Working in a creative industry can be tough. There is a competitive market, difficult clients, and people who will go to any means necessary to not pay you. Above all else, however, I’ve found that the hardest thing is other creatives. More accurately, creatives who don’t want to actually work.

The world has radically changed over the past 50 years. New technologies have made entertainment something that is taken for granted. Video games, TV, movies, and music are now something that isn’t sought out, like the days of drive-ins and arcades, but something that is delivered directly to the consumer - how can a novel compete?

Welcome to the first official article in my new series, Plotting Your Story. I won’t go into every step of the Hero’s Journey here. There are a ton of resources already out there about each individual step. Instead, I will talk about how I use it in my everyday writing.

You’ve no doubt noticed the hundreds of books, blogs, and articles written to help you achieve your dreams. Even entire sections of libraries dedicated to getting you to fundamentally change who you are. While there are people out there who truly do want to inspire and help people who find themselves stuck, I hate to say that there are just as many who don’t.

Last year, I wrote about my intention to finish a novel in 2019. Now, it looks like I’m on track to finish it sometime in October. By far, this is the most productive fiction I’ve ever written and I owe it all to the planning I did before. So, out of the request, I’m going to start a series of stories all about plotting your story.