The Legends of Milana

Want to write your own story?                                                                 Here's how to get started (and how to finish)...

         You only need three things for           a great story: 

1. A person.

                      2. A place.

                                           3. A problem.

Start with your person:  Grab a piece of scrap paper and a pen or pencil.  Ask yourself questions about your character.  Start with the simple and move to more detailed stuff.  You don't have to write all this down.  Some writers like to draw pictures.  If you're great at it then lucky you, if not you can use stick people and add details as quick as you can.  No one's going to look at this, it's just to help you flesh out your character!

  Some questions to get you started:  Guy or girl?  What kind of hair?  What clothes are they wearing?  Does your character have anything with them (backpack, compass, computer)?  Are they athletic?  Clumsy beyond belief? 

As you ask questions, be sure to keep in mind your place:  jungle, iceland, underground, underwater, in a tree, city, backyard, rainforest.  Your place will effect your character's clothes, the things they own, and even...

Their problem:  This is the fun part.  Put your character under stress, and you're doing great!  Absolutely no one wants to read about perfect Peter who lived a perfect life with his perfect friends and perfect family.  But mess with perfect Peter's life (anything from a school bully to a pack of wayward pirates who hide a treasure map under his bed) and suddenly people want to know what happens to Peter!  Your story is finished when your character solves his problem (or dies trying - hey, it worked for Shakespeare).

Got all that?  Not as complicated as you thought it would be, is it?  The big trick is to make sure that pretty quick into the story any reader can tell you about your person, their place, and what their problem is. 

Write fast.  I mean, really, really fly through your story.  Get your three main points out there, and then face your character's problem head on.  Just write.  Don't worry about grammar or details (yet).

Do NOT edit.  Yet.  Seriously.  You could write and re-write the first sentence five hundred times, but that does not finish your story.  Start at the beginning and write until you reach the end.  No editing till you finish.  I mean it.

Write small bits at a time.  Sit down and write until you're empty.  Do a little bit every day.  Give yourself the weekend off.  But make sure that you write some of your story every day, whether it's three paragraphs or three pages.  You'll know when you're running on empty.  Anything you try to write after that's not going to be all that great, so you may as well take a break. Write a little bit every day and it will get easier and easier.  Just don't forget your person, their place, and their problem.

Celebrate.  Yay!  You wrote a little bit everyday (or a lot), and now you finished your story.  That.  Is.  Awesome.  Now, take your story, bury it at the bottom of your sock drawer and refuse to look at it for a few days.  Pick a day that you will definately get it back out (which will be soon if you need it for school).  Celebrate the fact that you finished your story by taking a break - you've earned it!

Back to work.  Go dig out your story.  You've totally done the hard part (at least in my opinion), so this will take you a little time, but it's what makes your story fun to read.  Write out your story again, using the first version.  Change anything that doesn't make sense.  Put in some details (so just how much did Corrie's head bleed when she tripped and knocked it on that branch?)  and throw in adjectives (the words that describe stuff) like hot, cold, yellow, slimy, you get the idea.  Just don't violate your original character discription (Jane's been lost in the desert for three days and suddenly she has a canteen that she didn't have before) - big no-no.

Finish it!  You can stop, or you can go back and look for mistakes and fix them.  Was Jimmy's shirt blue on page one but red on page four?  That's cool if Jimmy has a suitcase full of clothes, otherwise, you need to fix it.  This is a great time to check your spelling.

That's all!  Now, get to making up your character and go stress them out (yeah, and then get them out of the mess you made)...

©A.L. Travis - 2009

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