But anyway, one of my awesome friends asked me a couple of weeks back if I could do a blog post on how to write a story. I may not be the best writer in the world, but I do know how to write a story. So if you will bare with me for a few minutes, I will explain to you how to write one; or at least the basics :)
Alrighty!!!
For starters, it's all about imagination, and letting your imagination run wild. As a writer, you have the opportunity to tell any story however you want to. You see, as another one of my good friends so eloquently put it, when an Author writes, it is like they are putting a piece of their very soul into their stories. All you need to do is have a dream, start writing that dream out (if your like me, you forget easily :D), and start planning using some form of story plot organizer (so you have a basic foundation for your story).
Stories need to accomplish something; they need a PLOT. You probably already saw the picture above a long time ago in some Language Arts (English) Class you took. Your characters need to go on a journey of some kind; whether that is a physical journey or not is totally up to you! Your characters need to have certain attributes that make them relatable to your readers. Have you ever read a book, or watched a TV show or movie or even played a video game where you became attached to a character? Almost like you had empathy for that character, or just loved their traits? But if you remember correctly, you didn't fall in love with that character right away. It took time. That character had to go through a lot of life transitions before he/she became the character that you love so much. This video will answer the question of "What makes a hero?"
For example, my favorite TV show character, who has beautiful character development, is Prince Zuko from Avatar: the Last Airbender (by the way if you haven't seen this show it is a must see and an excellent example of character development for all the main characters, and it has a beautiful plot!). Only if you actually watched the show, you would understand what I mean that Prince Zuko has amazing character development. But it is because of his amazing character development that when you watch this scene from the last season of the show that you have feelings for Zuko; and why it is such a tear jerker:
But anyway, your characters are essential to your story. The plot is your skeleton, but within the plot you have your characters, which is like the back bone of the story. They all play a vital role within the story. You have the Protagonist, or the main character that the story normally revolves around. Then you have the Antagonist, or the main "Villain" of the story. After that you have major characters that are constantly in the story. They are normally either seen often with the Protagonist or Antagonist. Past the Major Characters are naturally the Minor Characters. Minor Characters are kind of like filler characters. They can be the average people that your Protagonist runs into on their journey, but probably will never be seen again as the story progresses. Minor Characters can also be used as the people who start the character on their journey.
In designing my story plots, I often use a Web Organizer design to organize my thoughts for the story (to have a plan), like this one:
Story Title in center circle.
Characters in top circle.
And Beginning, Middle, End in the other circles.
You just build off Beginning, Middle, and End from there.
Now the thing with characters, as the Author of the story you need to know who they are. You need to know what think about, how they feel, where they come from, what do they look like, what are their interests, what are their strengths and weaknesses. And their are many more questions that you can ask so that you know exactly who your characters are, even the villains.
You can look at this website, which has some Character Questions on it - http://www.plus1gaming.com/2011/07/20-questions-for-deep-character-creation/
Or you can just type in your search box "character creation questions." There are literally hundreds of them.
Now for me, I have a problem with naming characters. Sometimes I've used google translate to find words in different languages - such as different words for Helper or Justice or any other attribute that really describes my character. I've also done similar things with a thesaurus. Sometimes I take peoples names that I know and use the letters of their names and change them around to make a new name (easier to do in a fantasy genre). Then there is this awesome website that I love to use when I really have know idea what to name my characters. http://fantasynamegenerators.com/fantasy-surnames.php#.V8Gq5q1f8q4 And this website is so much more than fantasy name generating. You literally can even make your own world if you can figure that out. It also can generate regular names. Of course you could also just type in your search bar character name generator and tons of those would pop up as well.
In the Abatral Story I'm working on now, I remember staying up late at night writing short histories of each individual characters - specifically the Protagonist, Antagonist, and Major Characters. This is because you will often write about these characters more often than the Minor Characters. But I feel that writing these short histories for each of these characters has helped me be able to bring these characters ALIVE in my head; after all, everyone has a story to tell. Doing this has made my characters become less of a dream to me and more of a reality. However, I recommend that if you do this, I would write the Major Characters histories first, and then the Antagonists history second, and finally the Protagonists history last. This is because more likely than not, your characters will have lived generally in the same time period. This way if some of your Major Characters, Antagonist, and Protagonist have an intertwined history, you will be able to write about that and expand on that in their history. I'd do the Protagonist last because by the time you write his/her history, you will know all the other characters stories. Plus, you want to make your Protagonist the most relatable character because him/her being the main character they will probably be in most of the scenes in your story.
Obi-wan from Star Wars for example, we know what he was like when he was young, when he was middle aged, and when he was older - although I wouldn't write past their current age that they are at when you start writing the story because as you write your story things will probably change by the time you get to the end of the story. But anyway. You know Obi-Wan's past. You know who his master was, who his friends were, and some other background information. It just builds from their.
The other thing I do, just because I like it, is draw my characters. Above is a picture of Yarmik that I drew (probably my favorite drawing as of now :D). If you've been reading my previous posts that were about my Abatral Story, then you would have seen the pictures that I drew, all representing what I visually see in my head when I write about these characters in my story. You can draw too - I think it helps me describe things better - but I also know that drawing is not everyone's forte. But hey, even if you draw stick figures that could potentially help :)
The next thing that I do is write out a general scene by scene summary. What I mean by this is, since you already would have had a general plot written out, you should figure how many chapters you would like to have in your story. Then for every single chapter, write a short summary of what those chapters will be about. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS. This is a new thing that I just recently tried with the current story I am working on. I did this because I have a horrible problem with ending my stories, so I wrote out how this story would end, that way I don't keep dragging out the story and never end it, like I normally do :(
It also helps somewhat with writers block because you would have a general idea of what you should be writing about.
The last thing I would recommend, if you are like me, is to play music while you write. Plain instrumental music is perfect for this because it can make your brain think of how to write out scenes. For me, I often listen to music from some of my favorite movies, TV shows, video games, and other stuff.
After you have these basic things down, you are ready to write your story.
Remember:
- Have Fun
- Let your imagination run wild
- Have a Plot written out to give your story a basic skeleton
- Get to know your characters better by asking questions and writing their individual histories
- Write out chapter by chapter summaries, based on the stories Plot
- And Have Fun -- did I say that already? :D
AND WATCH AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER!!!!!!!!
And here is a random video that I though was funny :D
Brass Band
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Picture 1 - https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpKcmbpPEYH3n1haLA9pDYFY26VbKlRLreyV5BCzd-vdGkWZOhECdAjuVvkDxQi0ldpjQTk2xiaq0gHw3zH3sVnJg5J9ruUqKgTgR7mL-84s5AJcdFFuNle5HTbHjQ5H9l6UDbp4mUGdz1/s1600/Plot.jpg
Picture 2 - http://www.bromfields.net/ljb/map.jpg
Picture 3 - http://img06.deviantart.net/cbb0/i/2012/005/e/0/character_name_generator_by_elerd-d4k71nv.png
Picture 4 - http://www.kathlibbertjewellery.co.uk/optimised-images/choice/mystery-person.jpg
Picture 5 - http://cdn.movieweb.com/img.news.tops/NEitudFb6YNbln_2_b.jpg
Picture 6 - Christopher Gagnon
Picture 7 - Christopher Gagnon
Picture 8 - http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/fb/b8/26/fbb826a6a443b0ada1c063f1426ac00d.jpg
Video 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNyrNwWTf6k
Video 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhk4N9A0oCA
Video 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q1dRSh8Idk
Video 4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHIp8LChwyM
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