Advice on how to write a story?

Once upon a time….....

1. Write out past experiences where you learned a wisdom or a truth about life, preferably one that holds a lot of emotion and meaning for you. Another way to find a topic to write about is to ask yourself: What are your favorite novels, movies, and TV shows? What have these writers written about? Was it popular with viewers (in other words, did it resonate with others, yourself)?
2. Circle the topics that you know are important to others, perhaps a target audience.
3. Choose a genre you feel you would like to write in and if it will be effective for the story you want to tell.
4. Ask a friend to read it, preferably one that has experience with writing or grammar/punctuation for feedback.
5. Decide if you want to do self-publishing or regular publishing or internet publishing. I highly recommend that it might be better to post your story to a writer’s forum first to have it critiqued. There are some experienced people there that can help. Forums are also good places to ask questions about publishing. Ask writers who have had experience with publishing and different types of publishing.

I hope this helps.

You need to have a story you want to tell. It can’t just be you want to write about any old random thing. You need a story that is important to you. Usually these important stories are about some struggle you have had.

When I need to write, I feel just about pregnant with ideas. I can’t keep my mind on other, productive pursuits—I just want to write. I have the same experience with writing music and painting. It is never a shortage of ideas, it is always a shortage of time.

Start by checking Real Toads In An Imaginary Garden out of the library or buying it online. It suggests starting with a detailed description of a real place, and then make something imaginary happen in that space. Go from there.

I wouldn’t worry too much about publishing the story until after you have it written.

Editing is a big part of the writing process. You will need to write, edit, and rewrite until you get it perfected. So don’t worry about getting it perfect the first time. Just keep writing.

You could start with coming up with a story line. :P

:P

Someone one wants something. Why?
Someone’s in that first person’s way to getting that something. Why?
Where are they? Why?
What time period is it?
What’s the most important thing going on? Is it Person 1? Person 2? Something bigger than both of them and what they want?

Writing Down The Bones will help you with shorter exercises and then you’ll get longer ones as your confidence in your “voice” increases. Then you’ll edit and edit and rewrite and it won’t feel like such a chore because your characters will be “real” enough that you’ll want to get their story right.

Imagine. Imagine
Remember or research about the historical or current events- big events in the world or small events in your life. Or big events in your life.
You know there is a new genre of storytelling using maps! Now that google query will reveal two major types related to story-telling-

one is making maps or flowcharts to outline the major plot- then you can expand each node and draw detailed flowcharts again so that you can have the outline of different chapters in the storyline.

and the other one is using Google maps to tell stories using real locations.

You need to be creative.

You also need to develop the character and their surroundings. You should write about what you know. If there’s something that happened in your life that you want others to know about, such as child abuse or a story with a happy ending, write about that but put your own spin on it and turn it into a story.

Try to start off small instead of trying to write a book. Start off with a few descriptive sentences or explain a character’s thoughts and what they’re going through.

Check out this article for some tips on how to get published.

http://www.ehow.com/how_2084895_get-book-published.html

Here is a list of book publishers. I know it’s a lot but maybe you could contact some of these companies and see how to get started.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Book_publishing_companies_of_the_United_States

Getting into the writing biz is hard work. You’ll probably experience many rejections before someone will publish your writing. So don’t be discouraged, just keep trying.

Okay! I’ve found a story line! I have had very bad experiences with texting and gossiping. So, I’m going to write my story based upon that. What I said to people, how it effected them, how text-bullying is wrong, all that jazz.

Thanks for your advice!

First, write EVERY day. Why do you want to be a writer? That can be an important thing to articulate.

You might want to take a writing workshop or a creative writing class at a community college. I find it helpful to engage with other writers and artists. I get together with a group of writers to share work and receive feedback. Don’t worry about publishing at this point. Just write. You don’t even have to know what you want to write about until you see it. You might not know that there is a great story within something mundane (to you).

I recommend reading books that writers have written about writing. I second @aprilsimnel‘s suggestion of reading Writing Down the Bones. Natalie Goldberg is very wise (and teaches workshops). I also recommend reading work by Annie Dillard, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. I also find Listening Below the Noise by Anne LeClaire to be helpful in thinking about my creative process, although it’s more philosophy than it is an instruction book about writing.

Also, remember that writing is not easy. Don’t give up after you writing something that totally blows. That’s why we revise and rewrite.

But, all of that said, try to enjoy what you are led to do. Happy writing!

@PoppArtist Thanks for the advice and welcome to Fluther!

When I wan to think of a new idea for a story I just sit down relax and read a book. Sometimes I read poems and flip through my television to give me some ideas. Mostly I just sit on a chair placed in my front porch and just think. If your planning on getting it self-published all you really have to do it write it, edit, revise, and then send it to a self-publishing company. But if you want it to be able to be purchased in local book stores you need an agent and everything. Hope this helped!

Try to find what topic you know most and research on it. And always try such thins which people like…