Principle Number One
When you write a story, don't make it boring.
The rest of this article addresses how to accomplish that.
Necessary Tropes
Most stories have:
Whether you want it or not, your story will also have structure, theme/premise, mood/tone, and style. These become especially important if your story has no conflict, or if the plot is related in non-chronological order, or if you've otherwise decided to subvert one of the most basic assumptions about how stories work. If you are a beginning writer, you'll want to regard this kind of subversion as a learning exercise, rather than expecting that your character-less novel will be a bestseller and a classic for the ages.
You'll want to Make Interesting Characters, develop their personalities, and consider their roles in the story (Characterization Tropes, Characters as Device).
Your Settings may be based on your research or completely made up. In general, you want your setting to be Like Reality, Unless Noted, for two reasons: it helps the reader ground themselves and feel comfortable in the setting; and it's less work for you. However, for the ways in which your setting is different from reality, you should spend some time thinking about how those differences affect everyday life.
A plot is a sequence of events that ensue when there is conflict. Most stories have conflict:
- A character, usually The Protagonist...
- ...wants something badly...
- ...and is having trouble getting it.
Typically, The Protagonist is opposed by an antagonistic character, or else to achieve their goal they must struggle against society, an object, a natural disaster, etc.
The Author
Now, most stories actually need one more thing: someone who writes or tells them. The person who creates them. The author. If you are reading this article, it is presumable that you want to be that author. Well, read on! Here's some tips on how to author.Execution
There are story ideas, story kernels, plot bunnies, that fill a person with excitement. "This is a really cool idea!," the consumer exclaims, "a story about having to Screw Destiny after you're cursed with an unjust fate by a callous and uncaring system!" And then there are stories that sound, well, boring and pedestrian: "Once upon a time, a man and a woman fell in love, but the boat they were on sunk and the man died. The end." Which of those ideas, do you think, was a staggering financial success? Well, the first one is Final Fantasy XIII, one of the worst-reviewed games in its franchise; the other was the first film to ever gross more than $1 billion at the box office: Titanic (1997). How could this be? It seems like a no-brainer that the first story would blow past expectations, while the second... well, it's so pedestrian. Where's the action? Where's the adventure? Where's the excitement? It's a love story on a boat!The answer lies in how the stories were told. The answer lies in execution. The answer lies in the fact that, to a certain extent, how you tell a story is more important than what that story actually is.
The extent is not large. The Romance Arc is fundamentally interesting to most human beings, because romantic love is something most human beings can relate to. Now, a fight against an unjust system is also interesting... but at that point, a lot depends on the nature of the system being fought against, and FF13 had some problems following Show, Don't Tell with regards to those details. It failed to make its story compelling because it failed to make its conflict into something players could empathize with. Both had good stories to tell, but one work just did a better job of telling it.
The point here is simply to say that, as a beginning author, you should not worry if the idea for your story seems mundane. You're not here to sell an idea; you're here to tell a story. And the way you tell it can make all the difference. It's the Journey That Counts.
Perseverance
No story ever springs from the writer's pen (or in this day and age, writer's word processor), fully formed and in perfect condition. Do not let that stop you. You're gonna start with stupid ideas, shallow characters, pointless conversations, and in general the kind of writing you would give your eyes and teeth to make sure no one ever sees. That's fine; the truth is that every published author, every titan of literature, even the "geniuses", started this way. (And succeeded at making sure nobody ever saw their early crap, too!)What is the most important skill a good writer has? Ability to read. A lot. And more. Figure out what genre the story you're telling is, then go read what successful authors in that genre wrote. Then see if you can figure out how they did that and what they did. How did they explain things? How did they create characters? What were the characters' motivations? What was the plot? etc. Then try to learn to do that. Then figure out how you can do it differently. With (lots of) practice in writing, you'll get as good, perhaps even better. You'll have to have written potentially hundreds of pages to get good at it. Once you've gotten reasonably good at it, then you'll actually be proud of your work and be willing (and probably eager) to have others read it.
If you keep at it, you'll inevitably start to work out the kinks until it becomes something worth reading, and then keep going until it becomes something worth telling other people to read. Again, every published author started this way. Every author was bad when they started. And what's more, they all admit this. The successful ones just kept doing it anyway — reading everything they could get their hands on, writing whatever struck their fancy, experimenting with this outlandish thing or that — until one day they woke up and discovered that, somewhere along the thousands of hours they had sunk into this hobby, they had gained enough Experience Points to stop being bad.
The same is true of individual stories, not just an overall body of work. Keep writing, even if it feels like you're going nowhere. It's much easier to polish a turd than it is to polish nothing at all; and, believe it or not, there is much to be learned from turd-polishing.
Perseverance is far more important than perfection.
But don't take our word for it: Extra Credits has some inspirational thoughts for you right over here
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Confidence
This concept moves a little more into metafiction than anything else, but bears discussing, because it has a huge impact on whether The Reader will give your story a chance. It gets down to a simple question: Does The Reader trust you?To quote Three Panel Soul, "Storytelling is a lot like a trapeze act. You throw someone on a journey at the beginning... And they're really angry if you don't catch them at the end." Judging by the timestamp, this strip was a reaction to the famous Mass Effect 3 ending... but that doesn't make it any less truthful or timeless. In fact, the strip is 100% accurate.
When The Reader starts reading your story — when The Consumer starts consuming your story, via whatever medium it's being told in (television, Visual Novel, movie, video game, etc) — they are looking for a number of things. Solid Characterization Tropes; consistent world-building and Back Story; a limited level of Author Filibuster; proper Foreshadowing; avoiding Unfortunate Names; even technical things like avoidance of Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma and Rouge Angles of Satin. They are using all these things to make one simple judgment: "Does this author know what they are doing? They're about to throw me on a journey that will probably take hours; do I trust them to catch me at the end? Is this story a waste of my time?" The need to answer this question — to make accurate judgments about the quality of a work of fiction, without doing it the hard way (IE consuming it) — is why we have reviewers and critics like Roger Ebert. It's literally the foundation of an entire industry, ranging from book reviews in magazines and newspapers to podcasts streamed over the internet.
Now, there's no accounting for taste. One person's Intrepid Reporter is another person's Mary Sue. (Look at how the main characters of The Millennium Trilogy were written after a Replacement Goldfish picked up the series following the author's death.) But whatever you're doing, as an author, you have to be good at it. You have to give signals that your story will be about something, and then follow through on that promise. You have to demonstrate that you know enough about the world to be worth listening to. If you don't... well, there's a lot of other stories in the sea for your would-be consumers to consume instead. Better figure out how to have what those stories do.
"Talent"
We have built a myth, in Western culture, about creativity. You see it applied not just to fiction but to all artistic endeavours: musicianship, painting, sculpting, dancing, etc. The myth is this: "A True Artist is Born Lucky enough to have The Gift." All the great Creators in human history, from William Shakespeare to Vincent van Gogh to The Beatles to Ludwig van Beethoven to Steven Spielberg to Aretha Franklin to Meryl Streep to Babe Ruth to PewDiePie, are treated the same way by this myth: They have something we muggles don't. And, perhaps more importantly, they have something we muggles can't have. Either you have The Gift or you don't, because it cannot be obtained by any means. Either you have it or you are going to amount to nothing in your chosen field.Do you agree with this attitude? Because the truth is, It is bullshit.
If you want to learn how to write, the truth is that you can. How do you do it? As mentioned under Perseverance, it's simply about just doing it over, and over, and over again, and spending time being bad at it until you stop being bad at it. As mentioned under Perseverance, every person who ever got successful at what they do — including all of the above Creators — spent time being bad at what they did; the only difference is that they didn't give up just because they were bad, the way — if we're employing Brutal Honesty — most of us do. And the truth is that Perseverance is the second-most most important indicator of success. How do you get good? By getting good — by putting your nose to the grindstone and doing the goddamn work.
Of course, that opens up a question: does "talent" even exist? And the answer is that it does... but its role in the creative process is misunderstood. "Talent" is perhaps best understood as "natural aptitude". If you and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were put in a room, side by side, allowed to touch a harpsichord for the first time, and given an hour to explore, it is safe to say that, at the end of the hour, both of you would have gained some Experience Points and would be better at playing harpsichord than you were before. But how much better? That's where talent comes in. Mozart has more talent at music than you, so he'll get better, faster... Assuming he doesn't get distracted by a bunch of toy soldiers — which, history tell us, he was quite wont to do. If he gets Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer this way, it's actually entirely possible that he'll end the hour worse at the harpsichord than you! Talent is a Score Multiplier. Do you want the best multiplier you can get? Yes, absolutely... but it's only meaningful if there's any underlying points for it to multiply. It's only meaningful, in other words, if you put your nose to the grindstone and do the goddamn work.
Now, this does raise a second question: "If I don't have as much talent as Mozart or whoever, is it worth the effort to get as good as he did? — seeing as how it'll take me three, four, five times longer to do so (and at that point I have quite possibly exceeded the limits of my own natural lifespan)." And the answer to that is that, well, It's Up to You. Here are the facts: Despite what the United States of America would have us believe, all people are not created equal; each of us has talents in different areas. Is it better for you to focus on the things you have more talent in? Arguably, yes. It'd certainly be more efficient. But here are more facts: You also don't have to be The Greatest Of All Time for it to be worth the effort. If it makes you happy, then it's worth doing. End of story.
Remember how Perseverance is the second-most important indicator of success? The first is that you love doing what you do. Every author who ever got published? They started writing because they like writing. They enjoy the heady thrill of spinning out plot threads and crafting fun characters and setting up mysteries and devising intriguing settings and even (if you're F. Scott Fitzgerald) the business of finding the exact right words to put on the page. Every author who ever got published would still be writing today even if they hadn't.
Do you love writing? Are you willing to keep doing it until you're good at it? Do you love doing it more than it annoys you? Congratulations: you have everything you need to become a published author. Talent is only a Magic Feather.
But if you really need some more encouragement, let's go to Neil Patrick Harris, from the opening to the 67th Tony Awards written by Lin-Manuel Miranda — so of course there's a rap:
- "At the end of the day we are gathered together to honor the best and the brightest
And tomorrow the fashion police will report on your dress and who wore it the tightest
If you win, have the time of your life; tell your manager, dad and your mom, “Thanks!”
Hi to your kids and your husband or wife, maybe (just for the hell of it) Tom Hanks.
Nothing is bigger and better than seeing a veteran get an ovation, or
Seeing a brilliant beginner freak out when they win on their first nomination. There's a
Kid in the middle of nowhere who’s sitting there living for Tony performances, singing and
Flipping along with the Pippins and Wickeds and Kinkys, Matildas and Mormonses.
So we might reassure that kid
And do something to spur that kid
‘cuz I promise you: All of us up here to-
night? We were that kid.
Choices, Choices
The qualities of your story as mentioned above — characters, setting, motivation, conflict, plot, resolution — are perhaps best described as the "contents" of your story. What we are now going to consider is the "tone" of your story. If the contents are what you tell, the tone is how you tell it. This is more important than it sounds.Let's take an example. Let's say you have a heroic man who is good at what he does, but wants to be more. Additionally, he's blind to his own limitations. So he bulls his way into a position of power he's not ready for and ends up ruining everything. Does this plot belong in a blood-soaked tragedy or a farcical comedy?
The answer is that it literally depends on whether you have a Laugh Track or not. The plot just described is the story of a lot of sitcoms (The Office (US), The Simpsons, about half the episodes of Frasier)... and is also a very accurate, if somewhat generalized, summary of two of the greatest tragedies of all time, William Shakespeare's Macbeth and Hamlet. (In the former, the out-of-place man is The Protagonist; in the latter, he's the Big Bad.) The only difference — the only difference — is whether the audience is supposed to laugh at it or not. The only difference is in how the story is meant to be perceived. The only difference is tone.
So let's take a look at what you might decide about your tone, and how to implement that decision.
The Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism
Do you wish to portray a world in which karma works in favor of the virtuous, and villains get their comeuppance? You might choose this path to inspire your readers to do good in the world, or simply because it feels good to read a happy ending.Or would you prefer to portray a world in which random chance harms the good and helps the evil, all without any rhyme or reason — where it's better to be self-centered or even evil, because the good don't get rewarded for their goodness?
You can place your story anywhere between the two extremes. Maybe some good characters get hurt or die despite their virtue, and some villains go Karma Houdini in the end, but most of the characters get what's coming to them, one way or the other.
In fact, you can also make the story look like it's idealistic, but ends with cynicism (suddenly the good characters die and the villains escape). Or, make it look cynical, but end idealistically (the ending makes you look at all the bad events from a different point of view).
The Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness
We started with this distinction between Comedy and Drama, and nowadays some of the strongest series are Dramedies — drama with a strong sense of comedy, the two forces working together, waxing and waning as appropriate to the story of the moment. Still, it's a good idea to know which one of them you plan to focus on, especially since you can exaggerate either of them, from absurd surrealism to unrelenting grimdark bleakness. Which one is the default for your story?The Sliding Scale of Scope
How many characters do you want? How many locations do you want? The sky is the limit — except for how we have stories set in outer space now, so, no, the sky is no longer the limit.Some of the greatest classics have drummed up a cast of dozens, even hundreds of characters, and ranged over a world almost as intricate and detailed as Real Life. That said: Don't bite off more than you can chew. It's best, in the beginning, to work with only a few major characters - perhaps half a dozen mains, half a dozen minors. By choosing a judicious number of characters that suits a (compact) plot, you can avoid a scattered tale with a dozen dangling plots that never seems to tie down all the loose ends, something even experienced authors have trouble with.
Similarly, save the globe-trotting for a time when you've already proven you can write. For now, stick to a few relevant locales.
The Sliding Scale of Comfort vs Challenge
There are two main reasons that human beings engage with fiction.- They want to be taught and challenged. This can be as benign as having An Aesop at the end of the story, or as dramatic as attacking the status quo directly (Upton Sinclair's The Jungle). This sort of story exists to tell the consumer that they are wrong — to get them to question their values and whether they are truly living the life they want to.
- They want to be comforted and reassured. This can be as benign as affirming Rousseau Was Right or as dramatic as redefining a vice as a virtue (Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, some portions of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth). This sort of story exists to tell the consumer that they are right — to reaffirm their values and congratulate them for making choices which (the author believes) are good.
Or, to rephrase using recent internet slang, what we are looking at is the Sliding Scape of Hopium Vs Copium.
We can actually take both of these straight back to one of the most famous and influential works ever written, The Bible. Check out the picture of Dogma's "Buddy Christ" on the Jesus Was Way Cool trope page — "He didn't come here to give us the willies! He came here to help us out!" This is certainly a valid interpretation of what Jesus says he set out to do. But then in Matthew, the first of The Four Gospels, we have that immortal line, "I come not to bring peace, but a sword," implying that Jesus' mission is less about spreading comfort and more about upsetting the status quo — which, again, is a valid interpretation of what Jesus says he set out to do, and was backed up by action (confronting parties who held political power, spending lots of time with people who those parties discriminated against, criticizing the rich, reinterpreting religious law, etc).
And what that tells us is that it isn't really a Sliding Scale; the two are actually independent. A story can be both comforting and challenging, and some of history's greatest works have in fact accomplished both. (Harry Potter, for instance, contains both the comforting moral that love is stronger than death, but also the frightening reminder that choices matter.) Likewise, a story can do neither, if it's written poorly enough (the infamous trainwreck of a Fan Fic My Immortal being a good example).
Where you want to fall on this scale — on either scale — is really up to you. There is no "right" way to write a story; Game of Thrones is one of the most popular works of fiction in recent memory because it challenges its audience, but shed a sizeable population of viewers who weren't looking for anything more than escapism. Transformers (2007) is one of the most lucrative works of fiction in recent memory, but shed a sizeable population of viewers who found its excessive escapism boring and unstimulating. There is no right answer to this question. There is only the right answer for you, the kind of story you want to write. Figure it out, and tailor your tone accordingly.
Pitfalls
Most people don't care to read about Flat Characters. They want to read about characters who seem like people. People have desires and fears, strengths and flaws; they are sometimes unpredictable, sometimes act on whim, but they usually have reasons for everything they do, consciously or unconsciously.
Now, this does not mean your character needs to evolve. Character Development is useful, but it's not the only way to run a story; sometimes the Protagonist is the only character who does not grow. So it's perfectly okay to have a Static Character - as long as that character is not flat (and not in the way you're thinking, either).
Also, you may hear that True Art is angsty, incomprehensible, offensive and such. Take this with a pinch of salt. Whilst it is true that great stories have been told in ways that can be painful, complex or challenging to our core beliefs, true art often cannot be summed up so simplistically, and it is often a sign of a certain degree of pretentiousness when people insist that art is 'only' one thing or another. Great art can just as often be optimistic, simple and inoffensive - and the greatest works of art generally tend to acknowledge both sides.
Keep in mind that tight plotting and plot twists are only part of the story. Lisa Cron put it best: "The events by themselves mean nothing; it's what those events mean to someone that has us compulsively turning pages." Even more than that, by adhering to Show, Don't Tell and making the emotional stakes a thing that The Reader experiences rather than hearing about later, The Reader develops empathy for the characters. The events are not just happening to some random stranger; the events are happening to The Reader, and mean something to that Reader. This is why something as mundane as a love story — which 99.9% of humans have experienced personally and scarcely need a secondhand account of — can nonetheless be so effective.
Be aware of your themes. Some authors believe you don't need them; Dan Benioff, co-showrunner of the hit HBO series Game of Thrones, once remarked, "Themes are for eighth-grade book reports." The part he overlooked is that almost all works have themes. The story's "subject" is what its plot and character revolves around: The Protagonist wants something and has trouble getting it. The story's theme lies in what you, The Author, think about the subject. And this happens almost inevitably, because most stories end up being about some of the biggest questions of human life: How much is romantic love worth? Who counts as human, and why? Can money buy happiness? How do we handle the world moving on without us? Because you are a normal human, you probably have opinions on these questions. Because you are a normal human, some of those opinions will inevitably seep into the story. You are writing a theme into the story whether you intend to or not. With that in mind, you'll probably want to do it consciously. If not, you can end up with something like... the ending of Game of Thrones, where the themes that had been built up for eight years were ignored, and which was lambasted by critics and audiences alike for that very reason.
Finally, remember that list from up above? The 1) protagonist who 2) wants something and 3) can't get it? That's a great structure. But in an episode of TableTop, John Rogers listed it this way: 1) Who wants what, 2) why can't they have it, and 3) why do I give a [Precision F-Strike]? We have plenty of tropes on the idea that the audience simply won't hook into your story, from the Eight Deadly Words to the Audience-Alienating Premise, and it might be a good idea to review them. You could be the finest writer in history, but that won't help you if your audience gives up after the first paragraph because what you're writing about is objectionable, poorly communicated or irrelevant. The idea cannot be interesting to only you; it has to be made interesting to everyone.
Potential Subversions
Many themes and tropes can be subverted in interesting ways. One of the most common forms is the Deconstruction, which is about analyzing the themes and how they would play out if painfully realistic consequences were applied to them. Another good tool is to add Hidden Depths to seemingly archetypal characters.
The trickiest part of subversion is that it depends entirely on Audience Reactions. A successful subversion is not just something the audience didn't expect, it is something the audience didn't know they wanted. This requires keen insight and a strong understanding of your audience. If you don't have those things, you're unlikely to subvert a trope effectively... And even if you do, you can still miss. This is why attempts at subversion can go over poorly with the audience.
Writers' Lounge
Suggested Themes and Aesops
Okay, go back to the sliding scales. What do you really believe? Do you align yourself with Rousseau Was Right, or are you on the side that thinks that Humans Are Bastards? Once you define that, you can build the moral scale of your history.Potential Motifs
There's a wide range of motifs to choose from when crafting a character, a story, a world. But you need to make the motif serve your story, not the other way around. If you find you're bending the characters to suit the motif, you're probably going to end up with something simple and flavorless, hardly standing out from its fellows. And readers who recognize the motifs are going to guess your plot twists a mile off.
But as far as potential motifs, there are, among others:
- Animals: Each major character gets an animal "totem" that shows off the basic feel of the character. ElfQuest did this with Cutter, Leetah, Skywise, and Rayek: a bantam rooster, a cat, a fox, and a snake. But this was never the be-all and end-all of their characters; even Rayek, despite going fairly dark in many places, was never merely the "snake" of the series.
- Colors: Each character gets a color, which usually informs some aspect of their personality. White might indicate an All-Loving Hero, yellow The Ditz, pink The Heart or Girly Girl (or perhaps a more macho type), blue The Smart Guy and red The Lancer, green or brown the guy who's close to nature, silver The Dragon, etc., etc., etc. There are plenty of ways to play with this (offhand: why is purple listed under villains or at best neutral?), so don't be tied down to what others have done just because others have done it.
- Moral Codes: Trigun took a central thesis of (not at all technical) pacifism and how it might work in a dangerous Wild West desert world — the unwillingness to harm or kill others, even villains (though not to passively accept them hurting others either) — and managed to pull off an entire series. The two male leads clashed on this topic, coming at it from completely different worldviews. When is it right to use force? When must we accept a less-than-ideal solution to the threat at hand? If you take care to avoid The War on Straw, you can really make a series shine by assigning certain characters ethical stances that clash with those around them (even if it's just All-Loving Hero vs. the guy who'll Shoot the Dog).
Suggested Plots
In general there aren't really suggested plots in works outside "conventional genres". Just open your arms and let the plot come!One way to find plots is listening to people. In the bus, in the subway, in the wall before the dentist, in the restroom, everywhere people talk, and chit-chat, and lament. Everybody believes their lives could make a book, or at least a good chapter of a Soap Opera. Of course, this is not true, but from anecdotes from strangers the embryo of a good story can born. Even from family you can get inspiration; there is fountain of inspiration on familiar anecdotes. Many authors have met fame and fortune writing disguised versions of their family exploits.
Aside from picking up plots at random, you can start with an archetypal plot and go from there. Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots outlines, well, seven archetypes, from The Quest to classic monster-slaying to Rags to Riches to Tragedy and even Rebirth (the Tragedy plus a Heel–Face Turn in time for it to matter). There are others who classify the archetypal plots in different ways and with different numbers, from two (every story is about Love or Death) to 42 or even more.
Another tactic: Design your main character and center your story around what they do. Just remember: A plot happens when someone wants something badly and is having trouble getting it. If Bob, your hero, wants a job at a nearby Pizza Hut, make him really want it, and let us in on the reason he does. Maybe he's desperate for money. Maybe the girl of his dreams works there too. Maybe he needs a job, any job, before his great-uncle shows up and drags him off to something worse (or his parents send him to That Camp). But if he really doesn't care whether or not he gets the job, we're not going to care either. And if he just walks in and applies, and they accept him on the spot, then maybe the job turns out to be not all he dreamed of. Otherwise, if he gets his wishes immediately ... what was the story again?
Finally, consider theme. Many stories have An Aesop, and are "about" something. (This is not necessarily a bad thing; Tropes Are Tools.) If your story has a theme, consider how your characters relate to that theme, and express that theme. Example: American Beauty is about people trying to find the freedom to Be Themselves in an oppresive, cookie-cutter suburbia; therefore, every character in the film is in some stage of that struggle. An obvious choice, but it makes said theme easier to catch on to without resorting to heavy-handed morals.
Departments
Set Designer / Location Scout
This is never easy as you think. Besides the whole "created world" versus "some version of our world" choice, there's a bigger concern: putting the reader there.The trip up is, of course, this is a balancing act. Under do it, and your readers will have no idea of setting at all. Overdo it, and other things suffer. And this balance is different depending on the story— sometimes, simply saying your two characters are in a small room is enough. Other times, to properly set up a thwarted storming the castle, you may need the Chekhov's Gun of the super cool defense set up in the first chapter. Then you need to decide how much of a surprise you want it to be.
Another issue is one a lot of writers miss. Even if you supposedly set your story in "our" world, you often end up bending things to suit the narrative. You never truly set your story in reality. The Chicago in The Dresden Files isn't real; neither is the LA in Black Dahlia.
The issue, rather, is how to invoke your version of a place in the story. If it's a real place or one spawned in your head, the drive is the same. Put the reader there, and don't look foolish to those who've been there. If you set your story in Toronto, it's all well and good to mention Kensington Market and "The King of Kensington"— but if you set your story in 1974, someone's going to realize Al Waxman didn't start playing the King until the year after.
With a whole-cloth setting, this is still true— except the only resource you have to start is you. Meaning you are the only one to blame if a Plot Hole related to the setting comes up. Contradict what you established on page one without setting up something properly for it, and you'll have the reader shouting "Ass Pull" and throwing the book against the wall.
The elements of setting aren't just maps and scenery, or even grand cultures (though those can help). The setting is revealed in something as simple as daily routine— if you go to a well whenever you need water, you likely don't have indoor plumbing. And that says certain things about the technology of your setting. Likewise, if someone addresses the lone female in a group as if it's natural she'd be in charge, that says something, too. People and things are both products of and have an effect on how your setting is revealed to the reader/ viewer. Realize this. Use it.
Of course, if your story is set in a specific location, then you should know your setting.
- Visit the place yourself. If your story is set in London, then you're more likely to be able to vividly, accurately and effectively recreate it if you have some experience of what it's like to be in London; not just where the famous landmarks are, but how the streets are planned, what the weather's like at particular times of the year, even what it smells like in certain regions. Most people have seen a picture of the Houses of Parliament, but if you actually visit it then you can get a sense of what the surrounding area is like, in order to describe it.
- If you can't directly visit the place yourself, then find other ways of experiencing it. If you live in Brisbane and your novel is set in London, then it might not be practical to visit London regularly; however, you can still access a large amount of literature and text about London — read stories and watch films set in London, read travel guides and memoirs based on London, talk to people who have been to London, etc. This even applies to more fantastical realms; if your story is set in an alien jungle, then obviously you can't go to an alien planet but you can go to a nearby Botanical Gardens and visit the tropical plants house to get a sense of what it's like in that part of a biosystem.
- Base your settings closer to home. Walk the streets around your house, visit local places, get a feel for it. You can just as easily set your story in your hometown as anywhere else, or extrapolate a more fantastical setting based on your hometown.
Props Department
Any props that you use should be established as early as possible. If it's important for the climax of your work that the hero bests the villain in a sword fight, then you're going to want to give him a sword and experience in using it as early as possible; if he just produces a sword and the ability to use it out of nowhere at the end, the reader will feel cheated. That said, you don't have to be too obvious or clunky about it; try not to give away too much too soon.Costume Designer
Many amateur authors go to great lengths to describe what their characters are wearing. This can work better in some genres than in others, especially when the story is going to a visual medium, but in most cases an über-detailed description isn't needed. Especially when the time of the media leap/adaptation arrives and the director designates a costume designer with his or her own ideas.If you don't give any description of clothing, then people will assume the character is clothed in a manner that makes sense for the time, place, and the reactions of those who interact with the character. (Don't worry, they won't assume he's naked unless he's at a nudist colony.) If your character is a caveman, a pioneer, a sailor, a pirate, an astronaut, a bank teller, a CEO, a surgeon, a journalist, a harried mother... each of these carries with it some stereotype that makes you think of a certain level of clothing. You probably saw the CEO in a business suit - that's good. But since we do make assumptions about the visuals, you as the writer have the chance to toy with us a bit, subverting our expectations in a fun or dramatic fashion.
If you decide that your characters' outfit must be described, or at least pointed out, you have to ask yourself the following questions before:
- Is it appropriate for the character? How can a real person in a similar situation move in this outfit?
- Can the attire in question be congruent with the historical period the story is placed? If not, is there a believable reason for that?
- Are the clothes really representative/appropriate/useful for my character, or am I just cramming any kind of Author Appeal into them?
- Do the clothes say something about the character? What, exactly?
- Does the description of the clothing contribute somehow to the characterization or the plot?
- Does the public really have to read/watch a paragraph/2 minutes of zooms and pan/a large 2-pages spread depicting the cute fashionable dress/the kickass armor my protagonist is wearing?
Casting Director
Because of the Mary Sue backlash and the rise of "more realistic" stories, there is an increasing amount of writing about average-looking people. While this is generally good and applauded, this could deviate in several ways:- Falling in the old dichotomy Beauty Equals Goodness Vs Ugly=Evil in an attempt to subvert this.
- Unleash the Anti-Sue.
Don't be ashamed to write about pretty people. Just don't indulge in endless sour grapes wangst, and your public will forgive you. Mostly.
If you want to avoid these problems, the recommendation is not avoiding physical descriptions entirely, but instead characterize with few elements. In fiction, a character's actions and attitudes shape their appearance; if you have a character do an evil thing and then touch their facial hair, The Reader will automatically picture a Snidely-Whiplash mustachio or a Beard of Evil. This goes for positive / good-guy characters too: you can have a character be a nice person and then let The Reader's imagination do the rest. Seriously, who's better at envisioning a character The Reader finds attractive: you? Or The Reader? So, give only the pertinent details, avoiding purpley adjectivation, and then leave it alone. It's better if your readers have their own mental images. Let them be the Casting Director.
Stunt Department
Be keenly aware of the medium you are writing for when putting stunts into your story. Many impressive physical feats only work in the movies (and other visual media) because describing them with words commonly ruins the timing and pace. One of the reasons is that most action scenes in the movies have several things happening at the same time:- The Hero punches The Dragon, The Dragon dodges while countering with a hidden knife...
If you don't believe us, try writing down the highway Chase Scene from The Matrix Reloaded in literary language and maintaining the dramatic tension. If you succeed, you are either an experienced thriller novel writer or a literary genius, and either way this article can't help you — you should be writing it, not reading it. (So get cracking! The Edit button's at the top of the page.)
