Rachael Stephen's Blog

You know, the thing about writing is that if you keep doing it, you learn things.

Writing (and royally fucking up and figuring our how to fix) North of the End taught me a huge amount, and most of what I learned became the process I map out in my How to Build a Story video series and How to Build a Novel book (abbreviated from here as HTBN). (It’s the same system, but I changed the name for the book. I know, it’s confusing. Sorry.)

And then I found the Plot Embryo. And my whole idea of story structure changed again.

There’s definitely some overlap between the Plot Embryo technique and HTBN, there are parts which fit fairly seamlessly, but there are also parts which… don’t. Where I’m at right now, if there’s a conflict I’d choose the Plot Embryo’s side over HTBN, but your mileage may vary.

In any case, it’s not immediately obvious how to integrate the Plot Embryo with the various HTBN techniques, so I thought I’d share an example of a step-by-step workflow for doing that.

This is me trying to remember / structure the process I went through to completely re-plot North of the End after I discovered the Plot Embryo, and integrate it as if you hadn’t already gone through the HTBN system.

I’m not going to lie, it was a lot of damn work and has meant a lot of rewriting. Which is hard and tiring. But my book is so much better for it, I don’t regret any of it.

 

Steps 1-6 will be different depending on if you’re using these techniques for a brand new story, or to overhaul a WIP, but from 7 onwards they’ll be the same. Let’s dive in.

 

IF IT’S A BRAND NEW STORY…

1. Set up a blank Plot Embryo.

2. Set up a new Motive brainstorming page for your main character or character group.

3. Pull out any existing ideas, characters, themes etc you have and have them in front of you. Refer to them for subsequent steps.

4. Start scribbling options for the embryo quadrants and character motives in pencil. (If plot points occur to you, throw them in, but focus on the internal and external change first) BROAD STROKES HERE.

5. When you find EITHER a motive or a set of plot quadrants you like, use that to extrapolate the other one.

6. Do whatever you gotta do to create all the plot points and complete your Plot Embryo.

 

IF IT’S A WORK IN PROGRESS…

1. Write down every existing plot point you already have in a list, whether you’ve written or just outlined it. (If you’re not sure what counts as a plot point, think of this as trying to distill the story into as few bullet points as possible. Anything big which moves the story forward/changes something drastically is a plot point)

2. It’s okay if they’re not in order or you haven’t figured out the order.

3. If you’ve done brainstorming which hasn’t yet BECOME an outline, start a list of Possible Plot Points on a seperate piece of paper.

4. Start plugging your existing plot points into the plot embryo IN PENCIL. There will probably be gaps, and things which need to be moved somewhere else, and things left over which don’t seem to fit anywhere.

5. Look at the partial plot embryo and try to figure out the quadrants internal/external realms.

6. Do whatever you gotta do to complete your plot embryo. (If it has to change a lot from what you HAVE to what you WANT it to be, do it. This has to be the embryo for the story you WANT to tell, not the one you DID tell.)

 

FROM THERE:

8. Use the HTBN magic questions where necessary to generate or flesh out missing plot points. Very roughly, Motive questions should help with YOU and NEED, Conflict questions with GO, SEARCH, FIND, TAKE, RETURN and Effect questions with FIND, TAKE, RETURN, CHANGE.

9. Write a scene card for each plot point. Each plot point may need multiple scenes, and there may be scenes of ‘connective tissue’ required in between. Write these out too.

10. Pick a short name for this plot, whether it’s the main plot or a subplot or something in between. Pick a colour for it. Write the plot name in the bottom right corner of every card.

11. Next to that write which plot point this card is ie. 1: you, 4: search etc. (You may have multiple cards for the same plot point, remember.)

12. Repeat process for any other plots in the novel.

13. When you have all the cards for all the plots, start putting them together into a final order.

14. Number the cards in the top right corner. This is the scene number.

 

And… look! You’ve created all your plot embryos and translated them into a handy outline format! Now take a seat, have a drink, take a day off pal.

Let me know how this workflow works for you if you give it a go!

You already know about the wonders of ambient noise for focusing while you write, right?

No?

Well,  for easy access for both you AND me, I’ve put together a playlist of my favourite ambient noise. Most of these are an hour long, but there are a few longer ones in there too.

>>TAKE ME TO THE PLAYLIST<<

 

Want more info? Well, here’s most of what’s in it. The first five in the playlist are my absolute favourites, the rest aren’t in any order. I find fandom soundscapes particularly comforting and motivating, so you’ll notice a lot of those.

Harry Potter

Valentines at Madam Puddifoots
The Burrow
Hogwarts Library
Forest of Dean Campfire
Forbidden Forest
Hogwarts Express
The Dursley’s, 4 Privet Drive
The Knight Bus
Gryffindor Common Room
Slytherin Common Room
Ravenclaw Tower
Hufflepuff Common Room
Three Broomsticks
Hagrid’s Hut
Christmas in the Gryffindor Dorm
Dumbledore’s Office
Newt Scamander’s Suitcase
The Great Lake

Star Wars

Forest Moon of Endor
Coruscant Apartment

Mass Effect

Liara’s Apartment 
Normandy Captain’s Cabin
Illium, Nos Astra

Sherlock

221b Baker St

Supernatural

Men of Letters Bunker

Star Trek

The Next Generation Bridge (one hour)
Voyager Bridge
Deep Space Nine Space Travel

Overwatch

Hanamura Temple
King’s Row

The Last of Us

Bear Creek Lodges

Non-Fandom

Spaceship Bedroom
Futuristic Asian City
Fantasy Medieval Town
Bookstore
Swamp at Night

 

>TAKE ME TO THE PLAYLIST<<

 

Got favourites I’ve not listed here?

Comment below or tweet me!

This is a place where you can find out what I’m up to at the moment, what projects and priorities I’m focusing on for now, and why I don’t have time to do that review of your mum’s best friend’s auntie’s book about horses. For reals though, I can’t give everything equal focus all the time so if you’re wondering why at any particular moment why there aren’t lots of videos, or I’m not posting updates on North of the End etc, here’s why.

 

Earning money to live

More than a year ago I made the decision to drop my day-job hours down to part time in order to focus on writing, YouTube and everything else which goes along with those. Without doing that, my YouTube channel, Prep_tober and the last draft of North of the End would not exist. However, I’ve been putting off necessary expenses for too long, and it’s time for me to start earning something closer to actually-livable money again. Early January I finished my marketing internship and threw myself back into the coffee world. Turns out my barista skills are in demand – and I’m now juggling working on and off for FOUR different coffee brands. It’s fun and exhausting and gives me a lot less time to work on other projects than I’ve had in the last year.

 

Creative Scotland funding for time to write

When I applied to fund Prep_tober, I got the nicest rejection ever – they said they loved my writing and encouraged me to apply for time to write. This would mean Creative Scotland would fund me to write 20 hours a week over the next six months. I’ll hear back in the next eight weeks. If my application is successful I’ll be using this to complete North of the End.

 

Navigate Novelling Wilderness

You might have already heard, but the book I previously published as How to Build a Novel (which is based on my video series How to Build a Story) is going to become a full online course in novel writing, from zero to a complete first draft. It would be great if I could make the entire course in the eight weeks I’m waiting to hear back from Creative Scotland, but I’ll see how I get on. At the moment I’m squeezing in making new video lessons and worksheets in whatever free time I can manage.

 

YouTube Channel

I know I’ve barely posted any new videos since Prep_tober, I know. I’d really love to have the time to do a video every week but that’s just not possible right now. I will try to shoot a new YouTube video every time I sit down to shoot a Navigate Novelling Wilderness video lesson, but I’m not going to make promises I can’t keep. In the meantime I’m spending more time on Twitter these days keeping up with the greasefire that is politics right now. Catch me there.

 

(oh, and like trying to figure out how to be politically active and fight all the fucking facism that keeps popping up everywhere like fucking weeds, somehow, in my spare time. Probably going to join a party and want to learn/collate resources on activism for myself and ‘where do I start’ people like me.)

 

[1 Feb 2017]

I’ve been using Scrivener for seven years. I’ve gotten fairly handy with it, so I made a video to run through how I organise my novel(s) using it.

Here’s what I cover in this video:

How I set up my Codex (or ‘story bible’)
How I set up my Manuscript
How I use Document Notes
My favourite Scrivener keyboard shortcut
How I tracked my NaNoWriMo wordcount without including words written before November without separating my manuscript

I hope you find this video helpful!

If you’ve been on the fence on getting Scrivener for yourself, go for it! After seven years using it, saying ‘Scrivener is good’ feels a little bit like taking you aside to say ‘the sky is blue’ – but I know some people are just discovering it.

                                                 

     MAC                                                                       WINDOWS

Take care cinnamonroll,

*These are affiliate links which means when you buy through them as well as getting an awesome new piece of writing software, you also get to support me! Neat, huh?

It’s been a whole week since Novelling Season (as I’m calling Prep_tober and NaNoWriMo because omg, those two words are so annoying to type over and over!) ended. How do you feel? I’m exhausted and thrilled, and starting to adjust to Life Between Drafts.

 

Daily Vlogs

My way of wrapping up Novelling Season 2016 was to put together the fruits of two months of daily vlogging (just about) in my vlogs for Prep_tober and NaNoWriMo.

 

Making these has been a really fruitful experience for me. As well as crashing me headfirst into the vlog format (which I’ve never done before – and actually really enjoyed), they are both incredibly useful testaments to everything I’ve achieved in the last two months. I created and ran my first Community Event For Writers (that would be Prep_tober), and then I finished my second draft of North of the End. Pretty major. Having these months recorded has shown me just how quickly the ups and the downs can hit me, and allowed me to get a sharp hindsight perspective on my life for the last two months.

It’s also been something of an exercise in HATING MY FACE and uploading the video anyway. Trying to remember that it’s okay to look tired, slightly greasy or otherwise human on video sometimes (ESPECIALLY FOR AN EFFING DAILY VLOG, RACHAEL). I’m not happy about how I look in a bunch of those clips, and I’ve learned to be okay with sharing it anyway. There’s real value in presenting your whole self online, not just your prettiest self, and I recognise that. I know how important it is to me when I see YouTubers I love look human, and how it helps me remember we’re all fucking human, aye?

 

Things I Achieved This Novelling Season

Daily vlogging
Finished the second draft of North of the End !!!
Found out I can write 5000 words of STORY (not random splurge) in a day
Found out I can write 50k of STORY (not random splurge) in a month
Wrestled my outline and won
Realised I need to flesh my characters WAY more (motive is the core but it doesn’t make a full person!)
Won NaNoWriMo as a rebel doing a second draft
Earned myself a goddamn break from this book (after THREE YEARS)

 

Things YOU Achieved This Novelling Season

A bunch of you won NaNoWriMo, and tonnes more wrote more words in November than you would have otherwise. If you were around for Prep_tober (whether you won NaNoWriMo or not) and you wrote some words in November, comment below with your name, final wordcount and a link to your site, Twitter or similar and I’ll add you to the list!

 

WALL OF FAME: Prep_tober Survivalists & NaNoWriMo Winners

Anna I. Meyers. 55,140 words. @SimpleIJustDo (and soon to be annaimeyers.com…)
M.L.Wahl. 26k words. @mlwahlwriter
Your name can go here. And your wordcount. And a link to your home on the internet.

 

Now What?

Well, I’m working on a couple of posts about things I’m doing post-Novelling-Season, and some ideas for things you might want to do yourself to take stock and figure out where your novel goes next. We prepped. We drafted. What’s next for you, and what resources are you looking for? What could you use help or advice with when it comes to writing? Tweet me with the tag #DoNext.

I’m also trying to figure out what happens to Prep_tober for the rest of the year. So if you’ve got a second, head over and vote for what you think should be next for Prep_tober and all it’s trimmings in 2016 and beyond.

 

POLL: What should happen to Prep_tober now?

<< VOTE HERE >>

1. Make Prep_tober an evergreen Novel Prep Course available all year round, and expand it where appropriate. This would mean anything new resources I create concerning novel prep would be available all year and as soon as they’re ready.

2. Stick to October, and run it again next year. This would mean new resources would only go up next October.

3. Something else. (Reply with your suggestion!)

 

I’ve said it already, but thanks for taking this ride with me in October and November 2016, cinnabuns.

 

To celebrate the snazzy new edition of State of Flux, (it’s pretty cute, guys, just sayin’) you’ll be able to pick it up absolutely FREE for one week. If you’ve been thinking of checking it out, now’s your chance.

I want a free one please.

Check out the video for more details >>

 

Cheers m’dears,

 

 

Is it still a party if it’s just you and your dog and a camera? I’m gonna saaaayy…. yes.

BOOK: https://payhip.com/b/Vhs9