January 2018 - Scott Writes Stuff

Rubbish to Published: Plotting and scheming – Writing Stream Recap

Rubbish to Published: Plotting and scheming – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on January 29, 2018

Last stream we continued our Rubbish to Published series, where we start from absolutely nothing and create something “publishable.”

We did our query letter in the previous stream, so this time we took the next step: plotting chapter by chapter.

For this one, we looked back over everything we’ve created thus far, picked out the best/important bits, and laid them out chronologically chapter by chapter. We also filled in the gaps by adding new plot points.

Thanks to all our hard work up until now, it was surprisingly easy! You can see what we came up with here:

Rubbish to Published: Writing your query letter FIRST – Writing Stream Recap

Rubbish to Published: Writing your query letter FIRST – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on January 27, 2018

Last stream we continued our Rubbish to Published series, where we start from absolutely nothing and create something “publishable.”

We did our worldbuilding in the previous stream, so this time we took the next step: writing our query letter.

A query letter is the letter you write to literary agents, telling them about your book and yourself. Typically you write it only once you’ve finished editing and polishing your book, but I like to do it earlier. If your goal is publication, then it’s good to have your eye on the prize from the very beginning.

I talk about this more in detail in my Tips-y Tuesday post. Here’s what we came up with for our query letter:

Rubbish to Published: Worldbuilding made easy – Writing Stream Recap

Rubbish to Published: Worldbuilding made easy – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on January 24, 2018

Last stream we continued our Rubbish to Published series, where we start from absolutely nothing and create something “publishable.”

We created an outline in the previous stream, so this time we took the next step: worldbuilding.

One of my favorite quotes is: “The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense.” This was said by author Tom Clancy, and it’s so true. In reality, whatever happens, happens; you don’t need to convince anyone. But when creating a fictional world, you need to make sure that it makes sense, otherwise your readers will reject it.

The way we do that is by worldbuilding. We make sure the world we’re writing about has an internal logic to it.

My favorite way to worldbuild is to start at the macro level, then go down to the micro level, coming up with cool details along the way. And always asking two important questions: (1) how did it get like this? and (2) why does it matter to the story?

You can see what we came up with for our worldbuilding here:

Rubbish to Published: 5 easy questions to make an outline – Writing Stream Recap

Rubbish to Published: 5 easy questions to make an outline – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on January 22, 2018

Last stream we continued our Rubbish to Published series, where we start from absolutely nothing and create something “publishable.”

We created character profiles in the previous stream, so this time we took the next step: outlining.

To do this, all we had to do was ask five easy questions about our plot:

Rubbish to Published: Creating characters – Writing Stream Recap

Rubbish to Published: Creating characters – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on January 20, 2018

Last stream we continued our Rubbish to Published series, where we start from absolutely nothing and create something “publishable.”

We picked out our audience and genre in the previous stream, so this time we took the next step: creating our characters.

To do this, we created character profiles. For the three main characters in our story, we asked each of them the same questions (“What is their physical appearance?” “What are their strengths/weaknesses?” “What do they desire/fear?” and more).

You can see the profiles we can up with here:

Rubbish to Published: Picking your audience and genre – Writing Stream Recap

Rubbish to Published: Picking your audience and genre – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on January 17, 2018

Last stream we continued our Rubbish to Published series, where we start from absolutely nothing and create something “publishable.”

We’d created our “idea toolbox” in the previous stream, so this time we took the next step: picking out audience and genre.

To start off we talked about the different: (1) story types, (2) audiences, and (3) genres. You can see what we came up with here:

Rubbish to Published: Creating your idea toolbox – Writing Stream Recap

Rubbish to Published: Creating your idea toolbox – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on January 15, 2018

Last stream we continued our Rubbish to Published series, where we start from absolutely nothing and create something “publishable.”

We’d already come up with our story idea in the previous stream, so this time we took the next step: creating an idea toolbox.

An idea toolbox is basically a bunch of brainstorming. You come up with lots and lots of ideas by following these steps:

#1. Ask a question about your story idea
#2. Write whatever answers pop into your head (you can have multiple, even contradictory answers!)
#3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you have about a page full of information
#4. Read through your page and pick out the parts that “spark emotion,” things that get you excited to write
#5. Compile all your favorite parts together, then go back to step 1

As always, chat came up with some great questions and answers based on the idea we came up with. Here’s where we finally ended up:

Rubbish to Published: 4 ways to come up with a story idea – Writing Stream Recap

Rubbish to Published: 4 ways to come up with a story idea – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on January 12, 2018

With the last stream we started a new series called Rubbish to Published. As requested by the chat, we’ll go along step by step with the process of coming up with a story idea, fleshing it out, and actually writing it to the point of being “publishable.”

And what better way to start than by discussing how to come up with a story idea?

Today we went over four ways to come up with a story idea: (1) a “what if…?” (2) an image, (3) a character, and (4) something/someone from your life.

After taking about each method in detail, we opened it up to the chat for suggestions in each category. Here’s the great stuff everyone came up with:

Vegan mom turns kids to life of ice cream crime – Writing Stream Recap

Vegan mom turns kids to life of ice cream crime – Writing Stream Recap

Published by Scott on January 10, 2018

For the latest stream we went back to one of our favorite writing exercises: randomly-generated sentences.

They’re a perfect way to work out your creativity muscles, and worst comes to worst, if your story sucks, hey, you can just blame the terrible random sentences!

Chat voted between three random sentences to start our story, and we wrote about half a page. Then we got another random sentence and had to use it as the next sentence in our story. Then we wrote another half a page and got a final random sentence, which would be our ending sentence that we had to write to.

Needless to say, it was pretty chaotic. But thanks to some awesome suggestions from chat, I absolutely love where our story ended up.

You can read it here: (the randomly-generated sentences are in bold)

Writing Stream Recap: Ca$hing in on $EQUEL$

Writing Stream Recap: Ca$hing in on $EQUEL$

Published by Scott on January 8, 2018

Since today was special guest Abbey’s last day to join the stream for a while, we decided to make it special.

Instead of writing a new story, we looked over all of the stories we’d written over the past two weeks and narrowed it down to the three we liked best. Then we held a vote in the chat to see which one we would write a sequel to.

The three choices were these:

#1. Christmas curse
#2. Dragon kidnaps a prince by mistake
#3. Hamurai the hamster samurai

In the end, the winner was…

Month: January 2018