In my Young Adult Fiction Class at Oxford Online, I learned about Young Adult Voice the most. We went through the entire cycle of developing a character, setting up a plot and writing scene pieces in a series of exercises. The output for the class for me was an 850 word opening to a short story. Today I wrote about 1500 more words on it. I'm almost to the life changing point of the story, I expect it will run close to 5000 words total.
To prepare for the short story I've been reading alot about the Armed Forces through a variety of books I haven't added to Goodreads yet. But soon.
I also started a second story I proposed and have written about 300 words on that one; it will be a challenge of viewpoint--the narrative looking backward as well as forward at points.
How do I go from an outline to a story?
Well, I just type. I also use a plot curve--a set of steps of increasing conflict where the protagonist makes choices and it propels him or her further into troubles. It's like an outline but it's more focused on the internal affect of what the choices were i.e:
a) say no to dad -- anger, choose to confront dad
b) flee -- released then more worried, chose to avoid further argument and go alone
c) cut off -- paranoid, character fell broke phone and now can't get help, stay or go
without the increasing the up and down nature of the character's emotion and thoughts it's hard to connect to the character. Having the choice spelled out ensure that the protagonist is the source of his own life--choices aren't being forced upon him by others, although as conflict builds, environment, society, leaders etc. can also impact the character but even then, the cha
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