I am often asked whether The Marshall Plan® system can be adapted for writing short stories. Absolutely. Here’s what I recommend:
Set up your template (or have the software do it) as follows:
- Use the shortest possible word length, 50,000 words.
- Opt for no romantic involvement.
- Opt for an invisible opposition.
This way, neither a romantic involvement nor an opposition actually appear as viewpoint characters in the template.
You will still have the confidant as the viewpoint character of B6. Change this to your lead. Now all of your sections should have your lead as the viewpoint character.
Proceed to develop your template, but using a smaller, more focused crisis and story goal, as befitting the story’s shorter form. Incorporate your story points as indicated: the worst failure, the point of hopelessness, and so on.
When you are ready to develop your template into actual writing, you must of course keep each section to a smaller number of words. Let’s say you’re aiming for a short story of 5,000 words. You’ll have 40 sections. For each section you should aim for approximately 125 words, or about half a standard double-spaced manuscript page.
If you give this a shot, please let us know how it works for you! And good luck.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
My novel is 80000 words long.My romantic involvement is not a VP character.My opposition is known to the reader but is not known to the character in the book.How do I go about constructing the story with 3 vp characters .Should I then make the opposition invisible and bring my romantic involvement in as the 3rd VP.So we have the lead the confidant and the romantic character as vp3
Hi Lester,
You say your opposition is known to the reader but not to your lead. This means you will have sections from the opposition’s viewpoint, which means your opposition should be a viewpoint character, and thus visible.
If I understand your question correctly, you would rather not have your romantic involvement as a viewpoint character? If this is correct, simply click on the Romantic Involvement tab and uncheck the box. You would still include your romantic involvement in some of your sections; the romantic involvement just would never be a viewpoint character.
If you do the above, the program will set up a template with three viewpoint characters: lead, opposition, and confidant.
I hope this helps.
All the best,
Evan