literature

Writing The Story

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Writing The Story
(How Does That Go Again?)

Detail is always an important factor when writing your story. For instance, if we have Milan digging out an ancient vehicle, we’re not going to simply say: Milan was digging up an ancient vehicle.

Readers like to know what things look like. The more detailed the description, the better the mental image. However, you don’t want to make it so long it’s boring. You want the detail to be short, but effective. This means you need to use as few words as possible to give an exact description of what people are looking out. Sometimes, this requires a bit of research.

There’s that word again. Yes, research. And it’s probably going to keep popping up. Don’t forget that, if you’re writing a science fiction novel on an archaeologist, people who know stuff about archaeology aren’t going to be dumb to the archaeological terms. Give the name of the tool your character is using to work with and your readers will know what that tool’s use is for and also what your character would be doing with it.

Dialogue is another important piece of writing a story. You can lead your readers through a story without much dialogue, but it’s extremely hard to do so without getting really boring. Dialogue breaks up the descriptions and provides for a refreshing change.

Dialogue also helps your readers get to know other characters besides the main one. How a person speaks and what they say when they do talk will show a lot how your other characters think and what their personalities are like. For instance, if Milan is discussing how important ancient artifacts are with other students and one of the other students suddenly says something about their worth being the most important factor, you’re going to know that the character who said that is more interested in the money than the mysteries and truths the artifact has to reveal and it’s not going to sit well among the other archaeologists.

Then there’s making sure that the way characters interact with one another and their surroundings is believable and true to their personality. This has been touched on before, but it’s important enough to mention repeatedly. Keeping your characters true to their personalities makes it so a reader doesn’t get confused on what to think about your character. If a character has multiple and conflicting opinions on one subject, your character is obviously a very confused person and your readers aren’t going to be very pleased with how indecisive your character is.

This can work if your character is young and doesn’t know much and thus is being introduced to many different situations. Their opinion might change constantly as they learn new things. This is how your character grows. But if your character is in their 40s or older, they’re going to be pretty much set in their ways. There’s not going to be much a person can do to change their minds.

And, of course, as stated before, a story has a beginning, a middle and an end. These are crucial to every story. Even if your story is a continuing series, each novel should have a beginning, middle and an end.

About the only stories that don’t have precise endings are the To-Be-Continued ones. Usually they tend to drop off right in the middle of something very climatic to get the reader interested in reading the next novel. However, even they sometimes have a sort-of ending that leaves the reader feeling satisfied.

Also, perhaps the most important part of writing your story is reading over it many times after you have completed it. There might be details you accidentally left out as you were writing it. Sometimes, when you’re writing, you have a good idea of what it looks like in your head, but you forget to tell everything about it so your reader is left with little to no idea of what an object/place/etc. might look like.

There also might be tons of misspellings or incorrect word usages, or very…strange things that somehow got into your story and which can either make you laugh so hard you cry or leave you wondering if you were really tired when you wrote a section and that might explain why it makes no sense at all. You want it to be polished to the best of your ability when you send it off to an agent or publisher.

Also, NEVER start correcting your story when you’re only a little ways or partway or even most of the way through it. Otherwise, you’ll be spending all of your time correcting it and not finishing it. Trust me, I know. If I had obeyed this rule, I would have been published years ago. I’m VERY nitpicky about my story and how it should be. Obsessive Compulsive would be a better word to describe my needing to constantly correct my stories before they’re finished because I don’t think they’re good enough or I think of something better.

Just FINISH the story. Then correct it. It will save you a world of trouble and you may just get published sooner.
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Animetor7's avatar
These guides are very good. Thank you, and you should make your Milan story into an actual one, it's interesting and I know that I for one would like to read it. Good luck getting published with whatever you are working on.