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How to Write a Story: A Checklist for Writing Your Story
Use this checklist for writing your story, and you will write even stronger stories. David Farland was a best-selling author and contest judge for the
Use this checklist for writing your story, and you will write even stronger stories. David Farland was a best-selling author and contest judge for the
Every story begins with an idea. The idea may come to you while listening to a song, driving a car, or reading a newspaper. You
Many readers and editors state that a strong voice immediately draws them into a story, and one of the most important voices will come from
THE ONE WITH ALL THE LISTS When I was in college, I wrote a story and—on the advice of my professor—entered it into a competition.
So how do you write a “hyper-real” scene?
There are several keys.
Select unconventional images to propel the scene forward.
Appeal to powerful emotions such as love, fear, anger, guilt, and so on.
Be careful to apply your poetic sensibilities to every line.
Make sure that you appeal to all of the senses.
This is commonly referred to as the writing zone. I spoke about the importance of getting rid of all external and internal distractions, and I suggested that you need to move into your writing zone slowly.
When you look at novels carefully, you will notice that the bestselling books of all time are usually big “doorstoppers.” In each genre, we see
Your story begins when you have a character (likeable or not), in a setting (interesting or not), with a problem (and it darned well ought to be a doozy). My mentor Algis Budrys said that as a rule of thumb, if a writer doesn’t have that by page two, then the story most likely isn’t sellable. He’s right. The stories that do well in my competition are the ones that grip me from the first page to the last.
In many novels you will have a fight scene—everything from a verbal scuffle as two people break up to a major battle, and because this
Nearly every novel shows a character with a big conflict. Sometimes conflicts are so vast that the tale is overwhelming. But readers must somehow muddle