Real life incident, how should I write?

Well, I am a newbie here (not really new but about 10 days old on this site )

I write articles/essays about self-help. I do also like to write poems as well.

Now, I want to write a story (non-fiction) about my aunt, who got possessed by bad spirits about 12 years ago.

I have the idea (of course) but how should I structure the story and write it? I haven't written a story before!

Well, have you figured out why you want to write the story? Maybe that's too big of a question. What's this about your aunt and spirits? Can you explain that?

This topic has been moved from Storybooks to Ask An Expert.

Iggy wrote:This topic has been moved from Storybooks to Ask An Expert.

Thank you very much. I don't know much about these forums

MooCowPoop wrote:Well, have you figured out why you want to write the story? Maybe that's too big of a question. What's this about your aunt and spirits? Can you explain that?

I just want to write a scary/horror story. And it will be based on my aunt getting possessed by evil spirits. I will describe what exactly everything happened to her.

You write it with a beginning, middle and end.

I do mean that in seriousness. Stories tend to consistently have a beginning, where you establish the characters and setting, middle, where the majority of the plot happens, and end, where things are mostly resolved.

They tend to have a primary plot, which is the main idea of the story, and subplots, which are side things that happen and add more dimension to the plot because a person's life is never completely dominated by one thing.

You have characters. Some are main characters/protagonists, who are the focus of the story. Then you have secondary characters, who don't play a major role but populate what's going on and help provide subplots.

Past that, there's a harsh truth of writing: you're not going to be that good at first.

You're just not. You've never written a story before, and that'll show. You'll think your characters are fantastic, your plot is perfect, and everything's so real, and readers won't get it. That's because there's a fundamental lack of skill.

Musicians train for years. Dancers train for years. Painters train for years. They are not wonderful at the beginning, and you really wouldn't expect them to be. Writing is the same.

If you've never written a story before, no amount of theory in the world is going to help you write a better one. You can know how to read music but not be able to hit the notes. You learn how to hit the notes by practicing them, hearing them, learning your instrument inside and out. Writing involves writing, rewriting, editing, getting feedback, repeating the process until you finally have something okay, and repeating the process again until you have something good. Theory can provide the framework for making that better story, but you can't simply have theory without practice.

Now, this is actually a good thing. Run with it. Explore. Study theory, but also write. You have to write.

You're not going to learn much if you don't.