 Hello, my name's Jackie and welcome back to my channel. In this video I want to start outlining my next project. So I do already have an idea. It started with a dream maybe a month or two ago where the characters were like wandering through a landscape that looked like the swamp of despair from the never-ending story. So swampy, muddy, all of these dead trees with no leaves and they were walking through this landscape and suddenly the texture of the ground underneath their feet changed and they looked up and everything in front of them had been transformed into glass. And I just really loved that image and I thought, oh that'd be really cool. Like what if we have something about some sort of witch who, you know, she can touch things and turn them completely into glass. So that was the first idea. Then a couple of weeks ago I was just mulling over this, thinking like what sort of world would this last witch character be in? And I had another idea about an apprentice glassblower in like Renaissance Venice and one day she goes to a gallery or museum. I need to do some research to see if galleries and museums were a thing back then. And she sees a life-size statue of a girl that's completely glass and it looks like it's all one piece and she is just entranced by this statue. She doesn't know where it came from, how it's possible and she decides she needs to find the person who made this. She needs to find out who they are and how they did it. So that's what I've got at the moment. Something in like Renaissance Venice with a glass-blowing apprentice and she wants to find this person who made the statue who at this stage she doesn't realize they're a witch. So I've already got a lot of imagery but no story which is where outlining can help. Now rather than trying a new method this time around I thought I'd just take all of the favorite exercises I have from the different methods I've tried. So on the table behind me I have my stack of different craft books that I have here and I'm just going to go through some of the different exercises to see if they can help me flesh out this story a little bit more because it's time. I'd really like to start writing something new and I feel like I mean downside this is nothing like powerless so I don't know if the same agent or publisher would be interested but I know I really like doing something that has sort of this old world fairy tale type of feel so we'll see how it goes. Of the different craft books I have I will not be using all of them because there are some that I just didn't like so nothing from Story Grid, nothing from Snowflake Method. I also have one called The Plot Whisperer which I've started reading a couple of times but just have never gotten through so not that either. So that leaves, take off your pants, save the cat, anatomy of stories, story engineering and the Story Clockworth book and I think there might be things in each of these I want to use. So the first one is take off your pants which was actually the first plotting book I tried back when I was writing Powerless and I didn't really love the plot structure of this but one of the things I did love was the story core exercise and this is a way of almost being able to summarize your story in one sentence. So there are five different points that you need to complete and what it says is every compelling story has the following five elements. A character, the character wants something but something prevents him from getting what he wants easily so he struggles against that force and either succeeds or fails. So in my case my character is an Apprentice Glassblower in Renaissance Venice she wants okay this is where this is where I struggle a little bit and this comes up for me with a lot of different outlining methods. The reason I'm hesitating is because is it what the character wants in general or is it what they want in this story because what my characters generally want at the beginning of their stories is different to the goal of the book. Like at the beginning of the story they're established as having some sort of general life goal or ambition or purpose that they want to achieve but then whatever happens in the book it like might get in the way of that it might interrupt that it might be a step on the way to getting that bigger purpose mission goal whatever. So in this case I think ultimately what she wants is to like be a famous artisan like I like the idea of her liking the idea of people coming from all across Europe to commission goods from her or to see her art or to buy her work so I think yeah I think that would be fun for her to be really ambitious like she wants to be the world's best glass artisan. That's not what she wants in the book though in the book she wants to find the person who made this sculpture or this glass statue of a girl. I'm not sure whether I should start this with the first goal because if it's the character what she wants is to be famous glass artisan something prevents her from getting what she wants well that could be if she's an apprentice at the beginning of the book that means she has like a master glass person. Clearly I need to research this I know nothing about glass blowing and yeah anything. The only reason it's in Venice is because I know that they had a huge glass trade so I thought it was fitting. I've also visited Venice a long time ago now 15 years ago but I visited Venice a long time ago and loved it so it would be fun to set a book there so I assume she'll have some sort of master whose role I need to research so she wants to be famous she's got this master who's sort of stopping her from moving forward so she'll struggle against him and either succeeds or fails so in her case we're hoping she succeeds because she's our main character. Now that all works but that would just be my first act because that doesn't get us to what she wants in the book so if I do what she wants in the book we have the character our apprentice classmaker she wants something she wants to find the person who created this mysterious statue she can't figure out how it was made. Something prevents her from getting what she wants so that again it could be the like master glass smith, is glass smith a word? I really need to look up what glass people are called so maybe he's not letting her leave like she'll lose her position if she goes looking for this person maybe what's getting in her way is just that they don't know who made this so where do you start so she struggles it's either struggling against the master or just the general struggle of finding someone who doesn't want to be found and then succeeds or fails the thing is she succeeds or fails but I don't think it's going to be the end of the book when she meets the glass witch and for anyone who watches Lindsey Puckett's videos I know she has a middle grade book called the glass witch I'm going to try not to call mine that or call this character that but it's the easiest way to communicate what's going on at the moment. Yeah even if I do the general goal of the book it's still changes. I'm trying to think of what I did for powerless because powerless the original goal was about Hannah being accepted by her father which worked because it didn't actually focus on the plot at all so maybe it should focus on her being like this famous glass maker it's just this point three with something preventing her from getting what she wants to me that sounds like it would be the main antagonistic force of the book and I don't know if I want like this master glass smith to be the main antagonist like he's just the initial one I don't actually see him like following her out of Venice as she goes on her quest so I need to think about this a little more what this reminds me of though is Dan Harmon's story circle so this is another method where I haven't actually used it but I do have this story clockwork book which um does a similar thing where you use this circle diagram to organize your story so Dan Harmon who if you don't know he created community and Rick and Morty he has this circle which is split into eight slices so the first one is you as in the character in their comfort zone the next one is they have like a need or a desire then they go into an unfamiliar situation they learn to adapt to that situation they get what they want or at least they think they get what they want but then there's a price to pay for getting what they wanted they return home having changed so there's this cyclical element to his stories it's very much like the hero's journey just simplified now Tyler Maori who's a screenwriter he um did a video I think last year where he attempted to write a screenplay in 48 hours and he actually used this story circle method but rather than just using the story circle for the entire story he did like a circle for each part of the play I think he did three or four so it might have been act one act two act three or part one two three and four what this um story core exercise is reminding me of is that is like that circle where in each key part of the story you could actually do the whole cycle again because each one the character has a new goal that they want to achieve so I'm wondering if maybe I try doing the story core for each of the different stages of the book or if I try doing the story circle for each of the parts of the book something to think about so this is making me wonder like do I need to do the full method again like is it just not going to work if I jump in and do just the exercise I liked but we'll see anyway the next one I wanted to do was the save the cat beat sheet so I'll quickly look at that now and then come back many many minutes later okay I'm back so the next method I'm looking at is the save the cat beat sheet um so the beat sheet is like the most famous thing that save the cat is known for even though it's this full methodology the beat sheet is basically 15 different beats that your story should hit in order to feel complete and have like a complete plot and in theory every single good story or good screenplay would hit these 15 beats so the beats are opening image so where the story starts themes stated so this is like the theme of the story so what's coming to me is disney's beauty and the beast the original not the 2017 flop and the theme of that is beauty is found within setup so setup is pages one to ten in a screenplay let's say the first 10 to 15 percent of a novel and that's everything about like your character before the story starts so what's a day in their life like what are their goals were their struggles who are the people in their everyday life etc then we have the catalyst this is the event that sets the story in motion depending on the method you use and the terminology that method uses this might also be called the inciting incident it might also be called the turning point after the catalyst happens one of the things that save the cat has which is quite interesting is a debate so this is where the characters are like talking about if they should go on the mission if you like they should accept the call to adventure if we're using joseph cambell's the hero's journey they might also be talking about how to get started so this is between when the catalyst happens and when they set off on the journey or the adventure or whatever it is and yeah they're figuring out if they should or how they should then we have break into two so that means break into act two and that's where like the adventure starts now from here the beat sheet falls apart a little bit because those first six beats are like the first 25 pages of the screenplay so that's about 25 percent of the screenplay and you can structure it fairly completely just having those beats though you might want to flesh them out then we have from page 25 to page 75 so twice the amount of space we only have four more beats so people are just following this and have no other like craft books or structures that they're following I can see why act two is such a struggle because there's not a lot of guidance so what we have here is B story which is usually a romance or a friendship or something that happens alongside the main story I don't love B stories to be honest like I maybe because like I get so like focused I only really can focus on one thing at a time so I just like to have one story there's fun in games which Blake Snyder describes as like all of the fun stuff that would happen in the trailer for a movie so things like car tracers or puzzles or I don't know recruiting the heist crew like that sort of stuff it's very hard to get guidance on that though because it is so different for every story so this is one of the reasons why this part of the beat sheet is a little weak in my opinion then we had the midpoints that's the 50 percent moment of the screenplay or the story usually something changes at that point so the main character will get some new information that they're able to use to achieve their goal defeat the bad guy etc they might also discover that their assumptions up till now have been wrong so this is the moment like everything changes either the better or for worse then bad guys close in so this is when we see like the bad guys plotting and closing in on the main character all is lost moment and dark night of the soul happened together so this is when everything feels hopeless it looks like there's no way the hero will be able to recover from this break into three this is break into act three it's usually the 75 percent mark of the story break into three and the finale both start at the same point this is like the big climax of the book so if it's a romance this is when they're making the big romantic gestures to win the person back if it's some sort of adventure or sci-fi or fantasy type book it's probably an epic battle so this is like the big showstopper and then final image so the scene that the story ends on so for me what I've got is opening image is her working in the glass studio workshop whatever it's called the theme stated I'm not sure what it is I think it will be something about beauty and that's not just because I'm thinking about beauty in the beast but I think um because there's you know this statue that she sees which is so beautiful and she's an artist so she's chasing beauty yet we discover that there is this witch who transforms things and that statue was probably a real girl at some point so something about the dark side of beauty maybe I think I'll see what comes out in the writing then the setup so she works in the glass workshop wants to be a famous artisan she's talented but there's definitely room for improvement the catalyst is she sees the statue of the girl and she wants to find out who made it debate some of the things I thought it could be about is like how do they track down this person they don't even have a name for the statue so who knows who made it also the risk she'll lose her apprenticeship if she leaves the master is not going to forgive her if she disappears maybe I could create some stakes around this like again I need to do research but maybe there's like some event where he's going to be displaying his work or maybe there's a big order coming in and he needs all hands on decks so I'll make a note of that okay so it's going to be if she leaves she'll lose the apprenticeship but also that this is the worst time to leave it's the one time the master really needs all hands on deck there could also be stuff with her family like how can you abandon something you've worked so hard for I don't know if this is like a sponsored thing so they need to pay for her to do the apprenticeship so almost like this moment she would be throwing away everything she'd work so hard for she's burning all of the bridges for a dream like she doesn't even know where she's going and how she's going to find this person who made the statue break into two will be leaving on the search and abandoning her apprenticeship B story no idea like I suppose I could put a romance in there but I don't know if I want to so fun and games again not sure like there's that image of the swamp that's been turned entirely into glass I also thought maybe she could find the witch but she needs to sort of pass some trials in order to meet her or do some riddles or something because that's very fairy tale like so still a bit up in the air and then the midpoint is when she gets like accepted by the witch and almost maybe gets apprentice to the witch I'm not quite sure what the dynamics going to be like after this is when things fall apart so bad guys close in who are the bad guys like I have no idea who the bad guys are it could be like maybe they're being followed because the master wants access to the witch's skills or maybe people do know about the witch like the older people know about the witch it's just she doesn't so they want to like go and hunt down the witch I don't know or if a witch is the bad guy then I don't know how this bad guys close in thing works because they're together the biggest question is is the witch the ultimate antagonist or is it someone else like the master yeah just lots of questions at the moment and then all is lost like this sort of depends on who the bad guys are so all is lost if the bad guys are people coming to hunt the witch maybe it's that the witch is killed maybe the witch gives our main character like she passes on her powers or something like maybe the witch was luring someone to her so she could get rid of the powers because it's more like a curse than a gift and now the main character maybe everything she touches turns to glass like it's like the hand of Midas I don't know like everything from the midpoint's a bit up in the air I'm not too worried though because I remember the first time I did the beach sheet with powerless and the other books I was working on it was very similar like my setup in act one was it wasn't completely mapped out but the overall arc was there and I had a few beats to get to the midpoint and then I wasn't quite sure what would happen so yeah clearly I need to think about this a little bit more and I think I need to think about this a little bit more before I do other exercises I have a feeling if I move on to other exercises I'm just going to run into the same questions so I'm going to call it a day and then pick this up in another day or two hello I've got a fairly busy week this week with stuff on almost every night so I thought a quickly touch base in the office since I'm on my own today and let you know that I have an idea so when I was first working on my beach sheet things got a bit muddy after the midpoint and I wasn't sure like who the main bad guy would be or well that was really it I wasn't sure who the main bad guy would be so what I've decided is both the glass witch and the glass master are going to be antagonists obviously their stories start at different points because they introduced different points in the book but I think it can all like culminate in the finale which I've decided is going to happen at Carnival in Venice so I'm really excited about that and other than that one of the things I'm really enjoying about working on a new project is going through this discovery process where you don't have all the answers at the beginning but it's okay because every time you go back to the beach you build on a little bit more and then suddenly there's this story like forming in front of you so it's it's just exciting and fun and it's real it's really nice to be having fun again because fantasy hot mess was not fun so unfortunately because I've got so much on this week I'm probably not going to be able to get back to it until Friday but I am letting things marinate so hopefully Friday will be productive session when I get back to finishing my beach sheet and then doing story engineering. It's now been another few days and I'm looking at the beach sheet for my new book again and when I was looking at it a couple of days ago I can't remember what I googled but I googled something and the Save the Cat blog came up which had a beach sheet for Pixar's Soul which I saw very recently and loved and when I looked at the beach sheet it was really useful because I could see how everything applied to an existing story I was already familiar with but also seeing the level of detail it went into was really helpful because when I was doing my beach sheet there was sort of like one line for each beat whereas here you had like a paragraph or two so they were actually almost mini scene outlines or mini scene summaries so I thought I'd look at some more of the beach sheets they have on the website for stories I'm familiar with and see if that helped spark some more inspiration and it was an interesting exercise but it actually reminded me of some of the things I've struggled with with the Save the Cat beach sheet so one of them is the whole fun and games section I mentioned earlier in this video I believe you know in the book it's described as all the things you see in the trailer all the things you would expect someone to get up to in this genre of story so if it's like a body switching story you'd expect all these humorous situations where they're trying to be the other person or the thing whose body they're in but the more of beach sheets I read the more it just seems to be this is whatever happens to happen in between the break into act two and the midpoint there doesn't really seem to be much guidance beyond that so I found the more beach sheets I looked at the less helpful it was because it's so unique to each story there's no real guidance for what should happen the next thing that I found was quite interesting is in the beach sheet the antagonist often isn't mentioned until like the second half of the book so sometimes they're not introduced until a midpoint and we see them in the bad guys close in beat yes sometimes we don't see them until the bad guys close in beat it's like oh there were bad guys this entire time so I find that really interesting especially after looking at other methods like the anatomy of story where the opponent is such a big part of the method and the way you design a story is supposed to be around the relationship between your protagonist and your opponent and I think the final thing that I noticed is pretty much any craft book or method no one seems to be willing to admit that their method might not work in all cases and I think that's clear when I look at some of the beach sheets it's like okay you've gone with like the exact times in the movie when stuff is supposed to happen and sort of tried to shoehorn it into the beach sheet but it might not work exactly and the one example that prompted this realization was Beauty and the Beast the 1991 one because in the Beauty and the Beast beach sheet they say the midpoint is when Belle sneaks into the west wing and while technically that might be at the halfway point of the movie the midpoint isn't just about what happens at the exact 50 mark it's also supposed to be a shift in the story where there's some shift there's some new information something changes the path of the story is going down so for me regardless of the exact time when it takes place I feel like that would be the there's something there that wasn't there before song because that's the moment when Belle and the Beast relationship shifts or even before that like after after she goes to the west wing gets in trouble and she runs out of the castle he saves her and then they have that interaction after he saves her where you know he's saying you shouldn't be in front of way she's like you shouldn't have frightened me and they sort of grumble and at the end she goes well thank you for saving my life and that's the moment their relationship changes now the sneaking into the west wing is a lead up to that it's part of the sequence of events that leads up to that but the actual midpoint is when the relationship shifts whereas in this beach sheet they've just got the bit when she sneaks into the west wing and he gets angry at her which I don't feel like again it might be the exact midpoint as far as time goes but as far as story goes nothing shifts in that moment the dynamic is exactly the same as it's been until this point and because they've said that as a midpoint the bad guys closing in they've actually listed there's something there that wasn't there before as part of bad guys closing in which doesn't make sense like they've sort of tried to justify it as they're inner bad guys at present because they're both a little scared neither one prepared I don't know maybe like if you think that makes sense leave your thoughts in the comments but I really feel like you know that is the midpoint shift and bad guys is more on like the Gaston and them trying to storm the castle type of thing so after that ramble I realized that I think I've probably gotten as far as I'm going to for the time being with the save the cat beach sheet just because I'm running into the challenges that come up with it when you've got this list of beats you need to hit but some of them do just feel like they're taking up space to fill the right part of the screenplay of the book like bad guys closes in we need something here so just think of something with the bad guys fun and games we need something here to take up some space think of some interesting things that might happen in your story and if you comment it from that angle I think it's very easy to just think of random stuff to fill the space by contrast I feel like story engineering has more of a cause and effect approach so now I'm going to be moving on to story engineering which is somewhere in my pile of books here um story engineering can be a little bit tiresome to read admittedly but I really like the approach to structure basically Larry Brooks devised books into four parts and I've always preferred that to the 3x structure just because I think if something's divided into three parts there should be three equal parts and most of the time act one seems to be 25% act two seems to be 25 to 75% and then act three is the final quarter so why not just have four parts so he has four parts and um they each have like a certain flavor so part one is like the setup we're getting to know the world we're getting to know the characters then at the 20 to 25% mark we have a turning point that pushes the main character into the story world so this is what sets them off on their adventure or journey and then part two is the response so a lot of that is the main character reacting to or responding to whatever happened in that turning point moment so this is when they're running planning trying to figure out what to do next they might be trying to take control but often the turning point comes out of nowhere so it is a reactionary section of the book then we get to the midpoint which is that shift I mentioned earlier so maybe new characters are introduced new informations introduced there's something that changes the trajectory of the story and that then puts the protagonist in the position of being able to attack which is part three is the attack that's when they start becoming more proactive they're actively trying to bring down the antagonist or fix whatever is wrong in the world and then we get to the 75% mark which is the climax this is the epic final battle the showdown if you're a sci-fi fantasy writer like me or if it's romances could be like the declaration of love you know they're running through the airport before it's too late you know this is the epic climactic moment and then finally have their resolutions so how all of the chips fall is that a is that an expression or a man mixing a couple up anyway it's the aftermath and also tying up all of the loose ends so what i like about story engineering as opposed to save the cat and to be clear i do really like save the cat i think it's really helpful for initial brainstorming i think having these specific suggestions around beats are helpful for thinking of initial ideas but i do think it's limited in how far you can go whereas story engineering i really like that there's this clear almost arc or theme of each part of the story and then within that at certain points of the story you have like beats you need to hear or events that need to happen and these are 25% which is the turning point or first plot point he likes to call it 37.5% which is the first pinch point this is a moment when um you know the antagonist rears their ugly head or makes them self-known or you know the threat is looming the stakes get higher the midpoint is when you get that new information it changes the trajectory of the story 62.5% another interaction with the antagonist then 75% is the climax between those four parts and those key tentpole moments almost i find it's a little bit easier to string a story together because it just makes more sense i don't know why but for me i can see like how stories naturally move through those four stages and i feel like there is more cause and effect because you know the turning point everything after that is in response to the turning point the midpoint when you shift to the attack that is in response to the information you get so rather than just having this random fun and games or bad guys close in because you've been told to put that there because it's that beat you can think a little bit more organically in that okay this has happened now what are my characters realistically going to do in response to this rather than okay this has happened now we've got to have some fun and games so i don't know if that made sense but with all of that said i'm now going to continue playing with the same story this time looking at the story engineering outline it has now been four weeks since i last looked at this book at all because we're moving countries in just over a week so things have been busy when i sat down to get back to it today what i'd forgotten was that i've actually packed everything i was using for outlining so the take off your pants story engineering save the cat my story clock workbook they're all in a suitcase not even a suitcase in the backpack so it's really awkward to get everything out my notepad that i was working in is also in the backpack so i do still want to get back to this today but it's going to be like starting from scratch almost because i don't have any of my notes or work that i've done having said that obviously it exists in my head i remember a lot of what i've done so i'm hoping that having the memory of everything plus the one month break will mean that when i tried to tackle the same exercises today i'll be just more refreshed and hopefully hopefully i'll be able to create a more complete storyline so let's see how this goes one of the things that i love about doing different plotting exercises is that every time you go back you discover more about a story so this time i'm going through it and i've been obviously writing down everything that's currently stuffed into a backpack but i've also been thinking of new ideas so things like maybe there's an existing relationship between the glass which and kiara's glass master and maybe the rivalry between them is linked to why the glass which wants to go back and destroy everything so i like that every time i go back to it i do come up with new ideas the frustrating thing is not being able to like reliably know when all of the gaps will be filled because i've tried just some brainstorming writing to get some of my thoughts from the last few weeks out i did the save the cat beats again and then i did a story clock circle i still have a lot of the same gaps so i'm not worrying about the b story because b stories aren't really my thing but fun and games it's like okay well i know that this is going to be when she's on her journey looking for the witch i know that there need to be three trials before she finds the witch i don't know what those trials will be similarly like after she's accepted by the witch i know the witch is going to start training her she's going to start learning more about the witch's story she's going to start getting hints that maybe this isn't just like a reclusive glass artisan maybe there's something dodgy going on but i don't know what's going to happen so i've got these big stretches of the story that are like this where i know what's meant to happen at a high level but i don't know what the actual scenes are and i'm not sure how to fill in those gaps i don't know if it's something where i just start writing from the beginning because i do have a few scenes for the beginning now and then those later bits will become clear as i approach them or whether i should really try and figure them out now and i reflect on powerless because that's the one book where i've successfully done this exercise i suppose you could say reciprocal stalking as well which was my april camp nano project last year but i didn't end up finishing because it ran into the interview process for my current job and it was a bit too much at once but both of those books like i did all these exercises i had them planned somewhat when i started but the plan by all means wasn't complete and in fact this is also in the backpack with everything else but i do have all of my planning stuff from powerless and reciprocal stalking so maybe i'll show that at some point but i know um there were definitely gaps in the list of scenes i had for powerless and some of them i figured out as i went i just feel like i had more than i have now though like i feel like i had more individual scenes than i have now for the glass switch but i feel like i have a better understanding of the overall plot of the glass which like what's happening in each part of the book even if i don't know the specifics so it's an interesting position to be in so there's this thing when you start doing youtube and you wake up in the morning going i'm going to be productive and do this challenge i was working on first thing and then the first time you see yourself for the day is in the viewfinder and you're like i really should have like washed my face and brushed my hair and put on some makeup before doing this but i've started filming now so this is what we have so it has now been another week or so since the last time i filmed and my husband and i are now in switzerland we arrived yesterday and i obviously have not finished the outline for this book so i've decided today is the final day i'm going to do one more exercise and whatever i've got at the end of that is what i'm going to have before i start writing this book because this is this is enough like at this point yes life has been busy yes i haven't been able to put as much time towards this exercise as i would like but at this point it's been over a month it's time to start doing some actual writing so the exercise i'm doing today is dan harman's story circle which i mentioned earlier in the video which is like a circle diagram where you have eight key points that your story is meant to hit what i'm going to be doing a little bit differently though is i'll have the story circle for the entire story which i think i already have based on the exercises i've already done but i'm also going to do a new circle for each of the four parts of the book and i originally learnt this approach from tyler mowry who's a screenwriter he has an awesome youtube channel he talks a lot about story circle and story structure and he uses the story circle in this way in which he has a circle for each part of the story rather than just the overall story so i'm hoping that this will help me flesh out some of the gaps in each of the parts of the book i think i mentioned this earlier but the story circle is a really good complement to the story clock which is another circular plotting method story clock more focuses on mapping out the events in your story and finding symmetry between different parts of the circle whereas story circle is divided into eight sections that each need to cover something think of it like an eight sliced pizza sliced one is the character in their comfort zone so the normal world slice two is their need or desire slice three is being put into an unfamiliar situation slice four is adapting to that situation slice five is getting what they wanted but slice six is when they have to pay a price for getting what they wanted slice seven is returning to comfort slice eight is having changed so even though they're back where they began something about the character has changed on the journey so first i looked at the story circle for the book as a whole which was really fast because i've basically already done the work gyara is the main character what she wants is to be a famous glass arson then getting put into an unfamiliar situation is when these glass statues of girls start appearing in venice and she finds one of them and wants to figure out who made it then five is getting what she wanted so she discovers who made the statues it's the glass witch and she is accepted by the glass which to start learning from her but then she pays a price which is the glass which is not what she seems she tricks chiara into inviting her back to venice and then heads to venice with the plan to turn the entire city and everyone in it to glass return is chiara returns to venice to stop the glass witch and then having changed i'm just going to leave this blank for now because spoilers the next step was creating four smaller circles for each of the parts of the book so from story engineering i already knew the focus of my parts so part one is the setup this is chiara's day-to-day life and goals and we introduce the mystery of these glass statues part two is her search for the witch part three is being accepted by and having a mini apprenticeship with the witch and then part four is stopping the witch when she returns to venice so to tackle these i started with filling out the bits i already knew from the macro story circle point one in all four of the circles is obviously chiara she is the only point of view character so she will be the focus for the entire thing in part one the focus is on her wanting to be a famous artisan but also the mystery of the glass statues her getting what she wants as she is invited to work with her glass master on the big display or exhibition they're doing for carnaval but at the same time she also gets a clue to who made the statues so she needs to choose between this dream she's always wanted and this obsessive drive she has to meet the person who made this statue so she gets what she wanted which is the invitation to work on the carnaval exhibition but the cost is that it would cost her finding out who made these statues and vice versa she can pursue whoever made these statues but it's going to cost this opportunity to work carnaval and obviously she chooses to pursue the witch and is going to lose her apprenticeship as a result part two what she wants is to find the person who made the statue so she embarks on the journey she gets what she wanted and finding the witch there is a cost i think that'll be something around sacrificing her friend who was with her on the journey i don't think literal sacrifice he's not going to die at this point but something around sacrificing their friendship in part three is the apprenticeship so a lot of it's learning from the witch but also discovering the dark secrets of who she is and her power and the cost here is obviously the witch has this power and she's going to use it to destroy venice and then part four is stopping the witch so in all of these you'll see there are a couple of blank spaces i'm not sure how some of the story circle points apply to each of the parts of the book but i do feel like this is a good exercise for getting a more in-depth overview especially if it's building on the previous exercises so save the cat beachy was good for brainstorming some initial scenes story engineering was good for coming up with the macro structure and then this story circle exercise is good for filling out the gaps within the story engineering structure i've now done one last thing for my last witch story which is transferring everything to this paper with post-its so this is an exercise from save the cat called the board i think and the idea is that you put each of your scenes onto a card and then you can sort of see them visually and arrange them and i feel like this has some additional benefits beyond doing things like the story circle and story clock and just listing out your scenes in that you can see where the gaps are so this is split into four rows one for each part of the book um and you can see part one is fairly complete and then there are gaps in the later parts i am not too worried about this at the stage i feel like when i started writing powerless it was quite similar like i knew what each part would contain but there were gaps for instance one of the big gaps here is i know kiara and her friend reberto are going to journey to find the witch i'm not really sure what's going to happen on this journey but we do need probably a couple of scenes in there to pass the time so there are gaps but i do feel like i have enough to start writing which is really exciting so all in all my plan isn't as complete as i'd like however most of my plans are not as complete as i'd like and i feel like i do have enough to start writing after doing my favorite exercises from take off your pants save the cat story engineering story clock and then the story circle so i hope you enjoyed this video if you have a favorite plotting or outlining exercise or methodology please let me know in the comments below so i can check it out if you like this video please like subscribe hit the notification bell and i will see you next time bye