Playing the Line - Structuring the Narrative of Your Story

At this stage in the writing process, you are likely to have a number of bits and bobs coming together.  You may have captured a snapshot of them in your synopsis, but already your ideas, fluid and free, are moving on, changing shape and direction. When you have a mass of thoughts brimming in your head, it can be quite difficult to know what to do with them and where to start.

In my stretched-to-breaking-point shed-building analogy, it's a bit like the Steves piling up sheets of ply ready to start filling in the walls of my novel hovel. The sight of them stacked in what currently passes for our sitting room rather reminded me of giant post it notes, and it occurred to me that these might well come in handy for you at this stage in the construction of your story.

Try writing down a brief summary of all the scenes you have thought about so far on individual post-it notes, or index cards.  This will give you the opportunity to experiment with the running order -- moving a scene once you have written it can have complicated consequences later on in your narrative, so if you can pre-empt that from happening you will save yourself a lot of trouble further down the line.  Even beginning to think about the running order starts to move your planned story from the hypothetical to the actual -- it can be an enormously exciting moment. Try mapping out a logical storyline, then throw everything up in the air and try various different, more fractured versions to see which interests you most.

With the help of the post-its you will gradually get a sense of the narrative arc of your tale and once you've achieved that, you will be in a position to think about where on this arc your story should start.