Day 26: Outlining the First 0-25% of Your Novel

Hey there, Igniter! Monica Leonelle from theworldneedsyourbook.com. Today is day 26 of the challenge and we are doing some outlining for the first 25% of your novel. Today is day 26 and we are continuing with the Ultimate Novel Plotter. We are focused on the setup, so the first 0 to 25% of your story, and we're doing the outlining portion. So up until today Today we've been, you know, looking at various aspects of our novel, but today we're going to actually put together an outline for the first 25%. So with this, I'm going to share the beats to a typical novel. Now, as you look at your specific genre, you will have to take the wording that I'm using and the language that I'm using and translate it to your specific genre. So, you know, and I'll try to give you some of that for some genres. I know romance is a really big one that the language that a romance author uses is very different than the language that, you know, traditional story structure uses. But I want to just impress that it is all the same thing and you really just need to translate it. So the beats are, you know, basically what is the protagonist's normal world? So they have the normal world. They have why today is different. So the Hunger Games example again, Katniss's normal world is that she's hunting with her friend Gale past the boundary lines of District 12, but today is different for the protagonist because it is Reaping Day. So this is a very typical setup. Like, definitely if you have a fantasy book or a sci-fi book, you're going to have this setup. But, um, even if you have, you know, if you have a romance book, it's really the same thing. The character is going about their daily life, and today is different for the protagonist because they have a meet cute. So that's part, you know, that's part of the inciting incident. So then there's this beat in there about your protagonist being either self-protecting or self-sacrificing, and how can you show that? So if you want to learn more about this, I learned about this from James Scott Bell's book called Super Story Structure, and he talks about it as— I think he calls it like pet the dog or something like that. That's, that's what the beat is called. So it's basically just to show the character, um, who the character is outside of their circumstances. So the example from The Hunger Games, Katniss gives up some of her food to one of the people at the Hob, which is a very poor marketplace in the first chapter of The Hunger Games. And the reason she does that is to demonstrate that, demonstrate who she is as a character. And so you'll see this like, like you will see this be in across everything now that you know about it, if you didn't already know about it. So you can either do self-protecting or self-sacrificing. Or if it's a villain, then you would do self-serving. So that they're gonna— the villain of the story is gonna do something that's kind of rude. Like they'll see somebody, you know, they'll see an old lady crossing the street and they'll let her get hit by a car. Probably not that extreme, but it'll be like they are hurting somebody who's innocent And in this, if you want to do this for your hero though, you want them to protect or to help somebody who is innocent or can't help themselves. So that's the third beat. The fourth beat that I use is what is the protagonist's fatal flaw? And so with this, you don't, you don't need to— it's like not something that you show. So we've talked about how the fatal flaw is really an under-the-surface thing. So for Katniss, this fatal flaw is she has this sentence where she was like, "I don't understand why people have kids." And she was like, "I would never bring kids into this world." Because she just sees the world as like completely doomed, like helpless. And so that's why the very end of that series, the epilogue of that series— and sorry, this is spoiler alert— she has children. And so people, you know, it's It's kind of like, um, it's really very purposeful. It's coming full circle. So that's how you kind of know that that's the fatal flaw. And it's, it's, um, it's only like a sentence in the first chapter, but it's very explicit to show that like, look, she really doesn't believe in this world. She doesn't believe that this world is worth fighting for in many ways. She's just trying to survive, and she's mostly trying to survive for her family who and her family, they're, you know, her mom and her sister are kind of softer characters and they just have a little bit more hope for the world, I guess. So show the protagonist's fatal flaw. Next is inciting incidents, and these are typically like these very surprising things that happen. So, you know, for Katniss, her sister her sister was chosen for the Hunger Games and then she has to volunteer in her place. How does the character feel about the inciting incident? So you'll see in the setup of The Hunger Games, the character Katniss is, you know, she does volunteer and then after she has this, she does really have this emotional reaction to it. So you'll, you kind of see that unfold in the second chapter of the book. And so what you can do if you're a little bit stuck on like, what is the character's reaction to this, and let them have kind of an immediate reaction and then let them have a drawn-out reaction that unfolds over the next section. And so the way to do that, you know, give them the immediate reaction like right there on the page right when it happens, and then you can use the 5 stages of death to start to unfold unfold the rest and think about like what were their— what was that character's ordinary world goals. So if Katniss had not been, you know, if Primrose Everdeen had not been chosen for the Hunger Games, if Katniss had not volunteered in her place, what is Katniss's goal? Katniss's goal is basically to kind of continue on to hunt for her family and to just like stay beneath the radar. You know, to live her kind of simple life. And I think she, you know, I think her, her larger goal was like, like she was never trying to climb out of poverty. She was really just trying to like feed her family and like make sure her family didn't starve. Um, how does— okay, so we did that. How does the character feel about the inciting incident? Okay, what are the two decisions that the protagonist faces? So, um, For Katniss, you know, the decision point is that she, she's going into these Hunger Games whether she wants to or not. But the decision point is, is she going to, because she does not believe in the Hunger Games, she doesn't want to go to the Hunger Games, she doesn't want to be a piece in these games, like she feels like a chess piece. She, you know, she's fine to basically just die for her sister. But she has to make a choice Is she willing to kill other tributes because she would have to? Is she willing to participate in that in order for the chance to survive and come home to her family? So she will have to let go of her values to survive and come home. Or she can, you know, basically just like accept that she's gonna die in these games. Um, so those are the two options and both are like really terrible options when you think about it. So, so the obvious option might be like, well, why not just try to survive? But think about that. She's going to have to kill people. She's going to have to kill other innocent children, like some of which are her own sister's age, that she— this person that she's trying to protect. So, and then it's not only that, but this is televised. So everybody is going to know that she's done these terrible things. Everybody is going to watch her do these terrible things. So it's not really that simple of a decision. So then what is the character's decision? Well, you learn the answer to that question and that marks the end of this section, marks the end of the setup. So give that character an actual scene where they are kind of going through these decisions, and then ideally you want to show the decision through action and not through narrative or through like just the character deciding in their mind. You want them to take an action. So it could be like they're going to call somebody and say "Okay, I'm in." So you'll see that in like movies, like, you know, it's like somebody's presented with two choices and they're like, "Okay, I'll think about it." Or, you know, the character who's trying to convince them is like, "Well, think about it and let me know." And so then you see the end of that section being like, "Okay, I'm in." And, you know, there's a darkness to the scene. I don't know. I think television is really great at doing the action piece of that. So definitely check that out. So you will, um, those are the beats that you're going to want to map out. Don't forget to grab, because you've already done some of this work, so grab your notes from, um, the— I, I don't remember the day. I think it might be day 12 and day 13. So the setup, the orphan energy, grab your notes about your protagonist, be because the setup is really going to focus a lot on your protagonist. Like, you're not going to want to introduce a ton of other characters to your story. So you're, you know, grab all of those notes, notes about the fatal flaw. That's something you have to introduce in this section. And then this, this worksheet should look really familiar to you. Scene numbers, scene descriptions, scene notes, and you can just map out very specifically what order your, your scenes are going to unfold. And you can do like chapters as well. So I've given you a lot of these pages, about 10 of these pages, so that you can map this out and go into a lot more detail maybe than you did in the previous days. Thank you so much for watching and listening. If you have any questions, make sure you leave a question in the comment section. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. If you'd like to join the challenge, although we're nearing the end of it, there still time to join, so feel free to join. Links in the description below for that as well. Hope that this has been helpful to you. Have a wonderful day!