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Fan(fic) Service 8w
Fellow writers, do you have any tips for planning out multi-chapter fics, especially ones with pretty in-depth plots? I’m really trying to get better about planning things out before getting too excited and diving in blindly. Any advice appreciated <3
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Anonymous 8w

I’m a big fan of the snowball method. The best way to work with this method is digitally on something like a word doc. I start out with a paragraph summary of how I want the story to go, then I separate the sentences into different bullet points

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Anonymous 8w

Most important thing: you MUST know what the ending is going to be. Not just vibes, but an actual conclusion with scene ideas

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 8w

After that, I keep expanding with scene ideas on how to get from Bullet Point A to Bullet Point B and so on

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 8w

I usually try to expand each bullet point to 1k-2k words of details and directions about how I want the scenes to go. Example: “Character A goes to Character B’s house. Describe Character B’s house. Symbolism idea- old furniture symbolizes holding onto the past. They discuss [inciting incident].” Example: “Character B, after Character A leaves, calls Character C to tell them about what they talked about. Dialogue idea… ‘blah blah blah’- B, ‘Blah blah?’-C, ‘Blah blah blah!’- B.”

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 8w

Furthermore, I find it helpful keeping a collection of what I want the themes of the story to be and the character motivations. Also, get an idea of what you want your protagonist(s) to be at odds with. Is it a force of nature? A betrayer in their friend group? An evil government? A villain? Themselves?

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 8w

Sometime I found helpful for the Protagonist v. Villain story is basically, “The Protagonist and Villain face the same problem but have VERY different ideas on how to fix it.”

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 8w

In my story, that translated to my protagonists and villain both not fitting into society and being rejected because they are different. Protagonist A loves being different and just wants to be left alone, Protagonist B wants to change to fit into society so they can have a community, and the Villain wants to change the world into their image so they’d stop being different (and control people)

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 8w

Holy crap dude thank you so much for all of your lovely insight! This was so helpful. I’m so excited, I hope I can finally write the fic I’ve always wanted to read! 😫

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Anonymous replying to -> OP 8w

Of course, man! And have soooo much fun doing it! My last bit of advise is to do at least two edits of your work before you post it. The first one is to change words, add or delete things, and look for plot holes. I also recommend reading stuff out loud during this stage to see if dialogue sounds natural. After that, I put the chapter through grammarly

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