How I Prepped For My Short Story:

Initially, this blog post was labeled What I Did To Prep For Nanowrimo however, I learned that those who started and run the non-profit Nanowrimo organization are in full support of Abortion. And as a Christian, I believe supporting the death of precious babies is wrong. It's something I can't stand beside. So because of that, I changed the title of this post and took out any mention of Nanowrimo.

I plan on having an Episode over on my Podcast talking more about why I've chosen to not participate under the name Nanowrimo sometime this month. So keep your eyes out for that.

If you disagree with me and my stance on abortion that is fine. We're all allowed to have our opinions and share them openly. But, I will not back down on my beliefs on this topic.

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Now, to get into the actual blog post. I thought it would be cool to bring you guys in and show you a sneak peek into how I prepped and planned my short story in hopes to start writing this month.

Here were the steps I took to prep for the writing stage of this story:

Idea:

First, I started with my main idea (pretty obvious I know) but I had to mention this because this is where all stories start. Mine started when I read a long-distance love story that honestly wasn't that great. It inspired me to write a long-distance love story myself and so there this project began.

Brief Character Notes:

From the basic idea, I jotted down the character names as well as some of their quirks. I did this because I knew that this idea would have to be on the back burner for a while, but I still wanted something that I could go back to when the time came to start work on this project.

Pinterest Board:

But, you know I couldn't stop there ;)

So what did I do? I went onto Pinterest and created a character board for the story. I found pics for character inspiration, pics for the general aesthetic of both characters, pics for the general aesthetic of the story, quotes, etc. Again this was a good way for me to flush out the general idea in a way that would prevent me from shifting all my focus to it rather than my main projects which required my full attention.

Character Charts:

When I finally decided to start working on this project as a short story for a brief portion of time I began filling out character charts. I used one supplied to me by The Writer Games during The Trials as well as the one-off of Reedsy.com. I filled these out over several weeks mainly because of procrastination and all the research and decisions required to complete the characters' backstories.

3-Act Story Structure:

From the character charts, I filled out two separate 3 Act Story Structure outlines. One was another worksheet supplied to me by The Writer Games during The Trials and the other was one inspired by the 3 Act Story Structure from the book Save The Cat Writes A Novel by Jessica Brody. The first one by The Writer Games was a very brief overlook of the three-act story structure that I believe most people are more familiar with. It had sections labeled as the setup, the inciting incident, and the first plot point. The other 3 Act Story Structure I used was more in-depth. I followed and outlined my short story based on all of the individual story beats mentioned in the novel by Jessica Brody. I enjoyed both of these types of outlining. They were both very helpful.

Scene Ideas:

With the basic plot point and story beats outlined and such I moved on to compiling a list of scene ideas that I want to include in my Short Story. I did this so that I knew what I wanted/needed to happen when I further outlined the story.

Outline:

Then I moved to further outlining it. This time I kept my outline very simple because I want this to be more of a fun writing project where I kind of just whatever comes out of my mind onto paper. So, I just put about 3 or so bullet points for each Chapter so I know the general idea of what needs to happen or a particular scene/moment I want to go there. This type of outlining gives me further direction than the 3 Act Story Structure Beats but it still leaves me open to a more pantser style of writing for when I sit down to write a chapter which I am looking forward to.

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That is it for today! Hopefully, you enjoyed this little sneak peek into my planning. This was a new way of me planning a story because I've never used the 3 Act Story Structure before but I look forward to using it in the future.

Let me know what you think of this process of planning as well as the process you use for your writing down in the comments! I love hearing and learning about everyone's process!

With Love, Kathryn Hawke