Every few days we post another step in the StoryWeaver story development path. Follow along to write your novel step by step or jump ahead with the StoryWeaver app on our web site at Storymind.com

Today’s Step: Finding Loose Ends in Your Story

In the previous step, you developed a log line for your story.

A log line is a one-sentence description of the essence of what your story is about, such as :

“A sheriff is trying to stop a gang of cutthroats from repeatedly robbing his town.”

Now we’re going to expand your log line using a four-part StoryWeaving technique for generating ideas for your plot.

The first part of this technique is to ask questions about your log line as if you weren’t the author but a person asking what your story was about.

For example, consider our sample log line:

“A sheriff is trying to stop a gang of cutthroats from repeatedly robbing his town.”

You might ask:

How long has the gang been doing this?

Why hasn’t the sheriff been able to stop them?

Does the sheriff have a deputy?

Does the gang have a leader?

How many members are in the gang?

How big is the town?

What is being stolen?

Does this take place in the Old West or in modern days?

Now, you job is to write down the log line for your story and then lists as many loose-end questions as you can.

In the next step, we’ll pull each of those loose ends into a new story thread you can use in spinning your yarn.

Drop by soon for the next step or jump ahead with our StoryWeaver app at Storymind.com