By Pandora Ballard
Introduction
If there’s one thing that I know for certain it is this simple fact: writing is hard. That’s not just with writing stories. Any type of writing can be hard, especially when you’re just learning how to do it. I find blog writing hard, but here I am! A month and a half into a blog writing internship and now starting my own blog! However, blog writing is a topic for another day. Today we are going to focus on some tips for writing stories. Whether they are short stories, novellas, or full-length novels. These tips can be found useful for anyone who is struggling with writing.
5 Tips
- Document Worldbuilding Notes
This first tip has to do with worldbuilding. Where your story takes place. I have found it extremely helpful to document any and all worldbuilding notes that you’ve got. I’ve done stuff between names of the world to climates and weather patterns for different areas in that world.
This is not saying that you have to know everything about the world before you sit down to start your story. There are still things about my story settings that are either undetermined or I haven’t thought of. I personally recommend doing this so that you have it organized for future reference. It can be as simple as typing it up in a Google Doc or finding a worldbuilding website that helps to document everything about your world. Either way it is important any and all worldbulding that you do.
- Chapter Cards
Chapter cards are a tool that I learned in Story Genius by Lisa Cron. I’ve read this book cover to cover at least twice and this is the tool that I liked the most. A chapter card is an outline of what important plot-related things happen in the chapter. It serves as a tool to help figure out what is going on in any given chapter so that you can better figure out where your story is going and if it’s on track to go where you want it to go.
- Discovery Writing
Discovery writing is something that I don’t have a lot of knowledge about, but I know it’s one way that I’ve seen helps writers that I know personally. One of the discovery writing techniques that I’ve learned about that I want to try is the “Yes and; No but” technique for discovery writing. What I mean by this is you ask yourself if your character succeeds in the action they are trying and then answer it. If the answer is yes, then you go with the “Yes and” option where the character succeeds and something else happens that complicates the situation. If the answer is no, then you go with the “No but” option where the character fails and something happens to either change the situation slightly or complicates things further.
- Read
This is a simple one that most books on writing suggest. Every writer starts off as a member of the audience. To an extent, they stay there in one way or another. Which is why it is important to not neglect building a reading habit. Reading is one of the primary ways in which a writer learns. It helps to know what you enjoy as a reader to know what your audience would enjoy.
- Develop a Writing Routine
This is one thing that is hard for many writers to accomplish, including myself. Because of this there isn’t a “one size fits all” approach to this. The best advice that I have for this is to find a routine that works for you and stick with it. Routines do nothing if we can’t stick to them.