Tag: plot

How to Write Fiction Stories: Creative Writing Lesson Tips

Writing has been handed down from father to son, mother to daughter or the village elder to the junior by word of mouth long before there was ever any writing of any kind, so that essential element in writing has never gone away. In fact, I would say that the prime prerequisite is: can you tell a good story?

The first thing you have to have to be a writer is to have a story or an idea or something that you want to communicate. Ask the question would someone be interested in this or would someone want to read about this? Writing is just a form of communication.
Are you a storyteller or do you have something to write about?

Here are some little tests to find out whether or not you are.

Are you the kind of person that when you go to the camp out you can tell the story by the fire and have everyone’s attention, have them hanging on your every word?

How’s your timing?

What do people say to you after you finish telling a story?

Do people laugh at your jokes?

Your listeners and then readers will tell you whether or not you can tell a good story.

Now we all want to take a look at ourselves and not be too critical and not be too harsh at the same time, be open and honest with ourselves. Share your story with a friend who will be honest with you.

Sit down and write. Then, read what you wrote so you can get your flow with words. Be interested in everything around you, be interested in what other people have to say. Take what they say and learn what they got from your writing. Did your story idea interest them, did they have any aha moments from what you wrote? Use that information to fine tune what you are writing. Begin to develop your voice and your style as a writer.

9 Tips for a Satisfying Plot

9 tips on how to write a satisfying plot.

1) Genre awareness. Genres exist for a reason so that people can find books they will find enjoyable to read. Know what makes a satisfying plot in the genre you select. Some principles and obstacles in character relationships really exist in all genres but they appear in different ways in the different genres. It is especially necessary when talking about writing a satisfying plot.

2) Change and growth. Stories are essentially made of change. A novel is made up of many little changes that add up to create the primary change. If there is no change, there is no story happening. There is no narrative and is just a situation. Where nothing is changing that is not a relevant moment to be including or the moment isn’t pulling its weight within the plot.

Little changes in the plot should be causing changes within the character also. If the characters emotional state and just state as a human are not changing throughout a long period of time then that’s also not really relevant to the plot. The story is a story because of the character and what is happening to the character. With no changes you have created kind of a lull in your plot where nothing is essentially happening. Change and growth are the foundation of the plot.

3) Setup and payoff. This is a term that is used a lot in screenwriting, but is very important for no matter what kind of story you are writing. Setup and payoff is quite simple. As a concept it essentially just means that what you introduce into the story pays off later on. You introduce in the beginning even things that might not seem substantial which turn out to be substantial and affect the plot throughout or often towards the end. If you are feeding threads into your story and then they never affect it, those threads aren’t really necessary or satisfying. Introduce threads into the beginning and have those threads weave all the way through. Then have a causal relationship where they effect the plot in the end.

4) Have an element. Whenever that element is introduced in the beginning, it might seem important at the time or not. When that element is relevant and important, hopefully in kind of an unexpected way, that can be really satisfying later on for its unpredictability. We generally expect that a good story isn’t going to be predictable and a boring story is going to be predictable. In some books unpredictability comes from possibly a drastic plot twist where everything is shaken up. You don’t necessarily need a plot twist or a dramatic turn, but rather it just means that the plot progresses in a way that could not be foreseen from the beginning.

5) Causality. It essentially is a domino effect with every scene being necessitated by the previous scene. In Poetics by Aristotle (which is one of the oldest books on storytelling theory) he explains that a strong plot is one where you cannot disrupt or remove a single event without disrupting the entirety of the whole. For the most part, the majority of your plot has as many scenes as possible that are caused by a domino effect. Every time you are hiding the scene ask yourself if the previous scene wasn’t there could this scene still happen? Then ask yourself does this cause the next scene?

6) Mystery and revelation. You know stories are made up of questions, a plot line or a premise. It is just a bunch of little questions that make up the book. A lot of them will need to be answered for clarity, but others need to be left on the table for suspense. Ask questions a) who is this person b) what’s going on c) what’s going to happen.

Those questions will be more specific based on the actual plot and this pairs with revelation. Revelation is the other part that goes along with mystery. Mystery sets up. Revelation ties together. These two together are what make a plot satisfying. It needs to happen at the proper rate. If you don’t answer any questions your plot will be really confusing.

There is going to be a lot of information you are going to need to setup at the beginning. Those are the questions that are being answered. Answer the questions that you need to answer for clarity. Then there are going be some questions you want to leave open.

7) Suspense and snap. Suspense is a common term and is often tied to mystery. Mystery is more of an intellectual thing whereas suspense is more of a visceral reaction and the stress you feel related to unknown outcome.

Snap is the jump-scare. Snap is the culmination of suspense in this energetic moment. This is often a key moment off an important one in the plot. It is that you have been building up – so much suspense and then it snaps. Those moments especially in certain genres like thrillers you expect. Many genres cna use this kind of snap moment and it can appear in different forms. It is the actualization or action making use of that suspense you have built up.

8) Emotional balance and cohesion. I hear writers often say I want my reader to be taken on an emotional rollercoaster or I hear readers say the book was an emotional roller coaster but I would be careful with this idea. Obviously emotional range is really great and important if it is the same emotion throughout. If this emotional rollercoaster you have created is lacking in other elements like logic or causality especially, then it is actually not very satisfying. It can really impact your characterization. If your character doesn’t have a stable emotional thread whether they are an emotionally stable person or not, it can be hard to track and feel their emotions.

If they are just jumping from emotional state to emotional state to make the reader feel those emotions it can actually be really hard to invest in the character and develop a sense for who the character is. The reader is not actually getting a chance to experience who the character is or learn about them or what their emotional threat is because of this jumbled mess of emotion. Emotional range is good as long as it’s cohesive and there is causality to it.

Another aspect of this is the push and pull of hope and despair. It is essentially the idea that at any point in time in your story there should be both hope and despair. There is always despair in the hope and there is always hope in the despair. Without hope in the despair there is no point going on because there is seemingly no possible way that this problem could be resolved. Hope is what keeps the reader and the character going. Without hope there is no tension at all. Hope means that there is no conflict, everything is resolved.

9) Unrest and resolution. A story is essentially the story of unrest. In most plot lines by this model, you have a character who has some sort of emotional or internal unrest but they don’t have a way of changing it. The inciting incident gives them an opportunity to change this unrest that they feel within their life no matter what kind of form it takes. They have an opportunity to change.

The resolution doesn’t necessarily mean they have achieved what they wanted, but it means their opportunity in which they could see the kind of change in their life they wanted has come to an end. Through this example you have unrest and then the resolution caps it off, whether this is positive or negative. Whether the character has succeeded or not, whether they have changed their life or themselves for the better or not.

Resolution basically means that the plot is now going to de-energize and the reader knows that part of the story is over. This aspect of the character’s life or maybe the character’s life as a whole is not going to be changing substantially or have the opportunity to change substantially anymore. In the way we were exploring this idea throughout the story with the reader. Sometimes this resolution isn’t always fully explored, it is the imminent promise of resolution.

The reader knows that resolution is about to happen shortly after the end, but that is basically the same thing – the imminent promise of resolution. Or resolution itself signals the end of the period of unrest no matter what the characters emotional state is. It means the character can’t affect or change their life any more really to any significant margin so the reader kind of feels that sense of closure. The story is over no matter what that means emotionally that’s kind of what makes your story feel like a whole.

How to Tell If Your Novel Idea is Good

How to know if your novel idea is a good idea. Writers will fairly often ask is this a good idea for a novel or of all of these ideas, which idea should I focus on. Understanding the idea behind your novel is rarely the determining factor and whether it’s successful or marketable. To know if a book is worth pursuing or how to know if a novel is marketable, consider these things: plot versus the idea behind the story. Many ideas are not that distinct and they are not that original.

Also consider if you have created compelling characters. A group of unique characters with a very distinct or unusual approach to a project with some sort of wow factor to elevate the story will help you write and develop the flow of the story. Make what is happening in the story more exciting.

If you want your novel idea to be strong, you want your novel to be marketable. You need to make sure that you are excited about the plot and not just the idea. An easy and a good question to ask yourself is which plot points am I excited about? Is there a surprising conflict that just comes out of nowhere or a really dramatic showdown between two characters. If you have specific plot events that you are excited about, that is a good sign that your plot is working.

If you think about the plot and there is nothing that you are particularly excited about, there is no plot point that you are proud of, or you feel like the plot is sort of interchangeable or that you don’t feel that strongly about it, then you know  that is a good sign the idea, the premise, and the plot combined are not working very well. You don’t have a complete picture. It is not about the idea being bad it is at that point  it is about the execution of the idea. Focus on the craft of writing, focus on understanding plot and scene structure. If the melding of the idea has a good plot with strong characters with good world building when you are writing fiction is what makes the book work. Don’t neglect the plot because the premise alone will not sell your book.

Note: world building for your story, whether your story is set in a real place or an imagined one, you need to establish your characters? world so that the reader can suspend disbelief and fully engage with the story.

Creative writing lessons: Creative Writing tips, advice and lessons

One method for starting a story is to tell yourself the story while relaxing or before going to sleep. Another way is to keep a notebook with your characters and plot ideas. Write as well as you possibly can so you have enough of the idea to remember it later when you are starting to write.

Outlining your story is a good tool to use so you can see how the details will let you move smoothly through the storyline as you are writing. You have to follow the story where it leads. The last thing that you want to do is to spoil your book with plot twists that do not lead to supporting your storyline. Be more interested in your characters in the situations you are putting them in.

See what ideas you can come up with to help you have more fun writing. Keep a list of those items close so you can refer to them when you begin to write. It will help you get past the blank page frustration and begin easily.

There are no rights or wrongs so be encouraged that you can express yourself and enjoy the process. If others enjoy your writing that is a big plus for you.

Creative writing lessons: Creative Writing tips

It has been suggested that that the first thing you do with a book is write the last line of that book. Some feel that is kind of like spoiling the fun. Ideas come from different places. The goal is to start with something and just go with it. Try it both ways and see which you like.

The thing is you learn little by little, so sample different genres to see where you enjoy writing. If you want to be a writer, you really only have to do two things you have to read a lot and you have to write a lot, and you have to continue to get excited by what you are doing. Remember writing is subjective, sometimes you get bad advice on good work and sometimes you get good feedback on bad work. The thing that makes it worthwhile is that people take writing seriously. Dreams are free and that is a good, so write, have fun and continue to be creative with your words.