One Month to a First Draft

Have you ever wondered how writers do it? How they write a book in one month?

Would you like to complete a family history story in 30 days?

Would you like to complete a family history story in our upcoming Family History Writing Challenge in February?

Over the last five years of leading the Family History Writing Challenge, participants have come to me looking for help. They show up every year, they write, but they never seem to get a story completed.

Is this you?

This year, I’m going to help you achieve your goal of completing a first draft. There is great value in taking a story idea from conception to finished product, it’s imperative in developing your writing skills. Spending years writing a story is crazy. It’s time to complete your first draft of a family history story, to learn and understand what it takes to create a story and take it from beginning to end in a reasonable amount of time.

Regardless of what kind of story you are writing or the length of the story, you can use our plan in One Month to a First Draft to write a story draft from beginning to end.

A writer who accomplishes a draft in 30 days knows one important secret – it’s all about the planning!

It’s really about a little bit of pre-planning before we begin to write. We can’t just sit down on February 1^st without a plan, without knowing what you are going to write each and every day. The best way to do find success is to take a little time upfront and create that plan.

In One Month to a Story Draft, we show you how to build that plan before you begin to write.

Here are some of the steps we cover.

1. Understand what you want to write, a short story, a novel?

2. Determine how much time you are prepared to dedicate to this task and schedule it on your calendar.

3. Choose your story from your research, with all the ingredients of a good story, characters, conflict and ending.

4. Know your ancestors, you can’t bring them to life unless you truly know them.

5. Have plenty of social history research to bring your setting to life on the page.

6. Be prepared to identify the inner journey and theme of your story as you write your first draft.

7. Plot the major scenes on a story map. Know where your story starts and where it ends.

8. Outline your scenes for the four weeks you’ve dedicated to writing your story.

In our newest webinar, One Month to a Story Draft, we take you through theses steps of preparing to write a family history story draft in one month. We explain how each step is necessary to achieving your finished first draft at the end of our one month challenge.

Also, if you are joining us this year for the challenge, The Daily Dose posts that you receive in your email each day will coincide with our One Month to a Draft plan. The posts will support what you are writing during that week. This webinar is going to set you up for success. You just have to create the plan, and you’ll be ready to go in February.

This year, finish what you started! Because once you finish that first story, there are so many more waiting for you to write.

Purchase your copy of One Month to a Story Draft here.