Occasionally, I will get asked for some advice on writing stories. I find this very flattering - I'm not a professional, I have no training in the area, and no commercial experience - and yet it still happens. And yet somehow I always feel I'm letting people down when I respond, as I'll craft an email that never quite says everything I want to. This page is something of an attempt to redress that, as I've had plenty of time to think about it, and it's fairly well ordered.
Do please remember in reading and taking on any advice herein - I am an amateur. Don't expect miraculous revelations because I don't have any, just long experience (9 years) in writing stories.
If you're after more professional advice, you might look for the book 'Writing a Novel' by Nigel Watts, published in the 'Teach Yourself' series. I came across it quite by accident in a train station shop at 6.50am one Thursday morning. By the time my journey ended 4 hours later, I'd read it, thought about it, and felt that I picked up a few damn good tips. Here's hoping I haven't also plagiarised it!
On with the show...
(This is where I burst some bubbles.)
Special effects, big space battles, 40 on 1 fight scenes, and bullet time make for great television, games, and comics.
They don't work in a written story.
Sorry, but that's really something important to understand. There is a tendency for people to watch an action film, and think that gives them a really good idea for a story about a half-vampire demon slayer, or a shipwrecked ninja who fights zombies at night. Maybe they are perfectly good ideas, but unless it's a total departure from the genre, it's not a written story that's wanted. A film, cartoon, or comic might work for such a thing, but writing isn't any of these.
Writing a fiction story is not the same as writing about a film. A film is designed to be short, and to grab attention. They lack depth, sacrificing dialog and character development to get through the plot faster, and show more 'action.'
If what you really want is an action story, but lack the ability to film, animate, or draw it - don't believe that writing is the answer.
Let me explain a bit more. Action scenes are hard to write. You've got to account for a lot of things, all happening very quickly. You've got to keep track of them, you have to know all the things that can affect your character(s) during this scene, and you have to present them all to the reader. If this is your character versus twenty opponents, then that's twenty one people you have to keep the reader aware of. And you've got to do it quickly, so that the speed of the scene doesn't get lost.
It can be done - but it's hard.
And it's also hard to read.
Don't let me put you off! I freely admit I have a few action scenes through my stories - and there will no doubt be more. But for the love of everything use them sparingly!
Despite the weaknesses outlined above, writing is a wonderful medium for getting a story across. With it, you can go deeper into the world your characters live in than any film, cover more dialog than there is space for in a comic, and generate more emotion than a cartoon. You can explore thought and feeling, texture, taste, and smell - all of which get lost in televisual media. You can make an object so real that your reader will believe they can feel it in the palm of their hand. You can make people think, laugh, frown, and cry.
And if you want to make a story that is un-put-downable, you're going to do all of these.
I'll just make a small note about fan fiction - think hard before you do it. As tempting as it is to jump into a fully formed world, you've got a lot of things going against you:
Overall, fan fiction is a thing to be discouraged. If you really want to do it, then do it without involving existing characters of that world. If you want to be clever, observe the existing characters from a distance, doing something they do in an existing story, but do not interract because it did not happen that way and neither the original author nor their readers will thank you for trying to alter those events.
I know how easy it is to think you don't need a plan. You've got this big idea in your head, it's all perfect, and you want to start writing right now! The problem with this approach (you may trust me, I've done it), is that you've actually got far less of a plot outline than you think. What you most probably have is a start, and an end. The challenge - the big one - is making those two meet up in an interesting and consistent way.
It isn't easy to do this - don't think for one moment that it is! It's really remarkable how easy it is to get into a situation where you have the idea that 'in this chapter, this character takes this action,' and only when you get to the end do you realise that the character has no reason to take that action, or that actually they have more than enough motivation to do the exact opposite.
And now you're going to have to backtrack, and probably erase days of work as you figure out how to pull a plot around what you feel should have been an obvious problem.
A plan is not a paragraph giving the start and end conditions of your story - that is an outline, and a hazy one at best. A plan is a complete, step by step breakdown of how your story works.
Stories can be rendered down to what I term plot events, units of occurance that can't be split up. Plot events have two important features: a start state, and an end state. As long as both remain constant, you can muck around with the bits in the middle as much as you like, and the story will stay coherent.
A good story plan is thus one where you map out each plot event, it's start state, and end state, and their connections to other plot events. If you're thinking I sound like I'm talking about programming, you're not far off - it was actually this that gave me my approach. Flow diagrams are a godsend at this point!
On the left is a screenshot of my plan for the Foxwood Chronicles (book 1). In orange are some 'timeless notes,' which are simply things to bear in mind when writing. In blue are my plot events. Sometimes I have been able to condense several chapters into a visible event - but that's often just for brevity. A plan with a plot event per chapter, containing a bullet point for everything of note that happens in it, would be an excellent goal.
The nice thing about this type of plan is that it shows connections. Every arrow on the chart means that a plot event in that block has been the direct cause of a plot event in another. There's actually less than I thought.
I also find this type of drawing to be very good for revealing the layout of your story - and what I have discovered from this one is that I actually have three main 'threads' of story, which weave together to make the whole. I also find what I hoped for - that the story starts in one place, and ends in one place. No matter how many threads you have, it's going to make far more sense if the start and end of the story have things all mashed together - otherwise you get the classic loose end.
There is one last thing to do:
Read the plan!
No, really. If the story is at all complex, so is the plan, and by the time you finish it, you've forgotten the start. Read it, start to end. Now do it again.
Now fix the plot hole you missed.
Now read it again.
Now ask why that character took that uncharacteristic action, and provide a reason.
Now read it again.
Repeat until you can't find any more problems. Don't get me wrong, you will find some as you write, but you've just ironed out many of the 'obvious' ones without wasting months writing 10 chapters to get there. Congratulations, you've earned a cookie!
Viewpoint and focus, as I term them, are tremendously powerful with regard to the overall feel of a story. They are, in effect, your literary camera - viewpoint is where you are seeing the world from, while focus is what you are pointing at.
Just like a camera, this is what the reader 'sees' in your story. You're typically going to be taking wide and panoramic shots to get a feel for location, or be up close and personal with your characters. The only real trap I find here is - don't forget to establish the background area for a scene.
Something I personally do time and time again is jump into a scene without establishing where it is, and what the surroundings are. Sometimes it doesn't matter - sometimes it would have been far easier to dedicate the opening paragraph(s) to a sweeping description of the environment.
When writing a story, there are typically three modes, of which you are going to be following just one.
3rd person splits naturally into two sub-modes: roving 3rd person, and restricted 3rd person.
In roving 3rd person, the camera is god. It can go anywhere, see anything, and show the reader events across oceans, behind walls. This is a great way to run with multiple threads of a story - and a great way to tie yourself in knots. Getting important information to the reader is usually easiest this way, but you've got to manage those other scenes, and make them plausible, and consistent.
Restricted 3rd person is where the viewpoint is always fixed with one character, yet we view the story from outside. The reader can never be given more information than the subject character has, and we never leave their presence. One of my favorite examples is the Harry Potter series - the viewpoint never leaves Harry's side, and we know only what he knows. When we need to get more information than that, the author is either right at the start of the book and setting the scene, or gives Harry a vision of remote events - but in all other cases we are pinned to him.
Of course, your viewpoint in a story isn't quite like a camera - for one it's more powerful. You can go inside a character's head, and evesdrop on their thoughts, hear their unspoken words and opinions.
You can use the viewpoint of the story to help endear the reader to a particular character - largely by staying with them.
When you want to have a main character in a story that uses roving 3rd person, the best way of establishing that they are the main character is to stick with them. If they are in a scene, be beside them. Don't let them slide into the background - if they are on the sidelines of a conversation and don't say much, listen to what they are thinking. Internal viewpointing such as this is, to my mind, the best way to get to know and love a character.
If you have a number of important characters, consider a pecking order - if #1 is available, ride along with her, otherwise #2, #3, or #4, in that order and always in that order, unless you have a very real reason to take a scene from an unusual perspective.
If you're having trouble figuring out how to viewpoint a scene from a specific character's perspective, perhaps consider the following:
As the old man raised his hand, Max couldn't help following the gesture with his eyes. It seemed... twisted, the third and fourth fingers gnarled as if burnt. Unconsciously, he rubbed his own hands together, fingers intertwining.
Here we have a simple action, as seen by Max, without being too invasive.
Sometimes it's quite nice to change viewpoint throughout a scene - for example we may start with John, who is approached by Mary as he's digging a hole, then follow Mary as she goes to talk to Steve, and finish with Steve's thoughts as he cuts up some radishes. A subtle shift of viewpoint like this lets us examine each character's thoughts in turn, if we wish to, and gives a way of connecting scenes that might otherwise feel quite separate.
Viewpoint shifts can be powerful - if you want to see both sides of an argument or romantic exchange, they can be excellent - but they can also be confusing. With many more than two characters, it's easy to end up losing track of who we are supposed to be riding with at any given time, and the reader can feel bounced and disoriented.
The tense of your story defines when things happen(ed) relative to the now. There are two potentials:
Present tense is by far the less common - especially when combined with 3rd person viewpoints. Past tense is what might be thought of as the 'standard' writing tense - though whether you are describing events that happened decades ago, or simply lagging behind the action by a few seconds is entirely up to you.
The important part - really important - is not to vary your tense. Never mix modes within the same story. It never works.
Unless it's a present tense story, and you've pulled in a flashback - but if you're doing that, it's intentional.
Sorry, just making sure I had your attention - I know this gets verbose.
Everything above was the technical stuff. It's the near mathematical parts of writing. You don't have to know them, but they will save you days/weeks/months/years if you do. Everything that follows is more subjective - the base elements of a story, and how to fit them together nicely.
We'll assume by now that you have a main character. What do they like for breakfast? If you don't know, why not?
As unexpected and challenging as the question may be, it's still valid. You are the author. To that character, you are god. You can, should, and must know everything about them, because if you don't know about it, it doesn't exist.
When you write about an important character, you should never be guessing their reaction to a situation. You should never have to think about their reaction. You should know their reaction, immediately, without thinking. If you don't, you don't know that character well enough to use them as an important character.
Ways to get to know your character(s):
Natural and fluid story telling: when you know the principle characters in a scene, and I mean really know them deep down, you'll lose any impression that you are writing a story or forming dialog - you're not writing it at all, simply relaying it to the reader. The characters have already decided what they say, and what they do.
And no, it's not easy. There are maybe 3 passages in the Foxwood Chronicles that flowed this well for me, but I do feel that they are the best work I have ever written. I'll leave you to find them yourself, if you care to.
This one is less obvious and often overlooked, but it's really very important. If you personally don't like a character, it'll show through in your story. Oh, you won't mean it to, but you'll show it anyway. You'll background the character, give them less lines than others, avoid passages which would focus on them and consider much of their time 'between the scenes.'
This is of course, a Bad Thing (TM).
As author, you have to learn to like your characters. If you're finding it hard, here's some ideas:
It's not always easy to get through any of the above steps, but it's well worth persevering.
Wanting to write about every one of your main characters, even the ones that the reader is supposed to despise. If you want to write about them, you will do so more fluently, more interestingly, and with greater depth and believability, all of which can turn even a mundane story into a fantastic one.
Almost without exception, a fiction story must contain one element above all others: a challenge. One of your characters must be put in a position where they have a task to perform, an event to initiate, or something to say, and it must be something they find difficult, otherwise you don't have a story, just a description of the day.
This is boring!
The challenge can vary massively. Here are some ideas:
See, the scale of the challenge isn't important. What is important is that it's something that isn't easy to do. If the task is something that requires an extrovert personality, your character better be the quiet and bookish type, else there's no fun.
A purpose for the story to exist.
It is unexpectedly easy to forget to tell the reader things. As the author, you've got a pretty good mental image of a scene as you write it - you know who's in it, where they are, what the lighting's like, whether there are any interesting smells or sounds... and no, I don't remember to write about all of those, either.
That's probably a good thing, an author who writes about every detail of characters' appearances and the environs before starting a dialog is usually considering whether another chapter is needed before they get around to it. This would be a Bad Thing (TM).
There's really no hard and fast rule to how much to tell the reader - it's a matter of authoring style. Nonetheless, do think about it, especially when introducing characters or places for the first time. It's quite confusing to spend three chapters in a town before you know what it's like, or to have your main character talking to someone for an hour before we discover that she's dressed in pink and not human.
An informed reader, who doesn't feel like they have missed something.
It's tempting to make your main character everything that you'd like to be: cool, calm, intelligent, knowledgable, never worried or afraid, always able to handle the situation.
This is boring!
It's also unrealistic. Nobody is all the good things and none of the bad - and if you know someone who is, you probably hate them. If one of your characters is all these things, the reader is probably going to hate them too - remember that they won't discriminate and think nicely of them just because you consider them 'special' in some way.
Fears, worries, and even phobias are a very natural part of life. Your readers can relate to that. It's ok for your characters to be afraid, and to worry, because people do it too! It's realistic, and it's wonderful to watch a character work through a lifeling fear to accomplish their task (compare to section 6 above).
Believable, interesting, likable characters.
Ah, yes, emotion. Here's a thought:
People have them!
Sorry, that needed saying. As with a lack of personality flaws, a lack of emotion is a killer for a good character. Cool, calm, and laid back is one thing, but it's also uninteresting. If the character doesn't care that someone kills her husband, neither does the reader. If the character doesn't fall to his knees and cry when his puppy dies, neither will the reader.
Again, people understand emotions, they can relate to them, and they like it when other people show them.
Oh, and here's a secret: guys cry too.
Believable, interesting, likable characters.
How I know this one... It's really very easy to have a 'he said, then she said, then he said,' dialog without really meaning to. The important thing to remember as the author is that you're probably adding more detail internally than you are writing about. Just because you see a character smiling as they speak doesn't mean that it's obvious that the character is doing. Tell the reader!
Don't be afraid to use synonyms either. Words such as stated, declared, responded, replied, answered, asked, shouted, cried - all off them add variety and get your writing away from that horrible flat unnatural of repeated words.
Variety and interest.
Getting someone to dedicate several hours to reading your story isn't easy. Nobody actually wants to give you that time, what they want is to be entertained. How do you do this? Keep making them wonder what's going to happen next.
It should be a running theme through your story - when finishing a chapter or ending a scene, bear in mind that the aim is to make the reader look at his/her watch, frown, but say 'ok, just a bit more then.' Never give them a break, if you can help it, so that they will keep coming back time, and time again.
Readers finish your story!
I'm not talking about avoiding swearing here - although if you can, it's probably good to. No, I'm talking about the way you use language to describe your world, and how your characters speak.
Don't let your characters irritate the reader!
That's an important point to remember. It is really (really!) annoying to plough through a story with lines such as 'and she was like, and I was like, and that was like just totally,' especially if it carries over into the narrative of the story.
I really don't care if your neighbour talks like that. I don't care if your friends talk like that, and I don't care if you talk like that, it is not a suitable form of language to write in. The one exception is if you have a single character who is supposed to be annoying, and supposed to talk like that - but if it gets outside that character's dialog, then your reader is most likely going to turn away in disgust.
Beyond such obvious travesties, just try to use a good narrative style. Don't use the same words over and over, try to use a variety of vocabulary without making the reader reach for a dictionary every third word. It's not actually hard to write text that isn't annoying - but sometimes you do have to break the habits of all the regional mannerisms you're exposed to daily.
Oh, and if you ever expect someone to read a story that has abbreviations in it, please go away now.
Clean, readable text, with dialog that does not make people want to be elsewhere.
