What makes an idea?
(Remember; nothing is an absolute truth. Question everything you read to see if it rings true for you.)
Most writers have some sort of idea of what they want their story to be about. I’m going to assume you have one or maybe even twenty different ideas.
Let’s say your idea is: a teen girl gets turned into a werewolf and falls in love with the alpha of her pack.
(There are about 10,000 different versions of this “idea” posted on Wattpad right now but that doesn’t matter for the purpose of this exercise. Actually it’s good because lots of you can relate.)
So you got an idea. Isn’t that enough? Time to click down the web browser and start writing, right?
NO.
Absolutely not.
First of all this is just a very bare boned idea. It tells us nothing about the girl. Nothing about the alpha. Nothing about how or why she was turned into a wolf or how she came to fall for the alpha.
Sure you would probably get a few chapters trying figure those things out. Then it would go real bad, real fast. Your story would fall flat on - its metaphorical - face.
So let’s back up a little.
A story needs a plot. Your idea is not the plot. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking it is. But an idea can be anything – a character, a scene, an idea of a couple, a magic necklace, a cool power, a villain or a place. The plot is a character’s story, his struggles, his problems.
The idea up there has no struggle, no dramatic arc and no risk of character death. Nothing. Sure there is a potential for some conflict with falling for the pack’s Alpha. She’s the new girl, she’s just getting use to being a werewolf. But that’s not life threatening. Nothing interesting enough to write 50+ pages about.
For it to be interesting there need to be the threat of death during the whole story.
Death? You mean my characters have to have an assassin after them?
No. Not at all.
There are three types of death in literature: Actual physical death, emotional death(losing your love/parents/kid/savings/house/mind/dream) or "work" death (getting fired/not catching the killer/losing nuclear weapon launch codes etc.)
Without the threat of one (or preferably all three of those) your story isn’t going to be engaging for the reader. We simply won’t care. We want to know that if the character fails the world will end (for him or for real.) Simply; we want to see the character struggle.
Ahh yes. The lovely word struggle. Struggle. Struggle. Struggle. The word dreams are made of.
YOU ARE READING
5 Steps to Better Writing
Non-FictionWe all know it, even if we don't say it; not much here is worth reading. But with these tips you can make sure your story is one of the good ones. Here you'll find the way to go from idea to fully planned project without all the fuss.
