Good morning everyone and welcome to the first task of the year long Novel Writing Challenge. Right now we are starting the planning tasks and where better to start than by stating the initial idea. So…
Today’s task is a nice simple one to kick things off. Give us a sentence or two, at the most three, about your story. That’s it. Just the general idea. Keep it simple. This isn’t the place to get into all your sub plots and themes. This is just a simple statement of the general idea. We’ll even start with a formula, all you have to do is fill in the blanks. Ready?
This is a story about ________(a character), who starts off _____ (normal life), then _____(something happens to jar them out of their normal life) and _____ (something else happens to complicate things) before finally____(your character reaches their new normal).
Later there will be time to refine it, expand it or even change it up so that if you decide midway through plotting that the place you wanted them to end up has changed a bit from when you first started you can.
In fact, as you work and think about your story more and more, things will clarify and change a bit. It’s perfectly natural. Nothing is set in stone, but we do need a place to begin. So, give us your best idea as it is currently circling through your brain or sitting on a slip of paper in your desk drawer.
Examples
For these examples, I tried to give examples in a variety of styles so you can see how it can be bent to any genre you are working on. They are general things. If yours is as general an idea that’s fine. If you have more specifics at this point, add them, but keep it to the basic format for this for the moment. (but add notes somewhere to keep for later. You will need them as we move forward.)
Examples:
This is a story about Bob who hates working for his father-in-law, then gets fired and has to look for a new job before finally leaving it all behind to buy a boat and sail off into the sunset.
This is a story about Mary who starts off in love with Brad, then realizes he is a corporate spy trying to destroy her family business and everything he told her was a lie including the romance, before finally realizing that she is strong enough to save the business and deserves real love.
This is a story about Galen who starts off as a hapless wizard who always gets things wrong then is overlooked when someone destroys all of the powerful wizards and he is left as the only one who can perform the spells to save the kingdom, finally realizing that his ‘non-standard’ spell casting is exactly what was needed to save the day.
This is a story about Gary who starts off buying a house then realizes it is haunted with an evil entity and that entity wants to kill him and his family, before facing it down and banishing it from the mortal realm, and his house.
This is a story about Wally who doesn’t believe the police report about his best friend’s death then begins his own investigation and finds a series of cover ups that all tie together until finally he uncovers a criminal conspiracy thirty years in the making.
Hopefully that is a wide enough variety to get you started. As I mentioned before, I will be working on my own story, all of the tasks, including the rough draft writing will be posted each day. The post will be on the main page or you can access the list of the posts on the Member’s Page. Happy writing.
Ten til Midnight 