A story is a journey of learning that has someone who needs something badly and is having difficulties getting it. Hence, the three fundamental components for story making are character, character goal (the conflict’s resolution), and conflict (the problem). There would be no story if these elements are not present.
Learn how to make a story that has the necessary elements to keep your audience captivated and engaged
Some story makers start with an idea, water it (add words and scenes), then grow and discover the story along the way. For those gardeners, the storyline is generally more open to possibility. Personally, I prefer the architects’ approach to develop the story most efficiently by outlining the beats in a unique and creative way never seen before. Whichever type you are it’s very important to practice everything you’ve learned in your quest for knowledge.
What is Story Making?
Story making is the process of creating a story. It involves developing characters, conflict, and resolution. These elements are essential in story making because they create a journey for the reader that is both engaging and entertaining.
By developing strong characters and an interesting conflict, storytellers can shape their story into something that readers will want to follow. And by resolving the conflict in a satisfying way, storytellers can give their readers a sense of closure and completion.
Story making is an art form that takes practice and patience. However, with time and effort, anyone can learn how to create a captivating story. It’s definitely worth it.
Do you Want to Learn Creative Story Making?
By learning creative story making you can create connections with people through compelling stories. You’ll also be able to engage your audience, influence them and persuade them more easily.
In this story making guide, you’ll learn the creative story making process and how to create a great story by defining all of its elements in relation to each other which is crucial for an organic story to function. I will show you how to develop the premise of your story and create characters that people will love. Whether you want to produce fiction or nonfiction, creative story making is one of the most important aspects of creating a great game, movie, book, or comic that will resonate with audiences.
What Makes a Story?
All storytellers have their methods, but there are some basic elements that all good stories share. A story is made by starting with an inciting event that gets the story going. The story then ebbs and flows, builds to a climax, and resolves in the end. This natural arc is what makes a story interesting and satisfying to read or watch.
The story starts with an inciting incident that typically destroys the equilibrium in a protagonist’s life, making it impossible to repair or return to normal. A catastrophe like this pulls the reader in, making them want to know what happens next.
The story then has ups and downs, but always leads towards the final climax. This is the most exciting part of the story, where all the tension is released. With this in mind, storytellers must carefully craft their tales, ensuring that each plot point leads logically to the next until the story reaches its thrilling conclusion.
Finally, the story is resolved, wrapping up any loose ends and providing closure for the reader. A well-crafted story will have all of these elements, its what makes a story powerful and meaningful to read or watch.
Make your own Story
Making your own story can be hard, especially if you don’t know where to start or what to include. I’ll show you the basics of story making and what makes a good story. I’ll also give you some tips on how to structure your story so it’s easy to follow and engaging for your audience.
How can you make your own story?
You can make your own story by understanding the elements of story making and using them to create a rich and complete experience for your audience. Make sure to focus on the hero’s development, carefully withhold and reveal information, and create a powerful emotional journey for your audience. With these components, you may construct a work of art that will be remembered by your audience long after they’ve finished reading or viewing it.
How to make a story interesting?
You can make your story interesting by using the elements of story making to catch your audience’s attention and hold it until the very end. What is the most important part of the story? The characters! Make sure they’re interesting and relatable, the setting is well-developed, and the plot is full of twists and turns. With these elements, you can make an interesting story that your audience won’t be able to put down.
Create your own story online
When you learn the elements of story making below, you can create your own story online. This can be a great way to get feedback from other writers and readers, as well as to practice your craft.
Developing the Story’s Premise
It’s certainly not the only way for a story to be born but identifying a concept or premise early on as an initial general idea can lend clarity as you work your way through the composition of your story. The premise is a concise way to focus on the protagonist, the protagonist’s goal, and what is at stake if that goal is not met. It’s much easier to spot problems and find solutions when you’ve written only one line. The premise is your inspiration, and the excitement from it will propel you to work hard on the story. Don’t commit to a single option right away, even if it appears to be great. Examine all of your possibilities and then choose the best one. Make sure you are happy with the choice for the special world you are creating because there are potentially countless other ideas you won’t be working on when committing to it.
The human brain is great at coming up with ideas, not keeping them. So write down any ideas you may have, list everything you are passionately interested in. You might list characters you’ve imagined, intriguing plot twists, or excellent dialogue remarks that have occurred to you. You could make a list of issues that inspire you or particular genres that always entice you. Consider locations and mental associations with things that are extremely familiar. When you see all of these options in front of you, it forces you to wonder if they’re life-changing or big enough to include in your story.
Every detail in the story gets its meaning and emotional weight based on how it affects the hero in their quest. Consider the fundamental elements a premise should have and how can they be escalated? Give a sense of the core conflict the characters will face. Suggest a basic action, character change, theme, and bind these unique aspects of the story process in a storytelling structure.
Find the Structure
Structuring the premise is the internal logic that binds its components together naturally, allowing for a greater whole than the sum of its parts. Use a journey or similar traveling metaphor to organize the deeper fundamental process that will unfold over the course of your story, told effectively in an original way.
Discover your Character
Always tell a story about your most fascinating, challenging, and complex character. You want this character to be the one who is driving the action at all times. To identify the strongest character ingrained in the concept, consider this crucial question: Do I care about the challenges he has to overcome? Do I love the way he thinks? Do I want to see him act? Who do I love?
Get a Sense of the Core Conflict
Look for the main conflict by asking yourself, “Who fights who over what?”. This one thing will be the driving force behind all of the conflict in the story.
Basic Action
Every good, organic story has a single basic action. When something happens, it will lead to another thing and so on all the way to the end of the story. The basic action should be the one that best enables the character to confront his weaknesses and change.
Identify Character Change
The fundamental character change gives the audience the deepest satisfaction no matter what form the story takes. Start with the basic action and then go to the opposites of that action. This will reveal your hero’s psychological or moral weaknesses at the start of the story and how struggling to achieve the goal has positively or negatively changed him at the end. Above everything else, human growth must be expressed or show why it doesn’t take place.
Figure Out the Theme
The central theme of a story is often revealed through the hero’s actions when going after the goal. The final moral choice the hero must make at the end of the story is the most important step to express the theme.
The theme is your view of the proper way to act in the world. It is your moral vision, and it is one of the main reasons you are writing your story. The theme is best expressed through the structure of the story.
How to Structure the Story’s Outline
The outline is an excellent place to explore multiple possibilities and structure your story. How the story progresses over time is what structure is all about. Good structure is the foundation for all the elements that make up a good story.
Some story makers don’t want to think about outline and structure because it might lead them to write in a way that is not creative. When it comes to using your most valuable asset, your time, defining actionable small steps is merely the pointer on a compass guiding you towards a great story. Getting your mindset focused on taking those manageable small steps in a unique and creative way never seen before inevitably gets you addicted to the progress.
The broad aspects of a narrative’s structure, such as beginning, middle, and end, provide a basic structure for a scene or anecdote, but you’ll need more complexity for bigger stories. There are numerous to explore and try, but you’ll have to figure out which one makes more sense for you. Some popular are:
- The 7 Point Plot Structure
- The Snowflake Method
- The Dan Harmon’s Story Circle
- Save The Cat
- The Hero’s Journey
- and many more.
Personally, I prefer John Truby’s The Anatomy Of Story which mimics how a human being would solve a life problem. With it, you can form a complex interwoven structure for intricate storytelling and character development.
At this time, you should know enough about your story to identify most of its major structural beats. Express these scenes in the form of points and short phrases. A scene is a single activity that takes place at one time and location. This way will be easier to move them around until you arrange the correct sequence of events that will give your story its maximum potential.
Story Character
A great story starts with an interesting main character who has a moral need in addition to a psychological need. The moral need is always hurting others in some way while the psychological need is hurting only the hero. It usually involves overcoming that moral weakness within himself in order to have a better life and learn how to act properly toward others. At the beginning of the story, your character should not be aware of the need. Only after having gone through a great deal of pain or struggle, near the end of the story, does the hero become aware of that need.
A moral need usually comes out of a psychological weakness that leads the character to take it out on others. To create the moral need, ask yourself what kind of immoral action might naturally come out of your hero’s weakness and need. Or choose virtue that your character is so passionate about that it becomes oppressive which is the negative version of that value.
You must consider your hero as a spectrum of change and possibilities. Beginning your story with the hero’s range of change is crucial. The hero must transform character. This entails the hero changing basic beliefs, leading to new moral action. You may show a character going through many changes in a story, but not all of them represent character transformation.
A character’s self-knowledge is formed of his beliefs, about the world, and oneself. They are his beliefs about what makes a good life and what he will do to obtain it. In pursuit of a goal, the hero is forced to challenge his most fundamental beliefs. Under pressure, he sees what he believes, decides what he will act on, and then takes moral action to demonstrate it. The development of your hero is determined by the beliefs he begins with, how he challenges them, and how they have changed by the end. This is one of the methods to make the story unique.
To create character change in your story begin at the end, with the change itself. Discovering it first automatically tells you where it began, which is the hero’s need and desire. Then make sure that each step of the journey is connected to every other step and builds up from start to finish until it reaches a high emotional impact with the change at the end. If the change is what the hero learns, the need is what the hero doesn’t yet know but must learn to have a better life. This is the only way to make the story organic.
Story Character Goal (the Conflict’s Resolution)
In a good story, the main character has one and only one primary goal. Your hero’s ultimate goal is the driving force for the resolution of the story’s conflict. Throughout the plot, each scene will have its own goal, but they’ll be steps toward achieving the dominant story goal. The character goal must be urgent and important to put pressure on your hero to act immediately. That implies that there will be big, negative consequences if your character fails to achieve it.
When the hero accomplishes his goal, he also fulfills his need. Need has to do with overcoming a weakness within the character while the goal is external and conscious. Even if the goal affects everyone in the story world, you must connect it to your hero’s needs. Weakness and need are what allow your hero to change at the end. They’re what makes the story personal and meaningful. And they’re what engages the audience.
Story Conflict
A conflict is a fundamental component of a story structure that adds uncertainty by posing problems, difficulties, or challenges for the main character. Putting constant pressure on your hero forces him to change. In a single story, there may be multiple conflicts, as characters might have to struggle against more than one opposing force. Opposition from characters and their values creates tension and brings your story fully to life.
The struggle to overcome a crisis quickly defines a character. It should be an outside manifestation of the hero’s weakness. The crisis highlights that weakness for the audience and gives the story a fast start. Keep the problem simple and specific.
Story Theme
A great story is not simply a series of events or surprises designed to delight an audience. It is a sequence of actions, with moral implications and consequences, attempting to convey a bigger moral vision. When you use a character to reach a goal, you are exploring the question of what is the right thing to do. You are also making a moral argument about how to live a better life.
Demonstrate your moral vision in small, subtle ways, primarily through the story structure and how the hero handles the conflicts. Your moral vision is revealed by how your hero pursues the goal while competing with one or more opposing forces and by what your hero learns, or fails to learn, during the struggle. This way, you are using your characters’ actions to show your moral vision. How do the characters’ actions harm others, and, if at all, how can the characters make things right?
Story World
Creating a unique world for the story and organically connecting it to the characters and their values is essential to great storytelling. The elements of the physical story world help the storyteller to condense meaning into a limited amount of space and time. The more meaning you condense in the world for your story, the more the story expands in the hearts and minds of your audience that grow and move them deeply.
The land, its people, and technology are combined to create the story world. A fourth element, time, is how your unique world develops as the story progresses. Make sure any natural setting you use is essential to the story. And above all, use it in an unexpected way. Any tool a character uses reflects his identity and shows how well can manipulate the world and navigate through it.
To understand what the world will be like at the beginning and end of the story, focus on the hero’s change. The world reflects your hero’s development. It shows his needs, what his values are, his desires, and the obstacles he faces. The world also shows your hero’s weakness or draws it out in its worst form. All these different parts of the story making process work together to create a rich and complete experience.
Story Scenes
A scene is one action in one time and place. It is the basic unit of what happens in the story. What’s important now is to plan what the main action of each scene will be. The hero’s overall development is always given precedence. There are certain scenes, such as subplot scenes, that simply serve to set up the narrative drive. You can include them but you cannot deviate too far from the narrative line without your story collapsing. You may find that the basic action in some scenes is not what you thought. You won’t know for sure until you write it. So be flexible.
How you withhold and reveal information is important for your story. You want to order your scenes by how they help the development of the hero but pay special attention to the nearness of scenes. Carefully manage the suspense and mystery for the audience. Lead them through the story in a way that they can understand while always leaving room for doubt. Do this until the very last scene to create a powerful emotional journey.
Story Making with Words
The process of story making with words expands beyond the storyteller’s imagination and into the hearts and minds of an audience. It is a powerful way to connect with others, share values, and explore the world around us. When done well, it can deeply move those who experience it.
The story is the most important thing. Everything in creative story making revolves around it. The story is what makes an audience feel something. It’s what allows them to connect with the characters and the world on a deeper level, making them care about what happens next.
When all these elements are working together, you create a masterpiece that will stay with your audience long after they’ve finished reading or watching it.
Story Making – Conclusion
In this story making guide, you learned about story making and how to create a compelling narrative that is captivating. You also learned what makes a good story in general with all its elements including structure. The key thing to remember when creating content is not only telling an engaging story but giving your audience something they can learn from as well. This means thinking about both form and function when crafting your message so it speaks both emotionally and intellectually to your audience. These story decision making process and techniques are what makes a story popular. So, what will your story be about?
Now that you understand the basics of story making, it’s time to put these concepts into practice. Use this story making guide as a reference as you begin planning your next story. And don’t forget to have fun along the way! Thanks for reading.