scrivener

The Worldbuilding Leviathan goes Spanish!

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I love how many people have discovered the Worldbuilding Leviathan and I’m always quite chuffed (and just a little bit amazed) whenever someone drops me a line to tell me how useful they’ve found the template. One such person was Juan de la Cruz, who asked me if he could translate it into Spanish. I said ‘of course!’ … Read more

Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet and Scrivener

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A screenshot of my novel 'Crash' plotted with a beat sheet and Scrivener.
I love the beat sheet’s word count per beat.

About the same time I revisted the BS2, Jami Gold posted an excellent article about using beat sheets with Scrivener. What I liked most about the article was the idea of using the target word count for individual chapters and scenes to lay out the beats.

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to word counts, I find big numbers like 100k pretty intimidating. One of the beauties of the beat sheet is that it breaks down these numbers into manageable chunks. For a 100k-word novel, however, some of those chunks are still 25k words, so I took the idea one step further, with Scrivener. 

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Blake Synder's Beat Sheet, with template

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Cover of Save the Cat by Blake Snyder
If you want to understand how the beat sheet works, check out this book.

Best for those outling a new work.

What’s awesome about it

  • The word count for each beat

What’s not-so-awesome

  • It’s daunting, especially when your manuscript is half-written
  • No capacity to outline subplots

The awesome

When I first came across Blake Synder’s Beat Sheet (BS2), I was half-way through the manuscript for Hero and the word count for each beat made me to blanch. The idea of trying to shoehorn my (at that point in time) pantsed story into all of those little boxes (opening image, catalyst, black moment) with their prescribed word counts, was more than my brain could take, but when I went back to the BS2, a new story in mind, they appeared as godsends. 

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The World-building Leviathan and a Scrivener template

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My first fantasy map
World-building is fun, especially when you start making maps!

Created by Kitty Chandler at KittySpace, the World-building Leviathan is a great method of world-building while  developing your plot. The best thing is, it’s non-genre-specific so you can use it without feeling restricted by your chosen genre.

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My writing process – Getting started

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For the most part, I’m an organised soul, so when I decided to create a writing process that worked for me, my first step was to establish:

  • My goals – what I want to accomplish
  • The method – how I’m going to go about the process, and
  • The tools I’m going to use.

It took a little less than an hour, and (so far) its been an invaluable framework on which to base my explorations and measure my success.

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5 more Scrivener templates

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Screenshot of open Scrivener template showing the new template sheets.
5 new Scrivener template sheets for your enjoyment.

I might have previously mentioned that I love templates, and you might ask why. I love them because they make world-building easier, not in a ‘this is how things must be done’ way, but in a ‘here’s some questions to get you started’ way.

Sometimes, when I’m in the thick of creating a story, or the world it’s going to be set in, I have an idea for a something (generally a plant, animal, person or thing). This something often plays an important role in my developing plot (or world), and while I may know a few details, such as its name and function, the nitty-gritty can elude me. 

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Scrivener templates for you and me

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Scrivener - Snowflake layout w QuickReference
A new project using the Snowflake Method template. As you can see, I like to be organised and I really, really, like templates.

This week, I decided to take a break from my frustrations (otherwise known as a first draft) and trial the Snowflake Method of writing a novel. I even found a great Scrivener template to start me off.

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