Lessons I've Learned: No. 3

Developing Your Story

Alright. You've decided you're a writer. You've accepted that perfection doesn't exist. You've picked out a story idea you want to work on. What now?

Now we carefully cultivate that idea into a story. Even if you're the type of writer that likes to dive in head first by just writing and seeing where the story takes you, you still need to have the basis of the story outlined. You need to know who your characters are, what the conflict is and what your story is about. Once you have that, you can write until your hands fall off. And if you're like me, you want to have things nailed down right away.

Where to start?

Most people tell you to start with your main character, also known as the lead.  I believe that's generally pretty sound advise, except in one instance.  If you are writing a story about a completely foreign world, a world that your reader is unfamiliar with and must have explained to them, it is usually easier to start with constructing the world around your character first.  What does the world look like? Are there vast amounts of poverty and inequality? Is it a technologically advanced or a primitive world? What type, if any, of government is there? What do people do everyday, for work and for fun?

This is particularly useful for fantasy or futuristic Sci-fi worlds (and maybe historical fiction too, I'm not sure because I've never written any) because your lead will be a product of the world around them.  For example, Spock from Star Trek shouldn't be overly emotional since he's a Vulcan and Vulcan's are almost strictly logical. Or I should say, he should be overly emotional without an explanation.  They is no reason why your lead can't break the mold. Maybe the fact that he's half human makes it harder for Spock to control his emotions than is it for other Vulcans.  Either way, developing the world first will help you decide what the norms are for society. From there you can decide if your character strays form the norm, and why.

Now to be clear, you should develop both your main character and the world around them in the early stages of your story. My suggestion is just about which one you should do first.  In addition to the questions above, you should also ask what make your world unique. Even if the world you are writing about is the world outside your own window, figure out how you will make it come to life for the reader. And in the same way, you should strive to make your main character a full fledged being with desires and fears and motivations. Here are some areas to consider that will help you create a substantial, relatable lead:

• Background - Where is your character from and what have they done
• Personality - Are they witty or dim, hot headed or even-tempered
• Speech patterns - What words to they use or don't use, how do they talk
• Appearance - Physical appearance
• Habits - Conscious or subconscious habits
• Strengths and Weaknesses - What is he/she good and bad at
• Flaws - Creating major or minor character flaws in your lead (like over-confidence or spitefulness) makes them seem more realistic, more human and more relatable

Conflict, Conflict, Conflict

So now you have the most interest, well-developed characters and the most beautifully described world ever.  Time to start writing right? Well there's one more thing you should consider first. Conflict. Without a substantial conflict, your story won't be very interesting.  Who would want to read Harry Potter if no one wanted to kill Harry, everyone got along, there were no mysteries to solve and there was no such thing as the dark arts? Sounds like a snooze fest to me.

The conflict is one of the most important parts of your story. It's what hooks the reader; they'll want to know how your lead gets out of the impossible situation they find themselves in.  How your characters meet the challenge will help define their personalities. And the best conflicts are hard to solve, filled with obstacles and unavoidable.

When creating the conflict of your story, shoot for an all consuming conflict: your character shouldn't be able to go on with life as usual because of the conflict. Putting their life in danger is the easiest way to accomplish that, but it can also be something as simple as a woman who is unable to resume her normal life in society because she is ostracized  (a la The Scarlet Letter). Once you have the conflict for your story, make it bigger. Limit your character's time.  A bomb that will detonate in the next hour is far more interesting than a bomb that will go off sometime next week.  Increase the stakes by making it personal. Put the bomb within a block of your lead's kid's school.  Throw in obstacles.  Let's say the bomb is behind a locked door and only one woman knows the code. If you need some ideas, Janice Hardy has some great tips for forcing conflict into your story on her blog. In the end, the conflict is the entire point of the story. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by creating a story with a weak conflict.

Where does it end?

At this point, those of you that enjoy jumping into writing and letting the chips fall where they may probably have enough of the basics down to start. You'll obviously need to go back and fill in some other pieces as you go along, but you have set yourself up well to explore your story with a purpose. But you (and people who like to have things planned out ahead of time like me) may benefit from spending some time brainstorming where your story will end.

Now by that I don't mean that you should necessarily know exactly how the story ends before you start. Sometimes after you spend enough time with your characters you will realize the way that they would resolve the conflict, and it might be different than how you might. But you do want to know if your character should end in a better or a worse position than when your story started.  If she started out in the slums, is she now the Queen? Or is she still in the slums? This will dictate what type of character arc you will use, and understanding the basis of that character arc will help you develop your character (K.M Weiland does a great job of explaining character arcs and story structures here).

If your story has any moral to it (i.e. don't discriminate), you should plan it out now to make sure that it carries throughout the rest of the story. If you are planning a sequel or a series, make sure you plan out any important events or changes that need to happen by the end of your current story. I am currently fleshing out the idea for a 2-book set (the one about the bad-ass that I posted about earlier), and I know that by the end of the first book my lead should be jaded and bitter so that she can realize the error in her ways in the second book. That means I need to throw in some stuff in the first book that will make her upset and mistrustful of people.


But by far, the most important thing is not to be afraid to let your story evolve.  You will probably change the conflict, the plot, the characters and everything else about your story multiple times. But that's a good thing.  That's how you take your idea and turn it into a story.