In response to a question to me, I have not created a 7 Point Story Structure, but have shared many of them. Here’s an amalgamation of resource links. As we move into the big annual NaNoWriMo many of us may be looking for a quick method to plan out our new work.

I personally find that 7 main plot points is a good base for any novel structure, and one which will work with both story and main character arcs also, with character and story merging at these main points. Subplots and other character arcs can add more points.

7 Points can also be defined as a Classical Story Structure, and fits with the Hero’s Journey plot points as a “lite” version quite neatly also.

7 Point Story Structure

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1. Dan Wells

Horror writer Dan Wells is perhaps the King of the 7 Point Story Structure. His series of videos (five of them), openly available on Youtube, are a must-see because he explains the points so well, analysing Harry Potter, Pride & Prejudice and The Matrix alongside the points. From Well’s website, a powerpoint is also available and there is a series of blog posts on the framework also. (links below). Note that in the video presentations, Wells analyses the plot points through to character arcs with The Matrix as an example.

Many others have interpreted, explained and diagrammed Well’s structure.

Links:

• Dan Well’s 7 Point Story Structure Youtube series
• Powerpoint of the presentation content, shared from Well’s website.
• Blog posts on the framework –
  • Writing A Short Story
  • Writing a short story, part 2
  • Writing a Short Story: Part 3
  • Writing a short story: part 4
  • Writing a short story: part 5
  • Writing a short story: part 6
  • Writing a short story: part 7
  • Writing a short story: The End

Dan’s 7 Points are as follows –

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Clik here to view.Hook – this is where the story begins, it’s what your characters start out as or the situation they’re in or the actions that are happening at that moment.
Plot Turn 1 – the part that forces the character or action to move forward.
Pinch 1 – where something serious happens that really puts pressure on the character to fall irrevocably into the arch of the story.
Midpoint – the point of no return, where the character makes that conscious decision to change or move forward on their own (this is where we transition from the Hook to the Resolution).
Pinch 2 – the point where the story really dips and something extreme happens (the mentor is lost, the friends disappear, the protagonist is left alone and in dire straights).
Plot Turn 2 – this is where the story reveals the tools or secrets needed to triumph (the climax of the arc).
Resolution – the story has concluded and we find ourselves in an opposite state from the initial Hook.

2. Belinda Crawford’s Pantser Beat Sheet

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Clik here to view.Belinda Crawford has a few blog posts on using Dan Well’s 7 Point Story Structure, which she also put into a spreadsheet she called the Pantser’s Beat Sheet.

On the below post, she talks about revising her own work against this sheet, she links to some posts, and she provides an Excel Spreadsheet with the 7 Points.  The sheet is in two different versions – the first has the 7 Points, while V2 has the addition of a theme column.

Link: Belinda Crawford’s Pantser Beat Sheet (Excel)

3. Writers to Authors Seven Point Story Structure Ebook

If you subscribe to Jason Hall’s Writers to Authors email newsletter you are offered a download link which provides access to 5 different small ebooks or documents. One is the 7 Point Story Structure Quick Guide, a 5-page check-list explaining each point (via Dan Wells). Or you can read each step through the posts.

Link: Writers to Authors – How to Outline your Novel – Seven Point Story Structure.

4, Algis Budry’s (and others) and John Truby – 7 Point Plot Structures for Short Stories and more

Science Fiction writer Algis Budry is credited with a 7 Point Plot Structure, documented through Philip Brewer’s article ‘Story Structures in Short Stories’ (Speculations 45: 16–18 (Feb. 2002)), but also in Budry’s book called ‘Writing to the Point’. However there are several others with questions towards credits, discussed through short fiction terms and for speculative fiction. Here’s an article at SFF Chronicles which provides some of these. Or I like this interpretation better, found at SF Center. Budry’s are –

1. a character,
2. in a situation,
3. with a problem,
4. who tries repeatedly to solve his problem,
5. but repeatedly fails, (usually making the problem worse),
6. then, at the climax of the story, makes a final attempt (which might either succeed or fail, depending on the kind of story it is), after which
7. the result is “validated” in a way that makes it clear that what we saw was, in fact, the final result.

Note that these points are very similar to that found in Image 4 below, available as a PDF by Novel Software. Budry also suggests that in longer fiction, the try-fail cycle should be repeated three times before hitting the climax. Image 7 below shows an amalgamation of Dan Well’s 7 points as try/fails.

Screenwriter John Truby also has a “Seven Basic Steps of Human Action” which can form points for plot. These are mentioned in the above article.

5. Larry Brooks

Larry Brooks also has a short story article – The Short Story on Structuring Your Short Story, in which he breaks down a 7 point story structure as –

“Like life, our stories always reside somewhere along that same continuum of set-up… shift… response… shift… attack… shift… resolution.”

Brooks, in his many writing craft books, talks about 7 Key Milestone Moments, documented in the below graph. Jami Gold shares several story arc beat sheets in excel format, including one for Larry Brook’s Story Engineering structure. Julie Glover also put the structure into a more colourful chart below.

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5. Others

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1. Dramatica has a PDF with several plot structure diagrams and explanations, as a comparison with their own. Interestingly, they provide Screenwriter Syd Field’s structure diagram as a 7 Point Plot. [Image 3]
2. Novel Software has another interesting interpretation, which can be seen as a way of using the 7 Points as useful as an elevator-pitch type summary of the entire story. This can be downloaded as a PDF from the link above. [Image 4]. This image is very similar to the 7 Point Story Structure credited to Algis Budry (see above).
3. E.P. at Green Where U Water It, has a condensed powerpoint and mindmap summary of Dan Well’s 7 Points here. You can pick up the mindmap as a PDF. [Image 5]
4. Daphne at The Self Publishing Toolkit also runs down Dan Well’s points, and includes a simple table template and Scrivener template to download. The post also contains all five of Well’s videos.
5. If you use the Mindmeister mindmapping software, there’s a 7 Point mindmap template here
6. Karen Woodward has a 2013 post series on Dan Well’s story structure.
7. The Lite version of the Hero’s Journey takes Joseph Campbell’s story structure down from 19 (13 or 10, depending on what versions you use) points to 7. See Image 6 below.
8. Finally, Janet Fox and several others have created graphs comparing many different plot structures or paradigms. Janet’s is below, but also available in PDF form from her website. [Image 9]

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Credits:

• Image 1 by The Thoughtful Novelist (also feature image)
• Image 2 (Dan Wells plot points) – unknown (found on Pinterest)
• Image 3 (Syd Field’s Paradigm – diagram by Dramatica within PDF comparison here)
• Image 4 (Elevator sentences) – diagram by Novel Software.
• Image 5 by Green Where U Water It – mindmap available as PDF here
• Image 6 – Lite version of Hero’s Jouney – credit unknown.
• Image 7 – Try/Fail diagram – Caleb
• Image 8 – Julie Glover’s flowchart of Larry Brook’s Story Engineering structure, from here.
• Image 9 – Janet Fox’s comparison of paradigms, also available in PDF form from her website.

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A few days ago I published “7 Point Structure” in response to an email question. But, over the time in writing and publishing I had returned to my email questioner to ask exactly what was meant – when she talked about 7 Plots, did she mean “7 Plot-points” or did she mean “7 plots as in Master-plots”? The response back was identical to the initial question – she meant 7 Plots. Which wasn’t ideally helpful.

But such is writing – just about everything we talk about has one or two different names for the elements of a story, and sometimes we can’t be clear on what it is exactly that we may be looking for. So here are the 7 Master (or Basic or Universal) Plots.

Of course, there are some who suggest there are only 2, 3, 6 or 10, 15 or 36 universal plots in the world.

But then there’s Christopher Booker, who says there are seven basic plots.

And of course, there are also references to seven types of conflict, which could be held up as plots.

So, here are some more resources for those undergoing an initial rough planning session for their novel or upcoming major writing challenge in NaNoWriMo. The 7 Masterplots…and more…

A Deviation to Three

Firstly let me sidetrack to what one of the latest memes around is saying – that strictly speaking, there are only three master or universal story plots on earth. Being a total geek for all this stuff, I collected it. Actually, it’s six, but three of these are mirrors/reversals.  These latest fall right in line with the seven qualified by Christopher Booker also, so if you want more detail, read Booker’s book (haha) or the resources linked to below.

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The latest meme comes out of the Computational Story Lab at the University of Vermont, and was released this July (2016 for those reading this later). The researchers used computers to analyse over 1700 books for sentiment and map out these as emotional arcs. These story arcs or patterns are reminiscent of the famous story shape diagrams of Kurt Vonnegut, which were presented back in 1995 in a now famous video where he hand draws the story patterns.

Read the media coverage of these findings here: MIT Technology Review, The Sun UK (credit for the images below) and a more detailed report from the Guardian.

The computational story lab findings mapped out six universal story patterns using a tool called a hedonometer and found-

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Note the patterns – rise-fall-rise, steady fall, fall-rise-fall. The names for each pattern may differ depending on what expert or group has named them, but the shapes remain the same.

Note also that very similar graphs and six master plots came out in February 2015 by Professor Matthew Jockers form the University of Nebraska, who analysed 40,000 books (reported here by the Daily Mail, or with more detail and links here at Motherboard). Incidentally, Jocker’s sentiment-analysis tools were released on GitHub for anyone to use, and I would guess formed the hedonmeter that the latest analysis from the Computational Story Lab has visualised for us. Jocker broke his own findings out as –

• There are just two categories broken down into three sub-groups
• ‘Man on a hill‘ – 54 per cent of books – is a positive story with mid-way peak
• But ‘man in a hole‘ sees characters plunge into trouble and crawl out

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Another Aside: 7 Basic Themes or Conflicts

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Clik here to view.Seven is a popular number – sometimes the 7 Basic Plots are confused with themes or conflicts. Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch nominated these seven master conflicts (or themes) found in story (but they are often called 7 Basic Plots) –

1. man against man
2. man against nature
3. man against himself (the internal conflict)
4. man against God
5. man against society
6. man caught in the middle
7. man and woman (romance)

These conflicts can be listed with some different permutations –

1. [wo]man vs. other
2. [wo]man vs. [wo]man
3. [wo]man vs. the environment
4. [wo]man vs. machines/technology
5. [wo]man vs. the supernatural
6. [wo]man vs. self
7. [wo]man vs. god/religion or fate

Example – Of course, these major conflicts must work in unison and with external and internal conflicts: Most man vs nature stories (in a huge storm, for instance) I’ve watched also include conflict between man vs man in trying to survive, and often man vs. [one] other, in that there is often a figure of authority the main character clashes with; and also man vs. self  – the only internal conflict – all without even getting into the whole main through-line of there’s-a-world-ending-storm-coming-our-way.

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Clik here to view.The major conflicts are something taught through our school systems, but also often cut down from the seven to either six or even four major conflict types (shown in the diagrams here), discarding the supernatural, technology, God/fate and other permutations, which can logically be represented in these four.

More details:

• Described at Daily Writing Tips
• Now Novel only describes six.
• This post at Bookosaurus describes five conflicts with examples from literature.

If you have a basic idea of your conflict – or the theme you want to explore – you have a ready-made set of protagonist, the antagonistic force (the obstacle creating conflict) and some story events required to put the two together.

Seven Basic Plots

Okay, got all that? Now we finally get to what is known as the Seven Basic or Master-plots. I think of them as Universal – early examples of each of these stories can be found in almost every culture or nation’s ancient tales.

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In 2004, Christopher Booker published The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. He’d worked on the theory for over 30 years.

He suggested there were seven types of tales:

1. rags to riches (success and crisis)
2. overcoming the monster (hero and the bad guy)
3. the quest (seeking and finding something, the hero’s mythical journey)
4. voyage and return (boldly exploring, another form of the hero’s journey)
5. comedy (from confusion to enlightenment)
6. tragedy (the price of fatal flaws)
7. rebirth (finding a personal light)

In the book, despite the name, Booker actually lists out nine different plots, saying that the final two are more recent in our history. These final two are –

1. rebellion against the “one” – a rebellion against a powerful authority (equates roughly to man against authority/society in the above conflicts)
2. mystery – in which an outsider to an event attempts to discover the truth

Note that even more recently (in my opinion) rebellion has become a genre almost of itself when you consider the many coming of age / bildungsroman stories in hot demand. The “One” doesn’t necessarily have to be an evil dictator, although many of our dystopian young adults like to have someone like that to rebel against.

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Booker also suggests that most of his basic plots meet a Metaplot structure which consists of five stages:-

• Anticipation
• Dream
• Frustration
• Nightmare
• Resolution

Most of the Seven Basic Plots are covered in the 3 (reversed makes 6) story shapes above. If you can get hold of the book, you’ll find a lot more detail on each (it’s a big book, and I found it quite dry reading), but there are also resources available on the web describing Booker’s 7 Basic Plots. Here’s a list of some quick resources to download or read to allow you to get on with your own writing –

• Wikipedia – Seven Basic Plots
• TV Tropes – the Seven Basic Plots
• Eastern Writers – 23 page PDF (slides) – direct link to PDF.
• My Teacher Pages – 2 page PDF (summary) – direct link to PDF.
• You Write On forum – 2 page PDF (summary which also breaks plots out to stages) – direct link to PDF.
• How to Write a Book Now looks more in depth to the Booker plots here, and compares with other structures.
• Story Bistro aligns the plots to other well-known story structures here. The same post by Téa Silvestre Godfrey is found at Business to Community pointing out that our storytelling elements are often tools used in marketing too.

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If you want to map the basic metaplots described by Booker (Anticipation, Dream, Frustration, Nightmare and Resolution) to other plot structures, below is a nice table from How to Write a Novel Now. The metaplot points fit within Michael Hague’s plot points, and across the Hero’s Journey.

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As usual, I am personally of two minds concerning joining up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again this year. But if I do write within the month challenge, I want to go in with minimal planning/mostly pantsing, and take it easy. So, below are some current resources.

I’ve been spending the last few months in series prep mode anyway, but realise that I still don’t have enough of a handle on some structural, character and setting elements. Which is why if I do sign up for NaNo this year, I’m going to go into the second novel with large gaps. Being more of a sequential writer, it’s this that makes me slightly fearful of NaNo, but fear’s always a good sign that I’m heading into an area I can learn from.

There’s not (so far) been a huge amount of NaNo resources published out there on the web this time around. Even the normal desktop poster-calendars and worksheets made by some helpful writers are not as yet available. But here are some of the noticed resources:

• Writing coach, and author Jennifer Blanchard has been sending out some simple preparation tips through her newslist this month. You can find them on her blog here. I especially enjoyed her simple 7 Questions to ask for story plotting. Also look out for the guest posts including Janice Hardy’s on Show not Tell, part of a Better Fiction blog tour. Jennifer will also be running a Story Planning Day via a free virtual workshop on the 25th October.
• At What is a Plot Com, Shaunta Grimes is running 31 Days of Being a Ninja Writer. Sign up for the newsletter or read the daily posts.
• ‘The Plot Whisperer‘ author Martha Alderson won’t be writing a new project in November, but has invited those interested in refining a current draft into the month while she also refines a novel of hers. Martha intends refining her “Refinement Program” over the month, starting 1st November, and will be sharing the process on her blog.
• Writing Coach Lynn Johnston, along with Britt Malta, are currently offering a package with video content and two ebooks including Lynn’s The 30 Day Novel Success Journal. Available here, currently for US$17 (not an affiliate link).
• YA Fiction site, Riveted, has a series on NaNoPrep, with new tips published on Tuesdays. Here’s the latest.
• The creators of the best writing program, Scrivener, traditionally offer great discounts on the product for NaNoWriMo participants and winners. Literature and Latte have just today released their special 2016 trial version offering for Wrimos. For those who already own and use Scrivener, the latest templates with NaNo compile settings are now available too.
• Many other writing apps are offering sponsored discounts for winners again this year, including my own favourite cross-platform writing repository app, Evernote. Offers are here on the NaNo website.
• The NaNoWriMo website refreshed 4th October, with the theme of Space for this year’s event. The site has a new web feature – a timer for your own personal wordsprints. If you like the competition of wordsprints with others, look out for these through the forums and twitter. Speaking of Twitter, NaNo is running all kinds of #NaNoPrep events including tweet-chats. See the event calendar here. This Thursday there is a free webinar with Reedsy editor.

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Clik here to view.And I’ve just created a new Free Resources page which shares, amongst many other things, a one-page downloadable NaNoWriMo Checklist for preparation. The Resources page is found in the main menu link.

My Own NaNo Plans

Although I’m still not sure if and what I’ll be tackling in November, these are the possibilities –

• I won’t be spending time on blogging about my own NaNo attempt this year.
• I may tackle three associated projects – a refinement (as Martha Alderson calls it) of Book 1 in my series, and a first draft (mainly plantsered*) of Book 2, and some series world-building on-the-fly.
• I have rejoined Second Life, the metaversal world where I get to go around as an age and beauty-defying avatar (or occasionally as a dog or skeleton if I feel the need). This is to make use of a couple of SL things – a writing group that forms around NaNoWriMo, and the fact I’ve setup the land I live on to offer me the sounds of ocean waves and natural sounds to write to. My Second Life may last only a couple of months, but as this is the third time back, I am keeping the avatar active when leaving again. I intend opening a simple blog to post up my own second life projects including the reason I’m there – writing. I may from time to time share links to those posts on here, you never know. On that note, it’s from my Second Life writing studio (yes I have one in real life, and now a virtual one also) that the header image comes from. Virtually, I’m much tidier than in reality.

*Plantsers, as coined at NaNo (you can get a personal web-badge with it on) is a mutant cross between plotter and pantser (or planner and pantser?). Book 2 is semi-planned, but I need to really drill down on 5 to 7 key scenes or else, in attempting the first draft I may make some serious series issues regarding arc growths and series throughlines.

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My old self-named author site is being shut down – I find this WordPress.com website ample for the now. In the process, and in preparation for next month’s NaNoWriMo, I’ve created a Free Resources page holding some free PDFs from previous post series, my own infographics, and of importance, the refound NaNoWriMo Checklist document.

You will find the Free Resources page from the top menu.

In the process I discovered that several posts from a few years back have somehow just gone missing off the blog here. If the resource page has some dead links, or errors, please leave me a comment and I will amend.

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I’m making NaNoWriMo my own, after freaking out about the date. Today here in Sydney it’s the 28th, with only four days to go before NaNo starts, and I find myself unready.

I have spent the past month slowly prepping up for the novel I intended writing, but yesterday came to the understanding that I’ve not got the setting right. Normally this could be winged (or pantsed) with a limited understanding of what is needed. But not for this one, the setting is elemental to the entire novel series, the key to not only a large collegiate of new characters but to the entire theme.

I had at some later point intended building a guide book to the world based on the fiction written, as a storybible to check through on revisions. However, it now looks like I need to do that firstly so that I can go into the story with enough base to drive the main characters.

So I won’t be drafting the novel fully through NaNoWriMo. I do have some key pivot scenes to write, so will be working on the draft, but not to any completion. But mostly I will be working on the now supplemental work of building that fictional guide also, plus any new character profiles and plotlines which may come from it.

This type of writing will suit my own November better. As we enter the weekend over here, I’m very aware that my family is committed to full days away for sports events, and other tasks. I won’t be able to write every day through November like I normally do, and will have to make up both wordcount for several days when I do find a day I can plan in time. November has always suited me for writing, more than the CampNaNo months, but I have an inkling this year of how Americans who face family holidays in the middle of the month must feel regarding finding that time for writing.

This means that I will be facing mid-week days where I may need to write for ten hours solid. Normally this suits me if I have enough prep-work done to know the novel almost scene by scene. As I don’t, this would mean I may spend a lot of time gazing at made-up rainbows trying to draw out a muse. Instead, I can move to the guidebook and worldbuilding, which is fictional and creative at least.

I will count new wordcounts on both documents as part of NaNoWriMo.

So that will be my hash of the writing challenge this year. I wish all those who are in NaNo this year every success, whether it’s simply new wordcount or a “win” of the challenge. It’s all good.

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Every year I do this thing, it gets harder.

At 55K words, this morning I made the sudden decision to finalise off my NaNoWriMo challenge, submitted the manuscript (obscurated), picked up the badges, and I’m done with it.

Well, not quite. My month’s word goal was 60,000, and I intend writing more over the next week or so, but I’m sick of having the challenge over my back.

This year it’s been the hardest ever for me to get word count. This is because I went in as a pantser, with no ready knowledge of what scenes to write. I also had a lot of sudden character and world-building to do, all through the draft process, otherwise I had no-where to go with a scene.

This meant that I’ve written a freakish lot of words which didn’t count towards the novel draft, yet took up many many hours more. In total I’ve written well over 100,000 new words this month already. And that’s around many conflicting external time demands. And my eyes decided to show their age, so I had to await new reading glasses and distance vision, tackling headaches and adjustment periods during the early month.

It has been hot too, this month in Sydney – many of those words have been literally sweated out of me.

I had forgotten how heat affects my energy levels and offers a further challenge through NaNoWriMo. I go into these things with a birth-mother’s memory. We don’t remember the pain of childbirth and we WriMo’s don’t remember the pain of writing during this month.

So, although I don’t feel as successful as what a simple wordcount win might have given me on previous challenges, it’s all good. Now I get to get on with ordinary business, Christmas, and of course – more writing. And at last – more reading.

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“Science fantasy is a mixed genre within the umbrella of speculative fiction which simultaneously draws upon and/or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. It also sometimes incorporates elements of horror fiction”. – Wikipedia

“Science Fiction is something that could happen – but usually you wouldn’t want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn’t happen, though often you only wish that it could.”~ Arthur C Clarke.

Introduction

After completing 60K of words within November’s NaNoWriMo writing challenge, I am left with a partial zero draft full of holes and lacking many connective scenes. I have a lot of work ahead of me to make sense of what I wrote, and what I didn’t write but now need to.

In going back into the work this month I began by returning to basics, to ensure I wasn’t missing anything dramatic enough to change or necessitate the dumping of my efforts so far.

My first place was looking into genre and conditioned expectations or tropes. Which is a little difficult in itself.

My novels sit within the superhero genre, which is a sub-sub-genre of speculative fiction. However, it also relies heavily on both science and some supernatural elements. Superheros, although they can and often include some science fiction basis, sit more so within the realm of fantasy fiction, with superheros being the latest rendition (as with Harry Potter and his wizard world) of our call for stories of universal mythical heroes.

Speculative Fiction, as a genre, is huge with many sub-branches into science fiction or fantasy fiction, but with my own novels I have come to the understanding that they sit firmly meshed between science and fantasy,  with some critical elements of both. This is, to put it into a super-genre term, science fantasy.

Science Fantasy

The Science Fantasy genre is a difficult genre to get to grips with.It has never clearly been defined in anyone’s mind, although was the title for a UK magazine published in the 1950’s.

On the one more generic hand you have a definition from Wikipedia: –

“Distinguishing between science fiction and fantasy, Rod Serling claimed that the former was “the improbable made possible” while the latter was “the impossible made probable”.^[1] As a combination of the two, science fantasy gives a scientific veneer of realism to things that simply could not happen in the real world under any circumstances. Where science fiction does not permit the existence of fantasy or supernatural elements, science fantasy explicitly relies upon them” ~Wikipedia.

But then you have TV Tropes which counteracts its own definitions with expectations that science fiction has recurring tropes of robots, scientists, aliens and humanoid aliens while Fantasy has warriors, dragons, castles and supernatural elements.

“Science Fiction and Fantasy stories can be difficult to tell apart under normal circumstances, as all but the very hardest sci-fi introduces some hypothetical technology that one has to take on faith, like FTL Travel or Humanoid Aliens. And at the other end of the scale, even High Fantasyworks have consistency requirements like Magic A Is Magic A, which can blur the line into Sufficiently Analyzed Magic.

Science Fantasy works, on the other hand, take traditional Fantasy and Science Fiction tropes and throw them in a blender, purposely creating a setting that has the feel of both. Expect to see a lot of classic Fantasy tropes (e.g. warriors with swords, dragons, wizards, castles, and elves) and a lot of standard Science Fiction tropes (e.g. spaceships, aliens, lasers, scientists, robots, and Time Travel)” ~ TV Tropes.

No, TV Tropes, my own novels do not currently include lasers, spaceships, aliens or warriors with swords. Yet I do agree, there is a blend of some elements from each.

Then you have this article by Randy Henderson “Is it Science Fiction or Science Fantasy?” published at fantasy-magazine.com, which describes science fantasy as the third level of science fiction –

• Hard Science Fiction
• Soft Science Fiction
• Science Fantasy

That article also suggests that the Star Wars franchise is science fantasy due to the mixture of spaceships and a supernatural Force. And it provides a good definition –

“The difference is that if the story includes a mix of possible science fiction (i.e. scientifically possible future or alternate events or technology) and something that is impossible (no matter how plausible the author makes it sound), then it is science fantasy.”~ Is it Science Fiction or Science Fantasy?

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction takes a much gentler attempt at defining Science Fantasy –

Certain sf themes are especially common in Science Fantasy – Parallel Worlds, other Dimensions, ESP, Monsters, Parallel Worlds, Psi Powers and Supermen – but no single one of these ingredients is essential. ~ SFE.

The SFE page, however, after listing a lot of well-known authors in Science Fantasy then goes on to note that through the online Encyclopedia body of work, such mixes of two genres like that are referred to under the name of Equipoisal.

Nowadays as consumers we are used to mashups in our music, books and other media.

Returning to the Wikipedia page on Science Fantasy, there is some suggestions towards sub-genres of this sub-genre: steampunk, post apocalypse, and sword and planet are listed. Often these genres or works within them do include elements of science and fantasy, as do both blending into the superhero genre.

Science Fantasy for Superheroes

If we look at the latest swathe of superheroes both in DC and Marvel movie franchises, the heroes include those based off scientific technology or accident origins (Batman and Ironman, Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk ) and those based off pure fantasy or mythology (Dr Strange, Thor, The Scarlet Witch).  Question – do the Green Lanturns, who are guardians appointed by supposedly superior alien beings, fall within the scope of science or fantasy?

In A.V.’s article “Starships, swords and the faded grandeur of science fantasy” one of our biggest films of later years, The Avengers, is held up as pure science fantasy, providing every earmark of the genre, including aliens and ancient gods. This article also suggests that although we may not recognise science fantasy as a viable form, it provides the dynamics and engine behind many of our best loved stories and cinema. Rather than a sub-genre, or positioned in-between these two large genres of science and fantasy, the article goes on to suggest that science fantasy is more like a supergenre sitting overtop of these two large categories.

Suffice to say, although no-one may entirely agree as towards the definition and tropes of what is science fantasy, it does exist, has recognisable applications for the writer, and for me – it’s what I am writing.

Even TVTropes, at the end of the article suggests that the definition of Science Fantasy is “arguably” indeterminate –

“Science fantasy may also arguably describe character oriented stories where the fantastic elements are very subtle and are common to both science fiction and fantasy. Examples could include Paranormal Romance which just happens to involve Applied Phlebotinum, TimeTravel or Artificial Intelligence. Many such stories strive to keep the fantastic elements understated (often in the form of minimal Special Effects) in the interest of focusing on human drama”. – TV Tropes.

The Superhero Sub-Genre is an origin and human story of one person – by some means – becoming an enhanced powered hero. It is – or should be – a very humanistic story concentrating on character growth.

So although

This reckoning has two repercussions for me –

1. Bookstores and sellers do not have a Science Fantasy category on their shelves. More often than not they combine science fiction and fantasy onto the same shelves also. So the point is relatively mute – for categorization I will need to submit under a more known genre such as Fantasy (or even superhero as an overall and understood catchment).
2. However, I will need to investigate both science and fantasy as overall genres to understand fully the expected tropes and expectations of readers. This generic knowledge base will then need to be augmented with conditions from the superhero sub-genre also.

Some of this I know already. However, as I do encounter new theories I will post up here, under a general series on Science Fantasy Fiction.

“Science fiction makes the implausible possible, while science fantasy makes the impossible plausible.” ~ Rod Serling

Science Fantasy Sources

• Wikipedia – Science Fantasy
• TV Tropes – Science Fantasy
• Is it Science Fiction or Science Fantasy? – Randy Henderson, Fantasy-Magazine.com
• The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [SFE] – Science Fantasy and Equipoise Genre
• A.V. Club – Starships, swords and the faded grandeur of science fantasy
• Robobeat – Thoughts on the science fantasy genre.
• Simon Dillon – Why Star Wars is not science fiction, and related matters…
• Scholarworks@UNO – Towards a Definition of Science Fantasy [PDF]
• Jeff Vandermeer – Does it need magic to be science fantasy?

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Just a quick update. I’ve been missing from my blog over the past few months, for many reasons –

• The long school holidays here in Sydney, accompanied by world record heat (if anyone doesn’t agree that faces dripping with sweat aren’t very conductive to writing with electronic devices, you owe me an air conditioner and payment of my energy bills)
• My discovery of Netflix and binge watching. Not recommended, although I’ve watched 155 episodes of The Vampire Diaries and am impressed with the complicated threads of story structure the writers inpur to the series).
• School returns with a hectic season of sports tournaments and grand finals, and the finding that my eyesight isn’t what it used to be.
• And any other procrastination device I can excuse myself with.

However, I have been writing, and developing my huge story world bible towards the series I have partially written. And I’ve continued to pin and tumblr interesting articles on writing topics as I’ve gone.

For this blog, I have no large plans as yet. But I’m sure there will be a few more articles to come. Meanwhile – happy writing, everyone.

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Just for fun. Before starting my writing day this morning, I was doing some organising through some Pinterest boards, and came across this graphic.

I find using the Myers-Briggs personality profiles helpful in new character development, and this graphic (which can be traced back by several years) appears to be based on this, but the originator and any explanation has since disappeared from the web.

Like most writers, I'm sure that what form of dialogue or story motion is dependent on the individual story being told, but also that most writers do have a tendacy to form stories with the same emphasis on certain elements. But I'm also not sure there are only four elements in question, nor whether there's an “or” statement between each. And what forms make up our newer genres?

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Fun to consider, though.

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Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana ~ variously attributed to Groucho Marx, Spike Milligan or Terry Wogan.

I left this blog for another last year, but have since closed that interloper down. Four days into @NaNoWriMo for this year of 2019, and I realised I might just refresh this old blog, for just in case.

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Clik here to view.NaNoWriMo Update: 14,000 words in. Not bad considering I couldn’t write much at all over the weekend. I was away at an all weekend softball state tournament, in high heat and humidity. I took the Ipad with the intentions to write, safe away from random softballs under the shade of trees, but even then, the heat sapped the battery up within less than an hour. First world problems, or NaNo excuses ahoy. It just meant I had a lot of word count to make up for over the last two days.

I began NaNoíng in 2009, in Great Britain at the time. I’ve since moved into a pen name email address, and with the complete new site design for NaNoWriMo this year, most of the historical data has gone missing on the many years I’ve completed the challenge, but it’s kind of invigorating to be looking back at it ten years on.

The Sydney municipal group is interesting this year. The new forum designs aren’t easy to navigate, with no connected messages with replies. It’s hard to tell what’s going on. Sydney also has a group on discourse, a page on the NaNo site, and a facebook (and probably twitter I suspect). Different local Sydneysiders are all chatting in different areas. I can’t even find/remember if I published my own introductory post anywhere this time. But what is good is to see that a lot of new people have joined up to write this year.

Because of the new site, there are no real progress badges, wordcounters or even headers to boast with this year. I”m tracking progress on a simple google spreadsheet, and another created in a productivity app, Notion, but everything feels very different this year from the last.

Ten years down the line, I am pleased to find that I can still sit and type for 5000 words per day without soreness, or losing my eyesight. That’s half of what I was capable of ten years ago, where I could add 10,000k wordcounts per day. But it’s still a good effort.

And I’m pleased with what I’ve written so far. It’s actual new words and story. Not the procrastinational aspects of world-building I thought I’d first get into.

Another similarity which is special is my writing companion. This year I have three dogs who accompany my writing, in various forms of relaxation. But one of them is Simon, my sheepdog. He is now twelve, and in great health for an Old English in his last golden years. We are told each year by his vet that this year might be his last, but he’s still here writing with me through NaNo. He was two, and a puppy still when we started all this back in Britain in 2009. There it was high Autumn, here it’s high Spring, but in both cases Simon is stretched out asleep in a sunny patch through the doors, probably wondering at this point when he’s going to get fed.

He’s right. It is time he was fed.

I’m always after the best productivity and self-care tools, but lately I’ve switched over to a few which really seem to be setting into stone for me for usefulness, so here they are, my top 6 productivity and self-care tools.

Note that the first two are complicated to get to grips with, but mostly because they are fully customisable. This means you will need to spend some time on learning what you can do, and what you like, before they will provide the overall productivity benefits.

Notion.so

Notion.so combines everything you may get in Trello, Evernote, Airtable and Wikispaces. It operates with blocks, and databases. The databases can be filtered and viewed in several formats – list view, datatable view, kanban board, calendar view or a gallery, all with tags, and filtered to projects. They can all be interlinked also. Notes can be simple text blocks, checklists, toggles (to hide lots under) or embed google docs, PDFs or webpage links.

The pages are sharable and allow for comments also, for work. Most users start off by creating a personal dashboard of all the most important areas of life, creating an ultimate task list, and a few areas to collect notes within.

I run with Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain system of PARA – Projects, Areas, Resources and Archive. Projects are, well, projects – so they have a set date, Areas are anything else that you have a longtime responsibility over (like your health or family, or being a writer, for instance), and Resources are where I collect all my reference documents or links on all subjects, as a categorised set of wiki pages.

The webclipper works well for me in getting in webpages. The tasklist, calendar options also allow me to be notified for task due dates. The template button feature allows me to create full pages (with sub-pages) and then set it up as a full template to be replicated at a click of a button. This is how I create new projects.

Notion can be complicated to learn and setup, but there are a lot of free templates, and youtube videos to get you started.

There are four tiers from a free tier (you may well run out of blocks on this one, being a writer), a personal subscription (which I am on), a team or an enterprise. The personal subscription is fine for me, allowing for lots of resources.

In the gallery above I have screenshotted four of my many Notion pages. I think of Notion as the system organiser for my life. My four pages are –

• Life Wiki page – this is my top level dashboard, with links to my most important pages (these pages can also be “favourited” onto the Notion sidebar for easy access. Note that the header or cover images on my dashboards are personally designed by me. In Notion you can also use cover images from NASA or unsplash, or upload your own as I have done.
• Daily Dashboard – this needs further rejigging by me, as I no longer use the workflows found here. Importantly, the page shows how I have embedded a local weather app, and a writer’s quotes of the day to a sidebar column. The page also links to my daily calendars etc, and to some planning pages.
• Digital Writer’s Notebook – this is formed from a template collection (and includes links to more templates) for writers, shared originally by Rachel Scarlet, but since customised by myself. This is not a story bible, but rather a one-page dashboard where my writer support systems are accessible, including links to writer reference resource pages, a writer journal, and pages which contain submission tracking databases and the like.
• Project Example – my NaNoWriMo Project for this last month. As I have just finished this, and was working on my major writing series project within the challenge, I will now simply drag and drop this whole NaNo project page into my main WIP project page, and therefore keep all the wordcounts and subpages created during NaNo. I screenshot this particular project because it features a lot of notion’s custom options including embedded and workable google docs, toggle organisation, columns which allow you to customise your wiki pages, checklists, and two inline databases which filter the view from a master database of notes.

Note – I use Notion as a systems organiser and life planner, I take lots of notes, and do a lot of planning in Notion. But I do not use Notion as a writing platform.

Notion for me has replaced Trello, and almost replaced Evernote in many ways, but it still has shortcomings:

• It’s not mobile or portable. Notes are kept in the cloud, and there are Notion apps to work with your data, but these are not fully useful if you are offline.
• It does not have normal tables (which I like to use) as all tables are databases. To get around this I either link to or upload word or excel documents, or embed google docs, which allows for formatting.
• Notion does not have recurring tasks.

Many features are still being worked on, with timelines (project gantt charts) coming up, and a more robust offline system, and the api, which will allow for many more interlinkages and custom options. But there’s a growing crowd of adopters who are producing templates and training for Notion.

I will do a bigger future post on how I use Notion as my daily dashboard and as a writer, and link to some of the most useful writerly templates out there, but in the meantime, if Notion.so interests you, try out the free option, and using this link you will get $10 credit on your account.

Amazing Marvin

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I expect I’m like most people – I try out task management apps, and swap them out when something doesn’t work. I’ve tried just about every one like todoist, rememberthemilk, and lately ticktick. I’m (confession time) not great at liking to plan, and have pressed on my own natural talent in remembering things really well.

Whilst Notion.so does have a wonderful capability for setting calendar dates and statuses onto a task list, and it does have a reminder system, there is still a great lot lacking in it’s task management functions, namely it does not allow for recurring tasks.

Some Notion users therefore look at external task apps, and a few are embeddable into Notion itself (using the embed function). Ticktick embeds nicely but I’ve found it gets stuck on updating/synching. And I found using ticktick for me just didn’t work to my natural patterns.

In the last few weeks I’ve been using Amazing Marvin, and I’m falling in love. I got it cheap for a year for a start (there was a discount running via Appsumo). Subscriptions range depending on the cycle you purchase. Currently if you buy for a year, it’s only $8 per month.

Once I had the app, the work started…

The problem with Amazing Marvin is that it is fully customisable. And you can turn on and off a huge number of productivity strategies and workflows. You can have categories, projects, tags, sub-tasks, setup your calendars with timeblocking, setup a number of day calendar sections (I’m currently using morning, afternoon and evening), and to top these all off, you can also setup the entire system to mimic various popular productivity and task management systems such as GTD, ticktick, todoist, things3, nivana hq or nozbe. Oh, and there are various calendar views, you can pull in your other calendars, and create recurring tasks, identify them as habits, or set timers like pomodoros to work with your timeblocks.Then you can customise the sidebar to show only what you want, and then you can setup smart lists (filtered lists).

A few weeks in, and I’m still playing around with the so many options, to create my own perfect and simplified task manager. And although some of this might be accused of being a timesuck, I’ve used the time as a motivation around actually doing the work and tasks I had planned.

Amazing Marvin also embeds well into my Notion dashboard. I use it as a full page, and can do anything within the html frame that I can do outside in a browser tab.

Unfortunately Marvin still needs work in the app department. There’s a handy little iphone app, but there’s no ipad app as yet. But the webpage app works well within Safari on the ipad.

The Front Page at Amazing Marvin shows you a lot of the features.

Scrivener and Evernote

Okay, Scrivener is still my writing editor of choice. However, I am a frustrated Windows user. We have been promised Windows 2 version of Scrivener for over a year now, which brings back memories of how long it took for Windows 1. Meanwhile, we don’t have customisable index cards and a lot of other features which make the Mac version debatably the best writing app out there.

On the good side, Scrivener has a great and compatible iOS app version, and I can write on and offline on both desktop and my ipad after synching my projects through dropbox. And I work naturally with the sidebar approach to trees of folders and files.

On the bad side, the webpage embed no longer seems to work on Windows, and tables can not be formatted. Images can’t be formatted either.

This means that whilst many Scrivener users say that they use the app as both a writing editor and platform to hold all their planning and research, for me it’s not workable. Any research pages I create or even a character profile sheet with multiple images finds me swearing because of the lack of formatting options, and then double-swearing because the whole system slows down on automatic saves.

Scrivener does have the bonus of two apps which can integrate data through to it. I do own and occasionally use Aeon Timeline, but won’t integrate those projects into Scrivener as they may overwrite some of my meta data. My favourite app is Scapple, which I don’t use to integrate into Scrivener, instead I use Scapple as a valuable mindmapping tool. Through Scapple I have created many visual entity maps of character relationships, family trees and also series plans.

I used to get around some of this by taking all my research notes and webpage scrapes through to Evernote. I’ve been a premium Evernote user since 2009, one of the first. But Evernote started really hounding the corporate and business markets over the past few years, and left the individual user to themselves. Lately a new word count function has come out at least. But with several thousand notes within Evernote, my own system has just ground to a halt with the automatic save going off, meaning I just have to sit there unable to type. Plus the formatting still has much to be desired regarding placement of images. And there is no PDF export option for a notebook, so you are confined with reading your notes through the apps.

I remain a happy Scrivener user for drafting – actually typing and rewriting my manuscripts, and for convertions into different formats. And I still use Evernote for research and some planning if I feel like it….

But neither is a good place for a workable huge world building notebook or series bible. Which is where the following comes in.

Good Old New MS Office

MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint and MS OneNote – these should be in your toolbox.

MS Word has come a long way in things like formatting, and also is good for final manuscript preparation before converting to PDF. It’s still the industry standard for writing and editing, receiving comments back from beta readers and editors etc.

MS Excel has saved my bacon on multiple occassions where I’ve struggled with other apps to produce a workable and formatted timeline of backstory events per character, or for word count and writing tracking. I seldom use the maths functions, it’s all about columns and rows in a table, and colour coding. Google sheets does a good sharable rendition, but noticably many of the shared word trackers out there which use formula do not work in Google Sheets once imported.

MS Powerpoint. This will probably surprise many people not into content production, but powerpoint does much more than slideshows nowadays. It’s a fully workable graphics app, can create animated videos, and is used by many low content producers to format and produce low content books like planners, journals, and even the book covers.

MS OneNote. This. This is my powertool for my huge series bible, and another even larger world building notebook for my work in progress. I prefer to use the old OneNote 2016 app on my desktop, combined with several plugins which give me a calendar, and features like wordcount, etc. OneNote 2016 is no longer supported but still downloadable. It has several features more than the latest web-based version, and you can still save and synch your notebooks through to OneDrive. I also have OneNote, the MS Office version, and often have two notebooks open on my desktop – a reference one through the normal OneNote Office app, and my series project notebook through the 2016 desktop app.

OneNote just offers more formatting options for all of my research and notes. I have setup character profile templates which I can copy and paste, and have multiple note sections and master sections to divide everything. Importantly, the OneNote clipper through my browser is as equally good as the Evernote one, and allows me to bring in as much research pages and alter them as I wish.

Notebooks or notes can also be published as PDF files – the formatting on these leaves a lot to be desired, but at least it’s an option to take your notes on the fly. (And I then import these as PDF files into my Scrivener projects).

Wavebox Pro

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I’ve been using Wavebox for 18 plus months now. Mostly I have it open on my main email account – a google account, and the rest of my many apps are asleep as buttons on the side or along the top. I have quick access to facebook, my google calendar, and other associated services through my accounts, and don’t have to waste valueable resources by having these open in browser tabs. The greyed buttons (like that of Facebook) are apps I haven’t opened in a timeframe and are therefore asleep and not churning through computer resources. This is the important feature which hits the productivity factors, providing much less potential for distraction than having these tabs open in a browser.

Wavebox offers a basic and free plan which includes 2 gmail accounts, or I have the personal plan at $4 per month which provides the ability to add all your accounts (as I have done) and have the sleep function working. There is also a team plan.

Like many of these other apps mentioned, there are discounted plans for education and non-profits.

Wavebox lets me cut down on browser tab clutter and helps me centralize my app management. It works for all web or cloud-based apps, providing either a webapp to access these, or a desktop app.

The screenshot above is only one corner of my own Wavebox Pro, showing my google mail accounts at top, and the actual page of google emails. Along the top are associated google accounts including my calendar. Along the side I’ve created buttons for several of my top webapps. Facebook, Pinterest and Dropbox web are all accessible from those buttons. And of course, the latest in Notion and Amazing Marvin are all there also.

Subliminal Messages and Affirmations for Writers

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I believe I have previously mentioned using a subliminal app called Subliminal Power or something like that. Unfortunately with moving onto a new laptop I lost the install and licensing key to this software. But I’ve been saved, because Subliminal Messages is a free software which does exactly the same.

It’s pretty basic, comes with lots of prepopulated affirmations, and with a customisable option to add your own messages. A timer and further settings allow you to play with how often and where the affirmations will appear on your screen while you work.

I could have made up my affirmations, but didn’t need to. Jackson Dean Chase has an MP3 or ebook called Affirmations for Authors as an OTO or upsell offer at the moment for a bundle of craft books (if this interests you, here’s the front salespage link which is time sensitive) or there’s a mass of web pages dedicated to these, including : –

• 60 Affirmations for Authors, Writers & Poets
• Affirmations for Writers
• 21 Affirmations for Writers
• Check Amazon or your favourite bookseller to find more, or
• Youtube has many guided affirmations for writers.

I think this is a win-win. Many experts providing advice on self-care matters mention things like meditation, journaling, visualisations and affirmations as ways to change mindset. Using these affirmations while you work as subliminal programming does work for me, in that I do write much more with this on.

Just a quick update. I’ve been missing from my blog over the past few months, for many reasons –

• The long school holidays here in Sydney, accompanied by world record heat (if anyone doesn’t agree that faces dripping with sweat aren’t very conductive to writing with electronic devices, you owe me an air conditioner and payment of my energy bills)
• My discovery of Netflix and binge watching. Not recommended, although I’ve watched 155 episodes of The Vampire Diaries and am impressed with the complicated threads of story structure the writers inpur to the series).
• School returns with a hectic season of sports tournaments and grand finals, and the finding that my eyesight isn’t what it used to be.
• And any other procrastination device I can excuse myself with.

However, I have been writing, and developing my huge story world bible towards the series I have partially written. And I’ve continued to pin and tumblr interesting articles on writing topics as I’ve gone.

For this blog, I have no large plans as yet. But I’m sure there will be a few more articles to come. Meanwhile – happy writing, everyone.

Just for fun. Before starting my writing day this morning, I was doing some organising through some Pinterest boards, and came across this graphic.

I find using the Myers-Briggs personality profiles helpful in new character development, and this graphic (which can be traced back by several years) appears to be based on this, but the originator and any explanation has since disappeared from the web.

Like most writers, I'm sure that what form of dialogue or story motion is dependent on the individual story being told, but also that most writers do have a tendacy to form stories with the same emphasis on certain elements. But I'm also not sure there are only four elements in question, nor whether there's an “or” statement between each. And what forms make up our newer genres?

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Clik here to view.

Fun to consider, though.