Tools for writing good story
Imagine that you go to Cinema to watch newest movie about your favourite character. It could be next movie from Star Wars, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mission Impossible or even Bridget Jones. Then you go back home and read book by Dan Brown or Ken Follet. Or you may play some of Assasin's Creed or Call of Duty games.
Do you know what all of these have in common?
A good written story...
Cassandra Rodino is main character of computer game that I'm currently working on. I want it to have an interesting story so I started from collecting good ideas.
During my school days we had a homework to write a short story about some topic. We learned about how to describe characters and that a story should have beginning, a middle and the end. When I started writing story for Cassandra's adventure I have noticed that it's a hard work and the effects are far from my expectations. So I searched for some aid in writing story and I found two tools that managed to improve my work a lot. Plus a bonus third tool that is optional but can make writing a lot easier.
Please note that people are different and desribed below methods of writing fiction may not be suitable for you. That's OK. You should then use the method that makes you feel most comfortable.
Please note that people are different and desribed below methods of writing fiction may not be suitable for you. That's OK. You should then use the method that makes you feel most comfortable.
Tool 1: Three-act structure
The invention of this tool goes back to the ancient times. Aristotle in his "Poetics" described his observations that tragedy (ancient Greek theatre play) should have beginning, a middle and the end. This was later expanded by Roman theorist Horace in his "Ars Poetice" to five-act structure. This idea evolved more during past 2000 years. Present day definition of three-act is that the story is built from:
- Act 1: Setup
- Act 2: Confrontation
- Act 3: Resolution
Second act - Confrontation, takes most of the story time/pages. During this hero is trying to resolve his situation often making it even worse. The reason for this is that usually hero lacks specific skills or features like for example confidence or courage.
Last act - Resolution is the shortest and contains most of the action of the story. It contains climax which is a sequence of events where the main tension of the story reaches its the most intense point. It directs to a part where dramatic question is finally answered and main character reaches finally a sense of who he/she really is.
A very good example of Three-act structure can be found in many superhero origin stories. For example in movies "Spider-man" from 2002 and it's reboot "Amazing Spiderm-man" from 2012 the end of the first act is when uncle Ben is shot because of Peter's fault. From this moment he begins to act as a superhero and not as a kid with superpowers. During second act Peter is confronted with many difficult situations caused by his decision to be superhero. He wants to have "normal" relationship with his love Mary Jane / Gwen but then he must fight villain Green Goblin / Lizard. Third act is when villain is capturing Peter's love and threatens her life. Then the final dramatic battle begins. Peter saves his love but at a cost of life of someone who changes his relationships (father of his best friend Harry / father of his love Gwen).
Tool 2: Snowflake method
So you have now idea about the story you want to write. You know how it will start, what will be the first plot point and how it should end. Now the only thing you need to do is write it. Easy, heh?...
Well, actually it is not as easy as it looks like. There are some types of wirters who like and can improvise but there are also some (like me) who can't.
If you are also that kind of person you need to think of many small details before your writing. What are your characters really like? How does the world they live in work? What are the relationships between them and between their enemies?
Then even when you start writing first chapter you will probably get new ideas. You think "pirates are cool" and "let's add a supporting character who is pirate". You think "dinosaurs are cool" and "let's make a cave in which hero must escape from dinosaur". You think "ninjas are cool" and "let's add an evil ninja thief that will steal that important thing from my hero".
And then you need to rewrite whole first chapter because it no longer fits to your story. And then after a while you realize that pirates looks stupid in story about dessert or cave with dinosaurs also doesn't fit into your story.
To create a good written story you need to test your ideas if they fit into your story before you start writing for real or else you will end in the loop of writeing and turning back for correcting.
Snowflake method is the right tool for this purpose. It is especially good tool for writing science fiction and fantasy novels because it let's you collect and tidy up all your knowledge about world and characters that you are creating.
Aim of this method is to build your novel like creating Snowflake fractal. First you create very general picture, then you add more and more details and finally you get whole novel done.
Author of this method is Randy Ingermanson who also is one of authors of very good book on learing how to write a novel "Writing Fiction For Dummies".
During this method you will go through ten steps (description of below steps is based on what you can find on Randy's website - I really recommend checking it):
Writing a one-sentence summary of your novel. As short as possible (usually fewer than 15 words) and no details and you can use it later as an answer to question: "What is your book about?".
For example one-sentence summary of Spiderman movie would be: "A young nerdy boy who gets superpowers and learns that with great power comes great responsibility". Another example for Ken Follet's "The Pillars of the Earth" is: "A XII century builder fights odds to build his dreamed building: a cathedral." For Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code": "Harvard symbologist and French cryptologist join forces to solve mystery of Holy Grail by preventing further morders in different parts of Europe".
Step 2.
Expand your one-sentence summary into whole paragraph. If you are using three-act structure this is the place where you should refer to each of your acts (for example one sentence per each act). This paragraph should summarize whole your story including the ending.
Step 3.
Now you need to work on your characters. For each of the main characters answer for the following questions:
- What is character's name?
- What is one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline?
- What does motivates this character?
- What does this character want concretely?
- What prevents this character from reaching above goal?
- What will this character learn, how will he/she change?
- What is one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline?
Now you need to work on your characters. For each of the main characters answer for the following questions:
- What is character's name?
- What is one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline?
- What does motivates this character?
- What does this character want concretely?
- What prevents this character from reaching above goal?
- What will this character learn, how will he/she change?
- What is one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline?
Step 4.
Time to add more details to the story. Take your time and expand each of the sentence of your summary paragraph from step 2 into whole paragraph. At the end of this exercise you will have a one-page skeleton of your story (of course it can be smaller or bigger than one page, that's OK).
Step 5.
For each of your main characters write a one-page description of your story as seen from the point of view of this character. For other less important characters you should also write this kind of description but it can be much shorter. Important note: none of the steps are final when they are done. You can get back to already finished steps many time and make changes in them. It just means that your story is expanding and you are making it better.
Step 6.
Take what you wrote in step 4 and now expand each paragraph you wrote there into a full page. Try to figure out high level logic of your story and fix all the loose ends.
Step 7.
Take what you wrote in step 3 about your characters and expand it into a full-fledged character history including such elemnts as birthdate, motivations, skills, important past events, etc. It doesn't mean that you will later need to put all of this data into your novel. No, that would make story boring. You just need to know your character at least 10 times better than your reader. This is so you should know how your character would react on certain events in your story. Most important thing is how will they change by the end of your novel.
Step 8.
Now you have everything you need to finally start writing down your novel. You can help yourself by taking what you wrote in step 6 and creating a list of all scenes that will be described in your novel. This can be done by using a spreadsheet of any kind. Make one line for each scene description. In another column you can put point of view of your character. You can add more columns for example with other information like point of view of other important characters or number of pages this scene should take or name of the plot lines this scene is refering to. This is a very powerful tool for analyzing your story. You can later filter out all scenes with specific character or references to him/her. You filter by different plot lines to see how each of them grow in your story.
Step 9.
In this step you will create your first draft prototype. Take each of the scenes from spreadsheet and write a narrative description of the scene in multi-paragraphs. You can put there fragments of dialog lines you want to use for this scene and other cool side notes that will be useful in final novel. Note down essential conflict if there is one in the described scene. You can then get back to this document and add notes and ideas when you start wrtining.
Step 10.
In this step you will start writing novel (at least first draft). If you have done your homework well you will now have a big picture of your novel with all scenes listed and already described. This part is still fun because you will now need to solve small logic problems like for example what will your hero use to escape from custody or how will he/she travel to another city on time. Remember that this is still first draft. It is recommended to use every quarter of it to stop and revise your work so far to fix anything that need fixing. It is normal for writers to rewrite their first drafts several times but by using Snowflake method you have probably saved yourself from some of those rewrite work by fixing problems and adding ideas during earlier steps.
As I wrote before this method is not the only good way of writing novels. Each writer can find method that suits him/her best. Anyway Snowflake method has very good reviews and is known to boost speed of writing novels.
Time to add more details to the story. Take your time and expand each of the sentence of your summary paragraph from step 2 into whole paragraph. At the end of this exercise you will have a one-page skeleton of your story (of course it can be smaller or bigger than one page, that's OK).
Step 5.
For each of your main characters write a one-page description of your story as seen from the point of view of this character. For other less important characters you should also write this kind of description but it can be much shorter. Important note: none of the steps are final when they are done. You can get back to already finished steps many time and make changes in them. It just means that your story is expanding and you are making it better.
Step 6.
Take what you wrote in step 4 and now expand each paragraph you wrote there into a full page. Try to figure out high level logic of your story and fix all the loose ends.
Step 7.
Take what you wrote in step 3 about your characters and expand it into a full-fledged character history including such elemnts as birthdate, motivations, skills, important past events, etc. It doesn't mean that you will later need to put all of this data into your novel. No, that would make story boring. You just need to know your character at least 10 times better than your reader. This is so you should know how your character would react on certain events in your story. Most important thing is how will they change by the end of your novel.
Step 8.
Now you have everything you need to finally start writing down your novel. You can help yourself by taking what you wrote in step 6 and creating a list of all scenes that will be described in your novel. This can be done by using a spreadsheet of any kind. Make one line for each scene description. In another column you can put point of view of your character. You can add more columns for example with other information like point of view of other important characters or number of pages this scene should take or name of the plot lines this scene is refering to. This is a very powerful tool for analyzing your story. You can later filter out all scenes with specific character or references to him/her. You filter by different plot lines to see how each of them grow in your story.
Step 9.
In this step you will create your first draft prototype. Take each of the scenes from spreadsheet and write a narrative description of the scene in multi-paragraphs. You can put there fragments of dialog lines you want to use for this scene and other cool side notes that will be useful in final novel. Note down essential conflict if there is one in the described scene. You can then get back to this document and add notes and ideas when you start wrtining.
Step 10.
In this step you will start writing novel (at least first draft). If you have done your homework well you will now have a big picture of your novel with all scenes listed and already described. This part is still fun because you will now need to solve small logic problems like for example what will your hero use to escape from custody or how will he/she travel to another city on time. Remember that this is still first draft. It is recommended to use every quarter of it to stop and revise your work so far to fix anything that need fixing. It is normal for writers to rewrite their first drafts several times but by using Snowflake method you have probably saved yourself from some of those rewrite work by fixing problems and adding ideas during earlier steps.
As I wrote before this method is not the only good way of writing novels. Each writer can find method that suits him/her best. Anyway Snowflake method has very good reviews and is known to boost speed of writing novels.
Bonus Tool: Software.
And now it is time for promised bonus tool. What software is best to be used for writing novels? The answer is: any. Novels can be written using no software at all - on plain paper. Then you can use Microsoft Office progrms like Word for writing and Excel for scene and character lists. You can use OpenOffice or LibreOffice instead too.
Anyway there are also existing some specific software for fiction writers. This applications allow to create project which will contain character charts, scene lists, world descriptions. They also offer features like dictionaries, word counting, spell check, distraction-free mode, etc. Some are payable and some are free of charge. Some have good and professional support and some are just small applications. As I don't consider myself a specialist on that topic I will not write here reviews or comparisons but you can easily find such data in Internet by searching for phrase: "Creative Writing Software".
For my project on adventures of Cassandra Rodino I have chosen a free and open source software called Manuskript. It may not be the best of the best but so far it meets my expectations.
Let me work on it for some more time and then maybe I will write a post about my experience with this software.
And how about your experience with novel writing? Have you already tried Snowflake method? What do you think about it? Or maybe you use different method? Please write your thoughts in the comments.
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