I'm going to do my best to break it all down into steps, but the reality is, of course, that any one of these processes could be going on simultaneously. Take them in whatever order you like, but do read them all, as each is important:
Step 1 - Get a place to write down your ideas. And really, the true step 1 is to have an idea that you’ll want to write about in the first place … but I’ll assume you’ve got that covered since you bothered to look at a writing tutorial... in an art blog. Anyway! This is what mine looks like:
More on that, later. So, once you've covered that end, you can move on to...
Step 2 -Begin fleshing out your world. Now is the time to do things like character breakdowns and basic world-building. This is probably one of the most important steps that people screw up right out of the gate, because sometimes this is all the aspiring writer strives to bring to the table: cool and totally unique characters in a cool and totally unique world.
It's important to remember that you're here to tell a story. If you're here because you want to show the world how great your characters and their backdrops are, or worse, how great one character or backdrop is specifically, then find some forum on the internet to spam your breakdowns on, and call it a day. It's okay to get excited for a character, and in fact, it's a great way to come up with an idea for a story, but it's gotta be a part of the overall story and not the whole. Also, I think it's good to note that if you're one of those people who hates writing interesting backgrounds, or if this is a comic book you're intending to do and you hate drawing backgrounds, you have to get over it now. Your backgrounds are characters too and you should get used to treating them as such from the beginning.
So how does one come up with a good character?
Step 2b - Write out a synopsis for each character. And don't start by naming your character, or describing your character. Petty as these things are, they limit her. I'm fond of using the phrase, "Don't treat your characters like furniture". Treat them like people, because they are. The name of the game is suspension of reality, and one thing that will stick out like a sore thumb more than anything is a character who was lovingly given a name, an intricate description, and had a goal simply tacked on... if at all. Ever read a fanfiction or anything from the Twilight series where the author goes into great detail about the character's name and how they got it, their looks and how their outfit is always a perfect match for how they feel and what others are meant to feel when in close proximity to the character? Did you ever once feel a connection to such a character or were you too distracted by your inner-psychologist who couldn't help but wonder if the author was more interested in inserting herself into a fantasy world than telling a good story?
Characters need goals, not long descriptions, to make them immersing and believable - in other words, someone the reader herself can step into, for a time. This is true of main characters like protagonists and antagonists, as well as the random guy who delivers your hero's mail. And yes, characters will and should have many goals throughout your story! But you first need to nail down a driving force behind their actions and why they would want to pursue any of them at all. Good characters have needs and problems to solve. What gets them up in the morning? What's the last thing on their mind before they go to bed? What wakes them up at night in a cold sweat? How would they react if they finally achieved their primary objective and how too would they feel if they found out they could never achieve it? And do yourself a favor and write this out for every character you come up with before you do anything else. Even for the guy delivering the mail. And for God's sake, don't give anyone, even the mail guy, a primary objective of shouting, "You're the best guy, ever!" whenever he comes in contact with your main protagonist.
Step 3 - Dive in. I liken the process of writing to sculpting. First you throw a big pile of clay on the table and give it a basic shape. This means a plot outline. The snapshot of my notebook above shows that it is lousy with this kind of scribbling and yours should be too. Throw it all out there and feel free to keep it vague. You can erase and cross things out, later.
Any of my stories may start as simply as this:
Part 1: Blaidfastt is attacked by a band of trolls. We need to see each character come into play, highlighting their strengths. They will win this fight easily
Part 2: We then cut to a forest where Kjell and Greta spot a dragon with a young troll in its mouth. Stig joins them and they go chasing it. Eventually they recover the troll.
Part 3: We need to introduce Kit and the circumstances surrounding his transformation and therefore how Ulven transformation works. Also introduce Wilander and showcase his disdain for werewolves.
So, in the above example, a few things are happening. First, I think it's important that before I ever got this far, I had a general idea of what my story was going to be, what the problem to solve was, and a basic understanding of how it all gets resolved. Second, this story was a pilot and had the rough task of introducing the whole world behind the tale, for the first time.
Things like introductions shouldn't be taken lightly. You should be able to tell a lot about a character the first time you see him/her "on-screen". There are instances where I swap a character out as a plot device, as well. Kit's intro in the example above, was a good way to give the audience a little back-story about how my wolf-people transform and the various limitations of their powers. Now, I could've taken a shortcut with any of this, with a long narrative or dialogue boxes popping up to give us character names, bios, and other pertinent information, but wouldn't that have been so utterly cheap? I personally save the dialogue boxes for driving plot, or better yet, I just don't use them at all. If you want cookie-cutter Pokemon battles, then by all means, work this way. If you want believability, then take the time to follow the golden rule of writing: Show. Don't tell.
Step 4 - Understand the difference between empathy and sympathy. If I could throw it all away in one, when it comes to the thing that bugs me the most about cheap, cookie-cutter stories, bad fanfiction and poor writing in general, it would be this (and it's never been easy for me to explain but I always try). In short, empathy and sympathy both rely on understanding your character. Empathy is you holding the strings of your character, and sympathy is letting your character hold yours.
I once had a vocal teacher tell me the most unprofessional thing anyone could do while singing a sad song for an audience was cry on stage. A singer was meant to be a vessel for showcasing a song, and to become emotional during a performance drew the attention of the audience back to the musician, not the music. A writer, like a singer, must keep her emotions in check so she can allow her audience to experience emotions for themselves. How many times have you read something that really charged you with emotion and sympathy for the character - perhaps brought a tear to your eye and had you turning pages like crazy? How many times have you read a story where the character gets so embroiled, it begins to feel like the world is shifting around them for the sake of impact alone, and the author begins to lose sight of the actual character as they focus more and more on the poor soul's plight and less on their ability to overcome it? How many times did you feel cheated having read that far and gotten so emotionally invested in a character to see nothing come of their suffering?
Hear me out, guys: You can't be epic all the time. This is why I can't read Andrew Hussie's webcomic-sensation Homestuck, on a regular basis the way others can. It's too epic. All the time. I love it, but I like my epic, emotional stories to be mixed in with downtime. I admit that I have no idea where any of the plot is right now, because every week it started to feel like everyone died in a huge bloodbath to excellently-orchestrated background music with brilliantly rendered animation. I couldn't connect with characters who died three times monthly in tear-jerker cut scenes, no matter how amazing they were. And yes, I love Homestuck for its epicness. I can't do it all the time, though, or my brain would fry.
My personal convictions about Homestuck and psychedelic drug use aside, finding the fine line between empathy and sympathy while writing is probably one of the easiest lessons to learn and also one of the hardest to apply. It's worth it though, as it could have a rather huge impact on how well your characters end up staying in character and how well your plot remains on task. Ever read roleplay-fanfiction? You know the kind... Two people on the internet get together and control a bunch of characters who start talking, eventually get it on, and from there the whole thing has the intention of tugging at the heartstrings of the two players behind the computer screens, and nothing more? It's fine for a game of make-believe but you can't write like that as a story-teller. It's too out of focus with the main intention here - which is telling a good story.
Step 5 - Write what you know. And I could also introduce this step as "Do your research", "Don't underestimate your audience's ability to call you out on bullshit" and/or "Get a life".
How many times have you sat at home, enjoying the internet's latest offering of homo-erotic Dethklok fanfiction, when suddenly, mercilessly, and in the same sentence to boot, the author refers to Skwisgaar as being a Swede from Switzerland? All the time, right?!
Fanfiction aside though, the ability to tell a story well can easily be pulled apart if an author does not know a damn thing about what they're writing about. The best stories come from personal experiences and first-hand accounts, of course, but even when this is not possible, a bit of research goes a long way. Because in my opinion, the second-best stories come from well-researched events in history. Even if it's not 100% the same as the story you're looking to tell, a peek into the setting you're trying to establish goes a long way.
So! You want to write a story that happens in Sweden but you've never been and can't afford to go? Grab some National Geographics from your library, make some Swedish friends on the internet and at least learn how to point the country out on a map. You want to write about a possible future where a corrupt government is enslaving its people and committing horrible acts of genocide? Read up on the Holocaust, visit museums with WWII exhibits and seek out first-hand accounts from people who lived through it.. You still want to write homo-erotic Dethklok fanfiction that happens at a concert but you can't actually visit some cartoon band's backstage? Go to a real concert and get out of the damn house.
Step 6 - Follow the basic rules of good writing practices. Going back to fanfiction for a minute again (sorry, last time) there's a painfully bad one out there called My Immortal. I probably don't have to introduce it to any of you reading this, but besides being a Harry Potter story with a "plot" involving vampires and the introduction of a terrible self-insert character, it's often been called the worst thing ever written, because of sentences like this:
I cried sexily I just wanted 2 go 2 the commen room and slit my wrists with mi friends while we watched Shark Attak 3 and Saw 2 and do it with Draco but I knew I had 2 do somefing more impotent.
Granted, the total absence of care given to details like proper spelling and grammar are quite extreme in this case, and indeed the epic My Immortal fic has been called out as a hoax more than once, but the point remains: All that crap your learned in third grade English was taught to you for a reason. I can't think of a single computer program that doesn't have have spell check now, and most have some form of grammar check, too. You should get at least one person to beta-read your script if you intend to sell it, and you should know basic things like the 60/40 dialogue-to-narrative ratio, maintaining a singular point of view despite third-person omniscient narration and the really obvious stuff like how to space out paragraphs and transitions to maintain optimal pacing. If you don't and you can't easily sneak into a third-grade writing class, then there are countless books to help you. Read them, for there is no shame in (re)learning the basics, but there is plenty in not applying them and claiming ignorance.
Step 7 - Find your voice. And it's been said before, but voice is not the same thing as style. Your voice is your unique perspective on life, which needs to come through in the way you write. And as you look for it, it's going to sound gruff, harsh, tiny, ugly, stupid, or just plain uninteresting. But find it you must, because this is your biggest selling point. Nobody has had the experiences you've had, and nobody will again. If you became a writer because you felt you had a story to tell that only you knew how to tell, then congratulations for having a good reason to write... now prove it.
And that's it in a nutshell. A few other pointers I've come across which are worth mentioning as you create your story are:
- Never fall in love with your first draft.
- Take risks. Write as if you're trying to prove to your mother she raised you completely wrong.
- Read. Everything. Every day.
- A crappy original story is 10x more readable than the best fanfic.
- Try not to base a character 100% off a real person. Goes double for someone you're dating.
- Write. Everything. Every day.
Good luck!
