One Template to Rule Them All - The Process Breakdown

Download: The Process Breakdown

If you've read my post on Narrative Space, you know that I like a well-defined task.  When it comes to writing fiction, it's all about setting goals for me, and that's what the Process Breakdown template is all about.

Most of my other templates are just bullet lists--series of questions designed to get you thinking about a particular area of your story's narrative space.  But the Process Breakdown stands above that; its purpose is to organize all those other templates into a cohesive picture of your project, help you track your progress, and serve as a hub for accessing all your documents.

It's broken into phases, most of which contain a simple table like this:

	Interview Phase
	Task	Status	Notes	Materials

Most of these phases are kept pretty open-ended.  You just make yourself a to-do list in the "Task" column, then when a task is complete, you write "Done" in the "Status" column.  If you have some kind of problem with the task, you can write "Problem", and if it's in-progress, but not currently active, you can write something like "Pending".  What you write is up to you.

The "Notes" column can be used to record any information you need.  If you've decided to skip the task, you might put your reasoning in that column instead of deleting the task, that way you have a record of your thought process in case you change your mind.  You might also fill the notes column with reminders about what you still need to do to finish that task.

Where this template really shows its usefulness is in the "Materials" column.  Most word processors have the ability to insert hyperlinks into documents.  In Microsoft Word, it looks like this:

Depending on what toolbars you have visible, the hyperlink symbol might also be present on a toolbar.  Other programs will have a similar symbol in a similar location.

When you click the "Insert Hyperlink" option, a dialogue box will appear.  you will see something like this:

On the left hand side (or somewhere in the dialogue box, if you're using a different program), you will see several options.  Traditionally, hyperlinks are thought of as links to the web.  But this is not all they can do.  Hyperlinks can also link to a specific document on your computer, or even on your cloud drive.  How to do this is pretty self-explanatory, but if you need help, here's a great video on how to do it:

Once you have a hyperlink set up, you can open the document in a single click.  One small note: in Excel and other spreadsheet programs, each cell can only contain one functional hyperlink, so you may need to insert a new row if you have multiple documents related to each task.

If you interview someone as part of your research, you can link to your transcript or notes from the interview.  When you write your character sketches, you can link to each of them.  This way, you can keep your files wherever, and when you sit down to work on your project, you can simply open your Process Breakdown and BAM!  They're all just a click away.  No more flipping through frayed, dog-eared spiral notebooks, searching for the scribblings of three months ago.  No more clicking through maze-like file paths trying to remember where you put your setting notes.  No more getting two similarly-named files confused.  Everything you need is neatly organized, and at your fingertips.

Now that you have the general idea, let's take a look at each of the phases in this document.

Interview Phase

If you write nonfiction, or novels based on true stories, Interviews are a crucial part of your work.  You probably already have a solid process in place.  But fiction authors occasionally need to do interviews as well.

We've all heard the imperative to "write what we know", but sometimes you want to delve into something new, and you can't get everything from the internet.  For example, if you majored in English, and you want to write a story about a Physics major, you might be able to find all the physics knowledge you need online, but you'd be hard-pressed to accurately recreate the essence of being a physics major.  You might need anecdotes about absent-minded professors, or grim tales of late-night cramming sessions.  If you're a sci-fi author like me, you might want to ask a real scientist about some of the crazy scenarios you dream up.  Interviews are a great way to come by more detailed, personal information on any subject, and they can add a lot to your fiction project.

Research Phase

But at some point, chances are you will have to do some real research.  Sometimes there's just no substitute for sticking your nose in a book, or in front of a computer screen.  Anyone who's dabbled in historical fiction will know what an important part of the writing process this is.  And if you're going to do research, you're going to take notes.  If you're going to take notes, you're going to need them at your fingertips during the writing process.  So take a moment to link to them in your process breakdown, and you'll never be without them.

Preparation Phase

Here's where things start to get a little more structured.  In the Planning Phase sheet, you'll see this list of tasks:

These are, for me, all the documents I could possibly want to create in preparation for writing a story.  I don't always choose to do all of these, but these are all the documents I could choose to do (this is where my studies of narrative space led me).  In case you didn't already see, I've provided a template for each of these tasks.

The order of these tasks is not important.  I rarely do them in the order you see them here (though I almost always start with a Sketch).  But when I do them, I link to them in my process breakdown, and then I always have them at the ready.

Writing Phase

Here's where we get into some next-level stuff.

The first four columns are the same as always.  I write the chapter number or title in the "Task" column, and in the "Notes" column, I put a one-sentence reminder of what happens in that chapter.  Add a link to the chapter itself in the "Materials" column, and Bob's your uncle.

But the remaining columns deal with something important I think a lot of writers overlook: word count.

When I'm writing any story, no matter what my goal length is, I find it is CRUCIAL to track my word count as I go.  Not only is it encouraging to see how far I've gotten, but it helps me keep an eye on my story's proportions.  In a well-structured story, each of the four acts should represent roughly 25% of the total word count.  Not only that, but chapter length has an important effect on how the reader perceives the importance of events.  If I spend 3000 words describing a character's office, they're probably going to assume that setting is important.  If I blow through an action scene in 700 words, they're probably going to assume those events don't have a very strong bearing on the rest of the plot.

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons for an important passage to be short, or for an unimportant one to be long.  But tracking my word counts helps me make sure I'm not doing this on accident.  Remember, intention is the defining characteristic of art, so it follows that all artistic decisions should be intentional.

I once had a screenwriter friend who attempted to adapt one of his screenplays into a novel.  I sent him an early version of the Process Breakdown template, and strongly advised him to track his word count as he went.  My good friend, full of confidence, chose to ignore my advice, and when he  finished his project, he was dismayed to find that the entire story was only 10,000 words long!  If he had tracked his word count from the beginning, he might have know this earlier, and chosen to add some new events.

This experience is what led me to incorporate a few formulas in this page of the template.  I've added a "Total"  and "Average" box for each of the four acts, and using the average words-per-chapter, I've installed a "Projected Total" and a "Remaining" box, so you will know if your novel is on-target to hit your goal length, and you will know approximately how much work you have in front of you.

There is one small caveat, however.  Because any given project will have a different number of chapters, I could not create a set chunk of rows to define each act.  As a default, I have the formula in each act set to ten rows.  However, you can change this as needed.

The formula looks like this:

That means that to come up with the total displayed in this window, the program adds up all the values in cells E3 to E12.  But say you have twelve chapters in your first act, not just ten.  All you have to do is change E12 to E14.

But for you more visually-oriented people, there's another way to change this.  When you click on the box, the formula displays in the formula box just above the spreadsheet.  If you click on the formula box, a blue outline will appear around the cells designated by your formula.  To change the range, just drag the corner of the blue outline to the cells you want, then hit Enter.

Just make sure not to click anywhere else, or that cell will get added to your formula, and things can get confusing.

One final note:  When this page is completely filled out, it represents only one draft of your novel.  When I start a new draft, I copy-paste the entire sheet into a new sheet titled "Writing Phase, Draft 2", clear all the old data, and start again.  That way, you can compare how your drafts stack up in terms of word count.

I hope this doesn't seem too complicated, because it's really quite simple, and totally worth the effort.  Tracking my word count was a revolutionary step in my writing career, and I highly recommend it to every author I speak to.

Editing Phase

Here's another spot where I get a bit technical.  I imagine this list looks pretty crazy to most of you.  And if you haven't taken a look at my Editing Resources, probably a lot of this is meaningless.

The truth is, most of the tasks in this list are taken right out of the pages of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers and Sin and Syntax, or directly off of K.M. Weiland's site.  And if you're not familiar with some of these terms, the good news is you can design your own self-editing process.  You don't have to do things my way.  If its easier for you, you can just delete this entire list and make your own.  there's no one right way to do it.  The important thing is to make yourself a list of everything you want to read for, and check things off as you do it.  That way, you won't forget to do something crucial.

You'll notice I don't have a separate "Materials" column on this page, and that's simply because the editing process doesn't generate new documents, it refines existing ones.  I don't think it's necessary to link to the same document in two sheets, but if you do, adding another column is easy.

Publishing Phase

The last phase of any project is of course publishing it!  Whether you're a self-publisher, or you're submitting to agencies, journals, and book publishers, there is bound to be a to-do list during this phase.  Synopses, submissions, pitch lines, all that junk goes here.

This page is left blank, because everyone approaches this process differently, and has different tasks they want to complete.  A couple tasks I recommend are coming up with an "elevator pitch" for your story, and writing a synopsis so you can have those things at the ready if anyone requests them.

If you're submitting a story to multiple publishing venues, you should keep some kind of record of who, when, and what happened, so I've included a second table on this page for that purpose as well.

...

And that's the Process Breakdown!  I know this seems like a lot of work just to keep track of your notes, but trust me, it's worth it.  For me, it's been an amazing tool that increased my efficiency, and streamlined my thought process so the creative part of my brain is free to focus on creative things, not practical things.  I hope it proves just as useful to you.