Hello and welcome! This is our first chapter that discusses storytelling and how to make great stories. I've collected a bunch of advice from different writers that I think you'll want to hear. I have tips discussing story theme, deep character development, and visual language. It's not like I'm a professional though, so, if you already have your own way of writing that allows you to create great books, keep writing like that. I know not everyone has the same writing style or the same way of getting inspiration. I'm simply doing this for fun and to help those who want some help creating, or putting the finishing touches on their stories. If you think you'd like help in improving your writing I have a great list of tips and advice here so, please read on.
Story Theme
Most writers might completely overlook a theme when creating a story. A theme can be described as a deeper subject that a story focuses on. It is something that you can find in basically all great stories. To give an example, the theme in "Up" is death or loss and overcoming it. In a movie like "Wreck It Ralph" the theme is being who you want to be, not what other people call you. There are tons of movies and books with deeper themes that you probably didn't notice the first time you looked at them, so take some time to look around at some of the stories and movies you love, and try to find what theme they used. It can be a fun exercise and even help you to find a theme for your own story. Now that you have a few examples to work with and a good idea of what a theme is, we can move on to implementing a theme into our own stories.
There is a huge library of themes that you can use for your story. There's loss, revenge, jealousy, and deception to name a few. Honestly finding a theme for your story, if it doesn't already have one, can be a real pain in the butt. You can't just put any theme into your story with no thought, you'll need to make sure it fits with the plot and overall feel of your story. Is your story suppose to be lighthearted, or is it meant to be action packed and suspenseful? This should influence your decision when you are choosing a theme. However, there's no need to rush in finding what theme you'd like to use. It's alright to focus on other aspects of your story, besides there's a high chance you'll see that your story already has one or you'll realize which theme would fit perfectly in your story. It should come pretty naturally most of the time, so don't panic if you realize you don't have one yet. You have plenty of other things to take into consideration when trying to make a really great story. That brings me to my next piece of advice.
The "What If" Question
If you have zero idea what I'm talking about when I say the "what if" question, that's totally fine. I mean, it's my job to explain it anyways. The "what if" question is a question to ask yourself to conjure up an idea for a story. Let me give an example or two to explain myself better. The "what if" question in "Toy Story" would be "What if toys could come to life when you weren't looking at them". The creators of "Toy Story" came up with the idea for the story by asking this question, then fleshing out the plot and bringing it all together. This question is a great way to come up with unique ideas. The best part is, it's incredibly simple. All you need is an interesting question and the creativity to build the plot, characters, and setting. Try asking the "what if" question a couple of times and see what sort of ideas you can come up with.
Character Development
Your characters are pretty much the first thing you want to work on when starting a story. They are what makes your audience invested in the story. What's a story without characters? You can't really just go "this guy tried to do this" or "this other guy tried to stop him". That just isn't going to make for a good story. Not only does your character need a name, they need something memorable about them. They need morals, fears, wants, likes, disliked. They need that depth to relate to your audience. Of course, these are pretty much the basics of creating characters. As long as your characters have at last a few memorable traits or gimmicks they'll be decent, and you might want that, but you don't deserve that. What you deserve is a great character with a capital G. Character development is what's going to get you a great character. Character development is simply change that occurs in a character. Sounds pretty easy right? That's 'cause it is, so don't go trying to skip this part. You might wonder what kind of change your character needs to go through. Well, their change should happen like this: character wants something, character gets what they want, character realizes they need something else. That probably didn't sound all that interesting or deep, but keep reading 'cause I've got more to say. This type of character development can be described as a want and need development. At first a character wants something, but when they get it they realize they didn't really want that or they needed something else more. This is what really invests your audience in a character. Oh, but before I end this part let me give you an example. In "Wreck It Ralph" Ralph wants to get a medal because he thinks if he can get one the other characters in his game will accept him and be nicer to him. However, once he gets his medal and comes back to his game everyone is mad at him because he nearly got their game shut down by leaving. He then realizes that he needs to be there for his friend (some little brat named Penelope) and save her as well as her game. Wreck It Ralph is a great example and you should try to follow it when implementing character development into your story.
Visual Language
I'm sure it probably never occurred to you that you should draw out some sketches of your characters or scenes from your story. I can understand why. Obviously, not everyone is great at drawing. The thing is, you don't need to be. Well, let me start from the beginning on why you might want to start using visual language. Visual language doesn't just apply as a drawing or sketch. It can very easily be used in your writing, as well as a movie, or animated movie if you ever want to get super ambitious about your stories. Visual Language is a picture (or words that create a picture) that tells the viewer (or reader) something important about what's in the picture (or words). Okay, so I'd imagine that was probably horribly explained so let me just give an example. In the movie "Up" during the beginning scenes there's a ton of visual language. In the parts where the protagonist, Carl, is with his dying wife there's a blue color over Carl and his side of the screen. However the wife looks more lively and has a orange color around her. This is because she's more optimistic and positive while Carl is more negative and sad. Hopefully that was a little more comprehensive. Okay, now let me explain how you can also use visual language in your writings. Another way to look at visual language when it comes to writing is description. The way you describe things, people, and places. That is visual language and if you can describe things well you can definitely use visual language well. Try doing a quick exercise to see if visual language can help you. Describe a scene of a frightened teen in a creepy abandon house because he was pressured by his friends to come with then into the building. You can describe his "friends" as happy and joking, you might even want to make them seen a little scary to the teen who was pressured to come with. Describe the afraid teen as small, as in he's cowering behind his "friends" and keeping his head down. Try to make a single picture with your sentences. Okay, I'll stop trying to explain and just tell you this, visual language is not all that hard to use especially if you can already draw, but if you can't, don't sweat it. Remember visual language is just describing something, so that your audience understand the deeper things happening in the scene. Are two characters having fun at a circus, but one of them is secretly extremely afraid of clowns and high circus rides? You can describe one as happy and carefree, but the other you could describe as attentive and fidgeting with their hands. Try explain what their doing, but not why their doing it, even if your audience might already know.
Ending Advice
I guess this is it. I'll be going and you will have to make your story all on your own. Just remember this, it's something I think is extremely important when writing a story. Give your story a resolution and make it a great one. There's typically a problem at the beginning or in the middle of a story so I want to see that problem being solved or at least your characters getting over it, depending on if your story has an internal it external conflict. This is what your audience is walking away with. It might be a lesson, a new idea to think about, or simply a memorable experience. It needs to be great just like the rest of your story. Okay, I'll see you later I know you'll do great! Make great things, do your best! I believe in you!
Okay, bye.
***There's a certain storybandit that has stolen my co writers work "Of Cinders and Ashes". I will not stand for this. If you hear from this user, their username is literally storybandit, please make sure to report their stolen story as well as the user in general. Princess Mclil1 is the original author of "Of Cinders and Ashes" please support her and her story.***
ns 15.158.61.50da2
