A book of advice for authors of all kind.
By Jayme Dray (@jeddiejay)
THIS IS NOT MY BOOK, BUT IT WAS TOO GOOD TO LET TO DIE AND NOT BE BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE. I AM, BY NO MEANS, THE OWNER. I REMEMBER TURNING THIS INTO A GOOGLE DOCS AND SAVING IT IN MY...
Listen, some stories aren't ready to be told at that moment. If you go through this chart and can't complete it for one story, it's not the end of the world. You either need to do more thinking or you need to set it aside for another time. It's nothing to be ashamed off. Every writer has a chest full of ideas that they carry around. But a true writer recognizes an idea, from a concept, from a story. When you start writing, you value all your ideas immensely and that's good. But when you get more advanced, you notice that an idea is a dime a dozen. Ideas can repeat. Ideas can fucking suck if they want to.
IT'S THE EXECUTION THAT COUNTS.
A famous writer once said, "Ideas are like bunnies. If you have two, you have a thousand." Don't pride yourself in having many 'original' ideas. Everyone does. Those who do something about it go beyond the everyday people to become artists. STORY BASICS: Before I go into the LOCK method, which will be discussed next chapter, I like to chart the very BASICS of a story. It is usually a good sign to be able complete the following table (I know, I fucking love tables, because I have ADHD so I need them to concentrate. I don't do well with large blocks of text):
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These should be answered in a few words to a sentence. You're not reinventing the wheel. You're just giving your inspiration its first checkpoint.
TITLE: I've mentioned before these are important. Some titles make stories. They attract attention with their uniqueness like "Blue is the Warmest Color." Or they're simple enough that every person who looks at it knows immediately if they are interested or not. When you read "The Bad Boy's Girl," you're either like 'oh not again' or 'yes, this is my niche'. It might not be original but it does its job. Think about what you want your title to do. ** Disclaimer: for some stories, I don't have a title until very late. That's fine. I usually have a working title for these so I can sort them out. Try to make the working title specific if you can. "Joshler Story" is fine but "Superhero Joshler Story" might be better.
GENRE: We could sit here all day and discuss what counts as a genre and what doesn't because genres come in umbrellas. Like "Superhero" and "Dystopia" might be specific enough to give us an image but they both fall under "Sci-Fi" (if you wanna debate this, sure).Try to stick to like BROAD things.
Why is genre important? When someone asks you what kind of books or movies you read, you know immediately. I, for example, like comedies and thrillers. I never watch horror movies. I read contemporary classics. I never read mystery novels. You want to give your readers the opportunity to make that decision. This way you attract the people that will love your stuff and repel the people that simply aren't passionate about it. The second thing to know about genre is GENRE EXPECTATIONS. These are the stuff we expect to find in a story after we know its genre. These are nurtured since a young age and are practically universal with some variation from culture to culture. You're not gonna be watching a Romance and the suddenly, the undead pop up in a jump-scare and cut the female lead's head off. I mean if that happens, it's like what the FUCKKKK???
