Writing isn’t easy, and writing a good story is even harder. I used to wonder how Pixar came out with such great movies, year after year. Then, I found out a normal Pixar film takes six years to develop, and most of that time is spent on the story. In this article, you’ll learn the secrets about how to write a story, and more importantly, how to write a story that’s good. Every writer works in a different way. Some writers work straight through from beginning to end. Others work in pieces they arrange later, while others work from sentence to sentence.
Whether you’re writing a novel, novella, short story, or flash fiction, don’t be afraid to try out different voices, and styles. Experiment with different story writing techniques, story ideas, and story structures. Keep what works for you and discard the rest. Your material and process will guide you to your own set of rules.
Steps to write the story:
Follow this step-by-step guide and writing tips to polish your creative writing skills:
Write in one sitting:
Write the first draft of your story in as short a time as possible. If you’re writing a short story, try to write it in one sitting. If you’re writing a novel, try to write it in one season (three months). Don’t worry too much about plotting or outlining beforehand. You can do that once you know you have a story to tell in the first place. Your first draft is a discovery process. You are like an archeologist digging an ancient city out of the clay. You might have a few clues about where your city is buried beforehand, but you don’t know what it will look like until it’s unearthed. All that’s to say, get digging!
Make memorable characters:
Character and event are inseparable because a person is what happens to them. You might think of this as a distinction from films, where actors are cast into pre-existing roles. But a novel is a character interacting with events over time. Your job as a writer is to learn about your character by observing how they interact with the world around them. Characters—like real people—have hobbies, pets, histories, ruminations, and obsessions. It’s essential to your novel that you understand these aspects of your character so that you are equipped to understand how they may react under the pressures of events they encounter.
Create suspense and drama:
T create suspense, set up a dramatic question. A dramatic question is something like,“Is he going to make it?” or,“Is she going to get the man of her dreams?” By putting your protagonist’s fate in doubt, you make the reader ask, what happens next?
Note: To do this well, you need to carefully restrict the flow of information to the reader. Nothing destroys drama like over-sharing.
Write good dialogue:
Good dialogue comes from two things: an intimate knowledge of your characters and lots of rewriting.
Each character must have a unique voice, and to make sure your characters all sound different, read each character’s dialogue and ask yourself,“Does this sound like my character?” If your answer is no, then you have some rewriting to do.
Also, with your speaker tags, try not to use anything but“he said” and“she said.” Speaker tags like“he exclaimed,”“she announced,” and“he spoke vehemently” are distracting and unnecessary. The occasional“he asked” is fine, though.
These are some basic points to write a good story by following these you can easily write an excellent story in no time. If you are still having any difficulty in writing a story you can hop on to our website Britain Writers and our writing team will briefly listen to your queries and resolve them as soon as possible.