Before reading, you can find my bias here.

Beginning with writing stories is an endeavor. Especially at a later age. You know what a story looks like, but you don’t know how to construct one for yourself. Maybe you’ve stared at a blank page, your head brimming with ideas you didn’t know how to get down on the page. Maybe you’ve been worldbuilding for years. Maybe you’ve researched the hobby extensively, and felt like you were drowning in all the advice. Or maybe you simply decided to pick up a new hobby one day, and writing was as good as any.

Whatever your reason for being here, welcome!

Disclaimer

I’ve been writing stories since I could pick up a pen and have never stopped. I don’t know much about starting with writing at an older age, but this is still advice I wish I could tell my younger self when they were struggling to put coherent words down onto the page.

What is story writing?

This might a simple question, but you’d be surprised at how often people stall with this.

Story writing is the act of creating fictional narratives about people (or fey, cats, or dinosaurs) doing things.

Worldbuilding isn’t story - still a valid hobby.

Plotting isn’t story - still important for some people.

Rewriting isn’t story - still important for a better story.

And today, my goal is to get you to write stories.

Step 0: Have or get at least 1 story idea

If you don’t have a story idea, open a document or grab a pen, and write down why you got inspired to write stories. Do you want to create epic, sweeping tales like Tolkien or GRRM? Do you want to make money? Do you want to write romances? Do you want to see your two favorite fictional characters interact? Great! Write it down.

Then make a list of things in stories you enjoy. Chosen ones? On the list. Complex character psychology? On the list. That moment realization that one character is in love with another? On the list.

Now, your first story doesn’t have to be complex. You want to write the moment a character in love with another? Great, you now have an idea, you can proceed to step 1.

If you’re still stuck with no ideas, maybe go consume media instead until you have an idea of what you do want to write.

And if you still have no ideas after that, consider if you want to be a writer or just want to have written/published a story.

Step 1: Infodump

Once you have acquired at least 1 story idea, or a nugget of a story idea, or a vibe for a story, you’re going to write down everything you know about this story right now.

If you have more stories and are indecisive, write down everything you know about all of them.

This infodump doesn’t have to be pretty. It can be incredibly vague, even. It’s just a measure to get you out of your head and see the story idea in front of you.

And if it looks like:

• Romantic candlelit dinner
• Long moonlight walks
• Kiss on a balcony
• Family conflict (?)

That’s more than fine! You’re going to expand on it in the following steps.

Step 1.5: Pick a story idea

If you’re staring at your list of story ideas going ‘I don’t know which one to pick’, this is the moment you are going to have to pick one to flesh out.

Pick the one with the most information about it, or the one you’re most excited about, or roll a dice to pick. Whichever method you use, you’re going forward with one story idea from this step onwards.

And if you find out that you aren’t excited about it down the line, you can pick another one then.

Step 2: Ask yourself questions

Now that you’ve picked your single story idea, you’re going to ask yourself questions. These are very boring questions.

If we take our list from before:

• Romantic candlelit dinner
• Long moonlight walks
• Kiss on a balcony
• Family conflict (?)

The questions I’m going to ask are:

• What is obvious, based on my infodump?
• Who is the protagonist(s)?
• When does this take place?
• What is the genre?

For example, my notes could look like this:

• Obvious things:
  • There is a balcony, this probably implies a castle or something stately
  • This a romance
  • The family conflict is probably what keeps my characters apart for the duration of the story
  • This is going to rely heavily on vibes and atmosphere and description to set the scenes
• This story is about two lovers (I’m deciding now I want to write a gay romance)
• The location is a castle. Probably medieval vibes?
• Definitely romance. Maybe romantasy? Court intrigue? I’m not sure yet

Step 3: Research genre conventions

Okay, so in last step, you decided that you’re writing a particular genre. Now google is your best friend. What is typical in this genre? What do readers expect? Especially if this is your first story, at least knowing what is expected in the genre your writing is important.

This is also the moment you can decide on a sub-genre or specific presentation of your genre, to drill down on your specific story.

For my gay romance, I can find the following:

• Romance has a happy ending, or a happy for now
• Romance had two leads chasing one another for their happy ever after
• Romance is about 70k to 80k for contemperary romance

As for the sub-genre, I can decide on romantasy, but that’s not the sub-genre I’m interested in. Instead I might want to look at something like Friends to Lovers, or Enemies to Lovers, Pretend Relationship, Secret Relationship, etc.

For this story, I might want to write a secret relationship romance in a a castle. That’s going to guide my story going forward.

If you’re a pantser, this is the point I’d stop fleshing things out and just write. If you’re not sure what you are, you can continue onto the next steps. If you find you get less and less excitement as you continue fleshing things out, you’re probably a pantser.

Step 4: Find the system

I have developed a personal methodology for stories. If you don’t know where to start, and ‘the beginning’ is too vague, you can borrow my methodology until you figure out your own.

System is the force pressing down against your characters. This can be a family, a school, or a galactic empire.

For my gay secret romance, I want societal/family expectations to be the main driving force. I definitely want there to be rules around marriage and courtship.

Step 5: Flesh out the people

People are the occupying force of your story. They’re the thing that makes the story a story instead of a worldbuilding exercise or an essay.

You’re going to start with listing every character you might possibly need. They don’t need names yet, but they do need one thing: Their system role, and, if you have it, their story role.

So for my gay secret romance, I’m going to make decisions about my characters:

• Prince, Protagonist
• Prince’s Guard, Protagonist
• King, Prince’s father, Antagonist
• Queen, Prince’s mother, Antagonist
• Prince’s best friend, Ally and Co-conspirator
• Guard’s mentor
• Prince’s betrothed, Antagonist
• Price’s betrothed’s parents
• Various court gossips
• Various castle worker gossips
• The cook, ally

They don’t have to be big characters, but just a list of ‘potentially useful’ is already invaluable.

Just from this list you can see the story take shape. Queen, King and Betothed oppose the Prince, and the Prince wants to elope with his secret boyfriend, his guard.

If you want to, you can make a note on personality, any defining traits, or whatever you know about this person already. This is also where you can start naming people, if you haven’t done so already.

Step 6: Care

Care is the way your characters show they are interested in another person. This is useful in just about any kind of story that involves character interaction, especially romances, friend groups, families, and team-ups.

How do your characters show care?

What items do they use to show this?

Maybe the prince is very big on useful material gifts, which the guard loves when he gets new saddle bags, but the betrothed doesn’t when she gets a new comb instead of a broche to show off.

Maybe the guard is a protector, not hesitating to throw himself in front of his prince to protect him.

Maybe the best friend pulls practical pranks to cheer the prince up.

Step 7: Plot

You have, by now, a pretty clear idea of what your story contains, but you want to actually have a progression in your story. If you’re not excited to write because you don’t know the over-all shape, you go on to plot. If you are brimming to write, skip to Step 8.

Plot is a sequence of events in chronological order. For structure, you can look online for plot structures.

Some structures are:

• Save the Cat (writes a novel)
• 3-act story structure
• 27 chapter method
• Hero’s Journey
• 5-act story structure
• Genre-specific plot structures

If you don’t feel like looking online, you can borrow this simple shape:

• Opening
• Inciting incident
• Progression markers
• Midpoint
• Progression markers
• Climax
• Ending

Depending on your chosen story, you’ll have more or less progression markers, and depending on your way of outlining, you’ll have a different idea of what each plot point does.

For example, for my secret romance, I would look at romance story structure, of which there’s plenty to find online, and I’d end up with a rough list like this:

• Opening/inciting incident: Prince hears he has to marry Betrothed
• Inciting incident/meet cute: Prince travels to the betrothed’s castle, meets his new assigned bodyguard, the guard
• Progression markers: Prince and Guard grow closer, while Prince and Betrothed grow to loathe each other more and more
• Midpoint: Prince admits love for Guard
• Progression markers: Fallout of love confession, changing relationships, maybe one person figures it out and has opinions but gets bribed into secrecy
• Climax: Prince has to marry Betrothed, but doesn’t want to, runs away with Guard
• Ending: Living quietly as normal people in a city

Step 8: Write

You knew this was coming. You have your situation, you have your people, you have the way they show they care, you maybe have a rough plot.

Now put them down onto the page. Start anywhere. The boring day, the day everything changes, the climax, whichever moment is in your head, and put it down with whatever words you have to describe it.

Doesn’t have to be pretty. Just get it down.

Congratulations! You’re writing.

Now do this for however many words your story contains.

Revision comes later. Story comes first.

Good luck!