Good Morning everyone and welcome back to the 2026 Novel Writing Challenge. Each day we have a very simple task that we are going to use to slowly build up our Novel, getting all of our ducks in a row before we start writing. So today, we start to look at our idea in layers.
We started doing that before when we stated our idea in a specific timeline format. We started with the beginning added a few bits in the middle and added in a bit of where we wanted our story to end. Now we are just going to split out the parts a little bit. Think of it like pully taffy. We are going to stretch it out and then start adding some crunchy story bits in between. Okay maybe taffy doesn’t have the crunchy bits, but we are still stretching out timeline out. We take the long and oversized sentence from yesterday:
This is a story about ________, who starts off _____, then _____and _____ before finally____.
And split it into points, or shorter sentences if you’d like.
1-This is a story about______.
2 – ____ starts off_____.
3- Then ______.
4- And ______.
5-before finally_______.
It is going to look a little clunky and possibly feel a bit like you are reading a picture book to a small child, but after we get it into our numbered points, we will be smoothing it out. Let’s take a look at one of our example ideas from yesterday, We’ll use the Bob break out as today’s example…
Example
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.
1-This is a story about Bob.
2-Bob hates working for his father-in-law.
3- His father-in-law fires him.
4- He has to look for a new job.
5- Before finally leaving it all behind to buy a boat and sail off into the sunset.
And there you have it, the tsk for the day. It is Friday so we have the break out list set and can leave it sit until Monday. My advice is to leave it until Monday. Let it swim through your thoughts over the weekend and then Monday, before starting the Monday task, look it over. Decide if any of the main points on this need to change.
Perhaps instead of Bob getting fired, you decide your story works better if Bob quits. Or maybe he loves the job instead of hates it and is still fired. Maybe you thought Bob should be an accountant at a corporate firm but instead decide it would be so much better if he were a mortician. For now though, let your basic story line sit and marinate. Your task for the morning is done.
Ten til Midnight 