Picking Up the Pen

nto the world of writing.

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Adulthood is a rather intimidating stage of life to enter. The responsibilities we get after we finish schooling and have what we believe we need, it can throw you for a loop as to just how much is expected of you. It is never easy to move on from the early stages of our lives that make us who we are. As such, the imagination is a very cherished aspect of the human experience. Sometimes, the best escapism from the hardships we face can be found in a good book. We have all read books at some point in our lives whether it was when waiting on a train to reach our stop, for a project for school, or simply to pass the time as the cold winter breeze flows past with a nice mug of hot coco to keep you warm. 

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However, simply reading a good story is not the only way to escape into a fantasy away from the cold reality that sometimes seems to bring you nothing but harsh miseries. You might find yourself even more invested when you’re the one designing these worlds for others to indulge in. That’s right, I’m talking about the wonderful world of creative writing. Maybe when you were a child, you’d create elaborate stories with your toys and friends about complex factions with betrayal and romance, or you simply have a passing interest in slowly building a manuscript as your day goes by. Either way, allow me to help you on your journey as you pick up that pen.

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The wonders of the page.

The Big Three

When creating your big story, there are three main things you need to account for when forming your creative narrative. Some people create a concept sheet to create a general layout for the major events, characters, and locations.

• Setting

The setting can encompass all kinds of crucial aspects of your story. The setting can help you set the mood for your story and create a nice atmosphere to be immersed in. The setting can be separated into subcategories including the location (I.e. a dock, a city, a rural farm,…), the time period, and the lore. Lore is the background information that establishes the context of everything. Who built the town? What kind of lives do the citizens live? Why do they live like this? Lore can be both the backstories of the characters and the backstories of the world itself. 

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Another thing to be aware of when choosing your setting is the genre and tone of the story you want to tell. Noir stories for example are often associated with dark dingy cities with dark rainy skies. Superhero stories tend to take place in massive sprawling cities with strange laboratories and criminal hideouts. Of course, these are not rules set in stone. You can even mix things up and tell a noir story in a more cartoonish world or have a superhero story set in the wild west.

• Characters

A story without characters is like a nature documentary without animals. The people or animals or whatever that make your ensemble cast will more than likely be the main focus of your audience. There are a number of character roles including the main protagonist, the villain, the love interest, the mentor, and more. You can use character tropes and archetypes in your writing such as the scrawny nerd, the popular cheerleader, the big meathead jock, and so on. 

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However, you also should not be afraid to move traits around and/or expand on these ideas. How does your scrawny nerd pass his time? How does your popular cheer captain act behind closed doors? Is your beefy jock a bully or someone with a heart of gold? Do they see themselves like that? What makes them tick? These are simply examples, you can go as simple or as complex as you want with these characters, because at the end of the day they are your characters.

• Plot

Last but certainly not least is the plot itself. You have a series of scenes you want to add to your story, right? A romantic kiss, a dramatic fight, a grizzly murder, a heartbreaking loss, and a few more ideas linger in your mind’s eye. So what do you do with them now? What order do they go in? What happens between those scenes?

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South Park Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker say that a story should not have a flow of “and then” between scenes, or it feels like things happen without cause. Instead, they suggest that stories should be written in a way that scenes build off one another so it follows more of a “and because of this,” structure. 

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The wonderful shelves you can fill with your stories.

Things You Can Do

Once you have everything laid out with major characters, setting, and plot, there are all kinds of things to do when writing. Writing a story is not always as simple as sliding things into the slots of the big three. There are several other steps to the writing process that, while not as necessary as the big three, are all still incredibly helpful to creating a fully fledged story. These can be great steps to take to improve your overall writing experience. 

• Music

Feel free to listen to music as you write that best fits the atmosphere of your world so that you find yourself in the best possible headspace. You could even assign certain songs to specific moods if you’d like. Smooth jazz can help set the scene for a noir style coffee shop scene, techno music can go with a scene in a funky club, and there is a plethora of soundtracks you can play for dynamic fight scenes.

• Inspiration

Ah yes. The fierce debate between “Inspiration” and “rip-off.” Stories like The Boys, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and Mr. Crocket’s World all take inspiration from popular characters and franchises to tell their own unique narratives, so you will likely want to do the same. Sadly, the term “ripoff” gets thrown around almost as much as a standard insult. As such, we should probably go into what separates the two; integrity. The term of ripoff is synonymous with bootlegs, simply recycling a story or character in a similar context without expanding upon it. As such, taking inspiration means to take 

• Research

There’s also the wonderful world of research. Sure, the word may not incite the image of fun in your mind, but once you get into it, you will not want to stop. You can find yourself doing research on all kinds of niche topics from the history of the Walt Disney corporation to different science experiments in the medical field, from Alfred Hitchcock films to military operations. 

• Writing Formats

Since this is your writing, you are not restricted to just writing novels. You can even write play scripts to experiment and maybe have your actor friends participate in them. Why even stop there? You can also take a more experimental approach with the format of your storytelling. You can use the world building approach lots of popular video games and movies take and tell your story. Company bulletins, school textbooks, police reports, and so on can all be used to tell the story you want to tell. 

• Details

Not every story needs a tremendous amount of detail, but it really does help. Due to copyright laws, you more than likely can’t just include large megacorporations like Amazon, McDonald’s, Apple, Hasbro, or Warner Brothers (especially if you’re writing a story focusing on an evil company, as portraying them as evil can be considered defamation). As such, what is your evil company stand-in? Who founded it? Who works there? What makes them evil? What is their history? What are the best products you can come up with for them to sell? The more small details you can come up with, the more real your world will feel. The more alive it will become.

The house that was built by artisans.

Closing the Book

With everything all said and done, the last few words written on this page, you can continue down the path of life. The soul of an artist is one that always shines brightly. You can create new worlds of your own. You can build a utopia without the blemishes of our reality, or a dystopia that shows the problems in our society that we need to fix. The stories we tell are bigger than anything. You can be surprised what characters like Superman are capable of, even affecting the real world by spreading hope and compassion. Books like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm opened the eyes of people to the manipulative and oppressive tactics of dictatorships (granted they can often be misconstrued to serve dictators into tricking the public into thinking freedom lies in oppression). The pen truly is mightier than the sword, because the one thing stronger than bloodshed itself are the ideas that drive actions.

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Write onto that page, and build yourself to be the best you that you see, the best you that even you can be proud of.