If you want to be a great story teller then very often the key to doing so is in the structure of your story and it is worth spending a great amount of time on this before you put pen to paper.In fact just last week I was contacted by Chase Rubin Linkedin connection and old friend about how to structure a story which he wanted to write.
The world is your oyster when it comes to writing a story and I have written short stories for many years about a whole range of subjects from fraud, scamming, love interests, broken families, victims of cancer and even a foray into crime with a story about guilty criminals and an FBI and RICO probe. I love the freedom that writing gives you and if you are looking to create something awesome, here is how to get that structure together.
Making Lists
The first step when it comes to creating a structure for your story is to write down all of the ideas that you have in your mind so that you can see an overview of them all. Break down your lists into specific categories such as plots, locations, characters, motivations, message of the story and the overall point of the story itself. Putting together a structure of your story is made much easier when you can see all of you ideas in one place.
School Lessons
In school we are taught that every story should have a beginning, a middle and an ending and nothing has changed, this is still how you should be looking to give structure for your story. Break down each part of this and work on how to create the perfect beginning, the perfect middle and the perfect ending to your story.
Character Breakdown
The depth of your characters will greatly help you when it comes to structuring your story and you should work hard on really building the life and history of each character in your story. Think about why the character is there, what kind of personality they have, what their motivation is and how they can add to the story itself. The characters drive the story, not the other way around and if you can create interesting and well thought out characters, you can use this to pad out the structure of the story on the whole.
What Are You Trying to Achieve
The most important thing about creating a structure for your storyline is to consider what it is that you are actually trying to achieve. Are you writing a cautionary tale for the audience to take heed of? Are you writing a story to fill people with hope? To complain about things? Whatever it is that you are looking to gain from your story, keep this uppermost in your mind so that the content and the structure of the story remains on message throughout the book or movie.
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