I am a compulsive researcher and planner. I want to read everything on a subject before I give it a try. This has its downsides – do I really need to compare 16 dishwasher before I buy one? – but it can also be a positive thing. It means I’m a plotter when it comes to creative writing. And I feel more confident knowing this before I write a story.
Many writers identify as either a pantser or a plotter. These categories define whether you prefer to just get writing or spend a lot of time planning your story. I’m a hopeless plotter – I love doing research, reading books on writing craft, and filling out charts and workbooks as I get to know my characters and their stories.
As a literature professor who specializes in women’s fiction and early literature, I have read thousands of stories. One of the reasons I love my job is that I get to read and compare the ways great writers bring emotions and ideas alive.
As I worked on plotting out romance novellas I found I had to adapt a lot of the romance models for the shorter form. Could I fit in all 20 key scenes from C.S. Lakin’s framework if there weren’t 20 scenes in my story? Did the 9-beat structure have to be adapted or condensed for novellas? Could I get all of Gwen Hayes’s Romance Beats into 8 chapters?
This led me to create the Romance Novella Plotting Cheat Sheets. I’ve already written a post for the simpler pantser edition. If you’re new to writing romance and want the quick-start version, here is that one.
This post provides the more advanced version. If you’ve read Romancing the Beat, downloaded Jami Gold’s Scrivener template and worksheets, looked at StoryGrid and other frameworks then you are ready for The Plotter Edition below.
This cheat sheet brings together Beats and structures from several sources. There is a lot going on! In future posts I will break down the sections and discuss them one by one.
For now I will conclude by adding the PDF of this sheet if you wish to download it.
Happy plotting!
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