Art & Art Tutorials
The Art of Basic Story Writing
First Things First
You might be wondering what a story writing tutorial is doing amongst all the other drawing and painting tutorials. Well, writing stories is as much an art as anything else demanding creative thought. Writing great stories is in particular. Just as composing a great balanced painting by conforming to certain rules, a story has to conform to certain rules as well, but we'll get to that in a minute so lets move on.
Forget It! What?
Basically everything there is to tell has been told before a gazillion times, so if you think you're going to write something completely utterly groundbreakingly new, you really have to strain yourself. Everything, from stories about love and hate to stories about odd beings visiting Earth have been told and re-told again and again since the dawn of man. But fear not. What you need is to write about subjects well-known by giving them a unique twist. A new and exciting angle. That is the task at hand. Lets move on then shall we?
The Important Elements
To complete the task of writing a great story you need to know how such a story is constructed. The rules of story writing serves as a framework wherein you can spread your writing wings. These rules can be bent, sure, but I would hardly recommend you doing that as a beginner writer. Below I have listed the most important elements and techniques of story writing, and if your setup consist of these elements you are off to a good start. We will start with the most important part. The premise of your story.
The Premise
Many great writers argue that the first thing to do is to define a clear story premise. A premise is simply a question which defines what your story is trying to answer. For instance if I wrote a story about mindcontrolling my premise/question could sound like this: "What would happen if I gained the ability to control other peoples minds and would this power corrupt me as a person?" That would then be the question my story has to answer. Always keep your premise short, informative and precise.
Brainstorming
If your story is a jumble of thoughts and ideas do some brainstorming and write down everything. Characters, dialog, thoughts, places and everything else. Get it down on paper and sort your information afterwards.
Beginning, Middle, End
A story is roughly divided into these three parts. The parts are not abruptly separated in the actual story, but flows from one part to the next naturally.
Beginning: Introduce main characters (use only few main characters) fast and try to make the beginning as captivating as possible to maintain the readers attention. Make the beginning set the rest of the story into motion. Something important have to happen, a conflict which needs to be resolved.
Middle: Here the plots unfold and the action rise. A plot is basically how characters evolve in the story and what makes them evolve the way they do.
End: This is the part everything else leads up to. Here the conflict, the things at stake, peak, possibly in a surprising manner. Once the conflict has been resolved you should end your story quickly. Even though your story ends you can still leave the ending somewhat open. It gives the story a dynamic feel to it in which the reader can speculate further.
Erase Your Darlings
I'm not encouraging you to rub an eraser against your loved ones here. Darlings in this respect means ideas you get which really stand out and you like alot i.e. they have become your darlings. If you get ideas like that get rid of them. Immediately! Why? Because if your ideas stand out too much they will break the flow of your story and demand too much attention. This might sound odd but it's true. If you get ideas like that either erase them completely or make them less dominant.
Choose One Point of View...
...and stick to it. As a beginner writer I suggest you either write in a third-person point of view (he, she, it), or first-person point of view (I, we). There are many different narrative modes but first- and third-person are the most common. In first-person the narrator is the protagonist (your main character) and knows only what he knows. In omniscient third-person mode the narrator is all-knowing. He knows every thought and action of every character in the story. He also knows what everyone else in the story knows about eachother. It is sort of the God Mode of narrating. Pick a narrative mode that works best for the story you wish to convey.
Themes and Settings
Your story needs a believable theme and atmosphere to become successful. For instance, if you write a horror story use alot of eerie and scary elements to solidify it. Right from wierd personas, psychotic axe murderers, fog, lots of dark and spooky places to occultism and lonely forests. You probably get the idea. Brainstorming is, again, a great tool for getting all the ideas down so remember to use it.
Past, Future and Present
The easiest is to stick to a single timeframe, but if it's vital for your story to work you are free to jump back and forth in time as long as you keep an overview of what is going on. Most stories have the usual present starting point then moves on forward chronologically until it reaches the end. But your story could easily start with the ending, then you start telling your story leading up to that endpoint. Using different timeframes can be tricky but also adds an interesting dimension.
Tutorials Have An Ending Too
That's the elements of basic storywriting. There is still plenty more to learn about storywriting and I've only covered the very basics in this tutorial. Google for more story writing stuff if you wish. The web is packed with free tutorials on the subject. Good luck writing.
Have comments, suggestions or critique? Sign up and share it here!
You might be wondering what a story writing tutorial is doing amongst all the other drawing and painting tutorials. Well, writing stories is as much an art as anything else demanding creative thought. Writing great stories is in particular. Just as composing a great balanced painting by conforming to certain rules, a story has to conform to certain rules as well, but we'll get to that in a minute so lets move on.
Forget It! What?
Basically everything there is to tell has been told before a gazillion times, so if you think you're going to write something completely utterly groundbreakingly new, you really have to strain yourself. Everything, from stories about love and hate to stories about odd beings visiting Earth have been told and re-told again and again since the dawn of man. But fear not. What you need is to write about subjects well-known by giving them a unique twist. A new and exciting angle. That is the task at hand. Lets move on then shall we?
The Important Elements
To complete the task of writing a great story you need to know how such a story is constructed. The rules of story writing serves as a framework wherein you can spread your writing wings. These rules can be bent, sure, but I would hardly recommend you doing that as a beginner writer. Below I have listed the most important elements and techniques of story writing, and if your setup consist of these elements you are off to a good start. We will start with the most important part. The premise of your story.
The Premise
Many great writers argue that the first thing to do is to define a clear story premise. A premise is simply a question which defines what your story is trying to answer. For instance if I wrote a story about mindcontrolling my premise/question could sound like this: "What would happen if I gained the ability to control other peoples minds and would this power corrupt me as a person?" That would then be the question my story has to answer. Always keep your premise short, informative and precise.
Brainstorming
If your story is a jumble of thoughts and ideas do some brainstorming and write down everything. Characters, dialog, thoughts, places and everything else. Get it down on paper and sort your information afterwards.
Beginning, Middle, End
A story is roughly divided into these three parts. The parts are not abruptly separated in the actual story, but flows from one part to the next naturally.
Beginning: Introduce main characters (use only few main characters) fast and try to make the beginning as captivating as possible to maintain the readers attention. Make the beginning set the rest of the story into motion. Something important have to happen, a conflict which needs to be resolved.
Middle: Here the plots unfold and the action rise. A plot is basically how characters evolve in the story and what makes them evolve the way they do.
End: This is the part everything else leads up to. Here the conflict, the things at stake, peak, possibly in a surprising manner. Once the conflict has been resolved you should end your story quickly. Even though your story ends you can still leave the ending somewhat open. It gives the story a dynamic feel to it in which the reader can speculate further.
Erase Your Darlings
I'm not encouraging you to rub an eraser against your loved ones here. Darlings in this respect means ideas you get which really stand out and you like alot i.e. they have become your darlings. If you get ideas like that get rid of them. Immediately! Why? Because if your ideas stand out too much they will break the flow of your story and demand too much attention. This might sound odd but it's true. If you get ideas like that either erase them completely or make them less dominant.
Choose One Point of View...
...and stick to it. As a beginner writer I suggest you either write in a third-person point of view (he, she, it), or first-person point of view (I, we). There are many different narrative modes but first- and third-person are the most common. In first-person the narrator is the protagonist (your main character) and knows only what he knows. In omniscient third-person mode the narrator is all-knowing. He knows every thought and action of every character in the story. He also knows what everyone else in the story knows about eachother. It is sort of the God Mode of narrating. Pick a narrative mode that works best for the story you wish to convey.
Themes and Settings
Your story needs a believable theme and atmosphere to become successful. For instance, if you write a horror story use alot of eerie and scary elements to solidify it. Right from wierd personas, psychotic axe murderers, fog, lots of dark and spooky places to occultism and lonely forests. You probably get the idea. Brainstorming is, again, a great tool for getting all the ideas down so remember to use it.
Past, Future and Present
The easiest is to stick to a single timeframe, but if it's vital for your story to work you are free to jump back and forth in time as long as you keep an overview of what is going on. Most stories have the usual present starting point then moves on forward chronologically until it reaches the end. But your story could easily start with the ending, then you start telling your story leading up to that endpoint. Using different timeframes can be tricky but also adds an interesting dimension.
Tutorials Have An Ending Too
That's the elements of basic storywriting. There is still plenty more to learn about storywriting and I've only covered the very basics in this tutorial. Google for more story writing stuff if you wish. The web is packed with free tutorials on the subject. Good luck writing.
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