How to Write a Great Story (Even if You Don’t Think You Can)

…regardless of your previous writing experience or current skill level

I’ve been gifted with possibly the greatest tribe on earth. And part of that gift are the email comments I receive on a daily basis. I’ve got a collection of over a thousand replies to a simple question I ask every reader.

The number one response I get, is something that revolves around self-doubt and either being unable to finish a story (because the writer feels she doesn’t have the time/discipline/[insert excuse her]), or being unable to start a story (because the writer doesn’t feel good enough/doesn’t know which of her 943 ideas to write/[insert excuse here]).

Trust me. You’re good enough. Have you seen the national bestsellers in the grocery store? You can do better. If some of that birdcage-liner can reach the NYT list, you can write a story that will make you proud.

My heart goes out to these folks. I can see them all working hard, nearing the end of a great idea, pulling a bad case of impostor syndrome, and dumping the entire story in the trash before it’s done.

I’ve done it too. Many times.

I picture a huge graveyard of unfinished fiction — all those incredible ideas — and not one reader will be able to enjoy them, because the stories died before the end.

This will be a long article. Probably the longest I’ve written to date.

Keep this one for later, especially if you’re a new writer.

I will probably turn this into a more-official document for people in my tribe, but these are the bones of my writing process. I hope it helps you too, even if you’ve written for awhile, this may help your productivity.

This is a guide to writing a good piece of fiction. Once you nail fiction you can write anything. As both a fiction and non-fiction writer, I can tell you fiction is 10X harder to do well. If you can write fiction you can write anything. Or as they say in the movie Dodge Ball, “if you can dodge a wrench, you can write a novel…” or something like that.

Here’s your blueprint for a great story.

Your assignment

I want you to write one twelve-paragraph short story. When you’re done with the first one, I want you to write another. After that, well, you get the idea. The plan is to write a new short story every week for 52 weeks. Some will be terrible. Many will be average. A golden few will be great.

We don’t get to choose the quality of a story before we write it. The greatness part is up to the reader. We don’t have any story until we finish it. So, the goal is to force yourself to write a short story a week.

Whether you want to or not.

Whether you feel like it or not.

Whether or not you think you’re a good writer, or you’ve got the skills to pull this off.

You won’t know until the story is done. And you will finish. You will act as a professional throughout this process.

This is the Ray Bradbury method.

Ray tells us “no one can write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

…and I believe him.

I’ll give you the entire framework — step-by-step, so don’t freak out. There are many ways to write a story. This is one. There are many rules to writing, yet there are zero rules. Start with these, then develop yours.

But you could write your entire career using this method I’ll share with you, and never change your style. This framework will help prevent you from writing yourself in a corner.

I get it.

We all want a shiny novel on our shelf, with our name on the spine. But if you start with a novel, you set yourself up to fail. A novel is the marathon of writing. We don’t start a marathon without a jog around the block first. Then a half-mile. Then a mile etc. You’ve got to fight many inner-demons in the process (in addition to knowing your craft).

Instead, let’s start with a short story first.

Shorts are harder than long stories in many respects, because we’ve got to learn to write tighter. So, if you can get through the boundaries of a short, you’ll be conditioned for all the inner-hurdles of the novel marathon.

As a bonus, if you really follow this process, you’ll have 52 short stories when you’re done. You can publish these in multiple volumes, give them away to your email subscribers, or re-purpose them as marketing content all over the web.

You can even use this idea as your groundwork for a NanoWrimo session.

This is the power of cumulative effort.

Are you qualified to be a writer?

Yes.

You’re reading this, so you care more than the folks who sit and dream about being writers.

You took action.

Let’s take some more action. Finish a great story.

Plotter or panster?

There are 2–2.5 general categories of authors, plotters and pantsers. Plotters like to create an outline before they write. They want a road map. They want to know what will happen before they write the story.

Pansters write by the seat of their pants. They start with a blank page and go from it was a dark and stormy night, all the way to the end, without having a clue what will happen before it happens. I’m a hybrid author… a plantser, I guess (worst name ever.. I prefer Mechanic). I don’t use an outline, but I do use a framework, so I don’t miss the major milestones in my story.

I will teach you the framework.

You can apply this technique no matter what type of writer you are. If you are the most hardcore pantser, it would do you well to at least memorize this framework, so it’s in the back of your mind as you craft your story.

No one like wasting words and writing into a corner.

We don’t have time for corners. We’re busy. We need to use our writing time as efficient as possible, no matter where we are as a writer. The more stories we finish, the more our confidence grows.

I’ve never found confidence from unfinished stories (only the done ones)… and I’ve got a lot of them. I want you to learn from my mistakes.

Where do you get the idea for your first story?

Chances are, you’ve got a few already or your wouldn’t be here, but one of my favorites is to use examples I’ve experienced (or heard) in real-life, then distorting the hell out of them to add twists and turns.

What do I write?

Many new writers keep these giant idea notebooks, stuffed with story ideas. For this, I want you to stay away from that notebook. That thing will do nothing but cause you trouble.

The best story ideas will stick with you.

For the first assignment I want you to go out in the wild, maybe a big box store, and watch real people in their natural environment.

All you need is a spark of an idea. Use as few characters as possible for this project. One would be great, three at most. This will not be your next Harry Potter or Game of Thrones.

Take something from reality and contort it into a short, fantastic story. Use as few locations as possible. Remember, this is a twelve-paragraph assignment, not a novel — yet. Think of the best idea you can and run with it. Keep the notebook shut.

I want you to write the idea all the way through, even if you doubt yourself. You’ll end up with something between 300–3,000 words. Probably around 1,000. Here, you’re training your brain to finish the work. This will not be anything you’ll publish. Next week’s story will be better than this week’s.

It’s a process.

You can’t skimp on the process.

First we condition our brain to do the work, like an athlete. Later, we hone our craft. It’s like all the people who follow the diets of ultra-athletes with 5% body fat, but they fail to exercise more than once a month.

Start with the core principles. Once you master them, the rest of your writing will come easier.

Don’t touch that writer’s notebook. Not today. Maybe not ever.

Write the premise

Entire books can be (and probably are) written about the premise alone. For simplicity (and I like simple), think of your premise as the movie guy voice in the background, as you watch an upcoming trailer… “in a world where…”

Your premise is a couple sentences that tell us what your story is about.

There are no spoilers — just enough information for the reader to make a decision: Is this something I want to read?

You don’t have to be a premise expert. You’ll get better with time. If you create a premise a week for 52 weeks, you’ll be so good at articulating your story’s message, you can do it for any story.

If someone asks you what you book is about, you’ll be able to rattle the story in any condition. Elevator, bus, or elephant.

How to write a premise:

Complete a couple sentences to fill-out this framework before you write your story —

[When] some event sparks a character to action, that [main character acts] with deliberate purpose [until] that action is opposed by an external force,[leading to] some conclusion.

When you get really good at uncovering the essence of your story, before you write it — you force your mind to think about the angles of your writing before you write yourself into a corner.

Will you be great at your first premise? Nope.

But the second will be better than the first.

I wrote a lot more about the premise in this article:

The Hero’s Journey

Maybe you already know it. Maybe you’ve seen a blockbuster movie or TV show in your life. Perhaps you understand the human condition. No matter your experiences, you’ve encountered the Hero’s Journey hundreds (if not thousands) of times in your life.

The HJ is a series of 12 major milestones in almost every great story ever written. There are people who argue against using this method. More power to them.

If you someday wish to be a commercial writer, with books that appeal to more than a hundred niche readers, you can do much worse than follow the Hero’s Journey.

Note: If you want to go much deeper with the HJ, check our Joseph Cambell’s book, A Hero with a Thousand Faces, or watch his special with Bill Moyers on Netflix. Campbell brought the Hero’s Journey to the world.

…but you don’t need all that homework to get started.

I want you to write a paragraph for each point along the Hero’s Journey. I will list them below. One paragraph. No more. No less. This will be hard, but if you can do a bunch of these, a novel will come much easier for you.

We’ll model our short story in the three act structure. Beginning. Middle. End.

You can divide the middle in two parts if you wish, but almost every novel, every movie, and every play fit this three act method. It’s probably best not to fight what has worked for other writers for centuries.

The Hero’s Journey:

Act I (the ordinary world)

1. The Ordinary World: We start with the world as it is before the story begins. What does the regular world look like? We meet the hero. What does the hero look like in her natural habitat, doing her regular things. Show her good and her flaws. We need flaws to believe she’s legit. We get a hint of the McGuffin (something very important — even a person, wanted by both the hero and villain).
2. Call to adventure: This is the big boom. The inciting incident. What big thing happens to the protagonist's world that sparks her into action? Here we meet the villain. The villain takes the McGuffin. The bulk of the story is spent trying to get it back.
3. Refusal of the call: The call to adventure is not easy. We’d prefer the comfort of the ordinary world. In this scene the protagonist talks herself out of taking action.
4. Meeting the mentor: We all need help. Our protagonist needs help too. Here’s a mentor that kicks the protagonist in the butt, convincing her it’s crucial she takes action, because no one else is suitable for the job. The mentor is a great complimentary character, with some skills or abilities the hero does not possess.

Act II (the extraordinary world/the underworld)

5. Crossing the threshold: Once the protagonist chooses to take the adventure, there’s no going back. We now enter the extraordinary world. This is the opposite of the ordinary world.

6. Test, enemies, allies: In a novel there will be many battles, loyalties, and teams built. In this paragraph, the hero builds a team of loyal helpers to defeat the villain and get the McGuffin back.

7. Approach: The calm before the storm. Here, the team gets ready to battle the villain. There’s a pause in the tension as we watch everyone gear-up

8. The abyss — death and rebirth: (this is roughly the halfway point of your story) This battle will either literally or figuratively, damage your hero. We see the villain at her best/worst. This is an exact moment of opposites, compared to the simple, ordinary world. This can also be called “the dark night of the soul.”

9. Reward — seizing the sword: The hero wins the battle and grabs the McGuffin (the thing most-coveted by both the hero and villain). There is much high-fiving and back-slapping. The villain limps away quietly, or dies…

Act III (back to the ordinary world)

10. The road back: Our hero makes her way back home. She thinks everything is fine. The villain seems to appear from nowhere, in one, final battle. We think the hero is killed (literally or figuratively)

11. The resurrection: The hero wins the final battle, severely wounded. The dust begins to settle and she takes stock of what’s left in her life.

12. Return home with the elixir (ordinary world again): The hero returns home, from whence she came. But a small part of the old her died. She returns permanently changed, due to the near-death and subsequent resurrection.

This framework isn’t just for thrillers and action stories. You can apply this framework to any genre.

Once you become familiar with the Hero’s Journey, add to your studies as your grow in your craft. There’s a lifetime’s-worth of information out there and every writer has a slightly different take on it.

Remember, there are no writing rules.

Start with a bang

Begin in the middle of something big. We don’t care how you got there. Start late, finish early. Just like the cop shows. We see the detective on scene. Not how she got dressed and spent two hours in traffic.

I want to be engaged with the first sentence or I won’t read the second one.

Slowly increase the tension as the story progresses. Yes, we start with a bang, but then we turn the knob down to a simmer — slowly increasing the knob until we get to the final battle.

Don’t keep the tension at a level 10 all the time.

Raise our heart rates. Give us a little release. Raise it even more.

A note on dialogue

Again, volumes have been written about dialogue. Here, I’ll give my five dimes to get you started, but don’t take this as gospel. Remember, you’re here to make your own writing rules.

These rules work for me. They might work for you too.

1. Write less dialogue than you think — most communication is non-verbal.

It depends on the people talking — how well do they know each other? You need to think about the relationship, because it will affect the formal-ness/informal-ness of the conversation.

2. Avoid inner-monologue.

Use action instead. Pretend we can’t hear what’s happening in the hero’s mind. I used to think inner-monologue was a great way to write, with paragraphs in italics.

Now I think inner-monologue/thought-writing is lazy. Now I see it everywhere and it makes me throw books in the trash. One of the biggest names in fiction uses this as a crutch and I can no longer read his books. OK, done with the soapbox.

Use inner-chatter if you wish, but you’ve been warned. Show actions instead. We’ll understand what she was thinking.

3. Don’t use complete sentences

Instead of “what would you like for dinner tonight?” we write “dinner?”

Instead of “Shawn, are you OK? That bump on your head looks something awful!” We write, “you OK?”

4. Don’t use any dialogue tags but asked and said

“We got any mustard?” asked Shel.

“Your face looks pre-punched. Ugly as hell,” said Arthur.

The rest can be taken care of with action instead of adverbs. We don’t need hurriedly, or grumpily, or quickly… skip all those. Many times you don’t need tags at all.

Ensure we know who’s speaking and all you need is the dialogue, with a couple occasional tags to keep us in line.

Example:

Shel kicked a foot atop the barstool.

“This place hasn’t been washed since Nixon.”

The bartender rolled her eyes.

“Mop’s in the back, Martha Stuart.”

Shel crossed his arms and hrumphed.

“Could be cleaner, is all.”

See, no tags needed. This doesn’t always work, but you definitely don’t need saids and asks after each line. We’ll lose our minds trying to get through the conversation.

Look to reality.

Watch how people interact.

Men and women communicate differently. Your dialogue should reflect this.

Write less dialogue than you think you should. Be ruthless in your editing. We speak a lot less than you think. Break up long bits of dialogue with action. No one likes to read a long conversation that rambles (about as much as we want to here Doyle’s story about his new fence, while we’re trying to make copies for that meeting in five minutes).

A note on the antagonist/villain

The villain doesn’t think she’s a villain. We’ve all got our motivations and the villain has hers.

We must sympathize with the villains plight (even if a little) to make us feel the character is believable. Just as our hero has flaws.

The villain is the antithesis of the hero. Just like the extraordinary world is the opposite of the ordinary world.

The villain can’t be all bad, nor all stupid, nor does she lose every battle.

A note on the hero

The hero is not perfect — far from perfect. She’s filled with fatal flaws, she’s got a few superhero qualities we’ll learn as the story progress, too.

But it’s the flaws that we relate too.

If you character glides through the story without a bump, and solves each problem as it comes — you don’t have a story we want to read.

She’s got to break an arm.

She needs to lose her job.

She must have a bad allergy to tree nuts.

No one likes deus ex machina either (look it up). We want the hero to go through hell, so we don’t feel so bad about our own lives.

Remember, the hero should be the opposite of the villain.

A note on editing

I like the loop-editing method. When I’m done with a story, I’m done. Because I hate the editing process. This method might work for you too.

Although this won’t be exhaustive, here’s how it works:

1. Write the first paragraph.
2. Stop and read from the beginning, editing as you go.
3. Continue writing through the original paragraph and write a second.
4. Stop and read from the beginning, editing as you do.
5. Repeat this for all 12 paragraphs.
6. Re-write the end three more times once you’re done.

Here’s a more in-depth story I wrote about this process, using it for a novel. Many well-known writers use this process. Few will admit it.

This method is golden if the idea of editing hurts your stomach:

Doing the work

Write every day.

You’ve got seven days to write 12 paragraphs. That’s about two paragraphs a day, with extra time on the last day for editing. Or, write the entire thing in one sitting. The pace is up to you and your capacity to sit (or stand).

If you can get yourself into a writing schedule early, you’ll thank yourself later, when you start getting into novels and books.

I get many comments from writers who can’t find the time to write. To most of them I say, “if you really want to be a writer, you’ll find the time.” But that’s not a helpful comment.

If you’re really slammed for time, take a page from my book — use your phone.

Make a template with the premise outline and all 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey. Copy and paste the template for each new story document.

Use a Google Doc, so your story is auto-saved and available on all platforms. If you want to go pro, buy Scrivenir for your desktop and phone. It’s cheap. It’s pro-level writing software, but there’s learning curve.

Write the entire-week’s story on day one, and spend the other six re-writing the story. Once you reach days seven, your short will be 100X better than your first draft. I promise.

Now go. Off with you. Before I change my mind about publishing this

Write your first short.

Don’t share it with anyone.

It’ll be terrible. It’s supposed to be terrible. If it weren’t terrible you’re probably some kind of savant and I can’t help you. If you don’t think it’s terrible, it’s still probably terrible, but that’s OK too. You’ll write better stories and later realize how terrible the first one was.

Keep your terrible story as badge of honor, then write a second terrible story.

Remember Ray, “no one can write 52 bad short stories in a row.” It’s not possible unless you try to be bad.

For the rest of us, writing is a muscle. It atrophies with non-use. Writing is a lifetime vocation, not a goal. You don’t just write once and get good. You keep writing and get better.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention tribe-building.

As a writer you’ll need readers. The sooner you find them, the better. Preferably a long time before you publish your first book. There’s nothing worse than writing a book, then looking for readers.

You want them waiting. And salivating. For your first story. They want to be part of the writing process. They want to see your journey. Trust me.

While you can’t have my tribe, you’ll want to build your own readers’ tribe now, so you’ll have a rabid audience as you launch your future books.

This should be a list you own (instead of relying on social media or some other big-business platform). Tap the link below. Enroll in my Tribe 1K indie email masterclass. I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 subscribers (and your next 1,000) without spending one hot nickel on ads.

We’re waiting for you.

Enroll in my Free Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.