The Final Boss

Honestly, this course could go on and on. There are infinitely many ideas about what a story should look like, how you could tell it, from big frameworks to tiny tips that might help in specific scenes.

But if you’ve made it this far, actually writing that story for each chapter (or most of them), you really don’t need more. You’ve seen the basic blocks of story time and time again. You have ~20 stories written, each with different approaches, which makes you more than qualified as a writer.

That’s why I will end the course here. This final chapter is about combining all the experience you’ve gathered. Next chapter is about finishing the story (ending, editing, publishing, etcetera) and then finally a short conclusion.

Creativity is mixing and matching

People like to think that creativity is this magical process in which our brain invents stuff from thin air. It’s not, I’m sorry. Creativity is just “mixing and matching” ideas we’ve seen before.

This whole course is basically “but what if hero’s journey?” repeated over and over. There are millions of stories following this structure, but still those stories aren’t all the same. Similarly, there are countless tragic characters, dystopian novels, characters who learn the same life lesson—but we keep inventing new stories.

Because stories are just a combination of parts that have already been done; it’s the combination that’s unique.

Do not worry if a part of your novel is directly inspired by another. In fact, I recommend reading books, watching the news, playing games, precisely because they will inspire you. They will regularly show you something that makes you think “that’s awesome, I’m stealing that”

The creativity is in the combination. You combine different personality traits in the same character. You combine one character on a hero’s journey, with another following a tragedy, with another who is mostly comic relief. You create a setting that’s partly inspired by this one place on earth, and partly by this other place on earth.

So what’s the final boss?

The final boss is being able to write an epic story (many storylines, big world, maybe many books in the series). And to do so, you simply “mix and match” all the ideas about storytelling in your head.

The creative part is in which elements you pick and how you develop them.

The skillful part is in having the experience to pick the right elements, knowing they can be combined in a good way.

That is, to me, what storytelling is.

• Having the experience and intuition
• To pick characters, plots, events, arcs on the fly
• That you know how to combine
• And which will naturally lead to an interesting and creative story

You have all the pieces. You have narrative structures, characters, experience writing them down.

Now you just need to combine different pieces in different ways. Every book, again and again. And if you’re particularly successful, your combination of pieces might even become a new “piece” that writing courses will teach twenty years from now.

Now write!

This isn’t a small challenge anymore. This isn’t a short story or something to apply to a throwaway idea.

I think you’re ready to write serious novels for professional publication now.

• Before you start to write, build a strong plan. (As much as you need or want.) Pick an overall structure for the story. Pick good characters which follow their own little arc or mini-story. Design your ideas to lead to good conflict and challenges to the flaws of the characters. Only pick the structures and tools that are most useful to this story idea.
• Then write your heart out. Trust the experience you’ve build. When doubts come, when you feel you hit a wall, ignore them. Keep writing. If needed, cling to an outline or beat sheet, if that helps you get through a slump.
• When done, put the story away for a while (at least a month). Then edit it to make sure the arcs and structures you planned actually come through in the final story. If not, rewrite and tighten up.

You do not need to know exactly how your story goes (before you start writing). That’s what I’ve been trying to explain. Practicing all these “narrative structures” should give you an intuitive sense of storytelling. Without writing down a very detailed outline, your head will automatically know the right thing to do. It will know “this character should do X, which could lead to a tragedy arc” or “I feel like we should have a big action scene right about now”.

You write scenes that make sense and lead to a cool finale without conscious effort. If people ask you “how did you design such a cool sequence of events?”, your response should be to shrug and say “it felt like the right thing to do”.

To me, that’s the craft and the art of storytelling.

With each story you write, with each tool you give a try, this storytelling intuition in your head grows. So, whatever happens, keep telling stories and keep challenging yourself with new structures and ideas.