Hello Malice blog readers!
The MALICE Authors will be chatting with the Q4 on Sunday, April 19th!
One of the Q4 members, Rebecca Sky has kindly provided us with a guest post about her thoughts on starting a new story. Check out her post below and leave comments and possible questions to be answered tomorrow during the chat!
Is your brain seeping in new ideas? At work/school do you find yourself doodling the name of a new character? If so, you may have been bitten with the New Story bug. Don’t worry, there’s a cure. (It’ll cost you almost all your free time though).
All you have to do is write it down. Sounds simple, right? Anyone who has started a book will tell you otherwise. It’s hard enough organizing your own life let alone the lives of many fictional people. So what do you do? Is there a way to get the ideas from your head and onto paper as seamlessly as possible? The answer to that is actually a yes!
Here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned through trial and error and a lot of re-writes!
Tip #1: Know your story’s climax.
Before you start writing, you should know the climax. Weird I know, but with a good grasp of your story’s point of highest tension/drama you can better understand your characters, and your story will have direction. It also allows you to drop hints to readers along the way. Readers love trying to figure out the story. If you have direction, the story has a better purpose.
But how do you figure out your climax?
Maybe the better question to ask is what is your main characters(MC) motivation—the internal private motivation and the external driving motivation. Once you know what they want, you can find your climax. The end of your book must answer the following questions: Does your character get what they want? If so, how? If not, why? And how has it changed them, for better or worse?
I love cue cards. I write my beginning on one card and my climax on another. Any ideas I have for scenes I write on another and then can start organizing them into the five sections of story progression. What else do you put between the start and end? That leads us to tip number two.
Tip #2: Understand story structure.
Section 1- EXPOSITION, this is where you introduce your main character(MC) to the reader. This is also where you introduce their normal life and the beginning of what is pushing them into the books conflict. (Every book needs a good conflict—I’ll get to that later). *This section should be less than 25% of your word count.
Section 2- RISING ACTION, here the conflict rises. Be sure to show the struggles and pitfalls your MC faces during this stage. It helps readers connect with them.
Section 3- CLIMAX, This is the turning point in the book. Your MC has either just won against the conflict or are trying to accept failure. *usually comes at 75%-80% of the way through your manuscript.
Section 4 FALLING ACTION, How do you tie up your books loose ends? How does you MC act now? This is what you show us here.
Finally, Section 5- DENOUEMENT, Your MC may have a new outlook on life, a new inner strength, this is how you nicely wrap up your story, your story’s conflict and tie everything into the ending!
*Section 4 & 5 combined should also be less than 25% of your word count.
Tip #3: Know your characters.
It is so important to have a good understanding of your characters because it influences how they act in your story. Some things I do to better discover who my MC is, is to answer a Myers Briggs personality test for them. It’s free online to do, just answer the questions how you think your character would and at the end they email you a complete personality outline with things your MC likes or would be good at. There are other tools you could use, some people just write biographies for each character. Whatever your tool the better you know the characters in your book the better book you will produce. If you know their goal, their weakness and their strength you should have a good idea who they are and why they act like they do.
Tip #4: Embrace conflict.
Conflict is the main problem of the book. Your MC could find out her boyfriend cheated on her OR he/she could realize they are dead. Whatever it is, it’s a problem that needs resolve. Books can also have a main conflict as well as smaller conflicts disbursed throughout. Make sure your characters reaction to the conflict fits their personality. For instance if your MC is chronically shy and finds out her boyfriend cheated, she probably isn’t going to yell at him in the school cafeteria. She would most likely run away and hide. How your character grows through her shyness and overcomes the conflict is the premise of the whole book. The cheating is the main conflict and your MC’s shyness is the secondary conflict. See what I mean, you can add layers of conflict. The more conflict you add the more developed your book becomes.
Tip #5: Excitement.
My motto is start every chapter late and end every chapter early. What that means is start with action and end with suspense. Hook the reader at the beginning then leave them having to know what happens next so they continue reading.
Tip #6: Have fun!
This is the most important rule to writing! If you aren’t enjoying writing it, then chances are readers won’t enjoy reading it.
Thanks for taking time to read all this, I hope I gave you some helpful tips. Please feel free to ask me any questions you may have. You can find out more about me at www.RebeccaSky.com.
xo –Rebecca Sky
To hear more from Rebecca Sky be sure to check out the links below!
Website: www.RebeccaSky.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RebeccaSky
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRealRSky
Wattpad: http://www.wattpad.com/user/RebeccaSky