Hi everyone, Ed here from Shades of Vengeance!
Today, I’m going to be giving you my three best quick tips for writing your story.
1. Start with Feelings
Begin what you are trying to create with the feelings that you want to evoke within the universe (not necessarily within the reader!).
How does it feel? Is it positive, is it negative? Are people optimistic, or are people angry and at each other’s throats. What is it that people feel like when they live within this setting?
That may include details on the size of the setting, because depending on the size, people may feel different: in a city you might feel faceless, whereas in a village everyone knows who everyone is. Consider that and consider the setting that you’re creating with through the lens of what it is that you want people in your universe to feel.
2. The characters you are telling your story about must be the most important people in that universe.
At the very least, they must be for the duration of the story. Otherwise, they will constantly be affected by the actions of other people. Making sure that they are the force that moves the world along is an easy way of ensuring that your heroes, your anti-heroes, or your protagonists (whichever they may be!) are the people who the story focuses on and that you are not telling the story about the wrong people.
As long as they are the centre of the universe, when they act, the setting will move with them.
3. Follow your characters on their journey.
When a character begins a journey, they will always have a motivation for doing so.
Sometimes that motivation might fade, and you need to make new motivations. But if you follow what your character would do in the situation and push them forward with minor events that contribute to their overall personality by the way they react to them, you will be able to write a character-driven story within a setting that speaks to people.
If you’re not sure how to make certain that a character is doing what they should, then think about how they are similar to you and how they are different. How would you react to a situation? how is this character different to you? And how, therefore, would they react to this same situation that you’re thinking about?
That’s everything that I’ve got for you today. That was three quick tips that you can use to make sure that your story is the best story that you can create!
Thanks very much for reading, and don’t forget to join us on Discord and let me know what you think: https://discord.gg/6C4H9Cv
If you want to help support the creation of these tips, consider joining us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/SoV
