The year usually starts with resolutions, goals and promises to achieve our wildest dreams. More often than not, most of these aspirations are forgotten come February 1. Studies show that only about 8% of the goal setters will actually achieve the goals that they’ve set for themselves. Hence, the argument that New Year’s Resolutions are useless.
But I disagree.
8% of people changing their lives and achieving their dreams is much better than none at all.
Success depends on various factors. One of the most important ones is how and when we get started. I believe the first 100 days are a deciding factor in whether your goals are going to come to fruition.
When we get a new Prime Minister or Mayor, they often talk about the first one hundred days and what they’ve achieved. While I don’t think there’s much you can do in a hundred days in politics (too much BS & bureaucracy), it’s a long time when it comes to achieving your personal goals.
The first 100 days can be the difference between success and failure.
The first one hundred days is the time to set your foundation. During this time you’re still excited about moving forward with your goals, dreams, and ambitions. The spark is alive and you need to keep the flame glowing to sustain momentum throughout the year.
Take the first quarter of the year and get as much done as possible. Break down your major goals into daily tasks so that each day you feel like you’re moving forward.
So, you’ve decided you want to have a book ready for publication by the end of the year. What do you do? What can you do in the first 100 hundred days?
Write the damn book.
Aim to write 1000 – 2000 words per day and you’ll have a book within two to three months.
Break it down to writing 500 words in the morning and 500 words in the afternoon if you need to. Make use of getting up an earlier, writing during your commute, your lunch hour, after work, or before going to bed instead of watching another reality tv show.
If you can’t aim for that many words, start with 100 words per day. You’ll still be better off than writing 0 words.
No excuses.
If you manage that in the first quarter, then you’re set to achieve the goal of publishing your first book by year end. How awesome would that feel? Your name, on a book cover, on a book that you wrote. Hell yeah!
The same goes for changes to your health and fitness. Maybe you want to lose weight or learn to run. Start walking every day. Then include a jog in between light poles.
I remember when I had to stop to walk a dozen times in a 3km run. It hurt. I felt like shit. But I persevered. Within a few weeks of consistency, I ran the full distance. Since then I’ve run marathons.
Baby steps every single day will make all the difference.
The first 100 days. Bring them on.
You can do anything. Be anything. Achieve anything.
The choice is yours.
Make the first 100 days count and you will be ahead of the game. You will maintain motivation, you will keep going, you will succeed.
My A goal is 5 new books on the market by December 31, 2019. The first 100 days of 2019 are going to be busy, they’re going to be productive, they are going to mean the difference between success and failure.
I’ve broken the goals down into actionable steps and daily ‘to do’s’. I know what I have to do monthly, weekly, and daily. I’m prepared to work hard because this is an important goal for me. My dream is to make a living as an author and the only way to do this is to have many books on the market. The whole ‘one-book per year’ tempo is a bit slow for my liking. With indie publishing, I can set my own pace which is fantastic (and dangerous – It’s easy to over-commit!).
Tune in next week for my 100-day book marketing challenge!
What else can you achieve in 100 days?
Save for a goal. Put aside $10 a day and you’ll have $1000 towards a holiday, enough to pay for editing and a book cover, or towards another goal. Does $10 a day sound like a lot? It’s the equivalent of two cups of takeaways coffees per day. Still too much? Start with a dollar a day.
Run 10km. Never run in your life? You don’t know what you’re missing out on. For writers running is a great way to stay active and fit as well as have dedicated time to think about the stories you want to write. Running is a great time for brainstorming. Add 100m to your run each day and after 100 days you’re successfully running 10km. How simple is that?
Learn the basics of a foreign language. I love being bilingual. It allows you to see the world in different ways and communicate with more people. While a hundred new words won’t make you fluent, it’s a great start if you’re planning an overseas trip or just want to challenge your brain. Try to pick up one new word each day and by the end of the 100 days, you should be able to at least introduce yourself, order a coffee or ask for directions.
Increase your book/services/products sales. Do one marketing tactic each day for a hundred days and you are guaranteed to see results and boost a stagnating business. You can use paid advertising, direct contact, talking to friends, posting on social media. Just one thing a day will have a massive impact after three months.
100 days is enough to achieve many goals.
There are 365 days in the year. That allows you to focus on 3 goals for 100 days each. The other 65 days can be free days that you allow for mishaps and hurdles and generally the thing we call life.
I dare you to take the 100-day challenge and see the effects for yourself.
It’s hard to commit for a lifetime but 100 days can change your life.
Do you want to make it even easier? Get yourself an accountability partner. Find someone who wants to achieve a goal (it doesn’t have to be the same goal as yours) and use each other to check in and stay motivated for the duration of the 100 days.
Take it up a notch and set up rewards and punishment for not achieving your mini goals. For example, if you fail to meet a deadline you have to pay your friend $50 or clean their house. If you win the 100-day challenge, then you treat yourself to a nice lunch, or a book, or whatever you feel is appropriate and relates to your goal.
What would you like to achieve in the next 100 days?
* The first 100-days cheat sheet download coming soon!
Books are precious. They are gold mines of information, entertainment, and education.
The words between the pages have the power to transform us in ways beyond our imagination.
They possess the magic to make us laugh, cry, cringe and seethe with anger.
As a writer, reading is part of the job. It fills the creative well. It inspires. It empowers.
Each year, Goodreads, offers a reading challenge. You choose how many books you’d like to read in a year and then you keep a record of it. I’ve done this three years in a row so far and I love it.
The number of books I challenge myself to read changes from year to year but regardless I love being able to see what has been on my reading list throughout the year. It’s easy to forget, so Goodreads allows me to reminisce.
Some books were great, others not so. The ones I enjoyed very much I gave a rating which you can find on Goodreads. Anything that wasn’t to my taste was finished but not reviewed. You can find my top five choices for readers and top three choices for writers at the bottom.
Remember, what we like is subjective. So be nice when leaving reviews. Writers are human, they can also be quite touchy. Always be kind, there’s never enough of that in the world.
In total, there were 26 non-fiction books and 44 fiction books. I did read a few others that weren’t recorded along with numerous children’s books that I read to my son. There’s also a duplicate on here but these things happen.
People still love to read. Check out these stats for the 2018 challenge:
Are you on Goodreads? Let’s connect. I’d love to hear from you.
What are some awesome books you’ve read this year? I’d love to hear your recommendations.
*I am a part of the Amazon Associate Program which means if you click on the links and purchase the books I may be compensated by Amazon for any qualifying purchases. This is at no extra cost to you but helps me with the running costs of this website.
The year has almost come full cycle. January to December. Twelve months of being. Fifty-two weeks of dreaming. 365 days of living.
The saying, ‘the days are long but the years are short’ is truer now than ever before. I’ve noticed this quite a bit lately. The older I get the faster the year moves and often I feel as if I’m constantly playing catch up.
But what am I catching up to?
Our lives are paved with milestones. From when we’re babies it’s all about the first smile, the first step, the first word. It’s about starting school, making new friends, graduating high school, and picking a university degree.
As soon as those milestones get ticked off it’s being asked about meeting that special someone, getting engaged, getting married, having children.
It’s all supposed to be done by a certain age. But does it really?
There are many constraints and expectations that society, and often those closest to us, place on our lives. They want us to tick off the key events in our lives to satisfy their needs, their expectations, their beliefs of what the world should be like.
The world is an amazing and diverse place. We’re all different. We all have different timelines and different expectations of what we want our lives to be like.
The end of the year is a good time to reflect on that.
Having spent the past few days with family and friends, eating lots of food and drinking far too much wine, it’s been interesting to hear the varied perspectives on life, our dreams, and our goals.
One thing is certain, we all yearn for something.
This year I’ve learned that the grass is rarely greener on the other side. That the life people project to their friends is not always the one they are living. No one has the perfect existence. We all go through tough times, we all experience sadness and anger and frustration. We come across people we don’t get along with or who misunderstand us. Mistakes are made, lessons are learned. We all have our own hurdles to jump over and battles to fight.
Our story is our own.
It’s so easy to judge others because they don’t think or feel like we do. But do we know their history? Have we walked a mile in their shoes?
Nature and nurture. We are all victims to it. But we are not prisoners to it.
We are creatures of change even though sometimes that change is uncomfortable. Change is good. It’s healthy. Change helps us grow and prosper, without it, the world and us in it, wouldn’t be where it is.
So what do you want to change in 2019?
Are you completely happy with the way your life is right now? If so, that’s fantastic. I applaud you, keep it up. Maybe you’re one of the lucky few who have come to a point where you no longer need to yearn for anything more.
Most of us want more.
It’s not often that we sit back and appreciate what we already have. The things that we wanted last year are discarded just like the forgotten toys of kids who have grown bored and are asking Santa for something shiny and new. We do the same thing with our achievements. As soon as we tick a goal off the list, it’s no longer good enough. We want so much more. And the cycle repeats leaving us unsatisfied.
I dare you to take a moment today, or this week, to reflect over the past twelve months or even the past twelve years.
Where were you last year? Where were you over a decade ago? What did you yearn for? How did you feel?
Make a list of all the weird and wonderful things that you have done. Appreciate them for what they are. Be grateful for the opportunities that you’ve had. Take the moment to smell the roses.
In life, there will always be people ahead just as there will be those lagging behind. We are all on our own journey. It’s ridiculous to compare our journey to the journey of the people around us.
It’s okay to want more. Just as it’s equally okay to settle for what you have if that makes you happy.
Your life, your happiness. Your choice.
It’s never your job to make anyone else happy. Neither should you expect anyone else to make you happy.
So without further ado.
What do you want in 2019?
Will you be making the usual resolutions on January 1, then completely forgetting them by mid-February?
OR
Will you take the time to consider what you want your life to look like in 1-3 years down the track, then come up with a plan and action steps that you can take to achieve it all within the designated time frame?
I love the acronym K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid in case you don’t know). But it’s one that I often forget. By keeping things simple when setting your goals you set yourself up for success. Complicate things and it’s easy to get discouraged and distracted.
Let’s take an example.
I want to write a book. Sounds simple enough. It’s not. Writing a book is a tough slog. It’s time-consuming. The process stretches every inch of you, forcing you to push barriers your brain has imposed on you.
But if you break it down with the K.I.S.S. principle then it becomes easier and much more achievable.
Instead of I want to write a book. Try this: I’m going to dedicate 30 minutes out of my busy schedule most days of the week and write 500 words of my story.
In 6 months, you’re going to have a book.
Writing 500 words a day is much easier than writing a book.
You want your goals to challenge you but you don’t want to be overwhelmed each time you think about them.
Maybe you want to run a marathon or lose weight. They’re big goals. But the steps required to take them are simple.
Start running a few kilometres a day and build up until you feel comfortable running a marathon. Reduce junk food and eat more fruit and vegetables to lower the number on the scales.
Your big goal will still be achieved but it won’t be giving you heart palpitations because the year is running away from you.
According to Business Insider, around 80% of New Year Resolutions are completely forgotten by mid-February. Do you want to be part of that statistic? I’d prefer to be in the other 20% who achieve their objectives.
The key is to look at your habits. Until you change those, then achieving your goal will be a pipe dream.
A writer with a habit of writing those 500 words every day is going to have 182,500 words by the end of the year which easily equates to 2-3 standard sized novels.
A person dreaming of running a marathon is going to attain the goal faster by starting a running program and aiming for 20 minutes a few times a week and building up towards 3-5 hours of running each week.
Habits are integral to our success.
Change your habits, change your life.
It really is that simple.
In 2019, instead of looking at a list of items you want to tick off by 31 December 2019, think about the habits that you want to change.
What do you want your life to look like?
Ignore the naysayers in your life. Forget what your best friend desires. Shrug off the neighbours’ comments about your shitty car. Embrace the people that lift you up and tell you that you can achieve everything you desire.
What habits do you need to develop to create the life of your dreams?
You can still have the list for all the other things that you want to do like for example here’s a few of mine:
Travel to a new destination in Australia
Read 52 books
Learn a new skill
Compete in a 70.3 Ironman race
The habits that I want to maintain or develop to achieve these goals include the following:
Write at least 1500 words per day
Swim, bike and run 2-3 times per week
Get at least 7 hours of sleep per night
Live on less than I earn and save the difference
Drink 2L+ water every day
Creating good habits will lead to achieving your goals. Without good habits, we set ourselves up for failure.
But there’s another layer to successful new year’s resolutions and that’s putting the plan into action. People often get lost here. It’s easy to set a goal but much harder to get down to the nitty-gritty of it and break it down into steps that you can take every day to bring your closer to achieving success.
It doesn’t matter what goal you set for yourself if you’re not willing to push boundaries and take action from day one. Whether or not you achieve the goals set for yourself depends solely on you.
You have to be conscious of your goals every single day. Your decisions from the moment you wake up till the time you go to bed will reflect whether you achieve your goals. It’s no use having ice cream for breakfast when you want six-pack abs by summer. You’re not going to get better at writing if you forget to switch on the laptop and designate an hour or two towards working on your craft.
You also need to know how to use the word ‘No’. Saying ‘no’ isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes you even have to be willing to tell it to yourself. It can be empowering and be difference between achieving your goal versus spending another year wondering why you didn’t tick off the new year resolutions.
2019 is upon us. I still can’t believe how fast the year has rolled around.
It’s time for new beginnings. A fresh start.
I wish you all the best for 2019. May you have the courage to pursue your dreams and live life on your terms.
How many drafts of your book do you need to write? One. Five. Twenty.
Most writers will give you a different answer. However, whatever they say, one draft is never enough.
Your first draft is rarely your last draft. Even if you’re editing as you go. You need to go back to reread and polish your first draft. Often you’ll find plot points that haven’t been resolved, conflicts that need more action, dialogue that requires a spruce up.
How many drafts it takes you will depend on the quality of your first draft. This is how I would normally do it.
1 – Write a quick draft of the novel
2 – Read the novel and make notes, edit scenes, add and remove scenes
3 – Read through your novel and correct any spelling, grammar errors
4 – Get an editor to go through it
5 – Read through it again and see if I can pick errors up
6 – Put it together, ready for formatting and publishing
That’s six drafts. I’m not rewriting the entire book from scratch. There’s an entire book to work with. It might sound like a lot but is it really?
It’s a natural progression. Each stage taking a different amount of time.
Once the book is drafted, it can take another 3-6 weeks to get it edited so realistically it would be possible to release a book every 6 – 12 weeks.
In an ideal situation anyway but with work, family and sleep, well we got to be realistic with our own timetable.
You don’t want to hit publish on your first draft, or even your second draft. It’s important to go through your book several times. As you gain experience you’ll be needing fewer edits but you will always need some.
Don’t fool yourself into believing that your work is perfect. It’s isn’t. It never will be. But that’s ok we’re not aiming for perfection. If we did we would have a quarter of the books we do.
At the bare minimum, I recommend three drafts – the first one to get the story on paper, then you edit/rewrite yourself, and finally, you get an editor to go through it.
If you can’t afford an editor, find a beta reader or get a friend who enjoys reading and is good with the English language. I have a teacher friend who looked through my first book before I sent it off to an editor.
Editing is expensive but it’s a necessity if you want to put out a professional book.
It’s more expensive not to edit.
Think about how long it takes you to write a book.
How many hours have you put in to pour your heart out on to the page? Blood, sweat, and tears? I know, it’s ridiculous. And most of us do it for nothing or peanuts.
Don’t you want your reader to receive the best possible version of your book?
I know I do.
So to recap, don’t worry about the number of drafts it will take you to write your book.
Just write.
The first draft you are getting your story down on the page. You’re telling it to yourself. It’s going to be much different on the page than what you are seeing in your mind. It’s almost a large project that is likely to evolve with each chapter as new ideas emerge.
The second draft won’t take you as long. Your story is down on the page. You read through the book as a whole to check when it makes coherent sense.
Does the story flow?
Have all the questions been answered?
Is the climax exciting?
Is the ending satisfying?
During this take of your writing process, you can use a highlighter and highlight sections that aren’t making sense that you can go back to later.
On the third round, go through your highlighted or circled sections and fix them up as needed. The amount of time this stage will take depends on how clean your first draft was. If you pick up any inconsistencies and grammar or spelling errors feel free to clean them up.
Once you’re happy with the changes, read through again and proofread as you go.
Happy?
Fantastic. Send the book to an editor.
You’re kidding, right? Four rounds of edits and I still need an editor?
Yes, yes you do.
You will find that you’re book still has errors that readers will pick up on even if it has been to the editor.
It’s inevitable when you’re working with 80,000 words. But you want to get it as error-free as possible.
If you can’t afford an editor, grab a trusted friend who’s a voracious reader and has an excellent command of the English language.
When your book comes back with changes, go through them and change what you feel applies. You don’t have to change everything, it’s your book after all, but make note of any comments and questions that apply.
Now read through it again, with a ruler, line by line. Don’t rush. You will be surprised to find more errors. Fix them.
Your book is ready for the next stage.
I know, it’s intensive but no one said publishing a book was going to be a walk in the park.
Yes, you can write the first draft, upload it and click publish in a matter of days but is that the sort of product you want to have out there? Do you think readers are going to come back for more if you publish another book if your first was laden with spelling and grammar errors, story inconsistencies, and poor formatting?
I don’t think so.
You want to publish work that you are proud of.
So don’t get hung up on the fact that it might take you several drafts to get your book ready to get published.
Your major concern is writing the best book you can.
If you continue with writing, which I hope you do, you will find that while each book isn’t necessarily easier to write, they’re all different after all, you will find that you might need fewer drafts to get them done, especially if you are writing a series.
One of the advantages of ebooks and print-on-demand is that if errors are still being picked up after publication you have the ability to go back and fix them before uploading a new version of your book for readers to purchase.
And you will find errors even after an editor has gone through it.
It’s inevitable.
Just make sure to go back and fix them immediately.
Writing a book is simple but before you have a publish-worthy product ready it will take several drafts. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether your book took three drafts or thirty, all that matters is that once you’ve published you are happy with the final product and your readers are going to love your story.
How many drafts of your book do you usually write?
Writing the first chapter of your book can often be the easiest and hardest part of the process. The first chapter will receive a lot more attention than the rest of the book because it’s the one that will need to wow your reader into reading your book. If you’ve managed to get them to pick it, intrigue them with the blurb, and now they’ve opened up to the first chapter, in order for them to buy it, they need to be ‘wowed’.
Sometimes that pressure can stop you from finishing a book and getting it out in front of readers and potential future fans.
A lot of advice out there stresses the importance of the first chapter. Unfortunately, this can also paralyse new writers into remaining stuck with the first chapter. Instead of moving on with the story they write and rewrite and repeat the first chapter of the book.
The truth is, no matter how many times you rewrite your first chapter before starting your book, it’s going to change completely by the time you finish writing your book. That’s why you shouldn’t get hung up on getting every word right in the first chapter, just get it written and move on. You can always edit once you’ve written your story.
Having said that, the first chapter is your selling point. The first chapter needs to hook the reader into a story. It will need to pose questions that the reader wants to be answered. It’s the chapter that you really want to give it everything you’ve got.
That’s good and bad advice at the same time which isn’t very helpful. So let me elaborate.
Why it’s good advice
With millions of books on the market, it’s getting harder and harder to stand out and get noticed by readers. You need to sell yourself in the first chapter, even on the first page.
How do you decide if you’re going to buy a book?
I tend to check out the blurb, if I like the premise I’ll flip to the first chapter and read a page. If I’m intrigued and like the author’s writing style I am ten times more likely to buy the book than to put it back on the shelf.
I know, it’s a fast decision and the book might be awesome if I give it a few more pages but that’s just not good enough. With so many books available and such a limited time to read, I want to be reading only what engages me from the get-go.
Make sure that your first chapter engages the reader. Here are some key points to remember:
– Avoid flashbacks and too much description.
– Get in the action.
– Ensure correct spelling and grammar
– Introduce your main character
– Pose questions that will intrigue the reader and be answered throughout the book
– Make the reader care about your main character
That’s a lot to do in the first chapter but it will be worth it.
Why it’s bad advice
Perfection is overrated because it doesn’t exist. Not everyone is going to love your first chapter, let alone your book. Get over it. You’re not aiming to please the world. It’s impossible to please everyone so don’t bother trying. Please yourself and then aim to please your ideal reader.
Who’s your ideal reader, you ask?
It’s your target market and that market depends on the type of book you are writing.
Is it a thriller, romance, young adult?
Don’t be surprised or offended if the sci-fi geek doesn’t like your Christian romance novel or when the cozy mystery reader gets offended by your gruesome horror page-turner.
Just write.
It’s all you can do.
You are your first target reader so make sure you write what you love to read. You don’t want to be spending weeks or months writing a book that you have little interest in, the reader will notice. So instead, write on the topics and in the genres that interest you the most. Then throw it all at your target market.
Think of your target market of about 10,000 people or about 0.0015% of the population.
Find your 10,000 fans, write 3 books a year, and you’re selling 30,000 books. With a profit margin of about $3 per book, you can make a living with your writing.
And you don’t need everyone to like your books. Really, you don’t.
Think of the books you’ve read. Have you really loved them all? Of course not. That doesn’t mean they were bad books. They might not have been to your taste buds. It’s the same as if you don’t like eating Thai food. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, it’s just not your type. The same goes for books.
But you’re still stuck on that first chapter.
Yes, the first chapter is important but it’s useless if you don’t have the rest of the book to go with it.
It’s easy to get bogged down and write and rewrite the first chapter but it’s never going to be good enough and you’ll only get better as the book goes along. So get the practice in, then once you’ve written your eighty thousand words, go back to chapter one and use everything you’ve learned during the process of writing a book, and start editing and rewriting.
With most books I’ve written, including the many drafts in the bottom drawer, I’ve always gone back to rework the first chapter. I have a feeling that I always will.
The first chapter sets your story for the rest of the book. It’s almost impossible to know how to do that until your story is complete.
Just write it.
Then move on to chapter two.
It doesn’t matter that your first chapter on your first draft doesn’t follow the rules, includes dreams and flashbacks, lacks drama and an attention-grabbing first sentence. Just keep writing.
Even some bestsellers break the rules.
Write the rest of the book first. Worry about the first chapter at the end.
While the first chapter is important in selling your book but it shouldn’t get in the way of you finishing your work. Make it good enough. Then move on. Often you’ll find that what you wrote when you started the book will be different from when your book is finished.
1 – Write the first chapter
2 – Write the rest of the book
3 – Go back and reread the first chapter – modify as needed
4 – Look at the book as a whole
5 – Get some feedback
6 – Rewrite if necessary- it will never be perfect, aim for good enough
7 – Start the next book!
I’m in the process of writing a new book, in a new genre, with a completely new set of rules. I don’t like rules. I’ve always been one to bend them.
Writing the first chapter of my supernatural sci-fi thriller/horror novel – see, I’m still not sure where the story will take me – is super hard. Ok, that’s a lie. It was easy. The hard part comes in the middle. I know exactly where my story starts and ends. But I’m struggling with the in-between.
But experience tells me that the first chapter that was so easy to write is not going to be the first chapter in the final product. A variation of it maybe, but not the exact chapter.
And it’s true. Since writing the first draft of the new book, I’ve rewritten the first three chapters several times. I’ve also made changes to the traits and habits of the main character’s because I didn’t really know her until I actually wrote the book. Now it’s easier to go back to the beginning and fix what’s broken.
The thing is you don’t know what your book will turn out to be like when you finally finish your story. That’s ok. You don’t have to know everything right away.
A wise writer whose name I can’t remember said to think of writing your book as driving at night with your headlights on. You’re only seeing a few metres ahead. But even though you can’t see the entire journey you trust that eventually you end up at your destination.
Trust the journey.
You can always mend what’s broken at the beginning later.
How do you start your book? The same way you finish it. One word at a time and until you’ve told the story.
Have you written your first chapter? How many times do you usually rewrite it?
Coming up with an idea. Plotting the scenes. Discovering the characters. Uncovering a story with a life of its own.
It sounds almost cliché to say that the characters made me do it. They grew a mind of their own over the course of the book.
But it’s true.
Sometimes when you create a strong enough character, they take over the story in ways that you didn’t imagine.
I had a character in my book that I initially was going to kill off. He was a bad guy after all, and in fiction, bad guys always get punished.
But he didn’t want to die and I didn’t want to kill him off, at least not yet.
So the story twisted in a way that explained his back story, he was still bad but he had redeeming qualities that were worthwhile keeping him in the series.
As crazy as it sounds, I’m looking forward to getting to know him better throughout the next few books in the series.
And only the other day, a reader and dear friend of mine, randomly commented about how she wants to know more about this particular character and can see his storyline involving. That tells me that I made the right decision in keeping him alive.
Whilst I like a book with good characters, I need the plot to engage me even more. But really, characters and plot will be intertwined.
When I start writing a new book I love the process of plotting.
During the plotting stage, you have the opportunity to create scenes, events, and situations for your characters to dig themselves out of. Plotting can also assist with character development.
What’s your characters primary goal?
Come up with ten obstacles that can get in their way.
For example, let’s say your character’s goal is to be left alone to lead a life of misery and self-loathing for stupid misdeeds of their past. What obstacles could get in their way?
– A squatter resides in the house for winter
– They come across a needy mother and baby in front of their building
– Witness an attack and they have to stop, therefore the person they saved wants to repay them and doesn’t leave them alone
– Someone is looking for them
– They get kidnapped by a lonely talkative villain
– And so on, and so on….
What’s your characters secondary goal?
Come up with another ten obstacles that could get in your characters way?
Elaborate on the obstacles.
Think about the different ways your character(s) would react.
In the example of where they come across a needy mother and her child. Initially they could ignore them (annoyance), then they leave some food or a blanket for them to make themselves feel better (guilt), they might be annoyed at first but then they don’t see the mother and child in a while (develop worry, concern), and realise that they don’t want to live alone and the human bond is important and they feel they must help them (redemption) and they fall in love (resolution). I think I just accidentally created the skeleton for a potential romance story.
Just the information alone poses several questions.
The main character.
Who is he? Why does he want to be alone? Why does he feel as if he needs redemption?
The mother and child.
Where did they come from? What/Who are they running from? Why did they end up there?
What if the situation was reversed where it was a father and son squatting in the building where a rich business woman lives and takes notice. What sort of conflicts and subplots could arise from that?
There are so many possibilities. The world is your oyster. You do with it what you please.
That’s what makes plotting so much fun!
Now, I would not say that there’s a book in that idea. There might be. But I do know there’s a kernel of an idea, an outline of a story that can be tweaked, further plotted and expanded to create a story that is novel worthy.
There’s still a lot of work ahead but that’s how simple plotting is.
When you come up with your story idea, add to it by brainstorming at least ten obstacles that could get in your characters way in achieving their goal. You won’t use them all, but the activity will get you thinking outside the box. Often the first two or three are the more obvious options, it’s only after about five that your creative well starts overflowing with more interesting ideas.
But please don’t get stuck with trying to come up with an original idea.
It’s near impossible.
Whatever ideas you come up with, they are going to have your slant on them. We all have different experiences in life. Even brother and sister living in the same family can have a completely different perception of what life was like in the home even though they shared the same environment.
It’s the same with writing, whilst it’s hard to come up with an idea that hasn’t been done to death already, you can use an old idea and make it new again by adding your personal touch to it.
When thinking about your plot consider not just the characters in it but also the setting, the emotions, the theme and the weather.
How would your plot change if your characters occupation, address, or age changed? A young college student will have completely different experiences, expectations, and realities than a forty-five-year-old male going through a divorce.
The little details about your characters lives can colour your plot in many ways.
That’s just one of the things that makes plotting so much fun – you can find out so much more about your characters.
In the end, your plot and characters will be intertwined intricately without you realising. At other times you are going to have work extra hard to get the plot and characters to complement each other.
Just remember to enjoy the process. Writing books is fun. Don’t stress too much over the details until you’ve written your first draft at the very least.
Go crazy with your plot ideas, let go of your inhibitions, and just write whatever comes to mind, no matter how crazy it seems. It’s your story, see what you can make of it.
How do you plot your novel? Do you have fun plotting? What challenges do you face when plotting?
by Stephen King
by Joanna Penn
by Joanna Penn
by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant
