Over the last few months I've discovered a simple way to get your story started. I've found that I can world build for months and months, but without a basic direction I become plagued by ideas changing to the point where I have to redo all my worldbuilding. I'm going to lay out some steps for building your story out of character, which you can then world build around. All you need to know to get started, is whom the story is about.

I will provide links to my examples as I rewrite my first book and organize the development of Triterrus. You are free to post links to yours based on my steps, or even suggest some of your own. Feel free to make comments about what works or doesn't work with my steps. This are based off of the following sources: Michael Stackpole's 21 Days to a Novel; Ben Bova's The Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells; and eventually pieces of Holly Lisle's How to Revise Your Novel.

1. List two short term and one long term goal for your main characters. (This helps if you aren't sure who your MC will be. Once you have their goals laid out, you should have a better idea of whom you want to focus on.)

2. List the obstacles to achieving these goals (bonus points if one person's goal is the obstacle to the other person's goal). This should include setting details. Use this step to help discover the world in which your character is struggling. Instead of just coming up with all kinds of details, focus on details that create obstacles for your characters.

3. Identify the emotional battle for each main character. For example, your character's main goal may be saving his kingdom (honor), but he is also a husband (love) and the obstacle is that he can't save his kingdom and be with his wife. Thus he has an honor vs. love battle.

4. List some strengths which make your character unique, but also a glaring weakness.

5. Find ways to insert conflict into the story which will cut deep into the heart of his weakness so that even up till the very end you don't know which path he will choose in his emotional battle. For my example, this could look like: MC's weakness is his marriage bond, and time and time again he will be forced to make decisions that will either help the kingdom and hurt his wife or comfort his wife and hurt the kingdom. Build the climax to the point where he will lose one or the other and then decide which one he would truly choose.

* I'm not much of an outliner, but these steps were enough to give me a beginning and an end which kept me on track so that everything was leading towards the general ending I had in mind of which emotion my character was going to choose.

6. Place your ticking time bomb. The ticking time bomb should be in your first scene. This will be a sign of your character's emotional struggle, or represent the struggle he is about to endure. Stackpole says to place this time bomb so that the character doesn't realize it is there at first.

> In my latest book, The General's Shadow, the ticking time bomb was my MC willing to risk his crew's lives to get coordinates to a planet that might help him regain citizenship on his homeworld. This was an indicator of the emotional struggle between sacrifice and selfishness (in the context of leadership).

* Once you have your ticking time bomb you are very close to being ready to start writing.

7. Orson Scott Card says you need to have two separate ideas before you are ready to begin your story.

> For example, his book Ender's Game has at least three ideas
a) Zero-gravity battle training
b) Take advantage of children's intelligence to use them to control galatic battleships under the ruse that they are playing video games
c) Earth was nearly destroyed by a bug race millions of light years away, and must prepare for the next invasion by bringing the fight to the bugs homeworld.

8. Summarize your story in 30 words or less including:
a) Protagonist (two adjectives, not a name)
b) Antagonist (same)
c) Setting
d) Conflict (related to emotional battle, but more so how antagonist presents attack against protagonist's weakness)
e) Twist (surprise at the end which really throws protagonist for a loop, so that even he doesn't know what he is going to do, how or if he will succeed till the very end

Thank you Inesdar. It's a compilation of "greatest hits" from around four schools of thought, so I can't really take credit. I just post what stood out as helpful for me. Some people are more worldbuilding focused, and so this might not cover enough for them to feel comfortable jumping in. Step 3 can take as long as you want to develop areas of the world and immediate setting/situation which present conflict to each character's goals. I like to leave the rest open for development since my conflict tends to arise as the story progresses and that gives me leeway to create more conflict.

You could bookmark them on your browser in a folder labeled HW Favorite Forums, or something like that. I've got Triterrus in there. Once I get to creating a subforum for my rewrite, that will be there as well.

This is wonderful, Tim! Thanks for posting. Generally, when I develop a story, these are the bits that I first think of - I mash them together a bit, have a random scene come to mind, and start drafting. World-building often comes later, and sometimes I have to force myself to develop my setting in more detail.

One bit of clarification - you're using "ticking time bomb" to mean something that's destined to explode, cave in, or otherwise cause trouble for the character later, correct?

I'm glad you posted this. These are useful steps to know.

Yes, that's what I mean. In my structure, the ttb is the climax that makes our character decide which path he will choose. If you were writing an event story, it would be the bad guy's last trick up his sleeve.

Thanks for clarifying! I was confusing it in my head with a "ticking clock," which is something that puts a time limit on the story. The two devices could be combined in the same element, but methinks they are sometimes separate elements. Depends on what your story needs.

I sure did pick a good day to start rushing the forums with threads on my novel (i.e. red font), but this is my day off.

I've posted step one, character goals (here) as well as some worldbuilding topics in:

Magic: scepter powers; redvine
History: history (how's that for redundant redundance )

Next I'll go to step two, the steps of conflict in order to help me develop my map with countries and power sources en route to submitting my sub-forum request to Eruheran.

Good stuff, one other thing you can do is to write out your chapters ahead of time with a short summary of what you want beside the chapter. Or just do what I did with my first, come up with a bunch of concepts you think are awesome and string em all together with a storyline.

Right now I'm working on scenes, plotting out the various pieces and overall purpose they serve. I don't know how long these scenes will end up being, so I imagine I'll block them into chapters as I write them. One author I've studied said he summarizes chapters in one sentence as part of his outlining.

Stringing together concepts is in fact awesome, but only one small step among many. That's almost like saying "Come up with an amazing ideas, throw them together and start writing!" Yes, good advice indeed. It's the process that gets in the way right

This was really helpful, Mr. Timo. I'm going to have to do some of those things. I'm sure they would help my plot. (Right now the plot has big gaps in it.)

Plot gaps are where sequels are born!

Heehee. Now that I've been world-building more, it has helped my characters. And the history of my world is so interesting, I now want to write a prequel. I need to finish the current book first, though!