I wanted to start the new year and the new era of posting off strong. I figured the best way to do that was to immediately start working on my goal for 2025: to share as many of my personal writing tools as I could.
And so, my “Plotter’s Inventory” is available on my new Resources page. It’s a Google Sheet that you can download, print out, and/or “Make a copy” of and use for your personal plot development efforts.
The Inventory is essentially just a series of columns, each of which are labeled with the names of different plot elements and influences. As you fill out those categories, you create an inventory of potential plot events and checklists that you can easily draw from and reference as you outline your story.
This is a really new tool that I developed for myself last year while worldbuilding my current WIP. Which is to say, yeah, I actually use the Inventory all the time. It’s not the only way I can keep track of the different ideas I have for my stories, but it is the best method I’ve come up with to organize all of those ideas and quickly arrange them into a plot. A plot that I can then rearrange a ton, with minimal hassle, to find a structure I like. If you’d love finding a way to do exactly that, I recommend checking out the Inventory when you have the chance.
And if you try it, enjoy it, and want to share–or if you know a writer who might find it helpful–please link them to this post or the Resources page. I know that just linking them to your copy of the Inventory would be easier, but linking to my site really helps me grow my platform, and that’s all I’m asking for in return for sharing these tools–a little help growing my audience.
Either way, as always, thank you for stopping by.
Coming up . . .
I’m dishing on my current creative projects next week. Stuff I’m not working on anymore, stories I’m shopping right now, and things I’m developing. Stop by if you want a look at what a lone, completely unsponsored, non-corporate writer is working on with no promise that any of it will get published. Might be interesting.
If you’d like to check out some of my fiction…
“Aixa the Hexcaster” was published at Mirror Dance Fantasy in 2016: http://www.mirrordancefantasy.com/2016/09/aixa-hexcaster.html.
“A Facet of That Faceless Death” is available to read, for free, on this site: https://louissantiago-author.com/short-fiction/a-facet-of-that-faceless-death/. However, it was originally performed on the NoSleep Podcast in 2024 (be advised, my story is one of the two on the pay-walled, members-only section of the episode; to hear it, you would have to get a $5 membership to NoSleep): https://www.thenosleeppodcast.com/episodes/s21/21×11.
Until next time, it’s totally okay to not look at the news for a while. We can just chill and disengage for a week or two. The important thing to remember: we will be alright and things will get better. Just hang in there, chief.
Inktrap 
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