Plot Consultant

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A vision board holds images you find inspirational and that represent visions of your goals. It’s a place to put drawings, magazine pictures, photos, quotes—anything that gives you a jolt of joy. What if you could create that same sort of magic for your story? A place where you could visualize and imagine your story and feel inspired to write. Where your actions and beliefs begin to align with your goals and intentions. You can. Think of a plot planner as a vision board for your story.

Plot Planner as a Vision Board for Your Story

Instead of intentions, a plot planner asks that you focus on your scenes. It’s a place to reflect on where your story and characters have been and what they’ve been doing, where they are now and where they and story are going. What’s important to your story becomes a scene. Then, similar to arranging images that represent your goals on a Vision Board, arrange your scenes on a Plot Planner.

The major difference between a vision board and a plot planner? A vision board often becomes a jumble of visual images, which overtime begin to lose their power. On the other hand, with a plot planner, scenes are arranged alongside a line that follows the flow of the universal story. That flow pulls you forward.

Plot Planner

A Plot Planner represents the story you’re either imagining writing, are in the process of writing or are revising. The layout of a Plot Planner mimics the rising and falling energy flow of the Universal Story, and relates to your story direction and movement. This flow creates the basic structure for your story.

Create the Structure

  1. Begin with the line
  2. Divide the line into four parts that correspond the four major phases in the Universal Story
  3. Add the 4 – 5 major turning points or energetic markers

Create the Filling:

  1. List your scenes
  2. Arrange them along the line in the order they appear in your story (if you’re adventurous or dyslexic, begin at the end and plot your way backward)
  3. Stand back
  4. Visualize the rhythm your scenes create

What you’re left with a clear direction of where your story is headed. (For step-by-step in-depth help creating a Plot Planner for your story with examples: Writing Blockbuster Plots)

Power Practice

Before beginning step 4, you first get clear about your story – well, at least as clear as you can be depending on which stage you’re in. Begin with the scenes you have envisioned. With the help of the Plot Planner, ideas for scenes grow.

Seeing your story before your eyes either in images or in words on sticky notes on a Plot Planner actually helps you manifest what you’ve plotted. A plot planner is a visual reminder of your vision for your story. Seeing the overall vision of your scenes and story on a Plot Planner inspires you to believe it will become a reality.

Boost Motivation

The act of visualizing scene placement and your story as a whole increases motivation to write. If you can see it, you can write it.

A Plot Planner becomes a source of encouragement to keep imagining, keep writing, keep revising, keep believing in yourself. It inspires you to write.

Never face a blank page with a blank stare again. With the help of a Plot Planner, each and every blank page you face comes loaded with images that send scene ideas swirling.

A plot planner improves your chances for success.

Plot Any Create Project

You can do the same sort of plotting out your creative goals as you do plotting out your scenes.

  1. Create images of your creative goal(s) similar to what you’d use on a Vision Board
  2. Decide on an end date to accomplish your creative goal
  3. Arrange the images that relate to your creative goal along the same line as a Plot Planner
  4. Stand back
  5. Visualize the rhythm of your life as you pursue your goal

(For step by step in-depth help plotting a creative plan for yourself: Boundless Creativity)