The Template, Part 1: Stories

25 Words or Less: Brief description of your plot. You will have an opportunity to expand below, but that will be after the jump, so make this good.

Background: As you can imagine, this is where you’d put in any information about how long you’ve been working on the project, what inspired it, and the status of it (conception phase, first draft, emergency re-write, etc.) This is all optional, of course, but it helps if you want to get the best answers for your problems. I’ll also just note here that the title of the post should be the title of the story. If you don’t yet have a title, come up with a generic working title to give people an idea of what they’re looking at (e.g. “Werewolves in Prison Dance-Party Movie of the Week).

Story: This is the body of the post. Expand on your story. If you know your acts/books/episodes, tell us. If not, or if that is not applicable, don’t worry about it. In general, going into scene-by-scene or chapter-by-chapter structure will probably be unnecessary, and just make things more complicated for the reader.

Remember that you want to keep your recap as brief as possible, while at the same time making sure we know everything we need to know specific to the questions you have about it. For instance, in the Werewolves in Prison movie, if the question is about how the hero kills one of the werewolves, the particular tenets of werewolf mythology that you’re adhering to will be very relevant, while the toke that the heroes mother gave him in a flashback that reminds him never to give up might not be so pertinent. However, if your question is about the scene where he decides not to give up, the werewolf strengths and weaknesses might not come into play. Or they might, in both scenarios, and you can of course pose multiple questions. In either event, something like why the hero is in the prison to begin with, and other key points of characterization, are probably things we’ll want to know.

I encourage everyone to remember Robert McKee’s words of Wisdom: character equals plot, and plot equals character, though your story philosophy may differ greatly from mine, and that’s okay. My point is that We the Commentors cannot adequately answer plot questions if we don’t know the nature of the character, and cannot answer character questions without understanding their plot.

If you have an idea about the world that you’ve created, and are lost on story elements, that’s fine as well. Just explain that below in your questions, as clearly as you can about what you’re stuck on as far as creating a story in your world.

Last word: Entertain us, and we’ll be more likely to help you out!

Problems: What are the specific areas where you’re looking for help/suggestions?

Author: Richard Milhouse Fakename, Vancouver, Italy