Building the Toolbox

Finding Writing

I think I always knew I wanted to write stories. In grade school, I wrote disaster stories, lifting plots straight from the Airport movies I loved. I'd hammer them out on old typewriters, including this electric one my dad bought at an auction that punched the letters so hard it left indents in the paper.

Then Mom and Dad brought a Vic 20—our first personal computer—into the house. My sister and I used it for games, and the idea of writing stories was lost to Frogger and Radar Rat Race. But I wanted more power—again, not for writing, but for games—and I begged for a Commodore 64.

I got my wish, and the computer ended up in my bedroom (much to my sister's dismay). I played games constantly. Until one night, I came home and opened up the word processor to write a story.

It was a horror story about a group of people climbing a hill to a church, preparing to fight a demon rising from the ground. I don't know why I decided to write it—I just did.

The next day, I took it to school and showed it around. People liked it, so I wrote more. The short story became a novel about teenage kids fighting monsters in a high school.

After a few chapters, I killed off the main character's girlfriend, and people were upset that I did it—and I loved it! Realizing that my words could create an emotional reaction was all I needed to get hooked on writing.

Then, some friends corrected my grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes to help. I took it the wrong way and grew self-conscious and scared. Whenever I tried to write, I felt the criticism; I'd overthink everything to avoid it.

Story became hard. Writing became hard.

And I quit doing it for 15 years.

Finding My Way Back

I switched to film pretty quickly after that teenage writing block, thinking maybe I could tell stories without writing. Then I realized I needed scripts to tell those stories, and I hit the wall again. For the next decade and a half, I lived in a strange limbo.

I pretended to be a writer. I'd sit in coffee shops with my notebook. I'd tell my family I couldn't go out because I needed to write—but I never wrote a word. I even went to career counseling and told them I wanted to be a writer. The counselor asked how many books or screenplays I'd written. When I said "none," he just stared at me in disbelief.

During those years, I read countless books on writing and went to seminars. I joined a writers group at the local filmpool—a group of older women who were always creating, always active. Meanwhile, I sat there with nothing to share.

Then I came across Chris Baty's "No Plot, No Problem," the guide for NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month that is held in November. I never bought the book, but the concept stuck: write a novel in one month. I thought, hey, I journal three pages a day, a screenplay is 90 pages... over 30 days, I could write a script.

After months of avoiding it, I finally sat down to write. Ten days later, I had a screenplay. It was terrible, but it was finished. So I wrote another one.

I'd heard someone say you should write 4-6 scripts before deciding if you like screenwriting, so I did that. Then I remembered another piece of advice: 99 percent of your ideas are garbage. I know the math isn't great, but I figured if I wrote 10 scripts, maybe one would be decent.

After 15 years of nothing, I had completed all 10.

After picking one, I tried to rewrite it but was struggling. I had worked with my sister-in-law, a high school teacher, on her drama productions, so I knew we worked creatively well together. I asked her to read through it and help me. We ended up tearing apart the script and rebuilding it. It still wasn't good, but it was better. We decided to write something together—and we kept doing it over and over until we were writing partners.

I tried to find my old writers group, but they were gone. So I started my own group at the same location. Sometimes people brought their writing, sometimes they didn't. Most of the time, I was just trying to get people in the door.

Then the filmpool director asked me to teach a writing class. I took everything I'd learned about story, structure, and formatting and shared it with others. When they asked me to teach rewriting, I did that too. I was still resistant—I wanted to be a writer, not a teacher—but teaching paid some bills.

I went back for my Master's in Fine Arts, focusing on screenwriting so I could teach at the university level. They asked me to teach early on, and I had to build my lessons to cover a full semester. Each class forced me to find better ways to teach, to simplify concepts, to get my students writing.

While I was in school, the film industry lost its funding and pretty much disappeared overnight. But something else happened—I'd taken two classes: poetry and short prose, and so I tried my hand at self-publishing a zine with some friends and people in my class. I thought it was fun, so I convinced my writing partner to try self-publishing a novel with me. I had come full circle—from that teenage horror story on the Commodore 64, through screenplays, and back to novels again.

That's how this book came to be. These tools and lessons emerged from years of figuring out how to help others write, how to get them past their blocks, and how to become a better writer myself. Everything here was forged in classrooms, writing groups, and my own journey from blocked writer to someone who finally learned to put words on the page.

Why I wrote this book

Over the years, I found myself creating and recreating the same content in different ways. I'd develop materials for university classes, then modify them for community workshops. I'd share formatting guides and story frameworks like WOARO with private clients, but I'd have to strip out the classroom assignments.

When I moved to teaching online, this inefficiency became even more apparent. I needed a better way to share these tools and lessons—one central place where everything could live and grow.

The Toolbox is that place. It's where I can finally bring together all these lessons, frameworks, and techniques in a way that works for everyone, whether they're in a classroom, a writing group, or working on their own.

How this book is structured

For now, the Toolbox begins with screenwriting lessons I've taught my students over the years. These lessons show the foundation of storytelling and, while tailored for screenwriters, can be adapted for fiction writers of all types.

After that come the specific tools—some mentioned in the lessons—that have helped me in my writing journey. These tools cover various aspects of the writing process, from getting started to building a story and refining your work. Some topics need just a few key ideas; others need deeper exploration.

As the Toolbox grows, this structure may evolve. Eventually, I might lead with the tools and move the lessons to later chapters. My goal is to organize everything in whatever way helps writers most.

This book will keep growing as I add new tools and find clearer ways to explain concepts. If something isn't clear, let me know—your questions help improve the work.

Who am I?

I'm David Gane, a writer and educator from Saskatchewan, Canada. With my writing partner, I've co-authored the internationally award-winning Shepherd and Wolfe young adult mystery series. I hold a Master's in Fine Arts in screenwriting and have spent over a decade in both independent publishing and the film industry.

My expertise spans novels, screenplays, short stories, and film reviews. I've taught writing at the University of Regina and various community organizations, collecting accolades and nominations along the way. But more importantly, I've helped writers at all levels find their voice and get their stories onto the page.

My Writing Philosophy

I believe in doing the work. When something gets in the way, you go to the toolbox and find the tool that gets you back to writing. The simpler, the better.

These are just the tools that work for me. I've tried to make them useful for others, but we're all built differently and come at writing from different angles. There are lots of great approaches out there that didn't work for me, but they might be perfect for you.

Think of this toolbox as one more data point in your writing journey. Take what works, leave what doesn't. There's no single right way to write.

Ultimately, for me, the sooner we focus on the work—and less thinking and talking about it—the better.

So, let's get to it.