My first book takes place in a near-future world that is both the same and very different from today. There are still companies and jobs. There are still laws. People still buy necessities like clothes and food, but wow, the food has changed.
While writing the book, I struggled to understand why the world was the way it was. The story felt flat until I understood what drove the protagonist to take the action he did and why his father was so powerful in this future world. In one of my many conversations with my friend Ed, he advised me to map out significant events that led up to my book.
I wrote a timeline and went back ten years before the story began. None of my ideas were very concrete. Notes along the timeline that said things like, “Taxes are abolished in the US,” “AugWatch cheap enough for everyone,” and “US, Germany, Japan & China attack Cambodia and Ivory Coast.”
Now that I’ve finished the book and am searching for an agent, my brain keeps returning to the story. I thought I could stop thinking about my characters and focus on work and family, but I’ve spent so much time thinking about every action and conversation in the book that I can’t seem to turn it off.
I’m constantly wondering what will happen next, but more and more, I’ve started thinking about the story that needs to be written first. The cataclysmic event that created the environment in the novel is not a mystery. It was intentionally written to feel horrible and incredible, but if you ponder it, can you say with certainty that this event could never happen?
However, that’s not the story that keeps rolling around in my head. I can’t stop thinking about what happened to the protagonist’s father. How did he become the person he is in the book? What dark secrets does he have that concern the protagonist so much?
And what about President Bob? He has a very colorful past. How did he become president? The first thing that makes him so interesting is his name. The most mundane name I could think of, well, at least to people of my age.
The people I grew up with had pretty boring names—there were a lot of Davids, Johns, and Peters. When people of my generation had kids, we wanted to give them incredibly unique names. We read loads of websites and studied the credits at the ends of movies.
A whole generation was born with names we had never heard of growing up. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when I overheard my son playing Minecraft and Roblox with his friends and discovered they had given their characters names like Bob or Steve. A generation later, these names are uncommon and fascinating. And so we have a future president named Bob.
Now, pantser or plotter? A pantser is a writer who “flies by the seat of their pants.” They say they write without a plan and see where the words take them. On the other hand, a plotter is a writer who carefully plans out the novel. I fall into the plotter camp. I give a great deal of thought to how earlier events lead to later events.
That doesn’t mean the story won’t be a complete surprise to me. When writing my first novel, I had a roadmap of where I was going and knew I had to write certain scenes. However, the action and motivation were only discovered when I wrote about them. Similar to a sailor who knows their final destination, and also knows that the wind and tide will always dictate their path.
In my first book, I finished the second draft and then wrote a completely new beginning and ending. The beginning was added because I needed to explain more about the world they lived in. The ending was changed because, thanks to another good friend, Sean, I realized that I had strayed from my original idea in my story map.
To get the ending back on track, I needed to invent new characters and amp up the destructive actions that led to the right ending. I wracked my brain for several weeks, but when the loose ideas came together, I could see exactly where they fit on my timeline.
After completing my first book, I thought about the many tools and ideas I experimented with to organize and write. Knock on wood, I expect the next book will go much faster. So, what is my methodology? Below is a screenshot of the story map I’m working on now. I started with the years because they already existed in my first timeline, but I took it even further back in time.
Next, I selected a content genre and sub-genre as defined by Shawn Coyne. I toyed with using an action drama for this version but ultimately realized it needed to fall under the same performance genre and business/profession sub-genre of my first book.
While there is a timeline of years, the orange bars going from left to right represent the fifteen story beats by Blake Snyder. I’ve also selected the Golden Fleece genre as defined by Blake Snyder.
Below the orange bars are stages of the hero’s journey that fall along the beat sheet. I’m using the shortened version by Christopher Vogler, but they’re based on the seminal work of Joseph Campbell.
If you want a fun way to learn more about the hero’s journey, I highly recommend The Hero’s Journey Podcast by Dan Zarzana and Jeff Gavin. In each episode, they review a movie and debate which scenes represent each stage. They don’t always agree, which makes for great fun. They also pause during each episode to surprise each other with an adult beverage with some obscure connection to the movie. Great stuff.
Anyhow, back to my plotting. The light orange bars are the obligatory scenes related to my selected content journey. That’s where the organization ends, and the real story begins. Above the orange story beats are the scenes. Some are specific scenes, while others are ideas that will play out over several themes. Below that, in green are important notes, and in red are important questions that need to be answered somewhere in the story.
The light orange bars are the obligatory scenes related to my selected content journey. That’s where the organization ends, and the real story begins. Above the orange story beats are the scenes. Some are specific scenes, while others are ideas that will play out over several themes. Below that, in green are important notes, and in red are important questions that need to be answered somewhere in the story.
And that’s where I am today. I haven’t started writing yet. I still have a few characters I haven’t identified, and I need more conflict; the juicy stuff. Every day, I get deeper into my head, imagining the history of a future that has yet to be written.
