My Writing Process: Step 5 #WritingTips | Renee Scattergood

Originally posted by Renee Scattergood:

If you haven’t read the other steps in this series, you’ll want to read Step 1, Step 2, and Steps 3 & 4 first.

By this point, I’ve determined enough about my main characters to get a general sense of what the story will be about. So, I define it using the next set of questions in BeemGee.

I don’t answer these questions with a huge amount of detail. I try to keep it as basic and to the point as possible since I’m working towards being able to tell what the story is about in one sentence.

Here are the basics of the questions, but you can get more info about how to answer them from the BeemGee site. You’ll find them in the Step Outline Tab under “Edit Story Information”. You’ll need to have the Premium Membership. It’s a yearly fee, which isn’t too bad and well worth it if you can afford it.

Question #1: The first question has to do with what drives the narrative and whether there is a McGuffin in the story. A McGuffin is a plot device used where the main characters are going after the same goal, and most often for different reasons. Not all stories have one but being aware of what is driving your story to develop the plot is extremely important.

Question #2: The second question has to do with the story’s theme. A theme is something like, “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”

Question #3: The third question has to do with the central conflict, defining what the main struggle taking place in the story is and where the characters fall into that.

Question #4: The fourth and last question is about the logline. Take all this information and boil it down to one sentence that describes your story.

That’s it for Step 5. Just those four questions, but it can take a while to complete because they define the entire story. I generally give myself at least a couple of hours to work through these questions. By this point, I already have a good idea of what is going to happen in the story, but I need to be able to tie it all together.

Next week, I’ll be going over Step 6. Sign up to the right if you’d like to get future posts in your inbox. Also, if you’ve been trying out my writing process for yourself as we go along, let me know how it’s going for you in the comments below.