October Novel Prep Challenge

Hello everyone. I'm Carly, another of your writing coaches. My official duty days for posting helpful messages and answering questions are Tuesdays and Saturdays. I will be popping in most days if you need me.

I have the pleasure of writing this bit for Day 4's assignment:
"Plot: Beginning (Where does your story start?)"
(1) Describe your protagonist's life in the beginning (Ordinary World or Stasis) of the story. Brainstorm ways you could establish normality through action and dialog to avoid boring your reader.
(2) Describe the inciting incident or trigger (Call to Adventure) that prompts your protagonist(s) to embark on this story's journey (whether literal or metaphorical) and face the conflict. This incident could be large and obvious like a death or disaster, or it could be seemingly insignificant, such as an offhand comment by another character.

Well, it's certainly a great place to start. I hope everything is going well so far.

Here are some things to consider as you prep for today.

Take some time to consider your protagonist's life at the beginning of your novel. This is their 'Ordinary World". The life they grow and change from. Introduce your character and let us see their life. Let us see their flaws so that we can come to empathize with them. We want to be drawn in and willing to follow them and see what happens to them.

Consider what they believe about themselves.... consider where you want them to go to on this journey through your story.

Consider what propels them from this ordinary world into the heart of your story. The inciting incident or call to action should be unique to them... and even if they want to reject the call, consider why or how they will have to say yes... and move into the story. Some characters may go willingly, but some may go grudgingly. But they must make that choice.

I am including two links that may make things a little less muddy. The first focuses on the Ordinary World; the second focuses on the Inciting Incident. This woman uses Christopher Vogler's work, The Writer's Journey. It is one that makes a good deal of sense to me.





I hope these help. Any questions? Feel free to ask and I will do my best to help.

Happy prepping.