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If you have an idea for a great story, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement. You want to just sit down and “get it out,” because you’re just sure it’s great.
But there’s a problem.
Because there’s more to writing a great story than having an idea, or just sitting down and “making stuff up.”
And I’m not just talking about character sketches and plots—or even beat sequences.
I’m talking about creating a consistent reality for the world in which your story takes place.
One of the biggest traps I see people fall into when trying to write their story is that they don’t really understand the way the world works.
And if you don’t understand the way the world works…
…you can’t anticipate how the people, places and things in your world are going to behave and evolve as your characters experience them.
Behavior and the evolution of people, places and things isn’t random.
It’s not subject to your imagination, although there’s certainly room for that too.
I’m not suggesting you can’t “make stuff up.”
However, what I’m saying is that regardless of the magic, future technology or mythical beasts you include in your world…
…there are some fundamental rules they follow.
Rules you have to define if you want your world to be consistent.
Rules you have to follow if you want to keep your audience enthralled in your story.
The reason people say “write what you know” is because you implicitly pick up and understand these rules by experience.
The more you’ve interacted with someone or something…
…the better you are at being able to predict what it might do…
…and the better chance you’ll have of ensuring your story sets up the factors that believably influences the way it behaves.
But this doesn’t mean you’re lost if you’re writing about people, places or professions you’ve never experienced—or are working in worlds that are entirely imagined.
It just means you have to be more conscious of the rules and where they come from.
And while they aren’t that hard, you can get a sense of these rules in the structure of the templates in the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint™ itself.
Establishing and surfacing those rules are why there are specific questions for each of the characters, the problem and the environment.
They aren’t random.
They’re what you need to know to discover or enforce those rules—even for new and novel situations or environments.
But if you’re still struggling to figure out how to “write the rules” of your story’s reality…
…then maybe the Blueprint can help.
Get your copy of the Breakthrough Scene Blueprint right here:
Because once you’ve decided the way the world you’ve built works…
…that’s when the stories truly start to write themselves.
To unlocking the soul of your story,
ast
—
Andrew S. Townley
Creator of the Perpetual Story System™