If you have an idea for a story but don’t know where to start, just steal the outline of a story that you like!
Let’s practice by slamming together the outline of a movie/book with a completely new and different story.
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to steal a story’s outline.
You can watch the video here to or scroll down for notes/highlights.
How to Outline by STEALING
- Sometimes you can have a cool idea for a story, but have no idea how to turn it into something with a plot and characters
- When that happens, a great way to get started is by simply stealing the outline of a story you like!
- You can use ANY story you like, it doesn’t have to be the same genre, audience or anything, because by the time you finish, it will be so different it doesn’t matter where you began
Steps to Steal an Outline
- STEP 1: Write out the outline for the story that inspires you from beginning to end
- STEP 2: Change the character names, setting locations, easy small changes first
- STEP 3: Then change some details, how the characters act, small plot points, etc.
- STEP 4: Add/remove things that your new story is starting to need/not need
- STEP 5: Final touches to remove any remnants of the original story
After going over that, chat voted that we steal the outline to the Dr. Seuss book The Lorax, but shoehorn this story idea into it: a man orders Buffalo Wild Wings, but instead of wings, he receives a friendship that will last a lifetime.
Be sure to check out the video to see Step 1, when we wrote out the outline for The Lorax, so you can see how differently it ends up!
Here’s what we came up with:
- A man named Wellned is hungry and decides to visit a Buffalo Wild Wings. The first waitress to come over is salty and just complains about her boyfriend.
- Wellned attempts to order wings, but they never come, so he asks to speak to the manager, Lester. Lester apologizes and tells him to make up for the bad service, he’ll serve him the super secret off-menu item: angel wings.
- Wellned doesn’t believe him, but Lester takes Wellned into the back and shows him the carved-up angel carcasses and the bodies in the dumpster.
- Lester lights a cigarette and starts to tell Wellned the story of how we found the angels
- Five years ago, Lester was a failed Buffalo Wild Wings franchise owner having a midlife crisis. He decided to take a road trip and stopped at a little mom and pop bed and breakfast in Strawberry, Arkansas. Their slogan was “a little piece of heaven on Earth,” and even though they weren’t the only ones who had that slogan… they were the only ones it was true for.
- Behind the bed and breakfast was a beautiful field populated with angels. The old folks who ran the bed and breakfast told Lester that the angels were people who lived good lives but hadn’t been admitted to “real” heaven yet because their wings weren’t strong enough to fly, so they were weak.
- Suddenly, Lester was reinvigorated with passion for Buffalo Wild Wings, seeing the potential to turn angel wings into a menu item. He traps one, slaughters it, and cooks it into the most delectable wings he ever had.
- “They melt in your mouth, like newborn lamb.”
- The devil then appeared appeared to Lester, saying that even for him, cooking angels was a low blow. He urged Lester to stop or else he’d throw off the balance of angels and demons, but Buffalo Wild Wings corporate got a taste of the wings that Lester sent them and they were enthralled, so Lester kept up his hunting.
- Lester’s small traps soon grew into a fully fledged slaughterhouse for angels, and he bought out the bed and breakfast. The devil appeared again to report that the dwindling of angels was causing mayhem on Earth (a.k.a. all of the terrible things that have happened the past several years), more than even he would like, since if it keeps up everyone will blow themselves up and there will be no more humans to torture.
- Lester was unrepentant and told the devil that he will keep on expanding his business, but at that moment, the last angel was slaughtered for its wings.
- Without angels, the slaughterhouse shut down and Buffalo Wild Wings corporate abandons Lester. The devil said he pities Lester for his incredible evil, but Lester said he pities the devil because he stole his girlfriend. Lester and the devil’s now ex-girlfriend walked away together.
- Back in the present, Wellned is disappointed to hear that Lester has a girlfriend. He thought he was gay and coming onto him, and he was kind of excited. The only reason he listened to that whole ridiculous story of Lester’s was because he thought it would end with a bang. He thought he made up the story to screw with him, and not in the way he wanted.
- Lester tells Wellned that he knows a way to keep getting angels, and he offers Wellned a ton of money if he’ll help him slaughter some, but Wellned says no and walks away.
- Lester realizes that Wellned is a good person. He flips open his phone, calls his girlfriend (the waitress from earlier) and says, “Hey, baby. Yeah. I found the next one. He’s gonna make a real tasty angel.”
It’s crazy how different our final version of the outline is from The Lorax. There are still some echoes of the original story in there, but i don’t think anyone who read the story of Wellned and Lester would ever imagine it was inspired by the Dr. Seuss story.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!