Usually, most of my prep involves plotting. This time, I'm putting a lot more effort into character prep (though I've just realised I've been brainstorming every character *except* the protagonist, so not sure what happened there!) and into research. Still to be prepped - cool action sequences, locations, and erm, the protagonist...

Prep for me involves working out the general arc of the story and leaving everything else alone until the first draft. I usually have a piece of music that sums up the tone of my idea and I will listen to that obsessively over and over again. I find my best prep is done on the treadmill. The mindless running empties my head of all conscious thoughts and allows the story its own space to breath. Character usually appears first, followed by particular set-pieces and then the general "feel" of the story. Then I type Fade In and see what happens. I used to fly completely by the seat of my pants but this sort of prep helps to form the feel and tone of what I want to do and gives me a direction to go in.

Congrats on Wolfblood Debbie. The word is (to use the parlance of today's youth) that it's "sick".

So they tell me! (To explain to everyone else, my children's TV show, Wolfblood, debuted on British TV a few hours ago, and so far, seems to be going down pretty well. But I shall try to stay on topic here...)

I like having music to get me into the right mood. Haven't got any for this project yet...

I like to know what I know and what I don't know that I'm going to need to know in order to tell the story. So I look at the story idea, sketch out the main character identities and ask myself what I don't know about these characters that I'm going to need to know.

For example, my protagonist is a homeless man and there's a lot about homelessness that I'm in the dark about, so I need to spend some time on the streets, at the soup kitchen, have a conversation with a couple of homeless people. There's a journalist I know who did a lot of work in the area a few years ago, so I need a conversation with him ...

I write up character profiles of the main characters. I also like to do some writing from their points of view, which might include a short story of theirs, an interview, a blog post ... essentially writing to get into the character's head and voice and discover what I know. I do the same with my story world. I map out what I know and look for areas that I'm unfamiliar with, where some research is going to help. I write descriptions of features of the world that will help create conflict. I look at what might be going on in terms of development, technology, weather. I set out a general story shape that follows the main character based on my premise and snapshot statements. This shape usually has half a dozen main points ... essentially it is a short statement of what happens to the main character in each stage: (1) the world of the everyday, (2) the inciting incident, (3) rising tension after entering the mythological woods, (3) the pinch in the middle, (4) rising tension or battle to leave the mythological woods, leading to the (5) crisis/climax, (6) the new state of affairs. This shape ignores subplots and focusses only on the path of the main character and serves as a 'master shape'. Its most useful aspect is that it highlights where other characters may be needed, and the role they might be needed for. I can then break this down into sequences, then scenes ... I guess the thing is, I need to know a lot about my characters and the world they're in, and the general circumstances they are going through and what's going to be the state of things at the end.

Kevin, perhaps we should name you the Patron Saint of Prep for GOYOQ. You've got a thorough process and one I'm sure any pro writer would admire. I'm reminded of a quote from Tarantino: “I need to know where these people [his story's characters] come from. It’s a universe I’m creating, and I have to know my universe backward, forward, and sideways. The audience doesn’t need to know, but they need to know I know.” It's a universe I'm creating. That pretty much sums it up re Prep. We have to create a universe. My only quibble with QT's comment: I choose to believe the universe already exists. So it's really a matter of us digging into it, engaging the characters, and doing the dirty work of digging into the muck to surface the diamonds. Thanks for posting!

Wow, that's a thorough process all right. Just reminds me that, although I do more prep with every script I write, I could still be better prepared before putting fingers to keyboard...

@Kevin Price: that's a real commitment. I also try to know whatever I can about the universe of my story, although I focus much more on characters than on the world itself. But I'll give it a try this time. First step, I answer questions (have a list of about 900 questions) do interviews, sketch monologues. Then I can try to write some loose scenes (not directly related to the plot, although I might come up with something I'll actually use). This time I'm going to try a new thing: I just re-watched "The Royal Tenenbaums" and thought putting down bits of exposition with a purposely overused voice-over. It could help me to put together a glimpse of both characters and the global voice. Then I'll just wipe it out and start from 0 but I'll have a stronger understanding of some features.

[...] Prep: I’m doing that right now for one of my projects, so this discussion on Go Into the Story was apropo for me.  I mentioned this recently – how I tend to do a lot of work in my head and in [...]

Great discussion -- so inspiring I FLEW through prep pages today! I start with the characters -- who are the biggies, the ones whose conflicts drive the story, and most impact my hero? Bios, etc. Then I start to see scenes, and I just write them all down as quickly as I can in a Word doc -- usually a sentence or two, dialogue one character says to another, or a plot point, or a visual that is particularly compelling to me. Meanwhile, I'm reading scripts with similar themes, or watching similar movies. Then I start telling myself the story of the movie, usually in paragraph form, or with cards, making sure to hit the plot points in ways that are true to the characters, and what THEY WOULD DO in those situations at those times. It depends on how a particular story is talking to me whether I write a doc, or card it -- either way, I do the OTHER method NEXT. I usually spend about a month doing this -- I fear spending TOO MUCH TIME and losing all excitement for the actual writing, killing all the passion with the prep. For many years, I let the prep kill the projects I was doing ... then I had a writing teacher in grad school who said, WRITE BEFORE YOU RESEARCH. Let the characters drive the story, and just keep making notes in the text to yourself: LEARN ABOUT RACE CARS. HOW MANY PEOPLE DID IT TAKE TO DRAG A PYRAMID BRICK? Etc. But get to the end of the first draft BEFORE you bog yourself down in a endless game of chase-the-perfect-facts. So, i do some research if I have to, but I save the rest for when I'm deeper into breaking the story -- either because I need THE RIGHT DETAIL to drive the next scene, or because I'm into a second draft, fixing things, and MORE INFO would inform the fix better.

Thanks Scott. I'm not sure about sainthood. I was inspired by Fredrick Forsythe who made a comment in a collection of "Writers on Writing" that he spends (or at least when he was writing he did) about two years in preparation. His method is to develop and understand his characters, put himself into situations that expose him to the situations of characters, and carry the work in his head for 2-21/2 years, working it over and working it out. Then he sits for three months and writes (empties his head). He doesn't revise, he spends about 3 days with his editors (both American and British) and works through an average of about one query per three pages. His point, and he went on to say that he believes it should take about three years to write a book (I happen to agree), is that the writer needs to know the story and its characters completely before starting the writing, and then write it quickly so the energy is highly focused. It doesn't serve the writing to have to break off halfway to research a situation. I'm constantly impressing on my students that they need to be able to 'tell' me the story before they can begin writing it, and if they can't tell it to me from beginning to end, they don't know it well enough. Which means they don't know their characters, they don't know the conflict, they don't know how it ends. It is easy to start writing too early. Not that I don't think you shouldn't sketch down a potential scene as it pops into your head, but if you write thorough biographies of characters, and then write creatively from their viewpoints, you end up with a lot of very usable and useful material. The same is for story world investigation. Leading into the next day's question, I think too many writers are published way too soon, meaning that they haven't spent enough time creating and knowing their story, and their stuff reads that way. If I could work full time at it (which I can't, I also have to write corporate fiction and teach kids about story) I think once the story concept is settled (prelibation/premise/snapshot) I'd spend about six weeks on character profiles and sketches, a week or two on the dynamics of the story world, probably a week or two on the overall shape model. Mind you, some of this process is reiterative and taking place in parallel. Part of this is visiting sites, talking to people, immersing myself in literature that helps inform me about situations and circumstances and potential conflicts that can be employed. My next process is to consider the subplots and where they engage with the story, and then break down the overall structure model into sequences, and then scenes. A fully fledged step sheet emerges (what I call a storyweave), with each scene discussed in an objective voice, describing the growth of character and incident out of each other. I find this process helps me enrich the story I'm working on. My fear (an aside on another of your posts today) kicks in when it comes time to do the writing because by that stage I'm overawed by the story and I have doubts as to whether I can commit myself to 450-500 hours to do the writing. But I'm gonna get beyond that :)

Now THAT'S the sort of thing I look forward to being able to discuss on the forum!