How do you write a story? Anyone want to venture a guess?
My guess is that you have a theme that should work like
a thread that holds the story together. The story should
have a beginning, a middle and an end. There should be a
main character who has a goal and transformation arc.
Seeking the goal should cause the main character to
transform. This way, the story won’t fall flat because
the main character is changing. And every story should
have an antagonist (in fiction, an antagonist can be a
person, object, thing, etc. the fine point of this is
that an antagonist is different than a villain). A villain
must represent pure evil with no redeeming characteristics.
Whereas, an antagonist should have redeeming characteristics.
So, by having an antagonist, or a villain, you should
also have the antagonist or villain seeking the same
goal as the main character, but for different reasons.
And the villain goes about accomplishing his/her goal
in a different way than the hero/main character does
with his/her goal. This, in turn, then causes conflict.
And this, in turn, creates drama. Without drama there
is no conflict. Without conflict there is no story.
And all of this is applicable to anything one writes
including fiction. So, do some reading and check it
out. You’ll find this article is right on for you.
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
The Zen of Writing
http://michaelc.nextmp.net/wordpress
dvasicek@earthlink.net