Do Templates Harm More Than Help?

Speaking as a very busy person, I take all the help I can get. Planner? Yes, please! Calendar? Absolutely! But working out your entire story before you've even written it? No, thank you!

As I like to say all the time, there is no formula to writing. Many successful friends of mine like to have an entire map of the plot and have their characters figured out before their first word. Whereas, I? I like barf out my prologue and figure it out from there.

But the most important thing to value is your comfort, so let's see the positives and negatives of templates before you get yourself into something that just doesn't seem natural!

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Time Saving:

For my first book where I wasn't as experienced and just wanted to get a few words out of my head, I free-styled the entire thing and was forced to go back and correct things when I wanted to change the plot. This caused many hours of revision to make sure everything correlated with the plot.

The obvious fix for me was to use a template to map out my plot before I started. This would've enabled me to know the plot before I started writing and I might have focused on my writing style more than just what was going to happen next.

It also, obviously, enables you to spend less time revising which almost always is the most boring part.

More Realistic Characters:

A mistake many young writers make concerns their characters. Many new authors base their protagonists off of themselves or the person they want to be-which leads to those characters being absolutely perfect. Even though we all struggle with our own faults, we imagine ourselves as a perfect human being with looks and smarts combined.

We ignore the fact that that's impossible.

If an author spends just a few minutes before they write the first few words of their story to write a little note about the protagonist's negative aspects, it'll make the entire book way more appealing to publishers and literary agents.

Take it from me, going back to add faults to a character takes time. Lots and lots of time.

Example Template:

Here's a template I've used for one of my stories. It helped me create my two main characters.

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Shri Vedh:

~Age: 22 years old

~Hair: naturally perfectly curly, jet black

~Eye color: left eye blue, right eye hazel(heterochromia)

~skin: brown

~height: 5’ 8

~ethnicity: Indian

~Religion: atheist

~Personality: Sarcastic, stubborn, secretly is a hopeless romantic. Known to be very pretty. FBI agent so very good eye for detail. Very organized. Loves Sherlock Holmes

~Likes: color black, details, pocky sticks

~style: business casual

~dislikes: sass(unless it’s from her), anything that restricts her

~Negatives: Selfish, doesn't trust

~Back Story: Tight upbringing of parents made her very rebellious. Smoked throughout high school. Quit cold turkey after admitted into fbi academy training program, relied on pocky sticks. Passed every test with flying colors. Strained relationship with parents

Sundrop Williams:

~Age: 22 years old.

~Hair: not-naturally wavy, blonde

~Eye Color: green

~Skin: white

~height: 5’ 6’

~ethnicity: Caucasian

~Religion: catholic

~Personality(literally foil of Shri): happy, loving, and carefree. But that doesn’t affect her sharpness at all, very quick and very smart. Friends with almost everyone.

~Likes: JONAH MARIAS, color yellow, oranges

~style: trendy

~dislikes: disloyal people

~Negatives: purposefully won't be shown until the end of the story.

~Back story: Father’s murder made her always want to hunt bad guys since the age of 6. Enrolled in FBI academy as quick as possible. Father’s murder also taught her to appreciate everything in life. Had an obsession with Jonah Marias since band started when she was 19. Dormed with Shri since college.

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You'll notice that this template is a lot more simple than other out there on the internet. A lot of people are fans of things like the Marcel Proust Character Questionnaire that really helps you dive deep into your character. This brings me to the one main reason I don't use templates.

Restrictive and Discouraging:

Many people think they have to stick to their outlines as if it's the law. They ignore any other ideas that appear as they're writing their actual story or just close their minds to more ideas.

For many writers, warming up their creative brain is essential and ideas only pop up after they've written their first chapter. For them, using a plot template might just limit them to their bland ideas instead of their groundbreaking ones.

And for others, a plot template might just confuse them or overcomplicate the entire process. Especially for new authors, mapping an entire story may be daunting. For them, my best advice is to just go with the flow and get the first page out. The rest will come naturally.

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In the end, it all comes down to comfort. If you tried to write your story without any planning and it didn't work, maybe try to make a character or plot template. Or, if you just can't seem to use a template, just bullet point a few ideas.

Writing is meant to be fun, so anything that makes you want to rip your hair out shouldn't be used. You can save that for the publishing process!