{"id":1926,"date":"2019-02-23T13:21:32","date_gmt":"2019-02-23T18:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/?p=1926"},"modified":"2020-10-26T10:54:09","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T14:54:09","slug":"5-things-you-absolutely-need-to-know-before-you-start-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/5-things-you-absolutely-need-to-know-before-you-start-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Things You Absolutely Need To Know Before You Start Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[This blog was originally published in Night Owl Reviews<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ah sweet Jughead – bearer of the dumbest hat and stupidest name in all of Riverdale – will you ever finish your terribly pretentious book so the world may finally understand your misunderstood genius??<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In my last article, I discussed how authors often fall into\nthe trap of obsessing over irrelevant character details at the expense of info\nthat matters. You don\u2019t need to know everything about a character, only certain\ncritical details: desires, strengths, and weaknesses. The same holds true for\nstarting a story: you don\u2019t need to know everything, only certain things\u2026but\nyou NEED to know those key things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In the biz, there are two general writing styles: plotting\nand pantsing. Plotters do a lot of planning before they write, fleshing out all\nthe story beats before putting pen to page. Pantsers just sit down and write, making\nup the story as they go along. There are benefits and drawbacks to both.\nPlotters have an outline to follow, but they can get bogged down with planning at\nthe expense of actual writing, or lack the flexibility to go \u201coff-script\u201d when\npresented with an opportunity to take the story somewhere exciting and\nunplanned. Pantsers have the freedom to be spontaneous, but too much freedom\ncan lead to a meandering narrative that requires extensive rewrites to fix.\nPersonally, I\u2019m more of a pantser, though I\u2019ve found myself doing more plotting\nas I\u2019ve become a more experienced author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether plotting or pantsing is right for you depends on\nyour style; no one way works for everyone. However, even pantsers need to know\ncertain details of their story before they begin, or risk ending up with a pile\nof hot garbage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NOOOOO!!!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So what are these critical details? Well, since I\u2019m a science nerd, I call them the initial conditions <\/strong>(which are the beginning values of all the variables of an equation\u2026basically). Here are the five initial conditions you need to establish before you start writing: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. What does the main character want, and what is his\/her greatest weakness?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does your character want? You need to know because they\u2019ll spend the entire story trying to get this thing. In the beginning of the story, the character\u2019s main weakness is dominant and keeping them from getting what they want. As the story progresses, they gradually overcome their weakness to attain their heart\u2019s desire. Therefore, knowing what your protagonist wants and why they don\u2019t have it at the beginning of the story will give you a broad outline of the plot. If you don\u2019t know these things, your hero will be naturally passive and end up just wandering around doing random stuff or reacting to random events, which is not a satisfying story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Who\/what is the main opponent?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is always an opponent, whether it\u2019s an outright villain or someone who\u2019s the personification of forces working against the hero. It\u2019s tempting, especially if you\u2019re writing a literary-type story, to declare the hero as the main opponent\u2014\u201cHe is his own worst enemy!\u201d\u2014but that\u2019s a copout. Yes, the hero is fighting his own internal weaknesses, we know that already. What we don\u2019t know is what is forcing him to change and confront his internal weaknesses to begin with. <\/strong>The hero begins the story in some sort of fragile equilibrium, ruled by their major weakness but not caring enough to change, until the inciting incident comes along and shakes things up. The opponent is the physical entity who forces the hero to change in order to get what he wants, and needs to be determined at the beginning of the story in order to focus the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. What world is this story taking place in?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worldbuilding for all stories is critical, whether your story is taking place in modern times or a fantasy land, or anything in between. What are the genre standards, and which will you honor or subvert? What\u2019s allowed and not allowed? What\u2019s real and not real? The world in which the characters exist bounds the story and sets the audience\u2019s expectations, and can\u2019t be made up on the fly\u2026well you can, and many writers of long-running series do so because they start running out of ideas, but then you end up with what I like to call \u201cLost<\/em>-rage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wait…so…the island is purgatory but not really, and people die but sometimes they don’t, and there’s time travel but it might be a hallucination, and Kate loves Jack but then she loves Sawyer but then she’s dating the hobbit guy in real life and WFT show???<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

4. Where, mentally and physically, are all the major players in the beginning of the story?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like your main character, all the other characters start with desires, too. As the story begins, how are they trying to reach their desires? Where are they in the world, and how are they on a collision course with the main character? Mind-blowing epiphany time\u2014in the best stories, all the major characters are actually different versions of the main character<\/strong>. They form what John Truby in The Anatomy of a Story<\/em> calls a \u201ccharacter web,\u201d in that they exist to provide contrast for your main character\u2019s desires and weaknesses. When you set the Rube Goldberg machine of your story into motion, each time your hero comes into contact with a major character, there should be a reaction that shoots the hero off in some other direction. General rule of thumb\u2014if you can take a character out of the story and it doesn\u2019t affect the hero\u2019s path, then take that character out because they are useless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Generally, how will the story end?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You don\u2019t need to know exactly how your story\nwill end, but you need to have an idea. Does the hero get what he wants or not?\nI\u2019m fond of the analogy of comparing writing to driving in the dark from New\nYork to Los Angeles: you can only see a few feet in front of you, but you can\nstill make the entire trip that way. However, you need to know you\u2019re headed to\nLos Angeles, as opposed to, say, Ontario. Because you\u2019ll be WAY off track if\nyou drove to Los Angeles and then realize once you get there you really wanted\nto go to Ontario. You might have to give up on the trip altogether! Don\u2019t let\nthat happen to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This blog was originally published in Night Owl Reviews] In my last article, I discussed how authors often fall into the trap of obsessing over irrelevant character details at the expense of info that matters. You don\u2019t need to know everything about a character, only certain critical details: desires, strengths, and weaknesses. The same holds … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “5 Things You Absolutely Need To Know Before You Start Writing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[495,501],"tags":[438,439,442,443,440,434,444,441,436],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-construction","category-how-to-begin","tag-character-initial-conditions","tag-character-strengths-and-weaknesses","tag-lost-rage","tag-lost-tv-show","tag-main-opponent","tag-riverdale","tag-story-ending","tag-story-world","tag-stupid-jughead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Vyi8-v4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2689,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions\/2689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}