Becoming a writer isn’t easy. Things get tricky if you are a complete beginner. I have been a fiction and non-fiction writer. Today, I will reveal my 11 tips to help you write stories like a pro. Building plot, characters, playing with time, proper build-up, and more will be covered later.
Writing a story is a unique skill that helps you express yourself in many ways. The ability to write stories enables you to become better at communicating ideas clearly and concisely.
How To Write A Story?
There are a lot of things that go into a writer’s mind while writing a story. I recommend you not to jump onto writing without proper preparation. Following all our steps and guidance, you can note anything from short to long stories based on your intentions.
Story Writing Tips
Also, in case you are looking for a much more generalized guide, then our 17 Great Tips For Writing Fiction & Becoming a Better Writer would be beneficial for you
So, without further ado, let’s begin with our tips:
1) Decide Plot
It’s more complicated than it sounds. You might have already prepared a storyline, but think of everything you’d like the story to be; based on those factors, your Plot can change a lot. For example, if you plan a romantic story, you might shift your Plot to a location with nice weather and attractions for couples.
At the same time, if your Plot involves some mystery, you might be interested in a sparsely populated location where creating a secret is much easier.
2) Write A Story With Proper Narration
A straightforward, boring story can be far more interesting if you choose narrative. Generally, stories are narrated where you play God, who reports about the activities of all characters.
Instead, you could narrate with a 1st-person perspective of a character. This would mean that readers won’t know much about the activities of other characters and would only be aware of the happenings of the narrator, creating suspense.
You could also choose to narrate in a flashback. A flashback is generally challenging to execute, and since you are learning how to write a story for beginners, I suggest you avoid it. However, if you are still interested, you could switch between 2 instances that are very far away in time by creating flashbacks.
Also, you can always take inspiration/ideas from others but never copy content. Modern tools like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Quillbot are excellent at writing and paraphrasing content, but such AI-driven content is easy to catch. Modern Paraphrase Plagiarism Checkers can easily detect such content. Such content rarely ranks on Google and is often low-quality, creating a lousy reputation in your audience.
3) Decide Character Traits
Since you are still a beginner trying to figure out how to write a story, you would often struggle to keep consistency in the characters’ actions. So, even before you start writing, create a character sketch of all your writers.
This would be like a single-page resume outlining the critical features of each character, including upbringing, family, profession, hobbies, etc. It would be best to portray all these characters in your story early on. Why? Good Question! For a reader, 5-6 characters progressing in parallel is too much to comprehend.
If you create distinct characters with some key catchphrases, habits, or weird details, then it is easy for the reader to remember the characters.
4) Practice Dialogue Writing
One of the key differences between fiction writers and non-fiction writers is dialogue. To learn how to write a story as a beginner, you must practice good dialogue writing or use an online story generator.
The online story generator will help you give a variety of dialogues; you can use it just for practicing purposes or as a full-fledged source of generation.
I am getting back to the point!
Generally, non-fiction has direct writing with no dialogues or maybe some direct word-to-word quotes. Still, the conversation must be natural in fiction, especially story writing.
Take suggestions over dialogues, use proper punctuation, pauses, and conversation words like “ahh,” “eww,” “oh my god,” Is that true?” etc., to make it much more like a human-to-human interaction. If you nail the dialogues, you’ll be good enough to be called a professional story writer.
5) Accelerate and Decelerate
When writing a medium to long size story, it is essential to vary the pace of your account. The best professional writers have mastered the art of speeding up the events on some pages while slowing down events on others.
This way, it always feels like a roller coaster ride for all readers. People may sometimes skip boring parts when things start going too slowly. But, if you are moving too fast, readers cannot digest many events.
So, you should select an apt speed for your content that keeps the interest and maintains the proper depth of the story.
6) Start
A well-begun story goes a long way in ensuring the overall success of your content. That’s why you must be diligent in creating a good start. Don’t try to keep it slow to elongate the story.
Starting a story slow with irrelevant information is one of the most significant crimes you could commit in story writing. You have to build interest and ensure that the reader is hooked on the story from the start.
You don’t need to start with a significant event necessarily, but keep the story interesting from the start; it may eventually get a bit boring. Still, for starters, it should generate good interest in your users.
7) Create a Protagonist
Often, the hero of the story is assumed to be the protagonist. However, things can get a bit different from a reader’s perspective. Give your audience someone to root for.
Someone who is loved by all users and can be supported unquestioningly. Also, a bit of struggle between your protagonists is a must. During boring parts, the love for the protagonist would help users to stick around during the weaker sections of a reader.
As a beginner still learning to write a story, you would often make mistakes or oversights where your audience would lose interest. If your user is genuinely interested in a character, your writeups would have much higher retention.
8) Build up Imagination
As a story writer, you deal in words, but humans prefer to see and hear things deep down. Creating a story that appeals to the eyes and ears would be best.
This means short yet vivid descriptions of backgrounds, facial expressions, situations, and more that help your readers visualize the scene. Their eyes may be reading the book, but their mind should be in the location.
For example, in a tense scene, you could say, “he was furious,” instead of saying, “his face turned red.” See, the former was just words, but you could picture the scene in the latter.
9) Start Small
We should have said that earlier, but I assumed you were already too prepared to write a story. Nevertheless, before starting the work on a big story, you must work and make mistakes on a smaller project.
One of the best places to start with short story writing is Milyin. Not only can you write there for free, but you would also earn income through advertisements for your stories. Besides, you could interact with your audience and ask for feedback. You’d also be able to chat with other writers and users to learn from their experiences.
This is a great way to gain initial experience and become a pro in a couple of days to start acting as a story writer. You can very quickly learn the art of a story as a beginner with Milyin.com
10) Find Continuity Errors
Relatively poor continuity errors can ruin an incredible story. Put, a continuity error is when an event or information is shared earlier in the story that unintentionally contradicts the statement at the end of the story.
The most minor things, like the character’s birthdate, if shown to change during the story, could hurt the user’s impression. Decide upon all such trivial facts in advance and check all of them before publishing.
Essentially, your content should be contradiction-free. This sounds easy, but it is a challenging skill to conquer. As a beginner who is learning how to write a story, you would surely be imperfect; try your best, but don’t feel disheartened upon seeing mistakes.
Even the best stories and TV shows have significant continuity errors that can be spotted if observed. So, don’t feel disheartened if you find mistakes after publishing the report.
11) Review Your Content
The best judge of your story is the reader. Once you have written your story, you must always reread your story. You’ll realize your story’s loopholes and problems when you reread your account. This could include areas that could be explained better or foreshadowing future events.
Overall, improving language and changing things to improve the story is crucial. Of course, when you review your content, use tools like Grammarly to enhance vocabulary and grammar. If you can’t simply write some content, use tools like Quillbot to rephrase and simplify your sentences.
FAQs
Last Updated:
Views: 43
9 Tips to get Freelance Writing Jobs with no Experience (2023)
9 Tips on How to Become a Freelance Writer With No Experience
17 Great Tips For Writing Fiction & Becoming a Better Writer