So this isn’t about the “book” structure I chose, I’ve talked about that elsewhere. This is more about answering “how do I write a particular story, and keep the characters front and center in that story?” It’s also about developing a process of your own.
Always Be Honest
The only constant thing that applies to everyone is this:
You must be honest with yourself as you develop your system, and as you work on your stuff using that system.
If something isn’t working, you admit it isn’t working and you go find something that will work. You do not beat your head against the wall saying “well this should work” or “it would be convenient if this worked” or “but this is really elegant” or “this worked for Bob”. None of that matters. Either something does or does not work for you.
You start with a system. You build something using that system. You evaluate how well it worked out. You revise your system based on that evaluation. You repeat. If you hit a wall, you do not back up and try again but harder. You find a way around that wall.
Example:
I revised my approach in Phase 2, which was very, very loose. I was basically trying to write “season-long” stories that would wind in different characters, e.g. I had a story with Ghost Girl, Summer, and Jordan. MIA emerged from the spy plot there, and I realized I should write self-contained “comic books” instead.
Midway through Phase 3, I went back to re-assess my approach thus far, and adjust. I think that exercise was very successful, and it worked because I was honestly critical with myself and where I’d failed.
Everything else, including everything below this line, is subjective and may not work for you, but is probably worth trying.
I’m going to use a metaphor of stew for the creative process. You make stew by adding ingredients to a pot and heating it for awhile. It’s very simple and very rewarding.
Interview Yourself
Like a good journalist, you ask yourself hard questions about what you’re doing. And you don’t relent until those questions reach an acceptable stopping point.
When I’m coming up with a story, one interview question for each piece I’m making is “who is this for?”
Basically, which character(s) are being served by this bit? Whose story does this develop?
If the answer is just “me, the writer”, maybe I can find a way to salvage the thing. Or maybe I put it in the fridge for later.
Don’t accept Rule of Cool for anything but the peripheral details. “Because it’s cool” doesn’t serve the characters, it serves the audience. Again, be honest with yourself.
Sometimes you can sniff out problems just by asking “Why?” or “How would that work?”
Example:
There’s two examples, one that comes from planning, and one that came in-story.
A few of the Phase 3 stories got as far as the planning stage and then I reviewed them again and said “this needs an entire rewrite”. The most recent is the Midnight story, “War in Heaven”, where I realized I cannot just ask Charlotte to tackle a whole universe of problems and had to reframe the conflict. But other plans stopped when I asked things like “why doesn’t the villain just (do well-established thing)?”
The in-story example comes when I have Vermillion walk through Moscow looking for the Eigendrake there. I write a bunch of vampiric shit, representing his mindset, and him thinking about everything from the Czars to the city to the Eigendrake from that perspective. And then I have him ask a question: “what could have driven the Eigendrakes here?”
Up until that point, I did not have a good answer for this question. I knew they were badass monsters from some cosmically distant place and I knew what they were carrying. But I didn’t know why. So I admitted I didn’t know, and resolved to find an answer. And all this came out of earlier blunt honesty and interview questions.
Reuse Everything, Trim the Excess
On that note, make your stories like you’d make stew: grab what’s in the fridge and put it over heat. You will have many more ideas for scenes than you’ll actually play through, and that’s fine!
If you think up a scene during your off hours or downtime or whatever, put it in the fridge and pull it out later when you need an ingredient for whatever you’re cooking up.
If you pull something out of the fridge for your current work and you can’t use it all, cut it up into the parts you can use now, and put the rest back in the fridge.
Example:
I thought it would be neat to have the MIA team on motorcycles, engaging in high-speed vehicle action. Okay cool, I’ve got plenty of precedent for that. “Mission: Impossible” has done a ton of fun motorcycle shit, including chases and other stuff.
Who is this for? Well, right now, just me. So I put it away.
Later, I noticed Emma hadn’t had much time, so I wanted to do something with her. Who’s a villain for a story like that? How about her mentor? What does her mentor want that would conflict with MIA? Well I’ve already got this storyline about Tyran cloning heroes & villains, and I’d previously written a Mr. Big story about breaking someone out of a CIA black site. So I’ll do that story, but from Emma’s perspective.
Now’s the time to put MIA on motorcycles, because maybe the prisoner is being moved? Yeah! We’ll do that. I didn’t get the exciting chase aspects of the motorcycle, but that’s fine, I could dice the original idea up and use just the bits I wanted.
Take Notes
I’m using Notion to organize my overall process. I have character pages for the heroes and villains in Phase 3, as well as each plotline.
While writing, I’ll keep a window open that enumerates what everyone’s doing at the moment, e.g. “Silver Streak/Mercury/Tempest/Comet - tackling D-SOL-8. Stingray/Ninjess - helping civilians”. If someone does their thing I clear the summary. If I finish a block of writing and need to know who goes next, it’s whoever isn’t doing anything now.
Ask Stakeholders
If you run a game, ask your players what they think, what they like, etc. Systems like Stars and Wishes provide a structured version of this process.
I asked for feedback on the Phase 2-3 stories and that wasn’t always productive, but for tabletop games it’s always useful to hear what the players think. Note that some players will self-censor or be like “yeah everything is fine”; encouraging people to speak is its own skill, and can’t be forced.