How to Build a Storyline

Find ideas. If there’s an idea lurking somewhere in your head, great! If not, do brainstorming, mind mapping, or follow one of the countless brainstorming exercises you can find on the web. You won’t need to come up with a story at first – but you do need an idea, even if it’s just a blur. Ideas can start with anything: a sentence, a face, a character or a situation, as long as it’s interesting and inspiring.

Turn an idea into a story. Remember to add a little surprise, because this is the expensive development of the story. If you’re familiar with the “snowflake” or “top-down” idea generation method, you’ll be familiar with this step. So, how do you turn a vague idea of a girl with jet-black eyes into a story idea? First, you need to understand that the story consists of two elements: the character and the conflict. Of course there are many other factors, such as theme, setting, narrator’s point of view, and other miscellaneous details, but the core of every story is still the characters that come with it. conflict. Well, let’s take the example of the black-eyed girl. With the goal of creating a character with conflict, we’ll start with questions and answers. Who is she? What does she want? What hinders her on her way to the finish line? When you have a character with some kind of conflict in your head, you already have an idea for the story. Write that idea down.

Turn your ideas into a plot. Now comes the hardest part. You have a good idea for a story, but how do you turn it into a plot? Well, of course you could just put pen to paper and see where it takes you, but if you’re leaning that way, you wouldn’t have come across this article in the first place, right? You need a plot. Well, here’s what you need to do: start with the ending.

Yes, that’s right, let’s start with the ending . Will the black-eyed girl finally win over her man? Or did she let him fall into the hands of the rich lady? Think of the ending first, and if that doesn’t spark some plot twists or the whole plot, read on.

Think about the characters. Now you have a conflict, a character, a beginning and an ending. If you still need help finding a plot, the thing to do now is to think about your characters. Add to those characters. Create for them things like friends, family, careers, anecdotes, life events, needs, dreams and ambitions.

Develop plot details. Once you have the characters and the ending of the story, place the characters in their world and visualize their activities. Remember to take notes. It is possible that one of the characters has achieved great advancement in his career. Maybe that black-eyed girl entered a swimming competition with that rich slut. Maybe a girl’s best friend finds out that she’s never given up on the guy of her dreams. Think about the actions a character can take to affect their world, as well as the things going on around them that can affect the character.

Attach the details of the story to the plot. Now the fun part has begun. Some knowledge of story structure may help you here. For the purposes we are talking about, Freytag’s method of analysis is perhaps the most useful. The structure of a story usually consists of five parts:

• Introduction – the character’s normal life leads to the “initiation event” that pushes them into conflict.
• Rising conflict: the conflicts, struggles, and pitfalls that characters face on their journey toward goals. In a three-scene structure, the second scene is often the richest part of the story.
• The climax – the most important part! This is the point where everything seems possible or impossible, and the character must decide how to act to win or accept loss with honor. The turning point of the story comes when the conflict reaches its climax.
• Conflict descends – events are interpreted after the climax, characters win or lose, all disjointed clues are reconnected, the results lead to…
• Epilogue – returning to a normal life with a new balance but different (or maybe not too different) from the “normal life” in the character’s introduction.

Put the story details you just came up with somewhere in the plot and tell them backwards or forwards. The end of the story usually falls in the descending conflict or the end of the story, although with some skill (or luck) you can come to a conclusion at the climax. If there is no climax, think about the resolution you want and the events required to get there. All the circumstances leading up to this event from the beginning of the story are “conflict rising”. Any consequence of this event is “descending conflict”. Anything that doesn’t fit either of these parts shouldn’t appear in the story, unless it’s part of a side story.