poetry, you probably want to improve your productivity.

As a writer, as with any other job, you improve your productivity by achieving more in the time you have. That might be writing more words, finishing more writing products or doing other activities that generate more income. Below are some ways you can instantly improve your productivity.

Focus on a single task – whatever you are working on stay focused only on the task in hand and stay working on that task for at least twenty-five minutes (unless you have less time than that available). Whether you frequently switch tasks or try to complete two tasks simultaneously multi-tasking reduces productivity and increases the likelihood of making mistakes. Switch to single-tasking and you will achieve more in the time you have available.

Turn off your mobile – messages, e-mail social media, on-screen alerts, and not forgetting the occasional phone call. All will distract you, engage you, and steal your time – your writing will not get done. Turn your phone off and hide it. You do not want to be tempted to pick it up, not even once, whilst you are working. If you are writing for long periods of times put your phone, on silent, in another room and check it during your break periods only.

Plan your time – don’t wait until you have some time before you write, plan your writing time and diarise it. Prioritise your writing and writing related activities and then plan other non-essential tasks around these rather than finishing everything else and then doing your writing in the time you have left.

Plan your projects – whether a book or other writing project ensure you create at least an overview of the scenes or sections you intend to write and of the tasks you need to complete. Preferably create a detailed plan so that you always know what you need to write, what you need to do and when you are going to do it.

Clarify your goals and objectives – be clear about your writing goals and break these down nto objectives with a deadline. If you are writing a book you might have the goal of completing that book within six months. You can break this down further with deadlines for each scene or section, for completion of the first draft, final edits and, if you are self-publishing, publication. Write down all your targets and deadlines and you are more likely to achieve them.

Stay healthy – often forgotten until it is too late. Look after your health to ensure you remain focused on your tasks, can work the hours needed to complete your projects and don’t have periods of time when you are unable to write due to avoidable illness or injury. Eat well, drink plenty (of water) and exercise.

If you would like further hints, tips and techniques for improving productivity for writers then take a look at my new book Productivity for Writers: How to get more done, write more words and createmore time to write. This book is available on all Amazon sites.

NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month

If you are participating in NaNoWriMo next month then now is an excellent time to start planning. As this stage you can plan and develop your idea, identify your main characters, plot your novel and set aside your writing time.

Remember that you are aiming for 50,000 words. This is a first draft so you do not need to worry about typos, grammar, finding just the right word or sparkling dialogue - you can work on these when you edit.

Start with developing an idea - you might already have one in mind, if not take some time to explore sources of ideas including newspapers, historic events, existing novels, traditional children's stories and personal experience. Once you have a basic idea you can explore other aspects such as setting, characters and motivation - use "what if?" at this stage - what if the male character was female?, what if a specific historic event occurred today?, what if there was a thunderstorm instead of sunshine?

Once you have developed your idea look at plot and characters - which you work on first is likely to depend whether your novel is plot driven or character driven.

Plan a scene by scene outline of your novel - include as much detail as you need ensuring you highlight aspects that are imperative to your story. For example a sudden rainstorm may result in a character being late for a meeting and losing an important contract.

Create character profiles - the better you know your characters the easier it will be to write about them.

You will find many posts on this site detailing how to create character profiles and how to plot a novel, you could also look at Write it! How to write your book in 30 hours or less (just right for NaNoWriMo).

Writing a first draft in one month is an excellent way to kick-start your novel and take you a step closer to completion.

Happy writing.

Free eBook Available from Amazon

The ebook version of Daily Writing Prompts is available as a free download today and during this weekend. It contains thirty prompts for you to practise your writing and help you develop the habit of writing every day. If you prefer you can purchase the paperback version which has space for you to write your responses to each prompt, you can take it with you wherever you go and use those free moments to practise writing

Click here to download from Amazon.

Happy writing.

Format your Book for Print or eBook

In the second book in the Write It series - Publish it! - there is step by step instructions on how to format your book correctly to ensure it either looks the way you want it to when printed or displays correctly when read on a Kindle or other reading device. If you want your readers to enjoy your book then it is important to get the formatting right and makes changes to the formatting when preparing your work for different publishing options.

I was reading this article on why you should care about formatting and found it answered many of the questions often raised or mistakes made including using hard returns to add spacing or force text onto a new page. It is well worth a read. Click here to read the article.

If you would like more information on formatting have a look at Publish it! How to publish your book for free using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), CreateSpace and Smashwords. You can download a sample for free and check out the content.

Happy writing.

The Snowflake Method

If you follow the Write it! Publish it! Sell it! Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/writepublishsell you will know that I regularly recommend books on different aspects of writing. I while back I downloaded a sample of Randy Ingermanson's book How to Write a Novel with the Snowflake Method. Before reaching the end of the sample I had purchased a copy. I had come across this method before and liked the approach however what prompted me to recommend the book was the way the technique was woven into an entertaining story using familiar characters.

At the time I bought this book I was partway through writing a novel (I had an outline as that is the way I prefer to work) so I attempted to apply this technique to my work. It really helped me to focus on the purpose of each scene and I ended up cutting out some large chunks before I had spent hours perfecting these scenes and then cutting them in the final edit.

Yesterday I came across this interview, it is well worth listening to.  Randy Ingermanson interview. 

If you are an aspiring or established author have read of this book and give the method a try. It won't take up too much time and you could find it genuinely helps you progress your writing. Click here to see book on Amazon.