BY ALICE FONTANESI
STAFF WRITER
If quarantine hasn’t reduced you to half a brain cell then writing a story is a good way to keep yourself busy. Here are a few tips to improve your plot, writing processes, and characters. But I want to say before I start that these tips might not apply to you because all of this is based on what I have learned over the years. I am not a professional writer, but I don’t consider myself an amatuer. Try and survive this word vomit I have created. Also, no none of this will help your vocabulary or grammar because I suck at that also.
1. Your First Draft Will Suck
I’m just going to say it, your first draft will suck. That doesn’t mean you can’t like your first draft or it might be good, but that is probably not going to happen. I’ve found myself having to do entire remakes on my stories because the last version didn’t make sense or was just bland. When revising your first draft, keep a few things in mind like to make it logical. Pacing is also vital to keep the reader engaged. I do know how hard pacing can be, but a good way to keep your reader on the story is leaving a few loose ends. Cliffhangers are an author’s best friend when writing, so it won’t hurt to throw a few in there.
I often find myself getting a spark of inspiration and I will go add it to my story. Sometimes I even delete what I have and completely rewrite it.
Personally, I think that making a rough draft for a story is a good way to make it the best it can. Start with a character and what kind of story you want to write. Build off of it, and, once you have a general idea of your story go back and sharpen it. You can easily see the bad parts and improve the story as you go on.
2. Inspiration VS. Theft
Stealing ideas are a big no no. But, sometimes it feels like you are stealing ideas when you aren’t. Inspiration is an idea that was created by an already existing thing. Many of my stories have been created by inspiration, and they are still original stories.
You sometimes just have to give yourself time to think about how you’re going to continue and improve your story. A recent story of mine has gotten an entire remake after I got inspiration from Bungo Stray Dogs. New characters, plot points, and the overall conflict were inspired by Bungo Stray Dogs.
And it doesn’t have to just be another story that inspires you. Songs, art, and other mediums can inspire you. Part of the personality of a character I have created was inspired by the song So What by P!nk because she has an odd obsession with starting bar fights.
Don’t start bar fights, kids.
Then what is stealing ideas? The definition of steal is to take something without the owner’s consent. That would mean basically taking another story and modifying it to create a ripoff. Taking entire characters, plots, and calling it your own would be considered stealing by many people. Yes, you can get away with making a ripoff because technically you didn’t plagiarize, but it will ruin your reputation. If you are planning on publishing stories, then creating a ripoff won’t get you far.
Besides, everyone likes originality.
Then how do you avoid stealing? Well, remember that this is your story you are writing, so you should have your own flavor to it. What do you like that you could apply to a story? A thing I like to do often is give my story a dark twist like some sad backstories, a bloody fight, and/or making characters drop dead like flies. This is your story, so allow yourself to be creative.
3. How To Prepare
You might start a story but then abandon it for months or years because you lost motivation. To avoid this, you should at least have a skeleton of your story. You should have an idea of what the story will be about and how the events will connect to each other. If you make up the story on the fly it will turn out bland, weird, and/or illogical.
Who’s the main character? What’s the conflict? Who is the antagonist? Where is it set? What’s the genre? Are you writing a slice of life manga or the next War and Peace? If you’re going to start a story, then try answering these questions before you start.
4. Characters
If you’re like me you probably have two hundred characters or more (seriously I counted). But even if you have a good plot, bland characters can ruin it. Like, imagine The Promised Neverland with dumb Emma, Ray, and Norman or Percy Jackson and the Olypians being just like their movie counterparts. Some characters can be too perfect or too useless, but creating a good balanced character can be difficult.
A character that I think is a good example for this is Osamu Dazai from Bungo Stray Dogs. Dazai is a genius strategist who is basically unkillable. If Dazai only had those qualities, people would probably complain about how overpowered he is or not care because ninety-nine percent of the Bungo Stray Dogs fandom is in love with the characters while the other one percent makes memes. But all jokes aside, there are also traits that Dazai possesses that balance out his other side. He’s lazy, determined to find a woman to commit double suicide with, often ruins Kunikida’s schedule, and was a member of the Port Mafia. His comedic side gives his character some depth including an interesting backstory. Just like Ranpo Edogawa and Sherlock Holmes, they aren’t just genius detectives; they have personalities and have some kind of struggle going on physically or emotionally.
And loosely basing characters off of real life people is another way to create a character. Seriously, if you didn’t make the main character you in a writing assignment for elementary school, then where did your childhood go? When you loosely base a character off of a person, then you take qualities from that person and add them to a character. Most of the characters from Bungo Stray Dogs are real authors and poets that actually existed, and the main characters of Downriver by Will Hobbs are loosely based on people the author has met.
Characters are people, so they should be like a person. No one is perfect or imperfect in any way, and everyone has a motive behind their actions. Think about the conflict and why the main character is solving it. Are they doing it for the sake of someone else? Are they doing it for their own sake? A person’s motivation can hint at the kind of person they are.
Another thing I want to mention is antagonists. A thing that I hate is when the antagonist is evil for the sake of being evil. Villains and anti-heroes are some of my favorite kinds of characters because they are interesting. Though I do hate the enemies to lovers trope.
Anyways, I want to say that the villain should always have a motivation. Just like all of the characters, they have some kind of goal that they have motivation for. And the antagonist isn’t always the villain. An antagonist is against the main character, and we always consider the main character the good guy. We’re all raised to see what is good and bad, but in reality it is the perspective that we are told. We are all the protagonists for our own stories, so think about that for your characters. The main character can’t have the spotlight the entire time because other characters also want it because in their eyes they are the main character. Your main character can be a background character to someone else’s story and vice versa.
A thing I like to do before officially establishing what happens to the antagonist is create a mini story for them. It includes their backstory and what built up to the path they chose. It’s so I can create a logical reason for the antagonist’s actions.
An example I like for this is Tobio Kageyama from Haikyuu!! Kageyama is not a bad person, but technically he is the main antagonist. The goal of the main character, Shoyo Hinata, is to defeat Kageyama one day. He declares he’s going to after his first tournament in his last year of middle school, and we see him finally achieve that goal in the manga as an adult. Despite how Kageyama was an egotistical king, he isn’t some high school bully with the snobby popular girl as his girlfriend; in fact, he’s kind of stupid academically. Kageyama is against Hinata because Hinata wants to defeat him which results in him being the main antagonist. Yet both of them are friends through the main storyline because they are on the same team and are considered a duo among the characters and fandom. No one legitimately dislikes Kageyama, but he is the antagonist.
And no, you can’t make the character’s biology an excuse like, “Because of the character’s species, they are extremely smart or just evil.” That will feel lazy, and, even if a person’s species makes them a little different, there always has to be limits and weaknesses. Nothing lasts forever, including gods.
I could write an entire essay on characterization, but I’m going to stop there.
5. World Building
The first thing with world building is the genre. Are you making a true crime story from back in the 1900s or a romantic LGBTQ+ novel? Usually the genre will give you the setting, but for more broad genres like fantasy and science fiction, there is a need of thought.
Obviously, if you’re writing a realistic fiction story, the setting will be real life, but even if the main setting is earth, no matter what genre it is, there has to be some kind of set of rules. If the main character goes to school, what kind of environment is the school? If the main antagonist is a demonic creature, then how did it originate on earth? The main genre I write in is fantasy, but magic and the creatures work differently in each story. Stories that involve the afterlife have different ways of interpreting what happens after death. Stories that include the supernatural don’t have the exact same set of rules. Try making a government in your story or just make your characters live in the middle of nowhere. No matter what kind of setting your characters are in, the rules have to be logical.
Motivation and reason are what makes things logical.
6. Who Else Thinks The Ending Is Hard?
It is always heartbreaking wherever a beloved series ends, but there has to be an end eventually. Most of the time, whenever a story ends, the conflict will be resolved since that was the whole point of the story, but sometimes that isn’t the answer. The characters don’t always have to have a happy ending or an ending at all.
If you’ve ever read the webcomic Ghost Theater (spoiler warning), then you’ll know that the ending was actually quite mysterious. We know that the main character got her happy ending, but we have no idea what happened to everyone else, nor are we probably ever going to. Yes, the series ended, but we are still wondering about the true ending.
Stories are just like real life. There sometimes won’t be a redemption arc for a character, there sometimes won’t be victory in the end, and many other things. The main character could become the main villain and even become dislikable.
But, if you are planning on a significant ending for your story, then think about the conflict that started the story. The reason why we are reading the story is to see whether or not the problem will be resolved. Demon Slayer will end when Tanjiro finds out how he will cure Nezuko. Harry Potter ended because Voldemort was officially defeated. Percy Jackson And The Olypians ended because Kronos was defeated. How will the series logically wrap up?
Obviously, the problem won’t always be solved. If you’ve watched Marble Hornets (spoiler warning), then you know that there wasn’t exactly a solid ending. Tim claims that everything is fine when clearly it isn’t. He murdered Alex, Jay was shot by Alex, the Operator is still out there, and Brian fell to his death. We also get that suspicious shot of Tim talking to Jessica. We never get to know what exactly happened, nor does the story just stop. The conflict might be an infinite war with no resolution.
No matter what kind of ending you give your story, you want to make it obvious. Don’t just drop it off like this was happening and now you don’t get to see what happens. Establish that the series is over with a final goodbye like with a flashforward or monologue.
Now that you survived that word vomit, why don’t you go and become the next Rick Riordan? Writing a story isn’t easy and takes a long time even if you’ve done it multiple times. A novel can take months, if not years to write and perfect, but it’s always satisfying to finally finish a book.