Hawk's Fairly In-Depth Guide About Writing Stories

[Hawks]

Hawks All-Purpose Literary Writing Guide

 

YAY FUN COLORS!

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

 

This guide is going to be a big one; Im going to try to cover not just basics of writing, but also of writing an enjoyable story. I may go a little deep in my story preparations; this is because thats the part I like the best. If youre one to just write what you come up with, this guide can still help you. Anyway, before my introduction becomes too long, Im going to give you the contents.

 

 

 

1. Introduction

 

2. Outlines and Why They are Important

 

3. Setting Design

 

4. Character Design

 

5. Getting Ready to Write

 

6. Typing and Proofreading

 

7. Conclusion

 

8. Useful Things

 

 

 

My table of contents is sort of in the middle of my introduction. This isnt the best As I go on my formatting will get better, I assure you.

 

 

 

Outlines

 

 

 

Outlines are the most important part of the story next to your characters. You should start by thinking up a problem that needs to be solved. It could be a characters revenge (he feels a need to kill his fathers murderer) or it could be the character is involved in an intergalactic war and has been drafted. This is what the story will revolve around, and in the end, the problem will be resolved in some way, perhaps not how the character planned. Along the way, the main character will meet others and will have to overcome obstacles in his way. These pieces of the story could be mini-climaxes; each problem has its own rising and falling action. If you write your outline in that way, you will have your story almost written for you; you just have to flesh the pieces out. Im going to define some literary terms for you so you will know what Im talking about later on.

 

 

 

Climax: The high point of the story; it occurs at least two-thirds of the way into the story. This is where the problem is going to be solved in some way, it doesnt necessarily have to be solved at this point; but this point is where its clear how the story will end.

 

 

 

Resolution: What happens at the very end, and how the problem is finally solved. What happens to all of the characters?

 

 

 

Rising Action: The events that lead up to the climax. Does the character fall in love with the daughter of his fathers murderer? Does it change his views on the murder?

 

 

 

Falling Action: The timeframe between the climax and the resolution. It is usually spent explaining where the characters are going and what they will do with their lives now.

 

 

 

If I were to write an outline for the story of the boy avenging his fathers murder, I would start with the murder, in a prologue of sorts. Character names are sketchy at this point.

 

 

 

Prologue: Boys father murdered by murderer.

 

1: Boy grows up, talks to mother and brother about father. Brother is bitter and angry, rubs off on boy.

 

2: Boy is near adult now. Feels hatred toward murderer. Mother doesnt want him to go, knows itll end up worse.

 

3: Boy leaves without mothers permission. Steals fathers sword and hunting knife. Mother and brother are saddened; brother becomes more bitter as time goes on.

 

4: Boy travels through the land. Learns many tricks by way of traveling performers. Earns a bit of money this way.

 

5: Boy learns where fathers murderer resides. Makes it a point to go there. By this time, boy is fairly well off and is successful at street arts.

 

6: Boy visits murderers fief. Murderer is none other that Sir insertnamehere, a well-known knight who killed boys father in a drunken rage. Boys father was a horse groom, boys older brother trained enough, so family was not compensated.

 

7: Boy sees Sir INHs daughter from afar. She is very pretty and not yet 17. Boy likes her very much.

 

8: Boy makes it a point to show off when she and friends are about. At this point boy is 19 and is living in a local inn in the fief.

 

9: Boys feelings toward Sir INH change as he learns of his plight from his daughter. Spends time with her, is invited to the castle on feast day.

 

10: Feast day. Boy is dressed in his best, and comes to the castle. Learns that Sir INH is not so well off. Boy decides that day that it would honor fathers memory not to kill the man who is repentant. (Sir INH has since sworn off alcohol).

 

11: The day after the feast, boy asks daughter to marry him. He has won her over with his many entertaining tricks, and she is a second child, with more freedoms to marry. She says yes.

 

12: The boy is hired as a court entertainer and he and his wife live in the fief for some time. Boy decides one day to return to his home with his wife to introduce her.

 

13: They reach the home; boys brother lives alone, and grieving over the recent loss of his mother. Brother states she died in her sleep. Boy tells brother of the repentance of Sir INH; brother is neither pleased nor angry. Brother welcomes them and says he wishes to go back with them.

 

14: They return to the fief. Sir INH welcomes brother as a son in law and offers him anything. Brother takes a cottage and a comfortable job as a horse groom.

 

 

 

Rising action, in this case is the Prologue to 10. Climax is 10-11; Falling action is 11-13, and Resolution 13-14. I have what is a complete, if kind of lame story. With a little work, it could become an enjoyable story. The storyline is only one factor in a good story; there are bigger and better ones on the way.

 

 

 

Setting Design

 

 

 

You could of course use RuneScape. Im going to use it as an example to prove that even if you use a pre-made setting, youre going to need to make some things up as well.

 

 

 

Take the Lumbridge Castle for instance. Its a landmark, but what if you were going to have a feast inside it, or go in the kitchen cellar? There are details in the game, but you can fudge them to give your story more feel, that you thought about it and decided the colors of Lumbridge would be black and silver, and that you have a reason for it. Not just because those are the colors in the game.

 

 

 

Personally, I feel that RuneScape settings are good (except I think Varrock and Falador are overused as story areas), but I think you can go farther and invent your own world. What if your story doesnt work with the medieval fantasy theme that RuneScape has?

 

 

 

You make your own. There are guides on this in various books, and Ill summarize it to you. Start with a name. Flesh it out with types of creatures, the land/water, the atmosphere, names of countries, what sort of technology it has, and the like. This will help you when you get to designing your characters. Get the details down, and the rest is fairly easy. You may not need to know what color the sky is, or if the inhabitants breathe methane. But if you need it for a later story, you have it. The characters are likely to know only their area, but they know it well, down to the number of rocks that have gotten stuck in the paddlewheel.

 

 

 

You probably want to map your country, even if its a simple doodle, it can help you understand details youve made that otherwise you might forget. There are digital programs that can help you with this; there are also random detail generators out there that can come up with the mundane stuff for you.

 

 

 

Character Design

 

 

 

This is my favorite part. I usually get to into it and start drawing and then I have a character that Im not happy with because I left out this detail or that detail. You dont have to draw them to have a good idea of what the character looks like; the way Im going to show you involves lists.

 

 

 

Start by making a form with the most important factors. These can vary due to the type of story youre writing, and you may need different details than another story. Some details are obvious, while others may be hidden and only mentioned once or twice in passing. This is similar to a character sheet in a role-playing game; sometimes I find it helpful to use one when Im designing a character because they also have skills that reflect the characters personality.

 

 

 

Name:

 

Age:

 

Gender:

 

Race:

 

Class:

 

Profession(s):

 

Alignment:

 

Religion:

 

Height:

 

Weight:

 

Weaponry:

 

Armor:

 

Clothing:

 

Hair Color & Style:

 

Eye Color:

 

Skin Color:

 

Personality:

 

Outlook on Life:

 

 

 

And so on. Feel free to use this list as a starting point for your own.

 

 

 

After you have a good list, you can add details like prefers to wear gloves with thumbs cut off or has a dragon tattoo encircling left bicep. Its easier to do this on notebook paper. You can also doodle symbols you might associate with your character, the characters face, or scars or tattoos they have.

 

 

 

Then you can draw your character if you wish. I usually do this, they dont have to be amazing, they just have to portray the character in the way you feel the character should be portrayed. What I mean is, if your character is a cold, menacing king, he should look it. If the pixie queen is happy-go-lucky and loves her kingdom, she should look like she loves it. You can also go online and find people who are willing to draw your characters for you or digital designers to help with your character image.

 

 

 

Getting Ready to Write

 

 

 

Were finally there. Youve probably had an idea for some time. Write it down, follow your outline (to some extent at least), but add in things that hadnt occurred to you. Writing on notebook paper is often the easiest way because you can carry it with you and when you have the idea, you can write it down. You can also shove it full of your character and world designs and any other notes youve gathered (historically accurate samurai armor, pictures of lightsabers).

 

 

 

If you choose to write your rough draft on the computer, I would use a simple text editor (like Notepad) rather than Word, because youre going to be editing it a lot and you dont yet need the features of a full word processor. You will eventually, so if you dont have a word processor that has a spelling and grammar check, you should get one. The link to the OpenOffice.org Suite is in the last section, but most Windows computers already have Microsoft Word on them. I think (but am not sure) that WordPad (on most XP computers) has a spell checker.

 

 

 

Your rough draft can have alternate endings, random bits and pieces that may or may not fit, and stuff that in general is kind of random. Youll edit it later.

 

 

 

Typing and Proofreading

 

 

 

Youll want to type your final draft in Word/Writer, or paste it in from Notepad or wherever you had it. (Notepad may do weird things with the line breaks; make sure you have Word Wrap off before copy pasting it into Word.)

 

 

 

Editing your draft as you type it in is an efficient way to do it. Choose the pieces you want and only type those in.

 

 

 

After you finish, go back to the beginning and take a look at your red and green lines. I find that Word usually knows what its doing with the errors, but sometimes it is wrong, and you need to make sure that you pick the right option when you check something. A lot of grammar error fixes it suggests dont make sense in the context of the sentence; in this case just ignore Word, its better that way.

 

 

 

Read your draft again to make sure you have no errors. If you really want to be thorough, print out a copy and have someone else read it for clarity and spelling/grammar errors.

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

 

 

I hope this guide has helped you in your quest for the perfect story. Im no great writer, but I understand the theory, and I hope you learn something from this. If you have questions or comments, thats what the topic is for. If you notice a (GASP!) spelling or grammatical error, tell me that too.

 

 

 

Useful Things

 

http://www.openoffice.org Get Writer if you don't have MS Word

 

HeroMachine Use as a starting point for character design

 

Punctuation 101 Guide on how to use punctuation properly

[Zonorhc]

When designing a setting, you should have an idea about what makes your setting different to others. What's your gimmick? It's no good to have a detailed, developed world when it's entirely generic. What's the underlying theme? Humans fighting off monsters? Humans fighting off each other? Utopia? Dystopia?

 

 

 

Designing a physical setting and giving names to places is the easy part. It's also one of the least important parts of setting design. You have to know what you want to do with the world and what you want the world to do with your characters before you can actually have something useful.

[archimage_a]

Other useful stuff:

 

 

 

http://www.nbos.com/products/keep/keep.htm

 

http://www.nbos.com/products/ipad/ipad.htm

 

 

 

Really useful if you suddenly run out of ideas, or if you want to make the world more realistic by adding a random event...Or even if you need some help resolving a fight.

 

 

 

You should aways over plan rather than under plan...It is better to have a realistic but bland world than a world that is completely off the wall, but the best worlds are realistical but quirky at the same time...

 

Take this as your example:

 

Realistic but dull: A world where men rule.

 

Realistic and quirky: A world where females rule.

 

Totally off the wall: A world where Dogs rule.

 

 

 

The same with your characters:

 

Realistic but dull: A detective

 

Realistic and quirky: A detective that has a catchphrase

 

Totally off the wall: A detective that is secretly a mob boss.

 

 

 

Stories should never get dull...if you feel your story getting dull then DON'T randomly put an event in. Change the character you are focusing on, talking about a new or pre-existing but unexpanded problem. Don't try to sustain the readers interest by adding random violence over and over and over...Because you will reach a point where your imagination gives out.

 

 

 

When designing a character limit yourself to a character that you can relate to in your first draft. Then explore their background...you are effectively writing their life story, this will give you something to work from.

 

 

 

When you write your story, treat it as a final draft all the way though...don't leave a load of loose ends that you can tie up later, make a note of how you are planning to tie it up and leave it under your writing.

 

 

 

When you finish, read it through, then open up a program like windows Narrator and let it read it though to you. This will take about 6-7 minutes per thousand words.

 

Just looking quickly:

 

http://www.nch.com.au/verbose/index.html

 

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8030

 

 

 

 

 

Writing is an art form, and like most art there is a lot more to it than simply looking at it...the majority of your work will never see page (if you do it right your plans will be easily as long as your story)