Here are some steps toward a quick rough draft. Read all the steps first. Make a quick, tentative plan before you start.

Quick beginnings:

• Start with an interesting bit of language
  1. Something you overheard eavesdropping or
  2. A phrase that is stuck in your head
• Start with a character’s name and with that character doing something
• Put something you like in the story
• Put a thing or situation that makes you nervous in the story
• Start with an accusation or an interdiction

Quick middles:

• Make things
  1. Complicated for the main character
  2. Worse for the main character
• Let the character think about
  1. Their actions
  2. The events of the story
  3. Another character
• Show power shift as a result of a character’s action
• Show power shift again as a result of an action
• Show power shifting once more
• Coincidences and dreams
  1. Can get characters into trouble
  2. But never out of it

Quick endings:

• Show power shifting irrevocably
  1. Always with the main character as a primary witness
  2. As a result of the character’s action
• Show at least one of the following
  1. A process begun earlier in the story is completed
  2. A restatement/return/echo of language from earlier in the story
  3. The main question or central tension in the story is resolved
• Clearly show a change in the character or a reversal of roles
• Resolve the question of “what’s going to happen” in a brief summary

Include many, many images.

Be willing to revise extensively and repeatedly.