Writing a Story

I don’t know if this is true for all people or just some selection of the world but I have found that sometimes people just sit down make these lovely characters, fall in love with all of them, and write a story.  I have been doing this since I was very young with stories about fairies and twins, Emily and Emma, and their elf friend, Fred.  Of course back then I really didn’t have complex stories and tended to borrow names (Emily is my best friend’s name).  Now my stories and writings have become more complex, at least when I put my heart into it.

By complex of course I mean I have a notebook almost fully filled with any character and plot I have created since February.  That’s a lot to write down when you are only a teenager with no real chance of publishing in the near future.  However, with websites like Wattpad I can still get my work to the world.  It’s a great way to practice writing, as well.

About a month or two ago I came up with a single character named Remy.  She was this great character in my mind and I wrote her down quickly and perfectly.  The problem was that Remy had no story.  Nothing that made her come to life to other people.  Sure I could post a character description online, but let’s face the fact that it simply wont work if I want people to like Remy.  A few weeks later I got a story idea and wrote the first few pages.  This is a problem with how I write.  I have always written from beginning to end.  It’s not only annoying but also extremely boring.  Starting at the end isn’t a good way to go either, however it seems better than start to finish.  When you are going in chronological order you get to this point where you’re just like “I want the end and I want it now!” and then you quit.

No!  I would not do that again, yet I still started at the beginning.  Old habits die hard.  As always after about a week of being stuck in the start to finish rut I kind of gave up.  I don’t like that system, and that time I only got a few pages in before all I could look forward to was some dramatic fight I had ringing in my ears.  I put down the pencil and put the story away.

After a week I was stuck at a coffee shop with my brother.  We were an hour into staring blankly at each other when Remy came to mind.  There, on the spot, I picked up a pencil from my backpack and my history notebook and wrote a scene that would happen right next to the end.  To do so I created five characters.  The group of two.  The two home-town best friends.  The love interest.  I finished the scene the next day, it turned out to be like ten pages in minor detail.  For the next few days I tried to keep my mind on Remy and her story but I realized that I had no chance of doing so without a real plot, something that when you write from start to finish you might even be able to avoid using.

I sat down and spent a week on the plot.  A full week of looking at a graphite covered lined notebook given to my by my mother.  It was the kind that is nice and expensive, the kind you almost don’t want to use because it looks too good.  My side of my hand was covered in shiny grey pencil lead by the end, reminding me of the days when I drew for hours on end to no avail.  Oh, but there would be a finished product this time!

With my plot written.  A map literally drawn and characters all made I sat down again.   Nothing.

Turns out inspiration comes at weird times, all of mine since the coffee shop have come from old music.  In my Student Aid class at school I was listening to the Fray’s song “How to Save a Life” and automatically had to change somethings in my plot to make the scene of fifteen pages usable.  After a Joan Jett two-disc set I wrote a good few scenes.  The Beatles “Help!” helped me through another.  While I was clipping my toe nails I got a good scene from the song “Rebel Rebel” by Bowie.  None of these were exactly preferable seeing as that in all these cases I had something I should be doing, including trying not to slice off my fingers while making dinner, but was focused on writing a scene in my head instead.

Now I have so many scenes that I put them all in order in a binder.  If someone were to read through the binder they wouldn’t understand it a bit because I still haven’t written so much.  However I have forty pages that are all for the very beginning and all go together flawlessly.  A binder clip separates those pages from the rest.

I have all of my story hand written at this point.

The reason I have talked about this so much is to tell you that there are many different ways to write.  Maybe you write from start to finish or vise versa.  Maybe you write scene by scene and slowly piece it all together.  I have no idea what you do so share it with me in the comments if you write.  Perhaps we can all learn something today.