Everything I Know About How to Write a Story

Significant experiences are the events in your own personal history you remember because they made you feel good, satisfied, engaged, invigorated, inspired, in the flow. By reviewing your significant experiences, you can gain insight into your values, beliefs, interests, strengths and dreams.

4 Tips When Writing from Experience

1. Don’t use your work as a weapon to settle scores and get back at people.
2. Know the difference between fiction and journaling.
3. Be an advocate for your characters – even the so-called villains.
4. Put distance between you and the experience so that you can be objective.

1. Write In One Sitting. Write the first draft of your story in as short a time as possible.
2. Develop Your Protagonist.
3. Create Suspense and Drama.
4. Show, Don’t Tell.
5. Write Good Dialogue.
6. Write About Death.
7. Edit Like a Pro.
8. Know the Rules, Then Break Them.

Contemporary Romance

1. Pick either the Heroine or the Hero and introduce them to the reader with a lighthearted scene depicting their life right before everything changes.
2. Begin with the “Cute Meet”, the event in which the Hero and Heroine meet for the first time.

When practicing how to write a romantic subplot you must include the following:

1. Theme (hate to love, friends to lovers, meet-cute, etc.)
2. Dramatic first meeting.
3. Reasons for attraction.
4. Point of no return.
5. Conflict.
6. Low point.
7. Resolution.

Shipping: 14 Ways To Develop Romance In Your Story

1. I can get emotionally involved in the romance of characters without actually getting emotionally involved!
2. Put them together.
3. Go slowly.
4. Show that they like being together.
5. Make them need each other for practical things.
6. Demonstrate how confused they are.
7. Give them a chorus to argue with.
8. Create a pursuit.

The Dos and Don’ts of Novel Endings

1. Don’t introduce any new characters or subplots.
2. Don’t describe, muse, explain, or philosophize.
3. Do create that sense of Oh, wow!
4. Do enmesh your reader deeply in the outcome.
5. Do resolve the central conflict.
6. Do afford redemption to your heroic character.
7. Do tie up loose ends of significance.

4 Classic Possibilities for How to End a Story

• The “happily ever after” ending. The classic, feel-good ending.
• The tragic ending. The protagonist’s main goal doesn’t go as planned, curveballs are thrown, and tragedy strikes.
• The ambiguous ending.
• The bittersweet ending.

Sometimes the writer reveals the theme by repeating symbols or motifs. A common way to understand the theme is by identify the “big idea”, what the story is about—love, death, crime, abortion, lust, human nature, divorce, abuse, and so forth. The theme of a story can sometimes be understood by its setting.

A book’s theme is usually derived from the emotional development of characters or from the consequences these characters face as a result of their actions. By using your theme in the right way, you end up creating an emotional connection between your readers and characters.