Do you want to start writing a story but have no idea where to begin?
Investigating different fiction writing strategies is the best place to start.
You’re in the right place. We have compiled ten of our favorite writing strategies you can try. No writing strategy is for everyone, but we are confident there is at least one writing strategy for everyone. Let’s find yours.
What is a Writing Strategy?
Writing strategies are tried-and-tested methods for drafting a novel.
The trick is to try out a few different methods that interest you, and see what works.
You may find you write best using a combination of strategies.
List of Writing Strategies
Writing strategies include:
- Using Writing/ Planning Software
- Starting with an Elevator Pitch, Blurb, or Synopsis
- Using Cards, Corkboards, and Whiteboards
- Story Arc Planning
- Beat-sheets
- Backstory Research/ Character Arc Planning
- The Draft Zero
- The Snowflake Method
- Writing from the Middle
- Writing from the End
Writing Strategy Examples
There are thousands of writing strategies out there, but we would need to write a full-length book to cover them all. So, here is a small selection of 10 strategies that we think are the most flexible and useful for a new writer.
Using Writing/ Planning Software
Devising a well-structured story in your head can seem like an overwhelming task. One way to handle this is by first exploring the wealth of software solutions available today.
Fictionary Storyteller is one such writing tool.
Storyteller allows you to create a manageable story outline which you can then develop as you write your story.
Alongside your Fictionary subscription you’ll also gain access to various courses in story structure, including outlining and editing techniques.
The software has been designed to work alongside other strategies you might use, so as we explore these strategies I’ll set out how you can apply each of these strategies whilst using Fictionary Storyteller in the planning, drafting and editing stage of your journey.
Other writing software exists to help you specifically with designing a story. Plottr, for example, helps you plan your novel using visual plotlines and virtual story cards which interact together.
Starting with an Elevator Pitch, Skeleton Blurb, Full Blurb and Synopsis
This writing strategy is one we at Fictionary strongly recommend.
Beginning your story with a strong elevator pitch and blurb is a great way to help prevent your first draft from rambling. By starting your story with a strong pitch and blurb, you decrease the likelihood of having to bin vast swathes of your first draft, though there’s never any guarantee against this, unfortunately!
An elevator pitch is how you’d quickly sell your story to an agent or publisher if they were stuck in an elevator with you. Elevator pitches are valuable, because without being able to encapsulate your story in a few sentences, it can be harder to ensure your story remains cohesive and integrated as a whole, without going off on unnecessary tangents. It can also be harder to sell your finished novel without a precise, two-to-three sentence summary of your story.
A full blurb has a similar role in that it helps you sell your novel to potential readers, but allows for you to spend a few paragraphs setting out and selling your story to potential readers.
A skeleton blurb, on the other hand, is a tool designed to help you write and edit your story, rather than for marketing reasons. It’s for you, the writer, rather than for the reader or buyer.
A skeleton blurb is a one sentence line used to help you plan and write your first draft (if you like planning your stories), and to help you structurally edit your completed first draft (if you prefer to write freely to begin with and plan your editing strategy afterwards).
A skeleton blurb helps ensure you have a tight story concept with strong pacing and tension.
A skeleton blurb can be set out as: (Protagonist) must (story goal) or else (story stakes). For example:
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Elizabeth Bennet must marry or else face destitution.
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: Katniss Everdeen must survive the Hunger Games or else she will die, leaving her family destitute.
Once you’ve crafted your elevator pitch and skeleton blurb, you’re in a strong position to ensure every scene you write is relevant to this skeleton blurb, and is infused with the essence of your elevator pitch.
This helps prevent your novel seeming dislocated, aimless or digressive.
After designing your skeleton blurb and/or elevator pitch, you can choose to expand this out into a 3 or 4 paragraph full blurb and/or a 1 page synopsis. Remember, a blurb is a three-to-four marketing tool, whereas a synopsis is a one-page summary you’ll use when submitting to literary agents.
You may find your story moves away from your full blurb or synopsis as you write, and that’s fine. But if you let your story drift away from your elevator pitch or skeleton blurb as you write, that’s more problematic, as you risk losing the essence of what makes your story special.
Fictionary software has been designed to allow you to begin your plan/draft/edit alongside a skeleton blurb and full blurb. Using this software helps you check that you’ve kept your story on track with this skeleton blurb and full blurb as you write.
Cards, Corkboards, and Whiteboards
This old-school method can be used instead of writing software, but it can also work really well alongside software too.
There are limitless ways you can use cards and boards, and it’s important to experiment to find what works for you. Some ideas include:
- Brainstorming ideas and plotlines on a whiteboard.
- Writing scene names on your cards and moving them around the corkboard to find which order works best.
- Writing brief character bios and character development plotlines on cards and moving them around the board to help visualise character arcs.
- Writing world-building elements on your cards and moving them around the board so you can check you’ve given your readers enough world-building/ setting information at various points throughout the story.
- Writing theme cards so you can see how the themes develop throughout the story.
You can see from this that it’s hard to visualise a corkboard big enough to contain all the various aspects of scene development.
Boards are great for visualising and experimenting with an overall general plot and scene development plan, but for more detailed planning, writing software can allow for more thorough note-taking.
For example, Fictionary software contains three layered elements tabs which allow you to see how your plot, character and setting have developed within each scene, and a story map and arc diagrams so you can visualise the overall structure more clearly too.
Each scene also has a Notes tab, where you can make notes of your thoughts and editing plans.
Each scene also allows for optional artificial intelligence tools to check the conflict, tension, and goals within each scene as you draft and edit.
Story Arc Planning
This is another strategy we at Fictionary recommend exploring.
Story Arc planning is about using the traditional three-act structure to plan, write and edit your novel.
Story Arc planning works especially well alongside Skeleton Blurb Planning.
Once you’ve decided on your protagonist and their story goal, ensure your story is structured around the traditional three-act structure by meeting the following plots point as you design and write your draft:
- Inciting Incident: A scene or scenes which comes within the first 15 percent of your story. In this scene, your protagonist meets their story goal.
- Plot Point One: A scene or scenes taking place within the 20-30 percent mark. In this scene, your protagonist accepts their story goal.
- Story Middle: A scene or scenes within the 45-55 percent mark. In this scene, your protagonist experiences a shift in perspective which leads them into new proactivity towards their story goal.
- Plot Point Two: A scene or scenes within the 70-80 percent mark. In this scene, your protagonist experiences their lowest point, believing they’ve lost all chance of achieving their story goal. They must dig deep, learn and grow if they’re to have a hope of succeeding.
- Climax: Happens at around the 90 percent mark. This is when your protagonist achieves or fails at their story goal.
Many writers find that designing their plan around these key scenes, or writing drafts of these scenes first, helps them write their first full manuscript with a cohesive structure.
Writers with a Fictionary subscription can attend free online classes which teach more about these plot points and how to use Fictionary software to create story outlines.
Beat Sheets
This is a method of story planning using specific structures. The structures encourage you to write around specific story beats.
Well-known examples of beat-sheet methods include Save the Cat and the Hero’s Journey. For more on these particular methods, see my article on Story Structures.
Fictionary software allows you to name your scenes according to specific beat-sheets as you plan, write and edit your story.
A simpler beat-sheet method is to plan every scene around an action and reaction scenes. That means that each scene should exist as a consequence of what came before.
An example from The Hunger Games includes:
- Action: Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place in the Hunger Games.
- Reaction: Katniss travels to the Capitol to train for the Games.
Fictionary helps you identify Action and Sequel scenes so you can ensure every action has an appropriate reaction.
Backstory Research/ Character Arc Planning
Another strategy is to begin your writing journey by getting to know your characters and their learning journey before you start writing your actual story.
In Lisa Cron’s Story Genius, for example, Cron sets out a specific method of writing scenes about your character’s backstory. Her intention is for you to understand the learning journey your protagonist will undertake once the story begins. Her book offers a detailed method for investigating your character’s history and designing your story plan around this learning journey.
In The 90 Day Novel, Alan Watts offers a detailed list of questions for character research. He recommends you spend a month getting to know your main characters by free-writing answers to these questions before you begin writing your story. He then offers a detailed guide for free-writing a story around a structure similar to the three-act structure above. This type of guided writing journey can be extremely helpful for new writers feeling overwhelmed by their first draft.
Any writer choosing this method can keep their research scenes in Fictionary’s note sections, where their background research will be easily accessible as they write.
The Draft Zero
The method is often favoured by writers who identify as pantsers: sit down and write whatever comes out of your head. You’ll be able to tidy it up later once your first draft is finished and once you know what your story’s actually about.
If this is your favoured method, you’ll likely need to follow it up with an exceptionally strong structural editing strategy.
If that’s the case, Fictionary Storyteller can really help you as you read through your messy first draft and identify methods to turn your free-written prose into a coherent story.
The Snowflake Method
A popular writing strategy designed by Randy Ingermanson.
In the snowflake method, you start by writing down a single sentence about your plot, a single sentence about your protagonist and a single sentence about your setting.
Then, as ideas and inspiration come to you, add more sentences to each. Over time, you’ll layer up a wealth of ideas with which to begin writing your story.
Writing from the Middle
In James Scott Bell’s excellent book, Write Your Novel From the Middle, he analyses successful stories, arguing that in the middle there’s always a key moment where you learn about the story’s key theme.
By considering how your protagonist’s perspective shifts at this midpoint, you can design your story around this important moment, and thus plan a thematically coherent story with strong character arc.
Fictionary Storyteller allows you to write your story starting from whichever scene you choose, and then design and move other scenes around it.
Writing from the End
Some writers prefer to start by writing the climax scenes of their story, then working backwards to figure out how their character reached this point.
As with the previous strategy, it’s a useful way to envision your story if themes and character arcs play a key role in your story.
Tips for Selecting Writing Strategies
Tip One: Experiment
If you’re a new writer, you won’t know which strategy works for you until you try out as many as possible.
Don’t view this as wasted time: each trial offers a valuable learning experience about your goals and preferences as a writer, about story structure and storytelling principles, and about the specific story you’re trying to tell.
Have fun with this experimentation, and enjoy finding new sources of inspiration!
Tip Two: Blend Strategies
Most of these strategies can easily be blended together in different ways.
For example, you could start with the Snowflake Method to build inspiration.
After you’ve written a decent amount, you could formulate an elevator pitch and skeleton blurb and write these down into Fictionary.
Then you could explore your character backstories further and create character bios, free-writing backstory scenes to develop each character’s voice, creating a file to work with.
Next, you could plan out your key plot point scenes within the Story Arc, either on paper or in Fictionary, and write a first draft of the middle and/or the climax scene.
Afterwards, you could follow a specific story structure beat sheet like Save the Cat to plan out the intervening scenes, naming these scenes and creating a visual diagram on corkboards and/or writing software.
Then you could free-write a few different versions of the opening scenes and inciting incident, and decide which version you prefer.
Once you’ve an opening you’re happy with, and a basic structure developed, you could start writing. You could either write your plot point scenes first, or begin writing scenes in chronological order, depending on your preferences.
Or, you could forget all the above steps and just free-write a Draft Zero. Once that manuscript is written, you can then start considering which strategies will help you edit and revise your draft into a strong story.
Tip Three: Different Strategies For Different Stories
Some stories are more character-led and others more plot-lead.
It’s worth taking this into account when you choose your writing strategy.
Genre plays an important role here.
Your gentle Historical Romance may benefit from more focus on researching your character backstory, developing character arcs and setting within your plan.
Your high-action Thriller will need such tight-pacing and intricately interwoven plot-lines that a high degree of planning will likely help: beat-sheet and plotline diagrams can be useful here.
Your Literary Coming-of-Age story, however, might benefit from a high degree of free-writing and character research to give you freedom to develop your protagonist’s voice and journey as you write.
It all depends on your story.