Planning Your Writing Project

It goes against every grain in your body. You got into this game to be a creative writer. You were inspired, touched by genius, immortal, and now I tell you to plan your writing and work from a blueprint.

Sorry, pal, but that’s the way it is, especially if you want be a professional writer. That is, somebody who gets paid cash money for writing. You don’t see a tycoon going into a new venture without a business plan, and you won’t see a general going to war without a battle plan, so it seems like common sense to do a little planning before you write your masterpiece.

It won’t stunt your creativity, believe me, because I’ve used the method and no matter how tightly I pre-planned, my creativity kicked in and what I ended up with would invariably veer away from where it was meant to go. Either that or the characters took on a life of their own and took me where they wanted to go.

I didn’t fight it and you shouldn’t either, the plan is not there to act as a straitjacket, but as a guide if you run out of steam. Most unfinished novels end up that way because the writer didn’t plan them to their conclusion. If you find your narrative going astray you have the choice of working to get it back on track or running with it for a while and seeing where you end up. You might end up in a blind alley, but at least you’ll know how to reverse your course.

Remember that the plan is not set in stone. You can go back to it in the middle of writing your novel, when the hero has run off with his sister in law, rather than the librarian, as you’d predicted, and change the plan. Keep both versions, the swine might take the notion for a book again, making you revert to your original intention.

So, what should a basic Writing Plan contain? I’ve given a quick example below. How elaborate you want to be is up to you, especially in the descriptive sections. I would recommend you over-write here, and edit down for what you actually put in your piece. I tend to write, at most, a couple of sentences for each plotting element.

PROJECT INFO

TITLE:
WRITER:
MEDIA (novel, screenplay etc.):
GENRE (comedy, romance etc.):
LENGTH (short, full):
SHORT SYNOPSIS (100 words):

CHARACTERS

PROTAGONIST
NAME:
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
CHARACTER:
ANTAGONIST:
NAME:
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
CHARACTER:
SECONDARY CHARACTERS
(1) NAME:
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
CHARACTER:
RELATIONSHIP:
(2) NAME:
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
CHARACTER:
RELATIONSHIP:
(3) NAME:
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
CHARACTER:
RELATIONSHIP:

SETTING
WHEN:

WHERE:

FULL SYNOPSIS (500 words)-
FIRST ACT (beginning):
SECOND ACT (middle):
THIRD ACT (end):

DEFINE YOUR CONFLICT (first act):
SECOND CONFLICT (if any):

DEFINE YOUR COMPLICATIONS (second act)
(1):
(2):
(3):

WHAT HAS YOUR PROTAGONIST LEARNED OR HOW HAS HE GROWN THROUGH YOUR STORY? (Try and get at least a paragraph for this):

NOTES:

By: Gurmeet Mattu

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Gurmeet Mattu is an award-winning writer with a track record in print, stage, radio and television, as well as being a qualified trainer. He currently runs a webiste aiming to train the next generation of writers at scriptschool.co.uk