The 抖阴社区 Block Party

A Quick Guide to Better Writing

Hi 抖阴社区, Alyssa Brandon, author of The Hard Mate - winner of 2013's Watty Award - speaking, or well, writing. I had several ideas about things I wanted to share with you when I decided I was going to do this; the importance of the beginning, middle and end, creating likable/ interesting characters, and story logic and motivation.

Then I figured why not touch a little on each. All three (and quite a few other things) are important when writing a story. Knowing about the different parts (and what happens in each) to keep the story on track, that the reader likes or at least cares enough about your characters to keep on reading and keeping thing logical and realistic so that the reader feels like your story makes sense are some of the most important though.

So I'm going to start off talking a little about story structure - the beginning, middle and end. I'll describe what they are, why we have them in the story and what should (and should not happen in them) then we'll talk characters. Characters are of course the most crucial bit to get right, and how they are introduce as well as how they grow is one of the things your readers will remember (if you've done your job right) long after we've forgotten exactly what your story was about. To wrap it up I'll talk logic and motivation both having to do with characters, conflict and structure.

The Beginning, Middle and End

Some of you might be familiar with the three act structure. Others might not.

I like working with three/ four act structures when I'm planning my story. But at the same time it's easier to think of the three acts as the beginning, middle and end (the middle is often longer than the other parts and where the "struggle" of the story is shown.) To just think; this will happen in my beginning, this in the middle and this the end. Because attempting to plan your story after some sort of Three Act Structure can often feel a little daunting and take the fun out of it. So instead we have the beginning, middle and end.

So what is the beginning?

The beginning is character introduction - we meet the main characters (MCs) - the problem / conflict is introduced - the thing everyone will be working to fix in the middle - as well as establishing your world. Beginnings can be short. In some stories what I'd call the beginning is no more than a paragraph or two. Other times you need 1 / 4 of the story. Genre may vary this, in a romance the two main characters will meet early and they might actually have the chance to fall in love before a problem presents itself. In a murder mystery the book might start with the detective showing up at the crime scene, throwing us right into the "active" attempts to figure out the problem.

So what is the middle?

The middle, in my humble opinion, starts when your characters have been introduced, a problem set before them and they begin dealing with it. The stuff before that is Beginning / Set up. So while you of course need to have characters and a problem, it seems most people forget these should be used to enable the writer to write...well, the middle, they're not just to be thrown haplessly in there. Because it's the middle we really want to get to, really want to read.

The middle might start with the character only having a vague idea of what they want to do, like rescue the princess. At first the things your characters attempt to do will fail or go wrong, since the MC needs to learn more things - about herself and the world - and gain friends and learn more about the "enemy" before he can solve the problem. In a love story the middle will either be about the lovers dealing with the world keeping them apart, one of them trying to win the other over, fighting attraction for one another while dealing with a subplot problem - while also often claiming to hate each other (there are countless variations of how all these are used of course). Your MC faces the bad guy and loses but learns from it. The middle is where all the characters are introduced (we don't want some random person showing up in the last act to save the day) information crucial to the plot is discovered and most important of all; there is build up towards the end.