Preptober Week 2

You should be coming to the end of the first book you’ve read this month and writing a review of it. You can publish that review, or keep it for yourself. That’s entirely up to you.

For week 2 we’re going to focus the second half hour of your set-aside time on BRAINSTORMING.

To write a story you need a character someplace who wants to get something or achieve something they think will make them happy. The story is all the twists and turns, and the emotional wreckage the character experiences and causes, as they go along trying to reach their goal.

Story is life.

Planning a story is like going to the guidance counselor in high school for college and career advice. They’re asking you all sorts of questions: What are you good at? What careers interest you? What skills do you have already and what skills do you still need to learn? How and where do you learn those things?

The result might be a plan to attend trade school, volunteering in the community, taking an internship, researching and applying to colleges, scheduling campus visits or nailing down the deadlines for various scholarship and financial aid applications.

For these next few brainstorms, write full sentences, paragraphs, get descriptive, include dialogue.

SETTING

This week, for your writing time, you’re going to brainstorm. First up, SETTING.

Why setting and not character? A person is a product of their environment. Even if they’re going against the grain, there has to be a grain in place for them to go against. So you have to understand where you want to set the story before you can generate a character who will live in that space.

Setting is place – both big (country, state, city) and small (lakes, rivers, mountains, businesses, organizations, clubs, schools) and time – contemporary, historical, futuristic, fantasy that is medieval-like, etc.

1. Where do you live? What do you like or dislike about it?
2. What would you change?
3. If you like stories with magic, or fantastical creatures, how would where you live change if you brought those things in?
4. If you like historical stories, what was your area like in your favorite historical time period?
5. What problems are there? Are there organizations or people causing them or, conversely, is anyone already trying to solve the problems? How?

When writing your answers to these questions, write in paragraphs, not lists. Write in full sentences. Swap out real people’s names for their roles in the situations you’re writing about.

1. Alternatively, If you hate where you live, where would you live if you could? What about that place makes it so appealing? Answer the same questions about about this other place.

Now, take a look at the novel you just read.

1. What about the setting of this story interested you?
2. Pull out bits of description that made it easier to visualize the setting and get a feel for what is good and bad about it.

CHARACTERS

During your brainstorming about setting, you may have had characters. But the focus on this brainstorming sessions is on your main character.

You may have more than one (a dual-POV romance for example). The process is the same for both. They have a place in this setting you’ve brainstormed about. Let’s uncover that.

1. Is the character new here? Born here? Raised here? Are they back, having lived somewhere else? (if so, what was that place like? were they happy there?)
2. What do they like about the setting? What do they hate about it? Go back to the problems and positives in the setting? Are they on one side or the other of an issue?
3. Who are their friends, family? Enemies?
4. What’s their living situation? How do they feel about their living situation and the people they live around or with.
5. Describe them sleeping, waking, and getting dressed/packed for these situations: work/school, a date, hanging out with friends, and a vacation.
6. Describe a keepsake and why it’s special to them.
7. Describe them preparing/eating a meal.

FOILS and FOILERS

This is about the supporting characters. Friends are “foils”, people who complement the main character, ally with them, have been through some event in the past with them, or are current confidantes. This brainstorming session is about generating that origin story.

1. How did they become the main character’s friend ?
2. How are they like the main character? How are they different? How do they feel about these similarities and differences?

“Foilers” are your antagonists. These can be people who simply make the main character’s day more difficult, or be outright bullies or enemies. This brainstorming session is about their reason for opposing the main character.

1. How did they become the main character’s opposition?
2. Is what they do intentional? If so, what do they want that they think they can’t get if the main character is not opposed?
3. If what they do is unintentional, or at least not done with malicious intent, what would the main character have to say – but can’t bring themselves to say – to get the foiler to stop hindering their progress?

For these next two brainstorms, get out notecards. You will want to be able to “shuffle” them.

GOALS

1. What does the main character want that they think will improve their situation (or the situation of others if you are creating a “hero” story)?

Come up with several different things they might want. Not steps in one goal, but multiple goals. For a novel, you will probably write their way toward more than one goal. Also, some goals may have to be adjusted or abandoned as part of the story. You’ll still write about them trying for it, but just like getting a rejection letter to your dream university forces you to reconsider your goals or abandon them, your character will adjust their goals, too. But you have to, as creator, brainstorm the possibilities.

OBSTACLES

Now come up with all the things that can possibly go wrong for the character on the way to their goals. The obstacle might be small, simple logistics (being late, missing a deadline).

It might be a large obstacle (losing their job or their home)

It might be an obstacle that requires “rerouting” or multiple steps to problem-solve (discover there’s a lost map, find it, decipher it, use it).

Come back next week (Oct 15) for advice for week 3 of Preptober (checklist 10-12): writing background and backstory.

~ Lara