Chances are, if I have more than a handful of characters in a story, one or more of those characters will represent an organization of some sort. Be it a religious sect, neighborhood watch, a gang of criminals, law enforcement, a ruling body,or even a chess club, they are all “organizations” one in the same. Some may bemore significant than others, but that really depends on what role they play inthe story.

Being thatan organization can play a role in a story, in my opinion, they are not that different from characters and I treat them as such. Just like characters,organizations have objectives, ultimate goals, and codes of behavior--which can be perceived as a personality. Organizations also have internal and external conflicts; they are influenced by the world around them and in turn, influence the world themselves.

Two reasons why I feel it is important to develop organizations, especially if theyare totally fabricated, is because: first, they add depth and realism to theworld in which they exist and second, they govern and/or influence the behavior of the characters in the story.

For example, take an agency of law enforcement. If a character is a police officer,they should exhibit certain behavioral traits in line with police training.They should stand a particular way, hold their weapons in a particular way,they should exude a specific air of authority when they are among others. There are many other traits but the point is that I think of a particular set of behavioral patterns when I think of a police officer vs. a gang member, or a priest vs. a politician. The behavioral patterns are all based off the organization that each subject represents.

Another way that developing organizations can add depth to a story is when one of its members behaves contradictory to what the organization represents. Look at thetypical crooked cop character. It instantly brings a particular understanding of how dangerous the character can be. This is mainly because we know what police officers are supposed to stand for and we are also aware of how much power and influence a police officer can have. Therefore, to think of a corrupt police officer automatically brings up feelings of dread because they use their power and authority to achieve goals that go against what their organizationstands for.

If I tell you that I have a character that is a “Bordor Warrior”, most likely it wouldn’t really matter much to you. You’d understand that the character is a warrior but it wouldn’t strike anything in you because you don’t know what Bordor Warriors are capable of or what they represent. If I tell you that I have a character that is a Jedi Knight, your response would change. There would be that moment of “Oh! A Jedi Knight, is he?” That’s because the Jedi Knights/Organization have been developed, you know what they are capable of, you know what they stand for, and you know how they should behave.

This iswhat I use to develop my organizations:

Name:

What is the organization called and why if there is a particular reason.

Function:

What type of organization is it? Religious, scientific, military, criminal, government,civilian, etc.

Objective:

What does the organization stand for? What are they trying to achieve?

Areas of Operation:

Where does the organization operate?

Conflict:

What conflicts are they involved in and with whom? Internal and external.

Leaders:

Who leads the organization? For fabricated organizations, even if their leaders are notin the story, I try to develop the first, second, and third commanders/rulersjust in case I may need them later or if a character has to refer to them.

Members:

Here, I list all the known characters that are a part of the organization. It’s a goodway to keep track of them.

Past:

What is the origin of the organization? What events of note have gone down its history?

Present:

What is the present state of the organization concerning its connection to the mainstory?

Future:

What do you foresee in the organization’s future? What are their plans?

Notes:

Here, I describe any particular information about the organization like customs, behaviors, skills, rituals, and technologies that may be unique to the organization.

This is what I use to “flesh-out” my characters. It is a couple of key points that I feel covers all the bases in character development. First of all, I put my characters in three categories:

Primary Characters

Without these characters, there would not be a story.

Secondary Characters:

Characters who are close to the main characters, like sidekicks or henchmen. They are important to the story but not primary.

Extras

These characters may pop in an out of the story very quickly and may only serve one specific purpose. They are not primary or secondary, but may need to be developed to give them life to better fulfill their short role in the story.

Afterwards, I develop my characters with the categories below.

Name

A real name, nickname, code name, or alias, by which is your character called?

Past

To develop my characters, I need to know where they have come from and what they have gone through. Their past should explain their present. Oddly enough though, I work in reverse. Usually, I know how my characters are at present so I work backwards to come up with WHY they are the way they are. Whether my character is a loving parent, shy teenager, or psycho killer, I need to figure out what events in their past molded them into what they are now. I often think about how their childhood must of been, how were their teenage years? Once my imagination gets going it’s easy to think of a logical back-story or chain of events to connect their present to their past.

Present

Here, I explain my character's present state regarding the main story. I go through their current position in life and list any key details as needed for the story, and I write out their take is on things as far as when they enter the story.

Future

Though not every character has a future in the story, because they either will be killed off or are only in the story for a short period, regardless, I like to come up with future goals for all my characters. One reason for this is it makes them that much more real. If they have a goal that they want to achieve it makes them seem less like they are in the story just to support the Protag or Antag. In addition, their goal is what drives them and it can be something they talk about in passing with other characters. The readers may not ever need to know what this is but I like to know in order to give my characters more life. My second reason for coming up with their future is that sometimes I stumble upon some good plot twists. One character may want to achieve something that will interfere with the key characters plans and that’s when lies, betrayal, and blah, blah, blah comes in to play.

When I come up with a characters future I try to make it as natural as it can be based off their past and present because if it does clash with the plans of the main characters it will be a natural clash and not one that was forced into existence, which can feel...well..."forced" if not executed correctly.

Personality

What is my character like? What is their attitude? Why does Karen roll her eyes every time Robert walks into a room? As I said before, I usually know "why" already because it is connected with the characters Present State, but by creating their past, I further enhance their personality and link it to actual events.

Objective

What does my character want to accomplish in the current story? Be it the Protag, Antag, or secondary characters, I need to know what they want to accomplish in the story. As to where the character's future goal doesn't have to be based on the current story, the characters objective is all about the story. If it's not, they should not be in the story. If I have a main bad guy and he has a henchman, I should know his henchmen's objective, even if their objective is just to protect the main bad guy. With all the fleshing out and brainstorming that I do to develop a character's past, present, future, and personality, their objective brings all that energy back to focus on the main story. To me, this makes our characters a lot like us. Although we all have our own hopes, dreams, and personalities those times that we pop in and out of each other’s lives are for a particular purpose/objective. The security guard in a bank has his own life story but while I'm in the bank, his objective is to protect me and the financial institution, or, stop me if I'm the one trying to rob the place. He is there for a reason and he has an objective.

Conflict

Characters most likely will have their own individual conflicts to resolve. They can be internal or external and I look at them as subplots because they can be in line with or apart from the main story. Being that my character has an objective; chances are it will conflict with either the main plot or another character’s objective. This is where I identify that conflict and explain whom or what it is with and the “why” behind it.

Resolution

How will the conflict be resolved? Just like in the Story Concept portion, I need to know how a character will resolve their conflict so that I can write in that direction.

Description

This is where I develop the image of my character. I detail what they look like, how they dress, and specify any particular qualities or abilities that they may possess.

Head: I describe age, eyes, hair, and any other unique features about the characters face.

Body: I describe body type, weight, and physique. If my character is a warrior of some kind, their body should show it whether if they are male or female. A character's body type should fit their "occupation". A drug addict should look like a drug addict, a dancer a dancer, and a warrior a warrior.

Clothes: What do they generally wear in the story? How do they dress? This also links to their personality. A person into Goth wouldn't normally dress in a pristine white suit, unless it served some metaphorical purpose of course and even then, it would have to have a particular style to it.

Items: I list and describe any particualr items of note in their possession like a keepsake from a deceased parent, a magical item, or favorite piece of jewelry.

Notes

In this section, I usually detail my characters powers, special abilities, or oddities that do not fit in any other category. I name them, explain how they work, and list any side effects, advantages, or disadvantages.

This is another process where I feel that each category helps in the development of the others. The Past, Present, and Future categories obviously influence each other, but also, they dictate a character’s personality. This is multi-directional and not just linear as well. As I mentioned before, I usually work from my character’s present state then develop their past. Obviously, you can work from the past to the present, but also, you can develop their past and present starting with their personality.

In what ways do you develop your characters? How do you flesh them out and make them “real”?

Once my Story Concept is done, the next step is Chapter Summaries. In this step, I work out the Major Events of my story along with whatever Minor Events I have already thought up. Most of these key events formed through the conflicts, plot twists, and resolutions I detailed in my story concept.

First off, I start with a blank page and jot down three headings.

THE BEGINNING

THE MIDDLE

THE END

Next, I write out each event in a bulleted list of paragraphs categorizing them under the appropriate headings in chronological order. I use the bulleted list like a timeline to highlight each event and keep them organized. Out of all the events there are two I try to hash out first, the Beginning and Ending Events of the story. The Ending Event, the end of the story, should be easy to figure out because I’ve already come up with a resolution to my Main Conflict. The Beginning may take a bit longer, for this is the opener, and of course, there are many things to factor in when writing the beginning of a story because you want to grab the reader right off.

Once I have my Beginning and Ending ironed out, I focus on the other Major and Minor events I’ve thought up. Since I know how my story starts and ultimately ends, I have direction in which to lead my other events and all I have to do now is connect them all together.

Let’s take look at my Chapter Summaries now.

THE BEGINNING

Beginning Event

Event A

Event B

Event C

Event D

THE MIDDLE

Event E

Event F

Event G

Event H

Event I

Event J

THE END

Event K

Event L

Event M

Event N

Event O

Ending Event

Of course it’d be more detailed than this, but you get the picture. The reason why I like this format is that I can easily get a rough estimate of the size of each section of the story. As I add more Events to each section, I can tell if one section is getting too lengthy or if another needs some beefing up. Some events will get shifted around a bit because maybe what was in the beginning may go better in the middle or towards the end. Through this, I have a “bird’s eye view” of my story, so to speak.

Now, as a summary of my story begins to form, I can see start to see my events grouped into chapters. Through the chronology of it all, I can see which events would be good chapter starters and which events would be good cliffhangers to end chapters.

After I separate my events into chapters, my summary looks something like this:

THE BEGINNING

Prologue

Beginning Event

Chapter 1

Event A

Event B

Chapter 2

Event C

Event D

THE MIDDLE

Chapter 3

Event E

Event F

Event G

Chapter 4

Event H

Event I

Chapter 5

Event J

THE END

Chapter 6

Event K

Event L

Chapter 7

Event M

Event N

Chapter 8

Event O

Ending Event

…and I’m done, well at least for the most part. Of course, there will still be some shifting around and tweaking but for the most part, I have a decent summary of my story. I can see if other events logically need to be added or if something that I wanted to occur just doesn’t fit.

Now that I finished my Story Concept and Chapter Summaries, I can move on to the Develop Stage. Next week comes my favorite part, Character Development.

See you there!

This week, I’ve been working on ViB and though I was supposed to be working on the sciences and technology featured in the story I didn’t do that at all. The reason for this is because I don’t really have any special technology in the story and any unique sciences I have, like the Card and Aura Magic of one of my characters, are already detailed within that characters particular file.

After visiting a couple of the LB&LI workshops this week, I’ve been going over my character files tweaking things and making sure everything still feels solid. While going over my protagonist’s file I realized certain things about her psyche. Well, I always knew they were there but just hadn’t gotten around to researching them, so that’s what I did.

My protagonist has a couple of psychological issues she has to deal with and overcome Battered Woman Syndrome and a Dissociative Disorder. With the help of my wife’s critical eye and researching these issues, I hope to present them well in the story. Both appear to be very challenging, especially sense I’m a Male, but I am up for the challenge of course. It’s the only way to get better right?

Both of these psychological issues are very interesting but what stuck with me the most, from a writing standpoint is the Dissociative Disorder. After characters like Smegal in the Lord of the Rings, Tyler Durden in Fight Club, hell, even Sally Fields Sybil, I didn’t want to use a “Split Personality” element just yet. Thankfully, after digging a bit more into Dissociative Disorders, I found there are different types and I came across a version that fit my character perfectly.

It is called Depersonalization Disorder and it is defined as: Feelings of detachment or estrangement from one’s self are signs of depersonalization. Although these feelings are difficult to describe, individuals with this disorder will report feeling as if they are living in a dream or watching themselves on a movie screen. They feel separated from themselves or outside their own bodies. People with this disorder feel like they are "going crazy" and they frequently become anxious and depressed.

Ok, so you have an idea for a story. What do you do next? You develop that idea into a solid and complete concept. I stress the word complete because, I know very well the frustration of going off, halfcocked, on a story concept that’s not “ready”.

To have a complete story concept you need to have a conflict and its resolution. There are a couple of other elements involved but those are the main two. I’ve had plenty of story ideas where I knew what the conflict was and I took off running with that alone, only to have my momentum slowly grind to a halt because, I didn’t know where I was going with the conflict.

Where was my story going? What was everything leading up to? I didn’t have any direction because I didn’t have a resolution. I learned that conflicts are directed by their desired resolution.

If you have a character that is going to rob a bank (conflict) before you start writing the story you need to know what’s ultimately going to happen to your character (resolution). Will they get away with it? Will they get caught and sent to prison? Are they going to get killed during the process of robbing the bank? By knowing how you want the conflict to end, you’ll have a specific direction in which to take your writing.

To solidify my story concepts I follow the steps below.

CONCEIVE: Story Concept

Title

This isn’t very important in the beginning because story titles have a tendency to change while you are writing the story, but I try to come up with one anyway just to have a name to refer to when I talk to other people about the story. Be it cryptic or not, the title should have something to do with the story, of course.

Plot Summary

Here I write a nice short summary of what the story is about excluding its resolution. Writing out the summary and memorizing it allows me to tell others what the story is about without babbling on endlessly, as I tend to do, when I talk about a story. Normally I tell of the opposing forces at work, the main conflict, and what weighs in the balance.

Major Conflicts

What is the character trying to do and why are they trying to do it? You have to know the “Why” behind a conflict because that’s what fuels it. For instance, if Sarah wants to find her long lost twin sister, we need to know why. This is the heart of the story. This is the reason why people will go out of their way to read it. Usually there is only one “Main Conflict” but there can multiple conflicts, depending on the story type.

Minor Conflicts

What are the smaller conflicts/sub plots of the story and why do they exist. These can be a mix of internal conflicts bound within a character’s sense of moral and duty or, they can be external conflicts between other characters that are not major factors in the story’s Main Conflict.

Plot Twists

If there are any in the story, I keep track of the “what and why” here. Plot Twists can come from the conflicting objectives of other characters or, they can come from an “unforeseen” event that forces the main character to achieve their goal through other means than what they planned.

Conflict Resolutions

Here is where I direct and “end” the Main Conflict, Minor Conflicts, and Plot Twists. Resolutions are the goals that you write towards; they are your directions that guide you. If the bank robbing character mentioned earlier is going to get away with the heist, you have to write the story in the “direction” that allows them to escape. 

Now my story concept is complete. I have conflicts, plot twists, resolutions for them all, and a summary for the story. Once I have completed the Story Concept, I move on to the “Chapter Summaries” to start planning the major and minor events of my story. I’ll go into detail about that next week.

I hope this process helps some of you out there.

I’ve been working on ViB this week which is the first in a series of short stories I’m putting together. I’ve been developing the world within which the entire series will take place and the key location where the first story in the series plays out. As I’ve mentioned before, the series’ theme is that of a dark western, based around the gold rush era with a mix of fantasy.

It’s been very interesting and somewhat frustrating researching that era. With my schedule, the only research tool that I have is the internet and I’d much rather go to the library or a nice book store and buy some reference materials. Although the internet is vast, without the correct terminology or search criteria, you can search for hours without finding what you’re looking for. I’ve been looking up old mining towns and trying to find maps and/or images that depict city layouts and landscapes of the “Wild West”.

Most of what I’ve developed for the overall world will only be mentioned here and there in the first story and will be slowly revealed throughout the rest of the series. Developing the world has been one of the easiest and most enjoyable parts for me, aside from character development of course, and the world seemed to come together all by itself. As I thought about the gold rush era, rock quarries, and darkened mineshafts that burrow deep into the earth, it didn’t take long before I envisioned all sorts of monstrous creepy crawlies and whatnot that could exist in this world. It all took an unexpected but exciting turn for the better.

For the city that the first story plays out in, I was able to find some information and images, not as much as I would’ve liked, but enough to get me going on the basic buildings and structure shapes that were present in that time period. I snagged some images of old western towns and after about a day or so of “studying” them, I was able to come up with a layout for my city. I broke out the pencil and graph paper and started sketching it out old school D&D style. I’m happy with what I’ve ended up with. I have intersecting streets, dark alleyways, and more than enough structures to use for the story. Now, my characters will be able to leave their creaky-floored hotel rooms, walk pass the bustling saloon and the women standing outside the brothel, make a left at the general store and scope out the bank across the street while keeping a look out for the sheriff.

At first, I was just going to come up with the layout of the city as I wrote the story, but I like the idea of having it mapped out better because it makes it feel that much more real to me. I will be able to better map out my scenes and know where the characters are going. I’ll be able to see how quickly it takes for them to get from one building to the next and I’ll know what buildings they will pass along their route. I’m very interested to see how my characters use the city’s layout to survive.

I’ll be continuing my research and tweaking what I’ve come up with so far. I’ll keep you posted.

I like sharing my passion for writing with others and so over the next couple of weeks, I will be going over the various stages of my writing process. The philosophy behind it all is “Conceive, Develop, Write” and it has become my mantra.

First off, the entire idea behind the process stemmed from me needing to formulate a creative flow for myself so that I could focus my energy, become more organized, and increase my productivity. Working with the Concept Stage, Development Stage, and the Writing Stage, I saw that not only does one stage fuel the development of the next in a continuous cycle of creativity, but also, each stage affects and further enhances the other two individually.

Each of these three stages have a certain amount of steps to complete them, and as I complete the steps in one stage, it will influence the development of the next stage. Below is how I break down each stage.

I’ll go over each stage and their individual steps in detail over the next couple of weeks, but for now, here is a brief overview of how I use them.

CONCEIVE: The Concept Stage

The two steps that I use in this stage are Story Concept and Chapter summaries.

Story Concept

I hammer out the idea of my story in its simplest form. What it’s about, who it’s about, what are the conflicts and plot twists, and how they will be resolved in the story.

(this fuels the next step)

Chapter Summaries

By ironing out the story concept, I get ideas about certain events that must happen in the story, and other events that I would like to happen in the story, like a particular action sequence or character cameo appearance. I group these events into chronological chapters of how they should play out in the story. Then, I arrange the chapters into three sections: The Beginning, The Middle, and the End to get a “summary” of my story. Once the overall Story Concept and Chapter Summaries are complete, I am ready to go to the next stage.

DEVELOP: The Development Stage

There are six steps in this stage and they are influenced by what I created during the Concept Stage.

Characters

These are the beings that drive the story. It is through their conflicts and interactions that story is played out and the reason why the story even exists. Here, I focus on the major and minor characters. Most of "key" characters would have already been realized while working out the Story Concept and Chapter Summaries.

Organizations

In most stories there are organizations’ in one form or another. They can be enforcers of the law, a treacherous gang of bandits, or religious sects. They are all organizations and if they are in my story, I need to know what role they play, how they operate, and why they do what they do.

World

Through developing the Story Concept, Chapter Summaries, Characters, and Organizations, the world that the story takes place in has already begun to form on its own. In this step, the world is brought fully into focus. I think about what the world must be like to house the characters I’ve created and the organizations that fight for dominance. I ask myself what is the population like? Is it a dark and dismal world ruled by evil? Or, is it one of light, where guardians fight to keep the darkness at bay?

Locations

Where exactly are my characters? What city, town, or village are they in? What are the names of these places? What is the history behind them? If my characters are traveling, I need to know what forests, swamps, or deserts they are going through. What creatures inhabit those lands? Locations are the individual sets upon which my characters act out their stories and these locations are already influenced by the world I’ve created in the previous step.

Sciences

Here, I highlight and define the sciences that are featured in my story. Be it a unique form of magic, a religious belief system, social customs of fabricated a race, or a scientific theory that does not exist in the real world, I need to know how they work in order for my characters to use them and be affected by them. (This has been influenced by my characters and the world I’ve already created.)

Technologies

Is my world high tech, low tech, primitive, or a mixture of all three? Just like the previous step of defining the sciences in my story, I must list and define the technology as well. I only focus on unique technology, which is usual what I have created with my own imagination, and for the same reason as developing the sciences, I need to know how it works and affects my characters.

(With the Concept and Development Stages done, I move on to the next.)

WRITE: The Writing Stage

This is where I put fingers to keyboard and begin the actual journey of my characters. There are four steps in this stage.

Scene Summaries

Here, I break my Chapter Summaries down into individual scenes that guide my characters from one event to the next. Normally, I take it a chapter at a time instead of trying to write scene summaries for every single chapter back to back. I’ve tried it that way and didn’t like it because it took up so much time and kept me from actually writing the story. So, for instance, after I write the scene summaries for chapter one, I write out chapter one. Then, I write the scene summaries for chapter two and write out chapter two. For me, this helps identify and fix problems ahead to time before I get deep into the writing, and I wind up doing less back tracking and reorganizing.

Write the Story

Once I finish the scene summaries for a chapter, I write out that chapter. Here is where I focus on techniques like "Point of View", "Character Switching", "Show, Don’t Tell", "Descriptive Flow", and "Short Descriptions" in order to present the story to my readers.

Edit the Story

I edit my stories a chapter at a time, and the first edit is usually just a quick run through to catch and resolve any glaring errors before I give it to a critique partner to read through.

Revise the Story

Once I get feedback from my critique partner and go over their comments I make the necessary changes. This helps because maybe there is a part that I thought read really well but it actually doesn’t in someone else’s eyes, or say, there’s a part that I wanted to be suspenseful and it just doesn’t invoke the proper amount of emotion. After I make my changes, I read over the chapter one last time then move on to the next chapter and repeat the cycle.

For example,

Let’s say that during the Writing Stage an unplanned character comes to life and is now a permanent fixture in the story. This new development may change the Story Concept or the Chapter and Scene Summaries and they well need to be modified to reflect that change. In addition, I’d have to flesh out this new character in the Character Development Section and figure out how the other characters will react to this new cast member.

Or

Let’s say that one day a couple of ideas just hit me for a scene and I start out just writing a couple of pages based around some unknown character. From those pages, I would have to “reverse engineer” my story in a way. The pages that I wrote out would be used as a starting point to develop the Story Concept and everything else in the Development Stage.

Although the flow of my process is "Conceive, Develop, Write," it really can be started at any stage and go in any direction. The main thing is that, with having these stages and steps in place, what I create will automatically become organized. I will be able to easily see what I have already created and see what I need to deveop to complete the package.

Next week, I’ll go into detail about the first step in the Conceive Stage “Story Concept”.