One of the biggest, and possibly the biggest, obstacle to becoming a writer... is learning to live with the fact that the wonderful story in your head is infinitely better, truer, more moving, more fascinating, more perceptive, than anything you're going to manage to get down on paper. So you have to learn to live with the fact that you're never going to write well enough. Of course that's what keeps you trying — trying as hard as you can — which is a good thing. —Robin McKinley

Story Structure: Holding Your Story

After today we will start plotting and organizing your story in earnest. So, today, on your last day of free writing, you only have one prompt. Write for as long as you can in response. 

Pretend like a friend has asked you about your project and you are trying to give her a very quick overview of your story. You will write this in a convoluted and confusing way, but I want you to practice holding the whole thing in your head. This exercise is not to produce a perfect synopsis, but to practice holding your whole story. Keep going even when it doesn’t make sense. Just write until you feel like you’re done.

My story is about...

Optional Exercise: Formal Synopsis

If that was easy for you, I’d like for you to try something harder. Don’t do this if you aren’t there yet as this is quite difficult. This is not free writing, but formal, edited, thinking stuff. Think of this as something well written that you are submitting to an editor.

Write a 250 word synopsis of your story.

Optional Exercise: One Sentence

If you are able to easily write a 250 word synopsis (rare!), please try one more. Please provide a one sentence answer to the following question:

My story is about...

Good job! Tomorrow we will start breaking this story into parts.

The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature. -- Willa Cather