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You can have the best story ever floating around in your head, but with no structure it is more likely to come out as a tangled mess of ideas than an instant bestseller.   What you need is a plan!

Here is one method I use to plan my story writing…

Idea Bank

First things first - Get all your ideas down on a page.   Once there is nothing left in your head regarding this particular story, get to work organising the ideas into logical groups.   Put all the alien’s mucus-powered weaponry to one side, your spaceship’s computer’s personality to another… make it nice and clear, so if you want to know about something specific, you know where to look!

Rough Draft Plot

Now you have your ideas down, it’s time to think about the actual story.   Where do you imagine the story beginning?   You don’t have to stick to this, as you can always change things later, but try writing out in bullet point format the main plot points.   This can take some time depending on how detailed you decide to be, but believe me - having a rough written guide to your plot is a life saver… and can be really useful when it comes to pitching it to publishers! (They aren’t going to want to read all 36837 chapters of your meganovel, I’m afraid)

Plot table

With the plot written down and your ideas in the bank, it’s time to tie everything together.   Make a table with each plotline (”The alien lost his gun”, “The computer just wants a friend” etc…) as a row and each chapter as a column.   Now go through and put each significant plot point in the chapter that it will be revealed.   This will help you keep your story interesting; if you notice there is a single plotline with very little else happening, you might realise you need a few more ideas in the bank to draw from in order to fill out your story.   The best stories are so involving because there is so much going on!   Try to think about how other characters will respond to major events in the story - this might trigger new plotlines entirely that you can cleverly tie in with your main plot! (The computer could find out the alien lost his gun and try to find it for him… only to discover that the alien wants the gun to shoot the computer to stop it complaining about wanting a friend!)

Write!

Finally, with your plot table at the ready and your idea bank to draw specifics from, it’s time to get down to the business of actually writing your story!

I hope this article has given you a few ideas to help you write your own stories (Feel free to expand on the alien-computer drama too… and send me a copy when you get it published!)

Any suggestions for organising your story before you write it?   Share them in a comment below!