The art of developing story is the process of transforming a tiny seed of an idea into a fully-fledged narrative with fleshed out characters, immersive settings and powerful themes. It’s a long journey, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to the pre-writing stages of story development. Some writers, called plotters, complete extensive pre-writing tasks before they begin drafting, while others, known as pantsers, do very little at this stage and prefer to discover their stories as they write. Most writers, however, fall somewhere in between.
This is the stage where you begin to find your story’s arc and shape its internal structure. It’s also when you start thinking about the bigger picture—the underlying moral, philosophical or societal themes and ideas you want to communicate through your story. Some writers identify these themes as they develop their story, while others discover them later when writing the screenplay.
You may want to also spend time at this stage identifying your world’s geography, culture, religions and other important facets of your fictional universe. You should also take the opportunity to plant recurring motifs and symbols that will help reinforce your story’s theme.
At this point, you will likely be taking your story to meetings and collaborating with producers and execs. Often, the requests you receive in development can clash with your vision for your story. For example, your line producer may tell you that the ocean surfing scene in your story needs to be cut because of production costs.
