Conclusion

Congratulations! You have reached the end of the storytelling course. If you followed along, you’ll have written more than 20 unique (short) stories. You’ll have experimented with many, many different ideas about plot, character, and writing in general. I feel completely confident in saying you are a good writer now, ready to go professional.

This is how I learned to write. In fact, it’s how I learned every skill, and it’s also the process that’s actually supported by science and statistics.

Our brains are very good at association and forming deeper connections over time. This means that …

• Trying to memorize writing advice is pretty useless.
• Trying to implement some theory or rule while writing is pretty useless (and overwhelming).
• Trying to improve at writing by merely following classes or reading books is pretty useless.

Instead, this course encourages you to simply write a lot. As you get more experience, your head fills up with thousands of rules, principles and ideas about writing. With every story you write, you build a stronger intuition for what works and what doesn’t, for why narrative structure is the way it is. With every writing challenge you give yourself, your brain creates more connections, building a larger database of tools.

Simply by writing many different stories, you become a storyteller intuitively. You can write without needing to think about it, without needing to (very) accurately plan the whole story in advance. You can enjoy the thrill of inventing a story and seeing where your characters go, instead of getting bogged down with rules and principles like it’s homework.

In the back of your head, there’s this intuition that your idea needs a hero’s journey (because it’s an epic adventure with one clear protagonist), or it needs a Fichtean curve (because you want to keep the pace quick and constant progression). You’ve seen all these structures, you’ve tried them, and they are now part of your skillset.

If you do remember one thing from this course, make it the first chapter: the Elements of Storywhy. You can ignore all other “rules” or structures, you can forget everything, but never the Elements of Storywhy. If you don’t include the reasons why we tell/enjoy stories in your story, then what’s the point?

Each story needs progress (ending in growth or change), a deeper theme or meaning, and simple entertainment (through action, mysteries, puzzles, jokes, and so forth.)

If you want more practice, or get more fun tools and ideas, check out any of the other courses from the Creative Writing category. They are structured in the same way:

• First some crucial theory and the necessary “why?” questions
• Then a list of possible tools or structures to use, with the advice to write a story using each.

I hope these courses inspired you and allowed you to become the best writer you could be. (While having fun and already writing!) If you’ve finished and successfully published a book, let me know. I love hearing from you!

Keep learning (and telling stories),

Pandaqi

External Resources

Over time, I keep finding great (free) websites or courses related to my own work. I wanted to share them, so I decided to add a little section with “external resources” over time.

• Holly Black has an awesome page answering questions and linking to other resources for writing.
• Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions is a huge resource about everything you could consider when building your (fantasy) world.
• Antipope about Stories are some loosely written articles about writing (four parts) which nevertheless proposed many ideas I had never seen in any other advice before.
• StudioBinder YouTube is an amazing channel with short and very high-quality videos on stories and screenwriting.

Long ago, I also summarized another piece of advice I found. I can’t discover the original source (as I wrote the ideas in my own words), so I am sorry for not crediting them. But it’s a great short summary to remind yourself about the basic practices behind every good story.

• Always keep moving. Get into interesting situations early and have characters do consequential things. Repeat until the end. Characters who act (quickly) are better at holding the reader’s attention.
• Have later events be shaped by earlier ones. Similarly, prefer to reuse characters, props, ideas, settings before inventing something new. Link what comes later to what comes before. (Certainly reuse your good secondary characters.)
• A story can (and probably will be) arbitrary when you first invent it. To turn it into great fiction, that arbitrariness needs to go away and make place for a completely connected story designed with intent.
• The invisible fifth item: rule of cool. Show cool stuff as soon as possible, then keep it coming. Don’t hold it back thinking you need to “save the best for last”—you can always make more.