Tag: derek murphy

Days 71 – 80

~ stephaniehaggarty ~ Leave a comment

The last ten days have been unproductive. I didn’t edit or write anything. I have been looking at writing a new supernatural thriller though. I’ve got some story planned, but I don’t know how it ends. I’m not sure how long it’ll be either.

However, at the same time a YouTuber – Derek Murphy, I follow came out with this long video about novel writing basics. At the end of the video, there is a small exercise where who fill in the blanks about what your story is about. It actually helped me a bit with the story I’m working on. I have added some more things to it and it’s starting to become something more.

Using a plot outline for the first time

~ stephaniehaggarty ~ Leave a comment

I had a loose idea of a story that I wanted to write. It involves witches, ye old times and maybe the undead but I didn’t really know where I was going with it and how to get there. So instead of doing my old and tried true method just doing a rough outline with points and ideas added to it as I go or just winging it, I decided to find a novel template (something I hadn’t bothered to do before) and see where it takes me.

I found Derek Murphy’s ‘The One-Page Novel Plot Outline‘ and was like, this looks put together, so I printed it out and started to fiddle with my story. With brainstorming with the ideas I had and intending to set up the inciting incident, I somehow ended up with a 6000-word first chapter that maybe is its own contained story with leads to a sequel. I’m not tossing out what I wrote because I like it and maybe that’s how I’ll set my book up. Long chapters that contain mini-stories that push towards an overall story, why not?

I’m working on chapter two and brainstorming ideas that will lead to connections to later on for foreshadowing or something. Who knows what I’ll think up of.