As I’ve mentioned before, there’s no correct or incorrect way to write a story. If you’re interested in writing, it’s important that you work out which way works best for you. Do you start at the beginning, or with a random scene in the middle? A writer friend of mine always writes the last scene first, and then backtracks from there. I’ve tried to do that and it hasn’t worked for me!
If you could see the first drafts of some well-known books, you may not even recognise them. Everyone’s first drafts are a bit all over the place. Sometimes a first draft is just to get the story down in any way – you won’t have beautiful descriptive phrases or fabulously imagined characters yet. My first drafts have weird random thoughts in brackets, scenes all in the wrong order, and little instructions to myself.
One piece of advice is to do a minimum of three drafts of your story. And if you feel that it’s not going anywhere, or you feel stuck, here are some things to try:
- Put it aside and do something active. Going for a walk can clear your head and sometimes while you’re doing something else, a solution or idea for how to make the story better might pop into your head.
- Read it out loud to someone and ask for their feedback, advice, suggestions etc.
- Work on another story for a while – don’t even think about this one!
- Try writing a synopsis of your story. This can help clarify what the structure is and what the story is really about. You can distil the idea and try to describe your purpose with the story in a few sentences.
- And lastly, here’s a strange one – some writers actively think about their story as they are going to sleep, and then sometimes they dream about the story and it provides solutions to parts of the story they were stuck on! Our creative brains work in mysterious ways.
I hope these suggestions are helpful if you get stuck with your story!
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