All of us have stories to tell, yet very few of us are able to put the stories in our mind on paper. Most of us simply lack the confidence. But as I wrote in one of my previous posts, if you have to write a story, just do that already.
But then, your story should have substance. People should like to read what you penned down. Otherwise, you will end up with piles of unsold storybooks. Here are five quick story writing tips that you may want to follow.
1. The theme
Identify the core message of your story. You may not have a theme all the time, but you should look to identify a theme. Your protagonist, for example, should be someone who can touch the hearts of your readers – does your protagonist want something? Does your protagonist need to make a moral choice?
2. The beginning
Your story has to begin well. This means you will need to create an exciting title for your story, something that compels a reader to pick up the book and browse through a couple of pages. Titles with only one or two words can confuse others, so let it be slightly lengthy. And of course, the first page of your story is very important – it sets the tone for the rest of the story. You need to get this portion right.
3. The plot
More or less, most stories follow a sequence – conflict, things going right and then wrong, the final defeat or victory and climax. If you consider some of the most well known stories, you will find that the plot revolves around a struggle or conflict that your protagonist goes through. The struggle could be with a situation, or another person, or something about another person.
4. The characters
Depending on the size of your story, you could have a few or many characters. Have a main character of the story and the others should surround the main character. The main character should be someone your readers can associate with – say a few things about the main character that makes them enigmatic to an extent. Don’t look to create a perfect character because a perfect character is almost always boring. While they should have some great qualities, they should also have a couple of bad qualities.
5. Keep the story moving
Your story needs to move. Moving forward is much easier when you write a short story. After all, you complete your story in about 3,500 words or so. So, you want to set a fast pace and continue at the same pace throughout. Keeping the pace in a novel is far difficult because you tend to write about 75,000 words or more. A great idea is to go up and down and keep jabbing the reader. And for both the short stories and novels, you need to take the reader to a climax and then end your narrative.
Keep these five story writing tips in mind, and writing your story could suddenly become much easier. I wish you luck in your endeavour. Happy writing…
Image credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simões on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0
Moumita Goswami is a full-time homemaker and a passionate writer. She stays in Pune with her husband and daughter. After giving up working, she started writing about five years ago and can now be seen using her computer keyboard almost all the time. An MA in Psychology from Calcutta University, Moumita has spent time in Kolkata, Delhi and now Pune. For Moumita, writing started as a sudden chance but she soon discovered her likeness for it. And now she has developed a passion for writing and hardly any day passes without her scribbling a few lines. She dreams of publishing her own book one day and is working towards it.