Pulling Story Threads
In the previous step we explored how creating a log line (a one-sentence description of what your story is about) can help you focus your author’s intent and provide an anchor point that can guide and center your entire story development process.
Now that you have a log line under your belt, we’re going employ a Four-Part StoryWeaving Technique for generating ideas for your plot and growing your log line into an initial story synopsis.
Part One of this technique is to look for loose threads in your log line and then ask questions about them as if you weren’t the author but a person asking what this story is about.
Though it may seem simple, you’ll find that very quickly you discover a lot of new ways of looking at your story, each of which becomes another thread to pull in turn!
For example, consider our example log line from the previous step, “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 probably won’t want to explore each of these threads in your story since you likely already have a pretty good idea about how you want your story to feel and where you want it to go. But some of them may intrigue you, provide the opportunity to enrich and expand your story, or even offer whole new directions for subplots, new characters, and a more meaningful reader/audience experience.
Here are a few tips to get you started:
First, put what you already know about your story out of your mind. Forget about your notes (for now) and start with a blank slate.
An easy way to get into this mind set is to take one element of your log line at a time and list its qualities. For example, what are the qualities of a western town? Some of these might be its size, how long ago it was founded, if it is growing or shrinking in population, its climate, the part of the country it is in, the strength of the local economy, demographics of the population, principal businesses, charitable organizations, primary religions represented, and so on, ad infinitum.
Once you have your list of qualities that easily come to mind about each of the elements in your log line, turn each into a question and list them below your log line in the Story Development box. Then move on to the next step.
Once again, here is the log line for the sample story we’re using in all of these steps with a few initial questions to illustrate this first part of the four-part process, presented as a list as you may wish to do it for your story:
A sheriff is trying to stop a gang of cutthroats from repeatedly robbing his town.
- How old is the sheriff?
- How many members in the gang?
- How long has the gang been doing this?
- What is the gang stealing from the town?
- Why can’t the sheriff stop them?
- Does the sheriff have a deputy?
- Is this the old west or the modern era?
- How big is the town?
Now, do the same for your log line with as many questions as easily come to mind – within reason, of course!
In our next step, we’ll use those questions to expand your story concept exponentially (and easily). But if you are eager to continue, sign up for the free trial of our StoryWeaver app from which this step is drawn and go from concept to completion of your novel or screenplay step by step.
