Extremely Essential Basics, The Soul
- When you write, make sure you have a point or take a position. Every story has something to say. Even slice-of-life stories have their characters living a certain way shown as being either the right or wrong way to live. Whether you like it or not, you'll be taking a position against something and someone will disagree with you.
- Know that there are no real stories that are simply entertainment. Even action movies from the 80s and 90s have the main character fighting against some evil or corrupt person. This tells the moviegoer that (for example) drug cartels and military dictators should be fought against especially when lives are at risk.
- There is no such thing as subjective morality. You will say something is objectively good or evil even if you think you're just giving your opinion. For example, the nonreligious will say that organized religion and God shouldn't be listened to or at the very least aren't worth looking into, which devalues it. If you don't know why this is important in writing fiction, then you clearly don't know the value of truth and I'll have to ask you to really think about why truth matters and why there's always one truth in reality rather than multiple truths that are either all true or all unimportant.
- Know if you actually want to be a writer or better yet if it's what God wants. Only some people should write even if you think you can write something decent and have done so. Think about how many people there talk about things they don't really know, but talk nonetheless because they think they know enough. Think about the times you've done the same and embarrassed yourself as a result.
- You're writing fiction and not a lecture. This goes without saying, however, in light of how recent fiction is being written it needs to be said. You should make the story interesting to read so that even if the reader doesn't catch or agree with the themes of the story then they may at least may recommend it to another person for its entertaining world and interesting events. If you want to lecture someone on a topic in a blunt way, then write nonfiction. Fiction should be used in a way to entertain as well as teach.
- Do not write pornography or stories made solely for shock value. Both devalue human life and are dangerous for the soul and people's views of sex and violence.
- Write without concerning yourself with fame, infamy, and fortune. You have little control over whether or not you'll get these things. Trust me when I say that when a single person recognizes your work for what it is then everything you've done will feel as if it were worth it.
Essential Basics, The Body
- Writing a simple story that's easy to understand is better than writing something complex or confusing with events happening out of order. If you're having trouble connecting events, then your readers will as well. Think of stories such as Kingdom Hearts or the popular Five Night's at Freddy's series that are too convoluted and complex for their own good to the point where most people don't have a good grip on what's happening and why. So, if their stories are hurt by their way of storytelling, what do you think will happen when you give it a go? If you do try, then you better plan your story out and connect events effectively and understandably.
- Write a story that you would read. If you aren't interested in what you are writing, then it will show in your work. A work deprived of love is something that is hated both by its consumer and maker.
- The accompanying artwork for your fiction should be eye-catching but not deceptive. Even if you're writing a story that takes place during a person's everyday life where they fall in love and nothing more, then at least put a design on the cover that gives an idea of the story, its point, or its characters. Also, an uninteresting front cover is an instant turn-off for most readers.
- Reread what you wrote after you've written it or at least have a grammar program or editor look over your work before you show it off. I admit that I've made lots of stupid grammar mistakes in my work, some of which might've made the story confusing or given the wrong idea if I didn't look over my work again. Sometimes you think you've written one thing, but you've redone it or come back to your work after some time and forgot where you were going with the story. This has happened to me more times than I'd like to admit and hopefully hasn't happened in this blog post, so be sure to double-check your work.
- Try not to write prequels. A good prequel gives the readers interesting information about preceding events to stories already told. A bad prequel gives useless information and has no stakes, especially for characters whose fates are already known by the readers. The recent Kenobi series is a good example of a bad prequel.
- Try not to write sequels to stories that have satisfying or definitive endings. In reality, stories in series can continue indefinitely, but if you keep trying to add stories to it where the stakes are either unchanged or go through the roof then you're just bloating the universe you've created and the reader will be disinterested in it. Think of the Dragon Ball series where the stakes and power levels kept getting so high that these things didn't matter anymore and people started to drop off it because it became too predictable and boring as a result.
- Don't retcon things that happen in the series or change the readers' perspective on events or how your series' universe works without good reason. Everything in the story needs to make logical sense and introducing a twist or change that contradicts previous information will take a reader out of the story and may ruin previous stories in your series.
- The world, the themes, and the characters should all seem like they fit together. Having a funny or light-hearted adventure in a horrifying world makes no sense unless you're trying to write a dark comedy or trying to say something about seeing the light in the dark. Going from something like Wonderland to Star Wars to Resident Evil will be jarring for anyone so imagine these series happening together when your pieces don't fit together.
- Your story should be a reasonable length. Some stories should be long, short, or somewhere in between depending on what's being told. Filling your story with useless events and information wastes your and your reader's time no matter how cool or important you think what you're adding is. Everything in the story should be important and not something that can be reasonably skipped over as if it never happened.
- You can take as much inspiration from other stories as you want, but don't implement plot points, designs, themes, etc. in the same exact way. If you decide to make your inspirations into your own story with various changes, then you may compromise it as if you took pieces from one puzzle and put it into another.
- Don't write sex scenes in your story. If you're going to imply or say that someone is having sex, then only mention them going to have it, mention what happens after it, or just mention it without going into specifics. Pornography is garbage and having elements of it bogs down and devalues your story and human life. Also, sex is a private action and not something that should be publicly shown anyways.
- Use big action scenes, overly edgy, nightmarish horror, etc. sparingly. Overly stimulating your readers will normalize the stick-out events of your story and everything will become boring and predictable if your rollercoaster of a story is just thriller without any build-up and slower sane moments.
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