But creative writing, like cooking, can be a pleasant experience if you know what to do. A cake doesn't turn out so hot if you've never made a cake, not without consulting a cookbook that lists all the necessary ingredients. You just have to know where to start.
Here is your cookbook for writing a story. There are four main ingredients you need to make a solid foundation for your story.
The First Ingredient: Character
All stories have one thing in common – characters. These are the people that will move your story, that will make things happen. There is the primary character, who is in the story from beginning to end; secondary or supporting characters that can affect the plot; and background characters.
Depending on the length of the story, there may be more than one primary character - the best friend of the wife, the other woman, the husband.
Especially for the primary character, they must come as fully and completely developed as possible. This is more than just hair color, eye color, build and body type. You have a life, memories, personality quirks that make you unique. Your character has to have these as well.
Secondary or supporting characters also need to be as fleshed out as possible. They may not be in the entire story, but they do deserve your attention as much as the primary character. Background characters are like extras in a movie.
The Second Ingredient: Situation
After you have created your primary character(s), you have to place this person in a general life situation, such as, they have a terrible love life, they hate their job, ect.
This doesn't have to be a bad situation they want to get out out of. It can also be the best situation they've ever dreamed of and don't want to change. For instance, the character has a dream job but then hears rumours about layoffs, or has a storybook marriage but then this marriage is suddenly in jeopardy.
The Third Ingredient: An Event
After you have created a character, and put them in a situation, you have something happen to them. This is called an event. The character meets someone new; gets laid off from their job; finds an email from a strange woman in her husband's email inbox.
The Final Ingredient: A Choice
In the wake of this event, the character has to make a choice. The woman decides to hack her husband's email. The laid-off person decides this will make her life better. Whatever that decision is, that one choice will be the thing that will launch the plot and get the story going. This is often a simple choice with complex consequences, also known as The Butterfly Effect.
The Bottom Line
So, there you have it - a simple cookbook for writing. All you need is a character or two, a situation, an event, and finally a choice to make for that character. And, like parmesan cheese on spaghetti, don't forget the details.
But that's another story!
Jon Bradbury - Hello! My name is Jon Bradbury. I am a 7-time electronically published writer, in the urban romance market, published with 3 different ...
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