My Writing Process: Step 1 #WritingTips | Renee Scattergood

Originally posted by Renee Scattergood:

I’ve had quite a few people ask me about my new writing process since I began talking about it, so I’ve decided to put together a series of blog posts to walk you through it. Keep in mind that it’s nothing original. It’s stuff I’ve taken from many different sources that have worked for me that I’ve put together in a step by step process. What works for me may not work for you, but you may find something that you’ve never tried before that you can use in your own writing process.

I broke my writing process down into twenty steps to simplify it. It takes me all the way from the planning process through to the editing. By the time I’m done with the twenty steps, I’m ready to send the manuscript off to the editor or beta readers (depending on what kind of project I’m working on).

In each post, I’m going to talk you through the steps individually, so today I’ll be talking about Step 1. Before I get started, I also want to let you know that I will be giving you links to and names of different sources and apps I’ve used to create each step as well as what I use to keep my work organized.

So, let’s get started with Step 1:

The first thing I do is start creating my main characters. By main character, I mean any character that is going to have a big part in the story, whether they are point of view characters or not. Generally, this is how I work it out:

• Short stories and novellas get one or two main characters. If there are two it may be either a protagonist and antagonist or two protagonists.
• Novels will generally have up to six main characters. I usually break it up by having up to four or five protagonists, and one or two antagonists.
• With serials, it depends on how I’m writing it. My current serial has eleven main characters who will also be point of view characters. Seven are protagonists and four are antagonists.

I don’t decide right from the start how many I will have though. I have a general idea in my head, and as I work through this first step and answer the questions, I will get more ideas and if a new character comes to mind I add them.

The next thing I do is I set up a new book in Scrivener. If you don’t use a writing program, you can just set up a word file for developing your characters. You can have a separate file for each or one big file for all the characters. It’s up to you.

In Scrivener, I pretty much ignore everything else and focus on the character section. I create three folders in that section. One for protagonists, antagonists, and other characters. The other characters can be family members or friends of the main characters that are in the story, but not necessarily a big part of it. It’s also for other characters your main characters come across throughout the story.

Now it’s time to start naming your main characters. I use Fantasy Name Generators. There are quite a few name generators there to choose from and it’s helped me a great deal, so it’s worth checking out. Once I have their names, I create a new character template in the appropriate folder in Scriver and fill in the names. I don’t worry about any other character details at this point. The characters are built as we go along.

Now for the main part of Step 1! If you’ve never used BeemGee before, now is a good time to check it out. This part of Step 1 comes from their app, which is free to use for these questions.

You need to answer the first set of questions for each of your main characters on BeemGee (or you can do it in a separate file for now, but BeemGee makes it easier). You don’t have to answer these questions for characters in the “others” category. Here is a brief description of each of the questions:

Question #1: What is the main problem or situation your character is dealing with as they enter the story? It can be something that already exists or suddenly comes into the character’s life at the start of the story.

Question #2: What is the character’s desire? This is related to the problem in the first question, but more of the state of mind or what the character will get out of solving the problem rather than just “solving the problem”.

Question #3: What does the character have to achieve to solve the problem?

Question #4: What does the character have to do to reach that achievement and solve the problem?

Question #5: What does the character think he/she needs to reach that achievement? This isn’t something the character actually needs. It’s what they believe they need. It can be an object, information or pretty much anything.

Question #6: What are the actions the character will have to take to achieve the goal and solve the problem?

Question #7: What will happen if the character fails? There has to be some kind of consequence to failing that will serve as the character’s motivation.

Question #8: What does the character fear most?

Question #9: Does the character have any special abilities? This can be anything from being highly intelligent to having magical abilities.

Question #10: Does the character have a prized possession? It doesn’t have to be an object. It could be another person, like a spouse or child.

Question #11: What antagonistic obstacle does the character face? These are obstacles placed in front of the character by his/her opponent.

Question #12: What external obstacles does the character face? External obstacles have to do with the world around the character.

After answering these questions for all your main characters, you’re done with Step 1. The amount of time it takes depends on how much information you include for each question and the number of characters you have. If you’re like me and you like to schedule your writing time, give yourself at least an hour or two for each character.

Next week I’ll go over Step 2 of my writing process. Hope you’re able to make use of the stuff I’ve written so far. If you try it out, let me know how it goes in the comments below!

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