Want to write a great story? Win a literary competition, receive a prize and a bunch of accolades? Seeing your story published in a good magazine? Get to the top blog rankings?
Attention, bonus!
Seven unique, wonderful, inimitable fantasy stories for FREE:
1) the most original is love for a vampire or vampire. Let Dulpomes fall in love with the beautiful Elvira, the lord of the vampires, and want to make her human. Definitely in a modern setting. Let the mistress of darkness be also the chief accountant in the office where Dulpomes works, and drink the blood of the entire team.
2) the most heartbreaking - about angels and demons or about death. Let some angel of death suddenly refuse to fulfill his role and take a little pretty girl to the next world, and for this, as punishment, he will be assigned to poison the life of our hero, for example, in the role of a harmful customer.
3) the most patriotic - about WWII soldiers. Let your hero see a soldier everywhere asking him to find former fields battles his personal belongings and pass it on to his descendants. And let the descendants turn out to be our hero’s worst enemies, competitors, or simply evil, envious people.
4) the most mystical - about the afterlife. Let your hero hang somewhere between life and death. It is better if this is a room - a hotel, a cinema hall, where many of the same lost and lost souls hang out, who disappear either to hell or to heaven, and no one can find out the selection criteria. The dulpomes, of course, must learn this secret, and then give up heaven and return to life.
5) the most romantic - this is only for women. Let the heroine be visited in a dream by a beautiful man with a face like Bradd Pitt, carry her in his arms, sprinkle her with rose petals, treat her with Veuve Clicquot champagne and give her mind-blowing sex, and in the morning she will wake up and find a couple of petals and footprints in her bed last night champagne, and then the whole story painfully searches for her prince.
6) the most pragmatic one - about reading minds. Let your hero have an exam, and he suddenly learns to read the professor’s thoughts and begins to viciously blackmail him (in order to re-educate himself in the end and fulfill cherished dream professor).
7) the most fascinating is philosophical. Let your hero meet a disguised god/wise raven/alien/talking pig/yogi/magician/super agent (emphasis needed), and let this sage tell the hero how to live correctly for ten pages.
PS. Inspired by judging numerous literary competitions and reading equally numerous writing textbooks.
But remember: there is some truth in every joke!
Don't know how to write a story correctly? The question is really interesting. You will learn my version of the answer to it from this post. With the advent of the Internet in our lives, the number of people wishing to leave a mark on history is growing before our eyes. Previously, the opuses of young writers had difficulty reaching readers hungry for new impressions, but now on the Internet, every willing author can receive his portion of fame from the inhabitants of the virtual space.
Usually, creative path the young author begins with a story. First of all, a simple principle of psychology works: a story is much smaller than a story or, especially, a novel, which means that it is easier to write. And piles of new unsightly and foul-smelling creations are created to the “joy” of the reader who is tired of poking around in it all. In this article I will tell you how to write a story without doing any “good” to the reader.
Hero
The hero should be succinctly described; in just two or three sentences, the reader should be able to see the image of the main mover of the story. The mover should be memorable, with a strong point that the reader can latch on to. Everything in the story is concentrated - both the plot and the hero. Give the hero the opportunity to become the highlight of your dish called “story”. Advice: read Chekhov, and your heroes will become better themselves.
Plot
The plot of the story is clear and thoughtful. In general, writing a story correctly is like designing a house. Everything must be in its place and to the point, otherwise it is just a waste of time, money and nerves. Take storytelling more seriously. Identify plot turning points immediately. Who, when and why appears. Feel free to remove the excess! The reader will not forgive you for smearing your creativity across his sophisticated consciousness. Be clear about where your character will end up at the end of the story and why.
The plot of the story should be dynamic and exciting. Each turn must have a "hook". It hooks either the consciousness or the feelings of the reader, leaving him no chance to tear himself away from the work. Dynamism is achieved through the alternation of action and feelings. Let your hero confess his love on the roof of a falling skyscraper, catching his long-desired lover in the air. Tip: Focus your thoughts, feelings and actions in each episode.
The final
The ending of the story should hit the reader over the head and knock him off his feet. Like a good cudgel, the ending should be a powerful argument in your hands to engrave your creativity in the memory. He is obliged to turn the course of all events upside down. The world will change to the point of recognition - and you will conquer the reader. Let the prince become a beggar. The poor will know wealth. Close person turns out to be an alien from the other side of the world. The ending of the story is your trump card. Be extremely attentive to him.
In addition to the classic “reversal,” “difficult achievements” are well perceived by the reader. When an irresistible force presses on the hero from all sides, but he finds the strength to defeat it. Let's remember Hemingway's story "The Old Man and the Sea."
Another good ending could be “realization.” This version of the ending suggests that the reader receives some important realization in life. The world will appear before him in some new light, new facets and notes will appear. Advice: read esoteric novels, for example Coelho, there is an invaluable storehouse of insights that will be enough for more than one story.
There can be a huge number of endings, so don't get too hung up on it. Find your way. Remember the main thing: there must be change. A story in which everything remains as it was in the beginning is better not to be shown to the world. Be favorable to him, and he will definitely answer you in kind.
Style
The style should leave no doubt that you can write. Sometimes, he helps the author get a hopeless work out of good level. I'm not a fan of writing stories for the sake of "dabbling in front of people" with mastery of style. But everyone should have one and help the reader discover story ideas in a clearer and more enticing way.
Don't despair if your style leaves much to be desired. Two reliable remedies remain true cures for lame style: reading and writing new works. Write and read more. Soon you will have your own unique style, which will elevate you and your works to the pinnacle of fame.
What are the difficulties?
A new short story writer may face many challenges. But the main thing, I think, is the lack of meaning of the work. Sometimes you read, read a story and don’t understand why all this is. The meaninglessness of the work kills it in the bud. Don't chase the majority, be original. Illuminate the work with the light of your idea. There is an easy way to bring it into the story.
Before writing a story, write down one sentence on paper. It must contain main value, which the hero and the reader will acquire at the end of the story, as well as the reason for creating this value. By writing a sentence like this, you create the backbone of your story. This will be your guiding thread, which will allow your thoughts not to wander throughout the text, but will clearly lead the reader to the desired point.
You have gained an understanding of the importance of character, plot, ending, and style in a story. We also learned about this problem modern writers, like the lack of meaning in history and advice on how to create it.
Please leave your thoughts about this article in the comments and share it on in social networks. Let's discuss it together important question writing a story.
You can try your hand at working on a story by taking part in. Hurry up, the number of winners is limited. Watch the video about literary competition below.
Don't forget to subscribe to blog updates below.
(estimates: 8
, average: 4,50
out of 5)
Honored writers admit that the short story genre is one of the most difficult, since the process of creating a masterpiece requires precision construction, impeccable finishing, significant meaning and high plot tension. But in this article we will still put everything on the shelves and find the answer to exciting question: how to write a story?
Hundreds of things happen before your eyes every day. interesting events, and hundreds more thoughts are spinning in my head. It is necessary to present everything that you want to tell the reader in an accessible and understandable form. Those who take up writing a story for the first time, as one, think that the story is not at all a difficult genre, since it is written much faster than any other. But that's not true. I would even say that this is the main thing.
In a novel, for example, events are recreated as an eyewitness saw them; a story is a sequential presentation of them. But the story is the most interesting and complex form, since the author will have to single out from the many events only those that need to be put together for a laconic canvas of the story.
Writing a story
So, working on any literary work consists of three points: find out, say, be heard. Let's decipher these “three pillars” of writing a story.
To know– means to know life itself, to reevaluate and comprehend one’s own life experience, learn to hear and understand the world, of people. Taken together, this gives a creative idea.
Say- means to create a literary work, that is, the most important thing. Namely: to find material, select it, process it, organize it correctly, and, of course, write our story - present everything in artistic form.
To be heard– this does not mean just writing a work and leaving it to gather dust bookshelf, but to give it life, to show it to readers, because a literary creation lives only when it is read, understood and appreciated. In order for a book to be appreciated, you need to know a few small writing secrets that will be useful to a novice writer in the process of creation.
The first stage in creating a story is the birth of an idea.
It appears in your head thanks to banal curiosity, reflection, and, of course, fantasies. Various factors can contribute to the emergence of a fresh and interesting idea. For example, your consciousness will be strongly influenced by the impressions of a book you read or some information message, be it a small document, a small article in the press, or even a chronicle. After reading the work of another author, sometimes there is a desire to slightly redo his work. Paradox – the desire to remake someone else’s work, radically changing everything; personal worries or severe stress; embellishment and addition of situations that occurred in real life; some assumptions, variations of events; ideal - the embodiment of the artist’s perfect idea of something, for example, justice.
The next stage in writing a story is selecting material
Good command of the language does not make any person a real writer. In order to become a recognized artist of words, you need to know and understand life. Knowledge provides only initial, supporting material, and understanding it makes it possible not to copy the text, but to elevate your presentation to the rank of a work of art.
Select required material possible in several ways. The first is a description of what was seen or experienced. But this type of reporting is more the job of a journalist than a writer. The task of literature is to create something that will allow the reader to see something that he could not or did not want to see before. The next method is design. Here the writer himself comes up with characters and plot, pulling everything out of his imagination and memory. And few materials are needed to describe the actions in detail, for example, where the main characters live, in what era, what they are wearing, what they are doing, what their surroundings are like, and the like. In such moments, the most reliable helpers are memory and your own experience. The last method of obtaining information is synthesis. The author bases the work on real events, but with some changes and many speculations.
When there are a lot of materials, it is difficult to understand them. You can use convenient ones, which I wrote about in another article.
Story Components
Perhaps the most important detail in the story is composition. Composition is a good arrangement of previously selected material. The sequence of episodes creates an emotional and associative perception of the story by the reader.
There are many composition options:
Direct flow- the simplest type.
Ring– here the story has the author’s frame at the beginning and end of the work.
Spot– when there are many small details and details that are ultimately tied to a specific event.
Wicker– when there is spatio-temporal scale.
Action-packed, detective, inversion - based on contrast.
Articulated- when the plot at the end of the story unexpectedly takes a sharp turn.
Revolver– the events occurring in the story are shown from different points of view.
The beginning is the beginning of the story. It is the first phrase that is the most important in the entire story. It creates a first impression, which, as we know, is the most important.
An effective story can begin with an exposition, that is, without delay, introduce the reader to the story, or landscape, or action, descriptions of past events, the main characteristics of the hero, portrait and other points.
Each writer has his own story style, and it is thanks to it that the author can become recognizable. This is his personal style, his individual way of using thought.
The criteria for determining a technique are elements such as a word, a turn of phrase, a phrase, a combination of two words, junctions of periods, etc. Select a specific style writing a story impossible, since there is always a combination of several styles in one story.
Details are something without which any story will turn into who knows what. It's the details that make the difference literary works, they must not be forgotten under any circumstances. Details can be a variety of things - taste, smell, color, touch, etc. In any case, it is necessary to adequately describe every little detail and give it life.
That's all I wanted to tell you today. Now you know how to write a story. It looks difficult, true, but it’s difficult just to start. May your inspiration and talent bring you success, and I will share that with you in the next article.
Useful tips for aspiring short story writers Daniil Volkov . If anyone has anything to add to them, then please suggest - different opinions are also important.
Daniil Volkov
Firstly, I realized that you can’t wait for inspiration. Inspiration is an insidious thing. It is very difficult to adapt to it. It’s almost impossible if you work or study at the same time. There is no need to wait for inspiration. Treat writing a story like school essay– whether you want it or not, you have to work. After all, no one told the teacher: Mary Ivanna, I didn’t pass my essay about Masha and Dubrovsky, there was no inspiration.
Secondly, I realized that three things are important for a story: meaning, style and volume. Simply put, it should be clear, beautiful and concise.
Having learned these two main things, Let's start the story, observing the seven rules.First. First, determine what the story will be about by summarizing the content in one sentence. Phrases: “about love” or “about friendship” are not suitable. We need specifics. For example: about how Cinderella was fired from her job due to the machinations of her boss; about why Thumb is sad when it rains.
Second. The second step is creating characters. You carefully consider the image of the main character (hereinafter - GG). What is he like? Gender-age, eye-hair-skin color, character, habits, biography, who he lives with, what he loves, who he looks like, etc.
Then take a piece of paper and write down everything you come up with on it. Very detailed and thorough. And then you pin the sheet to the tabletop to make it easier to peek, and UNDER NO EVENT! do not include this description in the story. At least in this volume.
A common mistake of novice authors is that they try to squeeze all the information about the character into the text of the story. Over the course of two pages, unfortunate readers learn that GG “had black, cheerful eyes, black curly hair, he had a snow-white smile, plump lips and a wide mouth. He was tall, with strong, muscular arms and legs. He was thirty years old, eighteen of which he spent in an orphanage, because his parents, when he was five years old...” Such an opus usually ends like this: “he had black skin, he was a black man.”
It is much simpler, clearer and more expressive to write: “He was a middle-aged black man, lonely, but not discouraged under any circumstances.”
Let me make a reservation right away that I am not advocating brevity of presentation. I don’t like it when it’s short. I find 55-word stories especially scary. So we will soon get to stories of 55 letters.
But now we are talking about a story in which (see above) volume is important. This means that we need to get rid of everything unnecessary, so we cut off the floridness of the text mercilessly.Third. We come up with a plot. The main condition is entertainment and dynamism. Priority to dialogues. Try to express the characters' feelings in THEIR words, not your own.
For example, for a story it is better:
“You're pissing me off, Chupacabra! - Puss-in-Boots hissed, playing with the hilt of his sword.
How:
“Puss-in-Boots felt a wild, primitive rage boiling in the depths of his being, like water in a kettle. He narrowed his eyes, fluffed his tail belligerently, pushed back his wide-brimmed hat, crowned with a plume of scarlet ostrich feathers, and began stroking with his paw, which instantly revealed steel claws and ceased to be velvet, the hilt of the sword that he received under the following circumstances ... "
How to build a plot?
The formula for a regular story is simple. Introduction, adventure, ending. The introduction should be interesting, and the ending should be significant. The introduction lures the reader in, and the ending makes him (the reader) think about the story for some time after reading. Even if, after reading your story, a person freezes for three seconds, staring into space, and thinks: “That’s what it’s like!..” - consider this a victory. Your story came true.
Don't start your introduction from afar. This is not a story or a novel, where you can admire the surroundings for a couple of pages, then mention the glare rising sun to the sea, and then devote another five pages to describing an ancient castle, towards which a flock of black swans is flying across this very sea. There must be some kind of intrigue that will make the reader hold his gaze and wonder: what will happen next? Well, let's see...
If the introduction and ending are more or less clear, let’s move on to the adventures. You can call them conflicts, events - the essence will not change. For the dynamics of the story, it would be good to have at least three conflict-adventures. For example, the meeting of Puss-in-Boots with youngest son the miller and their criminal conspiracy to seize the kingdom and surrounding territories; the said characters' raid on the royal palace, during which they steal the Sansi diamond and the princess; rescuing a runaway princess from a werewolf, followed by the princess falling in love with her savior, Puss-in-Boots. As an introduction, one can imagine the Cat stealing designer boots from Armani, and the ending is the Cat’s flight from the princess in love with an apology that he is not able to make her happy.Fourth. Having decided on the hero and plot, we proceed directly to writing. We write as best we can, trying, nevertheless, to remember the three pillars of the story - clarity, beauty and brevity.
Remember about bright images, try to avoid banalities. It is better to describe the night as the shine of a bottle fragment on the ground (see A.P. Chekhov), and not as “the silver light of a ghostly moon in a dark blue sky strewn with stars.”
As a result of the fourth step, you will most likely end up with a story on 15 pages in 14 font. This is approximately 20,000-30,000 characters. That is, twice the norm. We confidently proceed to the next stage.Fifth. Correction of the story. We stock up on a dozen handkerchiefs to wipe involuntary tears, re -read the text and delete (while maintaining the meaning) extra adjectives (“black black”, “cold, sparkling snow”) and attractive pronouns - mine, my, yours, and so on. (“he hit me with HIS hand”, “when I woke up, I realized that MY neck still hurt”). After editing, the text will be reduced by approximately two pages. But, I assure you, the reader will still understand that the black man was black, the snow was cold, and after you were hit, it was your neck that hurt.
Then the most unpleasant and difficult part begins. It’s not just necessary to reduce unnecessary words, but extra text. Ideally, no more than 10 pages should remain, which means three pages should be mercilessly erased. We stop crying and re-read the story again. We read very carefully, from time to time deleting entire paragraphs that do not carry a semantic load for confirmation main idea story (see point one). Everything that goes beyond firing poor Cinderella from her job - chic business suits and crystal sneakers; memories of how her stepmother poured orange juice on her in the bus stop last year; breakfast, during which Cinderella ate a piece of Anna Pavlova cake and was sad about the absurd death of the great artist - we delete it.
Feel yourself plastic surgeons, cutting off from a cute, but somewhat flabby face famous singer, superfluous. The singer should leave the operating table with her face as elastic as a rubber ball. Nothing extra! No: “this mole looks so cute...”!
Think not about your desires, but about the desires of the singer. She doesn't need sentimental senile moles, she wants a full stretch. So give her what she wants! Cut what you can and stretch it to the limit!
You will cry over the mole at home, counting the fee.Sixth. Inexperienced authors often believe that the sixth stage in creating a story is unnecessary. And they proudly rush to post a story (and in fact, not a story, but a raw semi-finished product) for reading or send it to a publishing house, and then are offended when they are subjected to devastating criticism.
But this is so easy to avoid if you follow a simple rule: before sharing your story in public, let it sit for a while. Two or three days, a week, if you have the patience. And if you last a month, hats off!
Question: why do this?
Answer: because after a while you will re-read what you wrote with fresh eyes. And you will notice errors that you have not seen before. Remember that the more often you perform this manipulation, the cleaner the text will be. By following the sixth rule, you will make your story shine like a diamond, otherwise it risks remaining an uncut diamond - a dull, clumsy stone, the value of which no one knows.
Read the story out loud, with expression. This will help identify dissonant word and letter combinations, and random repetitions. Try to make your story become a song, read like a prose poem.And finally seventh. Take another half hour to read the story and correct any mistakes in spelling and punctuation. Lack of knowledge or hard work? Give it to a smart friend. Let him add commas, write “not” separately with verbs, and deal with the suffixes “ber-bir”, “der-dir”. And don’t talk about the fact that there are editors and proofreaders, and that they are paid money for this. That's not what they get paid for. And for finding RANDOM errors.
If a story begins with “glorious glory,” 99% will immediately stop reading it. Of course, someone will read it, but only to laugh at the poor student or comment: “Supirski! Hurry up!”
Believe me, grammatical errors are as disgusting as a hair in a restaurant dish.
But seriously, write from the heart, write as your heart tells you. After all, talent and inspiration are great strength. And if you have them, then everything will definitely work out.
There is an opinion that only those who are given it by nature can compose. Is it true? Perhaps, but people who have truly achieved success in writing almost unanimously claim that it was perseverance, not talent, that helped them.
What about talent in general? Predisposition? Whatever talented person he wasn't, he still couldn't do anything good without effort.
Much in the world begins with an idea. The idea lies at the heart of everything human creation. How to write a story? Start with an idea. Choose it, be inspired by it, and the rest will work out on its own. The composition of the story, the images of the characters, etc. will come naturally. As long as there is inspiration based on a specific idea that evokes an emotional response in you.
How to write a story
Is it even worth trying? Yes, it's worth it. Understand that this activity is not punishable. Suddenly something worthy will actually turn out. If it doesn’t work, delete everything you wrote and forget how horrible dream.
As mentioned above, you need to start with choosing an idea. An idea can concern not only the plot, but also the location of the story, its hero, some plot device, twist, and so on. It's good if the idea is connected with meaning. Having come up with the meaning, it will not be difficult to come up with a plot and characters.
You can write according to a plan or without one. How to write a story according to plan? To begin, come up with a beginning and an end. The end of the story in this case should be clearly indicated. It means what you write for, what the heroes of your creation must sooner or later come to. Having a beginning and an end, it's not that difficult to come up with plot devices that connect them. Take your time and don't be afraid to change your plan. The very first ideas are most often the strongest, but sometimes the best comes from rethinking.
Write down the names of the characters on a piece of paper and write their descriptions. Take the time to come up with a little backstory for them.
How to write a story without a plan? Just sit down and start writing what comes to mind. Is it important to know the ending? In this case, no. It’s good to have some guidelines, but you can just rely on your imagination. Many writers believe that writing stories without a plan is much more interesting and exciting.
Anyone who thinks about how to write a story should be aware of how developed his imagination is. You can't do without imagination in writing. Try testing yourself. How to do it? Write down the first two things that come to mind on paper and try to come up with a short story about them. Find connections between them, similarities and differences. We also recommend saying to yourself: “It would be great if...” What next? Anything. If trains had legs, houses hung in the sky, and so on. Expand every “if only.” This will help not only develop imagination, but also find some non-standard ideas and moves for the plot of the story.
You can write several times. It's like working with a plan. What are we talking about? What you can write first short story, then re-read it and write a more detailed story. In principle, you can edit indefinitely. The ability to constantly make changes is both good and bad. Why is she bad? Yes, because authors like to get hung up on the same thing. Perfection cannot be achieved. Things can always be better or worse.
Or a story, you already understand, but how can you understand the quality of what is written? There are many options. The simplest one is to write it down, put it on the table and don’t touch it for a week or two. Then read it - everything will become clear to you right away.
An objective assessment can be obtained from third parties. However, keep in mind that not every friend will tell the whole truth about your creation. If you decide to test your genius through a friend, then present this creation to him as the creation of someone else. In this case, get an objective assessment.
