Welcome (back) to Flash Week! Today is Day 2. If you missed Day 1, go back and brainstorm story seeds, and come back with a favorite core idea that you want to build your story around. We’re completing a first draft of a story in just ten minutes a day, so time is tight.

This month we’ll be using Dan Harmon’s story circles framework to build our final outlines on Day 3. The story circle is a classic structure: a protagonist descends into the unknown and returns, changed. More specifically, the eight points are: You, Need, Go, Search, Find, Take, Return, Change.

I hope you are a regular reader (or that writing along this week tempts you to become one). If you are, you may enjoy our usual standalone exercises, BUT, for this week only, the days do not stand alone. You will want to save what you do on Day 1 as input to Day 2 etc through Day 7. We’ll spend days 1-3 on pre-work and 4-7 on writing the prose. And for the no-homework version you MUST stick to the outline you make on Day 3, or I can’t guarantee you’ll finish.

Here’s today’s exercise:

Take your favorite story seed from yesterday, or a random one of your set of favorites if you can’t choose.

The basic outline for a story circle is: You, Need, Go, Search, Find, Take, Return, Change. A protagonist recognizes something they want, goes into the unknown to find it, gets it and pays the price, and returns having changed.

Imagine things that might happen in your story: your protagonist might be a librarian, or she could be a liquor store clerk. Write, stream of consciousness, what could be true about your story — and in each sentence, include a weasel word like “maybe,” “might,” or “could.”

If you start wandering down a path that’s intriguing, wander away … unlike yesterday, you want to devote more time to exploring the paths that are calling to you, rather than forcing yourself to survey the landscape “fairly.”

That said, your ideas today can absolutely include threads that are mutually exclusive. Today, you entertain all possibilities.

Tomorrow, you commit.

Got it? Great! Save the list. Let your brain noodle overnight and I’ll see you tomorrow for Day 3, when we’ll buckle down and commit to a full eight-point outline.