Let’s say you just woke up from an awesome adventure, grueling nightmare, or the most romantic dream ever, and you thought this could be a book. What do you do? You dump all that you remember in a piece of paper and you tap it twice with fairy dust until it settles into your manuscript? I wish that could be true. Although there are people that can wake up and in one sit do somewhat of a first draft on a story. 99% of the population probably can’t.
So how do you organize your ideas? How do you untangle that fuzziness into a complete arc, plot, iconic characters? How about if we go step by step.
The first question you can ask. With what category or genre goes my story? This is important because when you put your story into a genre there are certain rules you must follow, and there’s an audience for each as well. Hey, you can two genres like dark-fantasy, romantic-sci-fi. Choose your poison. By selecting the genre gets you one step closer to make easier your writing process.
So you chose your category. Now can figure out what is your audience. By selecting your audience you can narrow even further on what you can write. Is it for children? YA? Adults +? By selecting this you can instantly eliminate a lot of thematics that could slow you down when writing. If you are writing a children’s book, I don’t think using adultery, bank heist, or government corruption sub-plots can help your story. It just doesn’t feel right. You pick your audience and you look for things that might interest the audience you are writing for.
I have another post on character creation, still, talking about characters forever will be an ongoing discussion. So what with the characters? Build them a solid profile. Something that you know or helps you out on what decision your character will take. You could make a scary-cat overcome their fears if its part of his character arc. But, will it be wise to have a person with no proper training of guns, becoming a marksman overnight? Probably not. That applies to everything in that character’s profile. If you use stereotypes in your favor, that can also help you out to figure how characters will react to certain situations. You can also include strengths and weaknesses to determine, how to move forward in your story.
So I gave you three ways to narrow your decision making. What if you need to expand? Do you know your plot? Sub-plots? Let’s say that you have pinpointed, your genre, audience, characters, plot, and sub-plots, one way you can expand is with proper research. Research is the key to everything, even writer’s block. Usually writer’s block can be negated with the investigation.
Example: You chose genre horror and adults. Just by selecting these two you can access a lot without turning to the plot or sub-plot. On horror, you can see all the ways you can shock people or frighten them with something physical. There are sites that only focus on tortures and grotesque items that were used to inflict pain. So again, how many things you can bring to the table with that.
Example 2: Character is a nurse. You can do too many things with that. Is the nurse wanting to become a medic someday? Those the nurse has student loans? Was the person force in this field? What happens if the nurse doesn’t follow proper procedure. Now more than ever, including what we are living at the moment with the pandemic, you can see how life varies between nurses and the countries they are in. Do they have a partner? Are they happy? Is the nurse having an affair at work? With a patient? There’s a bunch of questions we can make about a single profession. Imagine how vast your research can be to expand your story or create different obstacles for your character.
In the end you will need to balance what needs to get in your story and what really doesn’t have any impact. Remember that, the idea that you have is going to an audience that must start and finish your story. Don’t make it about you. Don’t make it boring. Writing is not an easy process, but there are ways to make it easier.
Another way to make your writing easier, get yourself some help. Critique partners, beta readers, editors, become part of a writing community. Sometimes you will have blindsides and another set of eyes, mind, experience, or whatever, can and will help you. Either to fix problems in your story or confirm a scene that had you in doubt if it was good or not.
I want to know about you. Are you writing? Just here for the reads? Let me know in the comment section. If you want me to take on a specific theme let me know. You can also follow me on social media at, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Soon I’ll have my YouTube channel open. It will be in Spanish though. Reign of Darkness is available on Amazon, so check it out. I’ll leave you for now. Take care guys.