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So you've thought of a cool idea for a story, now what?

How do you effectively get the story out of your head and onto paper (or the computer)? One way I use is story boarding. Loosely outlining your book before you start writing. Here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned through trial and error and a lot of re-writes!

 Before you even start the beginning of your book you should know the ending. Weird I know, but with a good grasp of your ending you can better understand your characters and your story will have direction as you write. It also allows you to drop hints to the readers along the way. Readers love trying to figure out the story. If you have direction the story has a better purpose.

One tool I use is a big piece of paper or a white board. I write my beginning on one side of the paper and my end on the other. What do I put in the middle? That leads us to point number two. 

 Divide the paper into 5 parts. These five sections represent your story progression.                  

Section 1- EXPOSITION, this is where you introduce your character to the reader. This is also where you introduce their normal life and the beginning of what is pushing them into the books conflict. (Every book needs a good conflict—I’ll get to that later)

Section 2- RISING ACTION, here the conflict rises. Be sure to show the struggles and pitfalls your main character(MC) faces during this stage. That helps the readers connect with your MC.

Section 3- CLIMAX, This is the turning point in the book. Your MC has either just won against the conflict or are trying to accept failure.

Section 4- FALLING ACTION, How do you tie up your books loose ends? How does you MC act now? This is what you show us here.

Finally, Section 5- DENOUEMENT, Your MC may have a new outlook on life, a new inner strength, this is how you nicely wrap up your story, your story’s conflict and tie everything into the ending you already thought of! Ok so now that you know the typical progression of the story and what each of the five sections are you write down ideas of what will happen inside your sections. Make sure it stays in relation to the progression of the story. This is where you will start to see your story come together.

 Other things you should always take into account,

CHARACTERS. It is so important to have a good understanding of your characters because it influences how they act in your story. Some things I do to better discover who my MC is, is to answer a Myers Briggs personality test for them. It’s free online to do, just answer the questions how you think your character would and at the end they email you a complete personality outline with things your MC likes or would be good at. There are other tools you could use, some people just write biographies for each character. Whatever your tool the better you know the characters in your book the better book you will produce. If you know their goal, their weakness and their strength you should have a good idea who they are and why they act like they do.

CONFLICT- this is the main problem of the book. Your MC could find out her boyfriend cheated on her OR he/she could realize they are dead. Whatever it is, it’s a problem that needs resolve. Books can also have a main conflict as well as smaller conflicts disbursed throughout. Make sure your characters reaction to the conflict fits their personality. For instance if your MC is chronically shy and finds out her boyfriend cheated, she probably isn’t going to yell at him in the school cafeteria. She would most likely run away and hide. How your character grows through her shyness and overcomes the conflict is the premise of the whole book. The cheating is the main conflict and your MC’s shyness is the secondary conflict. See what I mean, you can add layers of conflict. The more conflict you add the more developed your book becomes.

EXCITEMENT- My motto is start every chapter late and end every chapter early. What that means is start with action and end with suspense. Hook the reader at the beginning then leave them having to know what happens next so they continue reading.

Have fun! This is the most important rule to writing! And once you know the rules of story outlining play with them, challenge them and try to break them. Thanks for taking time to read all this, I hope I gave you some helpful tips. Please feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

Write on! –Rebecca Sky