From Idea to Manuscript, Part I
Developing Concept Into Plot, Character, and Setting
Today’s article is dedicated to occasional Shelf Life reader my Grandpa, whose birthday is tomorrow: Many happy returns to you, whether you are reading today or not. This article is more than usually not dedicated to Danalog, Hultsmash, Toshimo Is Sus, and Failkan who all know perfectly well why that is.
So: You have an idea. Maybe it’s a big idea. Maybe even a great idea. I do not deny that ideas can be great; only that ideas can be valuable (they can’t). Nobody likes that but it’s true.
If you have a great idea you owe it to yourself and your great idea to execute it. Not like shoot it in the back of the skull with a pistol at point-blank range but to carry it out. The execution of an idea—a song, a painting, a manuscript—has value and, more important, it can be shared with your friends in a concrete way and not only in your fevered explanation of the complex concept, sometimes under the influence of illicit substances, always punctuated with many hand gestures.
I’m not saying you can’t still tell me your crazy complicated ideas while you’re high (you can), but this article has guidance on how to take the idea you have, however scant its details, all the way to the end result: A manuscript. I feel qualified to give advice on this because I have done it many times and in many formats. I do not guarantee that this advice will help you get from your idea to a good manuscript, because I have no expertise there. Only that it will help you get from your idea to a manuscript.
Fortunately, you can get to a publishable or even good or great manuscript from a bad manuscript. You can’t get to a publishable, good, or great manuscript from nothing. You can’t revise the absence of a manuscript. Don’t worry about your manuscript being good. Focus on your manuscript being done. Even a terrible manuscript is better than the manuscript 99 percent of people write, which is no manuscript.
Anyway having ideas is easy. It’s so easy you literally have ideas while you sleep. A lot of people who hear that I’m an editor (and therefore, presumably, that I know many writers) will say, “I have a great idea for a book if you want to put me in touch with a writer to write it.” You can definitely get a writer to write your idea: That’s a service for hire called ghostwriting (if you want to put your name on it) or you can commission a writer to write something to spec for you. In either case you (idea-bringer) will be paying this writer (idea-executer) because the idea isn’t the valuable part, the execution is.
If you want your idea to exist in manuscript format and you don’t want to hire someone else to make it happen, you have to get that idea into executable shape.
Many ideas start out simple. You might have a scene in mind, two characters arguing with hushed voices in a darkened hall outside a crowded and lively ballroom. Maybe you have less—just a still image of a setting or a snippet of dialogue or a random phrase you heard. Maybe a character has made themself known to you. Maybe you saw something in a dream and you want to transform it into a story (that’s where Twilight came from). You might have as much as a roughed-out story—a political thriller or family saga.
Today’s article is going to walk you through several series of questions to interrogate yourself about your idea. Whatever the form your idea has taken, these questions will get you on your way to nailing down the six things you absolutely have to have to tell a compelling story. Those six things are:
Plot
Setting
Characters
Conflict
Resolution
Stakes
Whatever it is you’re starting with, you have to get these six things out of—or appended to—your idea if you’re going to write it. Otherwise you’re going to end up in the all-too-common “I started strong but twenty pages into my novel I didn’t have anything left” or “I have a handful of very vivid scenes but nothing connecting them” scenarios.
Sometimes in this development exercise you’re going to realize that you don’t have a full novel’s worth of idea; maybe you have a short story idea. Short stories start very short, you know, and a lot of outlets prefer shorter stories to longer ones. Sometimes in trying to develop an idea you’ll find it just won’t become what you want it to. Sometimes you let it become something else, and sometimes you stop trying to get blood out of a stone and move on to another idea.
Today’s Part I will cover the probing questions to ask to get plot, setting, and characters out of your concept. First things first, you needn’t begin with plot. Whatever you’re starting with may be a plot, or part of one, or it may be a character or a setting or something else. I’ll go over how to get a plot, characters, and setting from your concept but you don’t have to go in that order. Get your characters first and then the plot. Or if you already have your characters get your setting and then your plot. Whatever. I’m not the manager of writing.
Concept to Plot
First question: What’s the inciting incident?
Whatever you’re starting with, figure out whether it’s before or after the inciting incident—has the story started? Or is it about to? If it already started, what kicked it off? If it hasn’t started yet, what’s about to happen to get the ball rolling? If you’re starting with a character—how is their life about to change? If you’re starting with a scene—what action is happening and what started it, or what is it about to start? If you’ve started with a setting in your mind, what’s going on in that setting that will necessitate action—war? Natural disaster? Alien invasion?
Second question: How will the situation get even worse?
The situation must get worse before it gets better. You can’t start The Shawshank Redemption with Andy Dufresne claiming he’s innocent and end with the jury being like, “Yeah okay he’s innocent,” the end. There’s no story there. Whatever kicked off the action, whatever event or decision or disaster, how is it going to get worse. This could mean worse for your protagonist if you already know who that is, or it could mean things get worse for your setting. Think of Westeros: First their king died, and then it was going to be winter for an unknown number of years, and then the blonde lady from overseas showed up with dragons, and then on top of that there was a zombie apocalypse? What happens to make things go from frying pan to active forest fire?
Third question: Where will everything you already know align to create a satisfying ending?
Plots have to have a beginning, middle, and end. You know your beginning and middle, so what would the end look like? If you know who any of your characters are, where do they end up? Is there a good ending for the good guys, or a bad ending for the bad guys? What’s going on in your setting? Did the war end? Was the crisis averted, or at least ameliorated?
Once you have answered these, you have a good sense of your three-act plot structure: The inciting incident that sets off the action in act one; the rising action in which more forces turn against the protagonist and drives them toward the climax in act two; and the ultimate resolution of the story that closes act three.
Concept to Character
First question: Who is the protagonist?
If you haven’t already visualized your protagonist, now is the time. If you’ve got your setting in mind, think about who lives there and what their lives might be like. If you know what the inciting incident is, then to whom is it happening? Whose story begins with the inciting incident? Whose life changes in that moment?
Second Question: Who is the antagonist?
The antagonist may or may not be the person who set the inciting incident in motion, but consider whether they were involved. The inciting incident was either set in motion by something the antagonist did, or will set something in motion that affects them—even if it is only putting the protagonist into the antagonist’s path. Who has the potential to rise up and stop your protagonist in their tracks?
Third Question: Are there any other main characters, like a second protagonist or a hidden, additional antagonist?
Does your story have one protagonist? A couple? A group of them? What about antagonists? Is there one central character or faction blocking the path of your protagonist(s) or are several people or groups working together or separately to stop your protagonist from achieving their goals? Depending on how powerful or resourceful your protagonist is, it may take more than one person to really make a good try at thwarting them. These powers have to be balanced.
Concept to Setting
First question: Where do I see this taking place?
In rural Kentucky? In space? In Dong Son Vietnam? Dong Son Vietnam but in space? If you’ve already pictured a place but you don’t know where it is exactly, then what are the qualities of the place? What are the physical properties? What’s the climate like? Does the action take place in a home, a village, a city, aboard a vessel? How many different settings will you need? Is one house enough, or will your story span a whole world? A whole galaxy?
Second Question: What are present-day conditions like in the setting?
Whatever is the present day in your setting, what’s going on then and there? What are the current conditions? What season is it? What’s the status of food—scarce or plenty? Plague or pandemic? Supply shortage? How hard is it to get an education? Natural disaster in the recent past, happening now, or looming in the future? How’s the economy doing? Kingdoms at war? A once-noble house fallen on hard times? A newly decreed moratorium on technology? What’s going on in the world that your characters inhabit, that they will need to work with and around?
Third Question: Is the setting a real place (or based on one) that I need to research, or do I need to make up a sci fi or fantasy setting?
If you’re using a real setting, where can you research it? How much depth do you need? Is it a setting you’re familiar with, and if so how familiar? Have you lived there? Visited? Read about it? Seen it on TV? If it’s a fictional setting, what do you need to invent for it? Is it a realistic but fictional place, like a fake town in New England? Or is it an alien planet in another galaxy? What are the laws there, natural and otherwise?
Coming up Thursday, we’ll dive into how you use the information you’ve derived from the questions above to flesh out your story’s conflict, resolution, and stakes. These are the parts that really drive dramatic tension and reader investment in your story so on Thursday I shall proceed with less preamble and more . . . amble. Stay tuned in the next couple weeks for the very end of Shelf Life year one and the dawn of Shelf Life year two.
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