Pre-Writing Decisions

Welcome to Module 2 of the course!

Maybe you have an idea you’re excited about. You think it’s the one you want to go with. Hooray! Celebrate that. (If not, that's okay, keep working on the brainstorming.)

Now you have some decisions to make. 

First, a caveat. You’re never going to hear me tell you that there is one true way to write or one correct writing process. Process is messy and individual. Part of any writer’s journey is discovering, tweaking, and honing the process that works for you. I think of my process like a quilt I'm constantly adding new squares to. I have taken pieces I’ve learned from all kinds of different methods and classes over the years to form it. I take what works for me, discard the rest, and then weave it into a unique, personalized process.

So, having said that, the concept of pre-writing decisions may or may not apply to how your brain works. You may need to just write into the story to figure out some of these decisions. Or you may inherently know the answers to these questions without having to give it focused thought. But for others, it can be helpful to know some basics about your story before starting.

No matter when you tackle these topics, whether it is before, during, or after, they do have to be tackled at some point. So even though these lectures are placed in the "pre-writing" section, everyone can benefit from them even if you're not doing these steps in the pre-writing phase.

I’m going to cover the following in the next few lectures:

1. Point of View (POV)

2. Tense

3. Genre (including romance subgenres)

4. Length

5. Series or Standalone

6. Heat level

Let's get started!

NOTE: I have a worksheet you can use to note some of these pre-writing decisions. It's included in the last lecture in this module. You can wait until the end to use it or you can hop there now to grab the worksheet and use it as you go through the lectures this week.

Theme song

For this section, I'm going with "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield. It's an older song and always reminds me of the show The Hills, lol. But it's also one that's on my "Writing Caffeine" playlist because it makes me excited to start a new story. "The rest is still unwritten" is both a scary and exciting lyric lol.