 Hello my name is Jackie and welcome back to my channel. If you're new here I'm an aspiring fiction author who is currently attempting to plot out two different book ideas using three different plotting methods and this is attempt three. So in this video I'm going to be walking you through my attempt to use the Story Clockwork book to plot my two ideas. Now if you are new to the Story Clockwork book this was something that was actually recommended by one of my subscribers Dawn and it is a workbook that is designed to help you map out book ideas or screenplay ideas. I think it was originally designed with screenplays in mind however books and screenplays are both about telling stories so I think there's no issue in using it for a book as well. Now unlike all of the other plotting methods I've tried which have been based on a book such as Save the Cat or Story Engineering this is a workbook which means there isn't a lot of content in the book itself it's predominantly templates and pages that you can fill out to flesh out your ideas. So the way it's structured is on the inside of the first cover there is a general story structure which shows a circle aka a story clock and the key events that should happen. Now these key events are very similar to Save the Cat if you've done that in the past so they include your opening image normalcy normalcy being disrupted a herald or messenger rational approach to the challenge and failure acceptance of the call to adventure and departure and so on through to the end of the story. After that the rest of the book is purely templates you can use so each project is given four pages on the first page you list your title and the date you start working on it there's empty space for brainstorming you can list your characters and themes then the next page is the story clock so this is a circle which has been divided into segments and each of those segments should be a scene like the ones listed in the general story structure. After that there's another two page spread for each project which includes information like the premise the medium of your story the characteristics of your story similar stories available resources you have to develop said story and challenges you expect to encounter. I haven't started this yet but my initial impressions are that it looks like a lot of fun I'm looking forward to getting stuck into something that's a workbook rather than having to read through some writers or editors essays on his thoughts on fiction writing and what makes good stories I'm craving something practical so that looks like fun. Having said that not having a lot of background in here can be a downside and it can make it difficult to figure out how to get started so I also looked at the plot devices blog plot devices are the people who put together the story clock workbook and in their blog they've actually taken apart a number of tv shows and films and created story clocks for them so if like me you're coming into this new method and you're not really sure where to start because it is a workbook there is a lack of context I recommend going to check out the blog because they've already broken down things like back to the future the Incredibles the pilot of stranger things signs and so on so if you go through that and find a couple of stories that you're already familiar with and see how the story clock works for those stories I find that is a really good foundation for moving forward when it comes to the method itself beyond simply organizing your scenes in a circle rather than in a list the main benefit of this approach seems to be figuring out the symmetry of your story and by that I mean which events over here correspond with events over here and over here and so on and when I see that in the blog it's really interesting to see how other creators create this symmetry so one example might be something is introduced in the first 25 percent of the story and in the third 25 percent of the story that theme comes up again so it's really good before shattering the other thing that they talk about when it comes to using this to develop your own ideas is that you can use the idea of symmetry to fill in gaps so if you complete your story clock with all of your initial ideas and you notice there are a few sections of the clock that are empty then you can draw a parallel line to another part of the clock and see okay what's mentioned there and can I foreshadow it here in some way or can I replicate it or create a parallel event and I think that's going to be really fun to play with because I haven't had the opportunity to look at a story in that way before so I'm going to attempt to complete the story clock for both of my books and then I'll check in and let you know how I went I've now attempted to do story clocks for both Dreamspy and reciprocal stalking and the way I went about it was rather than going straight to the clock diagram first I got a bit of paper and I listed the different scenes that are mentioned on the inside of the cover so these are the general story structure scenes so things like opening an inch normal scene normalcy disrupted heralds rational approach and failure and so on and I did a list of those scenes down one side of the page and then tried to think of equivalent scenes in each of my books for them for Dreamspy that went fairly well I think because it's a you know traditional action adventure journey type of story so the events and scenes I'd already thought of for that book naturally lined up with the recommended story structure for reciprocal stalking it was a little bit difficult because the plot is not like one of those general stories so it came up with a couple of points but it wasn't really helpful to do that extra step then I took that list of scenes and I went to the clock diagram and filled it in as best I could for each of the books and then I looked at the scenes I'd already thought of from doing story grid and the snowflake method and I put them into the diagram and I think that starting with this story clock process at the very beginning of the plotting and outlining process might be a little bit difficult if you don't already have quite a few scene ideas however because this is the third method I've attempted this time round it was really helpful to have a lot to start with so you can see if you look at my completed story clocks they already have quite a bit of information in them even though I've only been looking at this for maybe 20 minutes it hasn't been a long process what I'm really liking about this is the idea of symmetry so the idea that if you have a spare spot somewhere in the clock then you can draw a line to another part of the clock so either diagonally opposite or parallel and see what's there and see if you can come up with a reflective scene or a symmetrical scene I guess so if a point is introduced in your climax and if you do a line down and you see there's an empty space there that's where you can first introduce and foreshadow that point now what I like about this approach is that it acts as a brainstorming tool which the other plotting approaches I've used this time round so story grid and snowflake method haven't really had with the snowflake method and the story grid it was really about listing scenes in and in case of the snowflake method listing those scenes in more and more detail and there was nothing there to say whether there was anything missing or how well distributed those scenes were when I look at my completed story clocks I can see that both of my stories have quite a bit in the first quarter and a decent amount in the fourth quarter of the book where everything gets wrapped up in the second and third quarter so let's say parts two and three they're both a bit sparse and I didn't know that when I was doing the story grid and snowflake methods because I just had a list of scene it wasn't clear where in the book they would fall so first this method has helped me identify holes in my existing plot and second by using this symmetry method so drawing dotted lines from the gaps to content I already have is a good starting point for brainstorming what could go there the other thing that's been really interesting is because my act two or parts two or three were so sparse there were a few events I had there and I wasn't sure where they should be situated because there was so much space so being able to draw dotted lines between the stuff that was already in part one and part four has been helpful for locating those things so for instance in the reciprocal stalking book there's a moment when the main character arrives at one of the apartments where she has a captive stored I guess and the captive is killed herself and that moment helped me figure out where the first potentially the only murder I'm not sure if I'll put another one in there but where the first murder of the book should go so you've got death and then this second death in a symmetrical location so from here I'm going to be doing a little bit more brainstorming around those gaps to see what can go where and I'll also be looking at the next couple of pages of the workbook because every project has four pages one page is for general brainstorming then you have the story clock then the next pages you can cover things like the premise of the book similar stories available resources for developing it and challenges you expect to experience so I will check back in once I've tried that it's now been about what five hours since I last jumped on the camera I took a couple of hours to go for lunch and let things marinate for a bit and then came back to the story clock workbook what I realized for both of my stories was that they needed something else to flesh out parts two and three and that could either be a B story or another antagonist or another person within the overall antagonistic group if you like now in terms of B stories I struggle with these because I don't like the idea of adding stuff just for the sake of having more stuff like I think it should tie into the main story if it can so I focused more on the antagonist side of things so with reciprocal stalking one of the antagonists is the girl's existing boyfriend and I thought I could have another one in there who's a friend I am a bit worried about it becoming a bit too much like you by Carolyn Kepnes however I think there's enough in there that it will be different so my story clock is now looking pretty comprehensive and I feel like I have a pretty solid outline for a book here I have a far longer list of scenes than I had before NaNoWriMo last year when I started working on my last project so feeling really good about that in terms of the next two pages of the workbook which cover the premise medium characteristics similar stories playlist available resources and challenges I didn't find this helpful for Dreamspy it was interesting to do for a reciprocal stalking so for Dreamspy I have premise I wrote an 11 year old girl I'm thinking she might be 14 or 16 we'll see but this girl is a courier for a secret agency in her dreams medium is book genre is action and fiction characteristics halfway between light and dark halfway between simple and complex halfway between small and epic on the scale of casual to formal it's casual cheap to expensive scale in the middle and niche to broad it's at the broad end similar stories the only one I could really think of was the archived by V.E. Schwab not because that's similar tonally but because the character is around a similar age similar stage in life it's also a similar dynamic between the secret world that the main character works in that no one else knows about and the real world and the fact that the secret world is real it's not a fantasy or delusion or dream or anything it's just the rest of the world doesn't know about it other than that like playlist and available resources and challenges didn't really seem that useful so I skipped them for reciprocal stalking this one the premise Cessaly becomes obsessed with wanting to possess Cara only to discover that Cara shares the same drive for control so the medium again is a book obviously genres drama and romance characteristics on the dark side of light to dark on the complex side of simple to complex scale is small rather than epic halfway between casual and formal halfway between cheap and expensive and more towards the niche side rather than the broad side now this one I had a few similar stories that came up one as you which I've mentioned before also I had into the darkest corner which is another stalkery type one that's more of a similar story from the idea of how a relationship can go downhill and how something that seems good at the beginning with someone who maybe is a little controlling or possessive can turn into something abusive now I don't expect this to go down the same path to that extent but I'm trying to get more books that deal with those power dynamics because I haven't written anything like that before another one is Berlin syndrome so this one is similar in the sense that someone discovers there's this girl he likes and he can keep her trapped and isn't it wonderful that she's waiting at home for him every time he goes home so that is something that's interesting because you can see again from the beginning where it's like oh he went on the state with this nice guy he seemed really great and oh whoops he accidentally locked me in the apartment this time and then it turns into no he's actually not letting me out and this is um not good then the other similar story I had was gone girl which isn't that similar in terms of plot but I think it's similar in terms of there are two unreliable narrators and you're not sure what the truth is between them I think when I originally thought of this idea as well I wanted there to be a big midpoint shift I don't think that's going to happen now just because of what I've come up with through all these plotting processes but originally I wanted there to be a big midpoint shift which is also what happens in gong girl for playlist basically everything by placebo I think that sort of darkish tone as well as the momentum of the songs is going to be like that's going to define the beat of the book available resources I skipped just because I think that this is more relevant for doing a film than doing a book because they list things like person place thing tool skill which all seem to be more relevant for films challenges my main challenge with this one as I mentioned in my last video is that I don't think I'm a good enough writer to pull this off however I'd really like to try I am very intrigued by the idea so that brings me to the end of the story clock process all in all I really enjoyed it it was nice to have something that I could actually complete in a day as opposed to the last two methods which took me a good six weeks from beginning to end I think it was more because one I was a bit burnt out and two I didn't like the methods than this method being easier but still this is definitely a point in its favor I think it would have been a lot harder if I hadn't already done any work on these books so as a standalone method I don't think it would work so well I think it works well as part of a larger process so if you already have an idea you've already done some brainstorming you already know some of the key scenes or beats you want to hit then this can really help you figure out where those beats fit in a book where the gaps are and how to fill those gaps by playing on the symmetry within the story I also think it'll be really useful for revisions so Don who recommended this to me actually said she uses it as a revision tool for her books so when I'm ready to revise powerless in a couple of months I'm actually going to map it out using the story clock and see basically how balanced the story is and whether I can play on the symmetry a little bit more whether there are any obvious gaps that need filling and so on finally I think this is a really useful tool for learning from other books I already mentioned earlier in the video that plot devices has a blog and one of the things they've done on the blog is pull apart various films and TV shows to see how their story clocks look so one there are those ready-made examples that you can learn off but two you can also use the clocks in the book to map out other stories that you're keen to learn from and in fact one of the things I did was I don't know how well you can see that but I mapped out you by Caroline Kepnes because it is one of the similar stories for this book just to see where everything happens and how much symmetry there was so I think it'll be really interesting to try that with a few more not books I want to plagiarise but books I'd like to emulate or learn from and finally the other thing that's good about this method is even though I went out and bought the workbook in order to do it you don't need the workbook in order to follow this method you can go to the plot devices blog and learn about the method you can find a blank page and draw a circle on it like this and you can map out your story to see how it works and how you can incorporate symmetry and where the gaps are and so on so all in all I really liked this method and I will definitely be using it again in the future ideally I want to fill up this whole workbook with different projects now over to you have you used the story clock to either plot or outline or revise some of your projects and if you did how did you find it what worked for you and what didn't and have you found any hacks that made it a bit easier so for me that was already having scenes mapped out beforehand perhaps you've found something else that works for you so if you have please put it in the comments below because I'm really keen to learn more and more about the writing and outlining and revising process other than that if you like this video please give me a like and a subscribe and hit the notification bell and I will see you in the next few days with a new one. Bye for now.