11 Tips on How To Write a Story (for beginners) in 2022

Table of Contents

How To Write A Story?
Tip 1: Decide Plot
Tip 2: Write A Story With Proper Narration
Tip 3: Decide Character Traits
Tip 4: Practice Dialogue Writing
Tip 5: Accelerate and Decelerate
Tip 6: Start
Tip 7: Create a Protagonist
Tip 8 – Build up Imagination
Tip 9 – Start Small
Tip 10: Find Continuity Errors
Tip 11: Review Your Content
FAQs

Becoming a writer isn’t easy. Things get tough if you are a complete beginner. I have been a fiction and non-fiction writer. Today, I will reveal my 11 top 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 very unique skill that helps you express yourself in many different ways. The ability to write stories helps you become better at expressing 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 to not jump onto writing without proper preparation. If you follow all our steps and guidance, you’d be able to write anything from short to long stories based on your intentions.

Also, in case you are looking for a much more generalised guide, then our 17 Great Tips For Writing Fiction & Becoming a Better Writer would be really beneficial for you

So, without further ado, let’s begin with our tips:

Tip 1: Decide Plot

It’s more complicated than it sounds. You might have already prepared a storyline, but think of everything you’d like in the story to be, based on those factors, your plot can change a lot. For example, if you are planning 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 sort of mystery, then you might be interested in a sparsely populated location were creating a secret is a lot easier.

Tip 2: Write A Story With Proper Narration

A straightforward boring story can be made 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 shall suggest you avoid it. Though, if you still are interested, by creating flashbacks, you could switch between 2 instances that are very far away in time.

Tip 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 key features of each character, including upbringing, family, profession, hobbies, etc. You must 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.

Tip 4: Practice Dialogue Writing

One of the key differences between fiction writers and non-fiction writers is dialogue. If you want to learn how to write a story as a beginner, then you must practice good dialogue writing.

Generally, non-fiction has direct writing with no dialogues or may be some direct word-to-word quotes. Still, in fiction writing, especially story writing, the dialogue must be natural.

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’d be good enough to be called a professional story writer.

Tip 5: Accelerate and Decelerate

When writing a medium to long size story, it is essential to vary the pace of your story. 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 so many events.

So, you should select an apt speed for your content that keeps the interest and maintains the proper depth of the story.

Tip 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 reader is hooked into the story right from the start.

You don’t need to necessarily start with a significant event, but keep the story interesting from the start, it may eventually get a bit boring. Still, for starters, it should be generating good interest in your users.

Tip 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 blindly. Also, a bit of struggle between your protagonist 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, who is still learning to write a story, you would often make mistakes or oversights where your audience would lose a bit of interest. If your user is genuinely interested in a character, you’d see much higher retention in your writeups.

Tip 8 – Build up Imagination

As a story writer, you deal in words, but humans prefer to see and hear things deep down. You must create a story that appeals to the eyes and ears.

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 present in the actual scene itself.

For example, in a tense scene, rather than saying, “he was very angry”, you could say, “his face turned red”. See, the former was just words, but you could picturise the scene in the latter.

Tip 9 – Start Small

We should have said that earlier, but we 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 would be able to interact with your audience and ask for feedback. Not only that, you’d 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 real story writer. You can very easily learn the art of how to write a story as a beginner with Milyin.com

Tip 10: Find Continuity Errors

Relatively poor continuity errors can ruin an incredible story. Simply 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 person who is learning how to write a story as a beginner, you would surely be imperfect, try your best, but don’t feel disheartened upon seeing mistakes.

Even the best of the best stories and TV shows have significant continuity errors that can be spotted if observed. So, don’t feel disheartened if you find some errors after publishing the story.

Tip 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 write some content in a simple way, use tools like Quillbot to rephrase and simplify your sentences.

FAQs

How to write a story for beginners?

You can effortlessly create a professional story by practicing short stories correctly, selecting the right plot, creating accurate character descriptions, and maintaining proper pacing for your story. An exciting plot, excellent dialogues, and ideal pacing can easily do wonders in the market.

Thanks for Reading,

Warm Regards,

Aditya,