Story Sketch

The way the Time Sketch works is to draw your story out. I find that the visual element helps me understand what is going on in my stories. This is only a sketch in that whatever you put here can be part of you story but doesn’t have to be. At the top draw a vertical line this is the length of time that happens in your story whether it is a twenty four hour period of time or it takes place over eighty five years. Next draw about an inch from the beginning of the line on the top left where your story actually starts. The inch before is all back story. Below draw in the tall rectangular box to scribble out a few main characters then brainstorm and write a few things down about who they are so that you know them better. This box is the Backstory box. Back to the line on the top go about three quarters of the way towards the end of the line moving to the right and draw in a line that looks different. I drew a line that looks like a rail road track symbol. This is where the climax of the story is. The rest is the falling action that happens.

Below where the bubbles are this is the brainstorming part where you put down possible events or conflict that your protagonist will face. What is great about this part of the Time Sketch is that you might find out connections from your characters that you didn’t see before or events that happen around certain characters. This is a visual way to see scenes, events, and characters at a glance that you can not see in paragraph form this is mapping at the core. Mapping can be a family tree, doodles on what your character might look like or drawing maps of where your story takes place be it in the real world that we live in or an entirely new world be it fantasy or sci-fi.

Above is an early rendering of my Seven-Fold Time Sketch. I am a visual person and have to draw things out so that they make sense to me. Here I drew a backstory time line above and to the right and a time line below of where my story starts. After drawing this up and attempting to draw a very detailed time line I realized that I needed to be more loose and make my time line less detailed. My story takes place over about three months and to draw out each day would take up more paper and time than what I really wanted to put into this. Ultimately the goal is to write the story and get done with it. The Time Sketch is there to aid and catapult us into our stories not to get caught up in drawing it all out.