How do you write a 1632 story for Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond? You need a story idea. Characters. Conflict. Continuity. And then don’t make it harder than it has to be. Let’s take a tour through the planning process. I’ve handed in the fourth Neustatter book, Security Solutions. Neustatter organized NESS in 1633. He hired additional agents in 1634. Spoiler: He’s hiring more in 1635. What if, in 1636, he hires an up-timer? That’s the story idea. Okay, I cheated. It might be one character arc in NESS 6 or so. But it could be a 1632 & Beyond story on its own. The next thing I need is characters. Again, I’m not trying to make this hard. We can assume that Edgar Neustatter and Astrid Schäubin are going to be two of the central characters. All I need is the up-timer. The grid is going to give me the rest. I haven’t started searching yet, so I don’t know who the up-timer is. He or she will have family. They’re either going to support this person working for NESS or they’re going to oppose it. I don’t know yet, because I haven’t seen the information. And here’s an important skill: Stay flexible. My first thought is a boy right out of high school, and his parents are naturally concerned. But I’m not locked in. Maybe it’s a boy right out of high school, and he can’t join the Army or the National Guard for some reason. Maybe it’s a girl. There’s no point in speculating further right now. What we need to do now is go to the up-timer grid. That’s here: https://author.1632magazine.com/getting-started/the-grid/ Ideally, I want to narrow my options down to a handful of characters I can look into further. I start by opening the CSV vile in Excel. If you just downloaded it, save it. Tip: Do…