How I approach a story.

As a writing student myself I have felt something which everyone out their trying to write has.

“This doesn’t look good”, “I am not writing well enough”, “I am not feeling the whole writing experience”, and many more.

There are a lot of writers out there, successful, teachers, students or people who just write for fun and every individual has it’s own way and style of writing. It’s generally fun to know how everyone comes up with their story ideas, scenes, dialogue.

Format of writing script

Most of the times we come up with ideas when least expecting it, maybe when you are taking a shower, while sleeping, or just walking on the road. Those ideas seems good, you feel they have great potential of becoming a great piece of art but when you sit down to write is exactly when the challenges arrive.

I feel the same and my own way of dealing it.

The first thing that I believe is that every story you think of can become great, there is nothing like great story when thinking, it’s all part of the execution. If you execute well the outcome will be good.

Now I’ve thought of a story and want to maybe write a novel on it or script.

The first thing that I like to do is think about what shall happen in the story from start to end in very brief so I know what kind of vibes I am getting from the story which helps me to determine the theme of it.

Lets say I come up with a story where a guy becomes a racer, drives an F1 car. There are a lot of stories written with the same concept so how do we approach it?. First like in the above paragraph, I think of what is going to happen in the whole story.

Main character is an racer, he wants to win a trophy, he will lose something precious in doing so (I always needs this to make the story emotional and interesting), maybe he is not going to win the trophy and retire and cherish his moments with someone.

A very raw piece of work but for me, while starting a new story its fine. Now I know what should be the basic themes which are “Loss” and “Ambition”. He is ambitious but he is going to lose something.

Next step is to now turn this raw story in a structure. For which I was suggested hero’s journey.

This is a format which is used to build your story in structure and help you when you start writing it in the novel or script format.

With the Hero’s Journey, I build the whole story. Main events, Main characters, their roles, climax.

With this out of the way, something are still missing. Which I often feel very often considering I like to write big things, this is also very common. There are many people who like to write short things but some people like to write long stories and am one of them.

So when feeling the emptiness in the story I start to add meaning and backstory. Backstory for every major thing, this is optional but I like to have a backstory for everything. It gives me more freedom and more ground to work on. It also helps to explain the components of story better.

Next is meaning. Meaning in the sense, adding hidden themes, objectives, emotions, and a message. “What am I trying to tell from this story”. Maybe I am writing this because I want to be like this, or because the world isn’t like how I want it to be, or maybe i am writing something of my dreams which I hoped was true or comes true now. When you add these elements in the story it makes it more relating for the readers and audiences to feel what exactly you are trying to tell.

Example of the above story again. Hidden themes can be love and desire. It can also be regret. These hidden elements come out based on who is reading it. Everyone makes a different depiction of every meaning based things so these hidden elements make them think there are hidden messages which is relatable to them.

I also like to add realisms to my story in some ways.

Well theory done, saying is very easy but executing is hard and that’s where PROJECT HAIL MARY WRITERS advice come in.

“What makes Weir’s stories work isn’t just the science, it’s the humanity underneath.”

You need a good emotional character and write it with emotion because it’s the characters who bring story to life and your creativity.

And one thing I always keep in my mind is, When you are writing do not stop and say this is not perfect or get demotivated, you need to know why are you are writing in the first place,

you are doing it because you love it or you want to love it. I love writing is why I write, So don’t write to perfect, write to tell. To tell a story.

These are my basic advice and how I approach a story. Even if you are a hobby writer you can use them and I hope it was useful information and will come in handy.

Thank You!