Continuing a story

Great! You’ve started a story! You have a strong main character and initial conflict, and you’re off to the races. For most writers, this is the easy part. Starting new stories. Writing the opening chapter of that cool new idea of yours.

But now what? Now we have to write the rest of the story. (Like that meme about “now draw the rest of the owl”.)

Some writers tackle their story in a random order. They write chapter 10 because they feel like it, then they write the ending, then chapter 5, and so forth.

For most (including me), this is unthinkable, and we just write the story chronologically. We start with chapter 1 and we’re done when we write the last chapter.

Next chapter, I will finally start giving you structures for your story. As mentioned at the Introduction, it’s your task to write one story using the given structure. One story using the ideas and rules I proposed. When finished, continue to another chapter with a completely new framework.

Prose & Dialogue

I’ve written two other courses about the actual practice of writing. How to get the idea in your head onto the page using efficient, effective prose.

You can read these before writing your book, and try to memorize the tips, but I don’t recommend that at all.

Just write your book. Once you’re done, take some time off, then edit it.

I would call this a golden nugget of advice. This is something most people never realize, even though it’s simple to do and makes a huge difference. So I’ll take time to explain it further.

The right mindset

Practice vs Performance

I’ve had several coaches for physical activities (like a sports coach or vocal coach). They all said the same thing.

In training, be critical of yourself and try to really improve. While performing, do not think about that AT ALL, and trust your habits and training.

These are two distinct phases. In one of them, you get to be extremely critical. You get to experiment, take in feedback, seek out advice.

In the other, you must dissuade yourself from doing any of that. Trust your training, trust your skill, and just let it flow.

As soon as a singer becomes self-critical during a performance, they will become insecure, and probably perform far worse.

In terms of writing

While writing, do not look up any tips/guides/advice, nor edit yourself. You’re in the “performance” phase. Trust your experience so far, trust your feeling for stories, and let it out.

Yes, you will notice that a sentence might not be ideal, or you might be unsure about the direction of the story. Make a note of it—then ignore it and continue.

If you’re able to do this, you will never get stuck, and become a storytelling machine. The downside, of course, is that there will be many mistakes or mediocre scenes in the end result.

That’s why we have the “practice” phase(s).

Before starting a story, use all the time and resources you need to do research and get the strongest start possible.
After finishing a story, read it again and edit. Try to improve the prose further. Rewrite a scene a few times to see if you can make it better.

Most of the learning happens during editing. At this stage, you can just open one of my guides and keep it next to your story as you go through it. No need to memorize anything! You can experiment and learn, as there is no risk and no chance of hitting a writer’s block.

You already have the first draft of the novel. It’s much easier to improve a bad scene that already exists, than to improve … nothing. And although it is tempting, don’t think you can get everything perfect on your first try.

Tracking progress

Most writers track their word counts each day. Some even publish them on their blog.

This is a very simple tool to make sure you stay productive. It’s both a challenge that helps to stay disciplined, as well as a reminder when you’re feeling down. I often have days when I feel like I’ve done nothing, or my progress has been stalled for a week. Then I look at the word counts, and see I’ve been writing 2,000 words per day. Even if those words are absolute shit, that’s still good progress. Then I feel better.

As such, I recommend doing this. Just write them down on a paper, stick them in an Excel sheet, publish them to your website if you have one, whatever. At the end of the day, count all the words you’ve written.

Now comes the next step: set a goal for yourself. A number of words you will hit each day (or week, or writing session).

This depends on you, your goal, your daily life, your writing style.

I maintain 2,000 words per day. But I am a professional writer (trying to earn my income from these books) and I am an improviser. I do not plan my books, I write a first version (very quickly), then rewrite and edit a ton.

Other writers do 500 words per day. Or they say “1 book per season”.

Now, let’s think about this. The average book is perhaps 80,000 words. With 2,000 words per day … that’s a book every 40 days. Just over a month.

Consistency and habits beat everything else

The best way to write a book, is to write a fixed word count, regularly. It ensures the book (and its characters, themes, ideas) stay in your head. It ensures that, even if you feel like you’re doing nothing, you still have a finished book after a month or two.

And the only way to be so consistent, is by turning off your critical inner monologue during the writing (the “performance” phase).

Remark

Of course, you can go over your word count goal. And it’s fine if you don’t hit it once in a while, or life gets in the way. Just try to hit it, like, 95% of the time. Even though I just called you a storytelling machine, we’re not actually machines.

Progress as a story tool

These past few chapters, progress has been the magic word. Humans feel good and useful if they’re making progress on something. We like reading about some character making progress towards their goal.

That’s why I think writing progress is the most practical, useful tool when writing a book.

You’re stuck? Figure out the next logical step the hero could take towards their goal. Write a scene in which they take it.

Feel like a scene is meaningless? Rewrite it so that characters take one step on their path to … something.

Feels like your character is dull or static? Write a storyline in which they progress, by learning a new skill or by moving up the ranks in their company.

Progress, progress, progress. Only 5% of your book can be flashy action sequences, or extremely smart mysteries (and their solutions). The other 95%, the meat of each story, is characters progressing towards their goal. One step at a time, one scene at a time.

This is so powerful, in fact, that it’s my main plotting tool. I pick a starting point, an end point, and then I break the route between them into “highlights”. A handful of scenes in which our hero takes the next big step towards the goal.

If you do this for the major storylines in your book, you already have a very solid foundation. Especially for when you’re stuck.

Remark

Being an improviser, I am likely to change my mind about the end point and the highlights while writing. These “routes” are mostly a backup in case I don’t get a better idea once I’m halfway through a book. But that’s the beauty: I only need to change one scene, take one different logical step, and suddenly we’re on the path towards another goal.

A consequence of this

I’ve noticed that many ideas that sound very good and marketable … aren’t actually good in practice. And the reason for this has to do with that idea of progress being the meat of the story.

A good story can’t survive on just a strong opening chapter, or marketing blurb. The book actually has to be filled with hundreds of pages of good content.

Example

I think we all know a few books like these, especially in the YA genre. They thrive on inventing some cool concept into which they can throw teenagers, only to realize, twenty pages in, that there’s no substance there. There’s a clear obstacle, but no clear steps for progression. Or there’s an interesting world, but just no story.

As such, when judging an idea, judge it based on its potential for progress. If you have a cool idea, but you have no clue where to go from there, it’s probably a bad idea for a full novel. If you have a great opening scene, but it leaves little room for progress afterward, it’s not a great opening scene.

In general,

Pick the character with the biggest potential for change/progress
Pick the conflict that supports the most steps (of progress)
Accept that you probably have to rewrite the first chapter once the book is done, because only then do you really know what the story is about.

Conclusion

Just write your heart out. Don’t be critical, don’t try to memorize tips—when you’re in the midst of writing your book, just write a fixed word count every day and stay in the flow.

Track those word counts as both a challenge and a positive reminder.

Use the other phases (before and after) to actually rip your ideas apart, improve them, and learn from it.

If you’re more of a plotter, you’ll spend most time in the before phase (creating the best possible plan before writing). If you’re more of a pantser, you’ll spend most time in the after phase (editing all the crap you created). But in both cases, no matter what type of writer you are, the writing phase is probably equally long and should have the same consistency.

Now you also know why this course is structured the way it does. The next chapters give you a framework for building a story. For example, it might give you a “beat sheet” telling you what should happen at roughly what percentage of your story.

You apply this during the before and after phase!

The framework tells you how to structure and plan your idea before you start. Then, while editing, use the structure to see what parts are inconsistent and need changing.

Once you’re done with this course, you will have written numerous stories, and you will have consciously experimented with each one. As such, you will have learned as much as you possible could from each attempt.

I also did this because all parts of storytelling are connected. I struggled to write separate courses for each, because you just cannot separate Plot from Character, for example. The character creates the plot through their wants and needs. At the same time, sometimes the Plot takes over and must add some bad luck or random circumstance to challenge the character further. As the saying goes: “Use a random event to get your character into trouble, but never out of it.”

It’s the reason why writing is so hard and mentally taxing. It’s also the reason why stories continue to entertain billions, and writing a good one is so rewarding.

So let’s get started!

Remark

I recommend trying the structures in the order provided. I slowly “build” towards more and more difficult challenges. But this is no hard rule: you can jump around or skip those you don’t feel would help you.

Continue with this course