Planning Fiction

DIRECTIONS: Follow the prewriting steps below to gather ideas for your short story.

Prewriting Steps
1 Identify the basic elements of your short story.
2 Flesh out your short story’s main character(s).
3 Develop a tentative plot line for your story.
4 List the details you will use to engage and orient readers.

Step 1: Identify the basic elements of your short story. Answer the questions below to record
ideas for your story’s conflict, characters, and setting. You don’t need to answer these
questions in the order they appear. You can start with conflict or setting ideas, for instance, and
then create ideas for characters.

Basic Story Element Your Ideas

Who are the characters in your story?
Jorgito and Dani
What problem or conflict will the
main character face? Heart break
Where and when will the story take
place? Colombia

Step 2: Flesh out your short story’s main character(s). What kind of person is your protagonist?
Answer these questions to help you get a clear sense of who your main character is. You won’t
necessarily use all of this information in your story—you can decide as you write how much of it
to include.

How old is your main character? 14

What is your main character’s name? Jorgito
What is your main character’s favorite
activity? Play tennis
What does your main character fear most? Getting his heart broken by Dani
What is your main character’s earliest
memory? The first time he played tennis
Who are your main character’s friends? Gabo and alejo
Name one other key trait of your main
character. He is insecure but learns things easily.
 Planning Fiction

Step 3: Develop a tentative plot line for your story. Now list the events that could occur in
your story. This list will be a tentative plan for your story’s plot. Once you start writing the story,
you may get other, different ideas about where the plot should go.

Conflict Jorgito loves Dani, but she has a big friend, so He is afraid that
Dani change jorgito for her friend Alejo

Rising Action One day jorgito see that dani is hugging too much alejo so he is
Events jelous

Climactic Event Dani says that she can explained or that but jorgito is angry and
or Scene goes oout of that place

Resolution Dani explained that alejo give her a present so shee was hugging
him for the present, and said sorry for doing it too much

Step 4: List the details you will use to engage and orient readers. Use this chart to note some
of the details that should be included in your story’s first few paragraphs.

What background information will Readers need to understand that Jorgito is very
readers need to understand the jealous and insecure, so they can understand his
story’s conflict? problem with Alejo and Dani.

What sensory details would help It can be things like exaggerations, or texts in
readers imagine your story’s setting? which the feelings of each of the characters can
be expressed.

What is the most interesting detail That he is insecure, but at the same time sure of
about your main character? certain things.

Write a sentence that states or Dani was hugging her friend Alejo a lot, which
explains your story’s conflict in a way made her boyfriend Jorgito angry, how Dani will
that will makes readers want to know explain this?
more.