Why rebuild the wheel? There’s a template for that!

Two of the most popular apps used in fiction writing are Scrivener and Plottr. Scrivener is incredibly powerful and wide-ranging having so many features most authors don’t even use half of them. Plottr is more simple but getting broader in scope all the time.

The thing is, no matter which program you use, you’ll need to organize your work somehow. That’s where templates come in.

Other authors have created templates that mimic different types of story structure: the three act, four act, W graph, hero’s journey, snowflake method, Blady Snyder’s Save The Cat, and even Michael Hauge’s Six-Stage Structure (for more on these, read my blog on story structure). And there are genre specific templates for romance and for mystery novels.

Some templates are simple just providing you with the outline, a folder for characters, one for setting. MG Herron’s template is one example. It includes the Six Core Competencies as laid out by Larry Brooks in Story Engineering and a nine-point outline with a short paragraph explaining in very general terms what could happen in each section.

Others templates are much more intense — practically an entire writing course laid out for you. K.M. Weiland’s template is like that going through, step-by-step, how to write and organize your book. Another similar…