Story Arcs, Scene Mapping & Spreadsheets by Natasha Woodcraft

I’ve just finished the second draft of my Work in Progress. For me, a first draft means writing in the flow. I know where my character is going to end up, but I don’t really know how I’m going to get them there. I have an idea of what lies they are telling themselves and how they need to overcomes these lies, and what challenges I’m going to throw at them along the way, but I haven’t mapped out each scene. I’m writing roughly to a planned story arc and I’ve probably plotted the key turning points in the story, but that’s about it.

As I’m not much of a plotter, analysing the story arc in more detail, and scene mapping, is the task of the 2nd draft. As I’m sure you’re all aware, there are various strategies around for helping you hit points of your story arc in a way that readers subconsciously expect (like “Save-the-Cat” which can be helpful for some story-types – but not all.) There are different story-types, and the story arc will look slightly different for each of these. Many of us will write ‘heroes-journey’ type stories (often without realising it – the “Quest” is almost a default type, as it features in the myths of old, so is probably the oldest story-type). 

Others might write romances where A overcoming obstacle + B overcoming obstacle = AB happily ever after. Middle-grade and YA stories are often “coming of age” narratives. Other stories might be action-based and plot focused, rather than character driven, but should still have some sort of value-shift going on. Some may write tragedies or even anti-hero stories (my first novel was one of those – talk about jumping in at the deep-end!) People have different opinions on how many story-types there are, and usually, good novels will combine elements of different story-types. 

Perhaps you don’t write stories at all because you’re a poet or non-fiction writer, but you recognise these story-types. Even if you haven’t studied creative writing, it’s something that gets talked about in Shakespeare lessons at school.

If you are a fiction writer though, it’s well worth investing time into analysing what’s typical for your genre, what your individual story-type is, and where “beats” or turning points usually appear on the arc of that story-type. A good story arc analysis will go a long way to preventing lulls and slow spots, and giving your reader what they want. You may find you need to move a few scenes about, or cut some out.

So what do I mean by scene mapping? I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but just in case you don’t know what I’m on about, or you call this process by a different name, I’ll give you the run down. Each scene in our story must have a purpose. We know this. Our characters need to have a goal in mind and come up against some sort of conflict or challenge that forces them to make a decision. This works on the scene level as well as the story arc level. If scenes don’t have these basic elements, they will be lacking gravitas, impetus and point. 

So I also analyse each individual scene at 2nd draft stage, assessing whether it deserves a place, whether the conflict is strong enough and whether it achieves anything. Most problems are easily fixed by a sentence here or there. The most dramatic scenes should be those that happen at significant turning points in your story, based on your story arc. For example, the inciting incident, which should usually happen about 10-12% through, or sooner. When I scene map, I analyse the place and potency of those key scenes.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed reading this, I have good news. There’s some really helpful software out there that can help you with story analysis and scene mapping. Programs like Plottr, Scrivener and Fictionary (there’s lots more) have built in visual aids that can help. But I’m a bit of a cheap skate, so I do it the free way – I have a mammoth spreadsheet and some large bits of blank paper! 

The paper is my visual aid – I draw my story arc and use different coloured pens to write in key points for the characters. It gets messy, but visually, it helps. The spreadsheet is another matter. I write in series, so my spreadsheet doesn’t just cover the arc of the individual books, but also the series. Which gets intense. In my WIP, there were 120 scenes to analyse – I’m not kidding. Columns for % of story, Point of View, tense, goal, plot point, characters in, and mentioned subplots all feature. Because I write Christian fiction, I also have a column for “spiritual point”. Here's a really small image of the first few lines of my WIP spreadsheet (no story peeking!)

So, what do I leave for later? Well, I’m a compulsive line editor – as my critique partners know! I’m trying hard to improve on this, but I just can’t help tweaking… The reality is, though, line edits are for a later stage, once you’ve run your story past trusted others and received feedback on whether you are hitting those beats like you thought you were, whether your scenes are as powerful as you hope and whether you need to kill off a character. Try to resist line editing during the second draft, even if it’s hard. It’ll save you a ton of time. (By the way, line-editing columns also feature on my spreadsheet – such as scene openers & closers, setting, senses etc, but I won’t touch them until the next draft.)

So that’s some of my process. I’d love to know yours. What story-type are you writing? What do you do at what stage? And do you find any particular software helpful?

Natasha Woodcraft lives in a slightly crumbling farmhouse in Lincolnshire with her husband, 4 sons and a menagerie of animals. She believes stories have power to communicate deep truth and transform lives. Her published novels, The Wanderer Scorned & The Wanderer Reborn, explore God’s redemptive purposes for messy people by reimagining the tale of Cain & Abel. She's one half of the team behind Broad Place Publishing, a new UK publishing house specialising in Christian fiction.