I happen to have troubles sleeping. I've had this all my life, and I've learned how to deal with it: make up stories to keep my mind off of my attempts to sleep. I've been doing this for as long as I can remember, and I feel like it's about time for me to start writing them down.
I'm actually kind of glad I'm waiting until today to do so. My first stories were terrible fan-fictions starring me as a male Mary Sue. What little of them I remember, I just want to forget. They're terrible and embarrassing.
Occasionally, I have a stroke of genius and write down a quick short story. These have never left my computers except when they went on a flash drive. Most of these are elongated jokes with a good point in them. I probably should post them up somewhere, like on that Deviant Art account I registered. I figured that if I laughed at them, and the people at college really consider me somewhat funny, I'm sure several people out there will enjoy it. They certainly not the worst things on the internet by any stretch. I guess I just have this fear of falling victim to Sturgeon's Law.
Over the years, I've learned quite a bit about writing in general. The most important thing is to have relatively good grammar; bad grammar can destroy the experience of an otherwise great story by making it impossible to understand. The second most important thing is to think things through, and ask yourself every question the naysayers would ask. Never stop until every question has a great answer.
The third most important thing is to show, don't tell. It gets boring being told everything. It's much more fun to give the readers all the clues they needs to figure out your characters for themselves. Needless to say, this is very hard to do. Here's a half-stolen example:
One man stood and shouted in protest, "You're insane!" Receiving nothing but stares and silence, he checked his seat before returning to it.
What does that say:
There is only one man who disagrees. He acted completely inappropriately. He was somewhat surprised by this. It made him somewhat embarrassed.
None of those things were directly stated, but can be implied based on the details being shown.
The fourth most important thing is to have something to say. Without any point, it's just words, words, words. Just note that you don't have to have a specific type of point, just a point of some sort. Whether it's to tell a joke, or to make an argument, or to educate, or simply to tell a story, there just has to be a point.
The fifth most important thing is to have a plan. Winging it usually doesn't work, unless you're taking the AP Exam, in which case you'll end up somehow passing despite calling one author completely insane (yes, that's how I passed my AP English exam). You need to have something of an idea of how you're going to do things. You also need to have something of an idea of how to get between doing things.
While you're at it, don't forget to add in a few clues that you know where you're going. This is called foreshadowing. Generally, you want to give readers a vague idea of where you're going with this, but not give any details. If you're really good, you can give a perfectly accurate hint, but word it in such a way that it makes the reader think something different. Don't go attempting this on your first try; you probably will fail. Also, don't do this every time, otherwise your readers will be expecting it.
If you can do all of this, you can probably write a good story. Of course, there's a lot more to it than this, and if you screw up badly in all of those, your story will fail even though you did all of these five things right. Just be sure to try and put effort into things. You could be surprised at how well things turn out.
Of course, some people are just plain afraid of writing. They're afraid of writing something bad, which I'm guilty of. My response is to wait for a good idea that can work. Others are afraid that they have no good ideas. Look, if Twilight can become so popular, so can your bad ideas, especially if you execute them as best as possible. Still others are afraid because they're dyslexic. Dyslexia has nothing to with writing a story, but writing words. A spell-checker or editor can easily solve that problem. Plus, I only recently learned that one of my favorite authors, Terry Goodkind, is dyslexic, and almost all of his books are #1 New York Times Best Sellers. All that matters is your ability to tell a great story, and if you can do that and get published, you have it made.
Just for fun, I've included an outline to a standard fantasy story. This framework should be all you need to write a good story. I've kept it open enough that anyone can adapt it for any purpose, such as writing a comedy, or something completely serious, or maybe even political satire. Whatever the case, here you go. Consider it public domain (or in the event that this is not legally possible, I hereby grant anyone permission to use the following outline for any reason without any restrictions, unless such restrictions are required by law).
- Intro
- Hero and friends introduced
- Hero's hometown destroyed by evil sorcerer
- Rebel says to collect the 3 MacGuffins to kill him.
- MacGuffin 1
- Travel through forest
- Evil talking tree has it, heroes kill it and get MacGuffin 1
- MacGuffin 2
- Travel through Desert
- Evil living skeleton has it, heroes kill it and get MacGuffin 2
- Additional motivation
- Heroes make it back to town
- Evil sorcerer attacks and kidnaps the chick.
- Alternatively, sorcerer does something so evil, you just want to kill the #%*& out of him.
- MacGuffin 3
- Travel through snowfield
- Evil yeti has it, heroes kill it and get MacGuffin 3
- Preparation
- 80's montage video
- Assault
- Kill hundreds of summoned monsters fighting through lair
- 3 more Guardians
- Pig demon
- Giant head and hands
- Dragon
- Sorcerer's right hand man
- Chick rescued
- Final battle
- Sorcerer offers hero chance to join him, refused
- 1st form: normal
- 2nd form: some form of demon
- 3rd form: Naked Zombie Sean Connery
- Hero suddenly remembers the MacGuffins, kills sorcerer
- Villain defeated, lair spontaneously starts collapsing, heroes escape at last second.
- Conclusion
- World is saved
- Hometown avenged
- Everybody is happy
- Hero and the chick get together
- Roll Credits
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