Plotting Out Story Ideas

‘Journaling over coffee’ - image by Hannah Olinger (Unsplash)

Having returned to writing, I’ve been perusing the list of story ideas I’d jotted down over the years, some retellings and some original.

It’s been some time since I wrote most of them down, and as my writing has developed (I hope), it seemed a good idea to go through them and see just how viable they are.

I’ve never been a panster as I enjoy the plotting process, and its fun seeing the story take shape. Of course, it will undergo changes with each draft, but, usually, the basic plot remains the same.

If I don’t write out the bare bones of the story from beginning to a somewhat loose end, I lose focus; its ridiculous how easily distracted I get!

Another thing I cannot do is work on more than one story at a time. In addition to getting easily distracted, I’m also easily confused.

So far, I’ve plotted out four story ideas.

Fantasy swan - image by Darkmoon_Art (Pixabay)

The first two are retellings. I started one thinking it was going to be based on ‘Swan Lake’, but it ended up being centred on ‘The Two Sisters’ instead with elements of ‘Swan Lake’.

And the second is based on ‘Bluebeard’.

‘Bluebeard’ by Edmund Dulac (image from Folio Society copy of Perrault’s fairy tales)

The third story was originally going to be a sequel to ‘Moon Goddess’, but I wanted that to remain a standalone, and didn’t necessarily want a potential reader to have to read it first.

Original image for ‘Moon Goddess’ cover (dreamstime)

I still wanted to return to that world, so changed a few characters around and renamed them. There are, possibly, two more stories set in that world. If I go ahead with them, I was thinking I could name the collection ‘Moon Goddess Stories’ or something like that.

With the fourth story, I was adamant on making it fit around certain elements of ‘The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Lady Ragnelle’, but it was not happening; talk about an elaborate, confusing mess.

Instead, I just went with the flow, as it were, and was pleasantly surprised to come up with an original story with a fairy tale feel.

Even though I’ve plotted out novel-length story ideas, I was thinking that I’d like to put together another book of short stories… or long short stories.

I’ll carry on with the plotting exercise – certainly gets the creative juices flowing – and see if any present as possible short story candidates.