How to Join Pieces of a Story
A story is a wonderful thing. It creates an adventure for us to go on, all without having to leave the house. It makes our lives a little more interesting. It can get rid of the monotony of a day. But really, why does it?
The answer to that is quite simple. A story has many interesting elements that all join together to create the main theme. Otherwise a story would be quite uninteresting and predictable if there was only one idea.
Not to say a story can’t start from one idea, but adding more will alway be what happens in stories. You’ve never read a story that has only been about a war, but not what started it, or how someone was forced to enter a war, have you?
Probably not, and if so, the story was probably pretty boring. The point of all this is that a story has many elements that blend together to create a wonderful narrative, and I’m going to teach the best ways to join the pieces of a story together.
The Story is one of the main elements of a novel without it there would be nothing.
The first thing to remember when writing a story is to not wait for inspiration. Now this one is a little bit controversial, but trust me, and take the time and try it. You’d be surprised what you can come up with.
Of course leading to the second thing TAKE the time to come up with a story. These two go hand in hand. You kind of have to do both of these concepts and join them together, taking the time to come up with and write a story.
Of course, sometime inspiration will strike, and it’s important to use that. If it does, use the inspiration to join different parts together.
Without Characters there is no story, and without a story there are no characters. Characters and their development is a key to writing a story. They can join completely different parts together, and create connections between pieces that are missing.
Make sure to make characters interesting, funny, serious, good, and evil. There is an almost unlimited amount of things that make or break a character, and connect a story.
Now, I’m into a creative scenes as much as the next person, but you can’t just add them in willy nilly. You need to consider the point in the story. Will a different scene connect sections of the story, or will it seem out of place and odd?
The same goes for normal scenes. Will that specific scene help connect the last scene and the next scene? If not, then rewrite it so it does, or use a completely different scene.
An example is that if the last scene is about exploring the woods, and a scene after features a character in the hospital, maybe write a scene in between those two showing how a character became injured.
The pace is very important in a story. If it’s a horror, chances are the pace will be quick, with lots of action. If it’s a romance, chances are that the pace will be slower, building tension for the end when two characters inevitably get together.
So pace is important, but how can you use it to connect a story? well, it’s simple really. Most stories have at least two elements, or a mixture of genres. Like how almost all adventure stories have a little romance in them.
So you can use the pace to connect these sections. Faster paced for the adventure sections, and slower paced for the romance.
Dialogue is an important part of writing. It is how the characters express themselves to others, and how we can learn anything that happened off scene.
Maybe you didn’t want to write a scene showing how the character got from the woods to the hospital, and that’s fine. Instead you can connect those two sections using dialog.
The character can explain what happened to another character, thereby filling readers in and connecting two different parts of the story. It is a much faster solution to connecting a story as well.
This is a bit more complex of a way to connect parts of a story, so it is harder to explain and use, but it is worth it.
You can use the conflict of, say a rival at work, and that rivalry connect the work issue and continues into everyday life. Maybe the rival at work is so desperate to win a promotion that the character and them are up for that the rival summons a ghost.
Then the ghost is the next bit of conflict in the story. Using a rival from work to start a mess with a ghost is a good way to connect normal life to the supernatural section of the story.
Drama. Simple issues blown out of proportion. Maybe it’s something as simple as a missed birthday. And then, your character has unknowingly created drama that surrounds them.
Maybe the drama is what causes the next section of the story take place. An example is that your character’s family member whose birthday was missed refuses to come to a work event of your characters. This causes a series of events that lead to your character breaking a leg.
Then the broken leg prevents them from getting married at the moment.
This is a way you can connect a missed or cancelled wedding to normal life.
The climax of the story. Something authors both fear, and look forward to.
Now, let’s pretend there’s a story, and it’s at its climax. Let’s also say that the character discovers that their mentor, the person they’ve trusted the most, has been revealed as a villain.
This is a shocking turn of events, and a very good way to connect the story together. Maybe the mentor has done subtle, but strange things that were clues to them being evil, and that will connect the whole story.
If you do this, you will then reach the resolution. The resolution is the end of the story. Everything is over, but you still need to connect it to the rest of the story.
A good way to do this is to show the aftermath of everything. Maybe show a wedding finally happening if that was the problem. Nevertheless, you have now found out how to connect a story, from beginning to end.