Young Writers Society

Hello!
I'm Rory, and I have never finished a story (USA Unifinished Stories Annonymous member lol). I have now officially resolved to finish my first story. It is going pretty well plot wise, I know what is going to happed and all. I just seem to have a problem, now that I have the plot I think I am too eager to rush things and I don't really know how to fill the story.
I need help with things like:

When to put description..
What parts of what the main character is doing are and are not important...
When my characters do something it is logical/likely to happen...
How to make my characters seem real and interact well...

The story I am working on is called Think, it is in the Sci Fi section, I think if you look at it you will understand why I am asking these hard questions. I think I could write a half way decent story I just really don't know how to fill it inbetween all the major plot points.

Thank you for reading my plea for help, and thank you for any help you can give me!

-Rory Legend

Wow, some pretty broad questions here But I'll try and do my best to answer them.

Description That's quite a difficult one. You need to think about what type of story you're going for. I often find myself reading stories, often published stories, where the plot is bogged down by too much description. If a character is dying, I don't really care about their complexion or the exact styling of their hair, and I don't care what colour their carpet is. I care about how they're feeling, what's going on in their head, what they see around them.
On the other hand, a plot which is not so deep as the one above often relies on description of things that might seem trivial with a deeper plot. If the character is running from a masked villain, I want to know what their running shoes are like, what the weather is doing at that moment, how the villain moves and how he talks.
So you need to decide how much description you want in your plot. Just have a think about what your readers care about, and what is just going to look trivial when read alongside the rest of it. If nobody cares about what you're describing, don't describe it.

The actions of your characters are pretty similar. Just keeping asking yourself is anybody cares. Does that action make a difference to the story? Does it show something about your character's personality or their feelings? Does it advance the plot in any way? If the answer to all of those questions is "yes" in all cases, then the action is probably not best to describe. Obviously, there are exceptions, like if you want to add a little humour, but those three questions are often a good way to decide the importance of actions.

The interaction of characters and making them seem real is a difficult one. A technique I often use with dialogue is just to read it over and over in my head a few times. Try and imagine your characters speaking the words, and you'll soon spot if a line sounds unnatural or forced. You also have to learn to get a good grasp of punctuation. In real life, people speak with pauses, unfinished words, different tones, and punctuation can help you to convey this to your audience.

Anyway, I hope I answered some of your questions and gave you some kind of help. If some of it made no sense, feel free to PM me and I'll answer any queries

Josh

About description: Use it where something needs attention drawn to it. Generally, we dont' need to know that the school is brick and the roof tan. But if the lockers are battered and covered with graffiti, that says something about the school and characterizes it a great deal. Also, when describing, don't just give us an infodump on what something looks like. Have the character interact with it.

Example of how not to do it:

Sally looked around. The cave was enormous. Stalactites hung from the ceiling and water dripped down their lengths methodically. Water. The cave had water. She would live.

Example of how to do it correctly (more or less):

Sally gasped and the sound echoed through miles of tunnels. The cave was enormous. Her flashlight beam couldn't even reach the far wall. As she ventured into the massive cavern, something wet splashed on her forehead. Shining her light upwards, she could see the long teeth of stalactites dangling hundreds of feet above her. Another drop hit her chin, and another splashed on her flashlight. Water. The cave had water. She would live.

About your main character: most of what they are doing will probably be important. You don't need to drag on about the little details, unless your character is obsessive-compulsive or something. For instance, you probably don't have to go through every step of their getting ready in the morning. (getting dressed, brushing teeth, combing hair, eating breakfast, etc.) Instead, you could just fast forward to whatever they are doing that day.

Example:

Calvin yawned and laid his head down on his desk. His alarm clock hadn't gone off that morning and he had slept in too late. His stomach growled. There hadn't been time for breakfast. Stupid alarm clock.

About your characters doing likely things: is it something that your character is likely to do? An average mother of four isn't going to suddenly pick up a gun and go rampaging through the city on a killing spree (barring zombie/alien invasions), but I'm sure that if there were someone attacking her children, she wouldn't hesitate the blow the buster's brains out. A schoolgirl probably isn't going to be able to command an army right off the bat and a hillbilly probably doesn't drink champagne.

A lot of your questions have to do with characters and their actions. The key is having characters that are people in and of themselves. The problem I mainly have with plotting is that I'll get the story the way I want it to, but then when I put my characters in it, they'll go through and change a whole bunch of stuff. That sounds silly (I mean, I'm the writer, right?) but it's true. Characters are people on paper and people tend to have minds of their own. Don't be afraid to let the plot meander about a little if the characters do something that you didn't think of but that is absolutely brilliant. You can always curb it back later on.

Mainly, my advice is don't expect it to be perfect the first time. Just get it down on paper and you can edit it later in the second draft (and third, if need be). Fun, yes?

Good luck with it!

~GryphonFledgling

A note on logicality:

Understand that your plot operates in a cause-and-effect mechanism. That is, whatever happens in Incident 1 sets off the events leading to Incident 2, which causes Incident 3 and so on. Have you ever seen the timeline in the CBS drama Without A Trace? That sort of linear diagram can be useful when plotting out a story.

You can also think of your story as having a 'burst of energy' that propels it forwards into the next scene, incident or crisis. It should gather momentum as the story progresses - of course, you should pace the speed of the energy to create lulls and pauses in between the action, but overall there should be an exponential rise in energy and momentum. The stakes should get higher, the tension should build and your story should grip the audience right to the very end.