Chapter One: A Fast, Fun Way to Write Fiction

Table of Contents

Chapter One:

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1: What a Character!

Extras: Character Archetypes

Main Character Worksheet

Secondary Character Worksheet

Characters Checklist: General Checklist

2: GMC, OMG!

Extras

Character Examination Worksheet

GMC Checklist: General Checklist

3: It’s A Whole New World (Building)

Extras: Setting Worksheet

Fantasy World Building Worksheet

World Building Checklist: General Checklist

4: Wiggles And Arcs: Story Structure

Extras: Story Arc Outline

Scene Chart

Quick Scene and Sequel Summary:

Wiggles And Arcs Checklist: General Checklist

5: Movin’ On Down The Road: The Hero’s Journey

Extras

Hero’s Journey Checklist: General Checklist

6: Pov: Who Me? How Should I Know?

Extras: Pov Exploration Writing Exercise

POV Scene Ground Exercise

Pov Checklist: General Checklist

7: Dialogue: He Said What?

Extras: Dialogue Tips

Dialogue Exercise: Strip!

Dialogue Checklist: General Checklist

8: Show And Tell

Extras: Show And Tell Exercise: Livin’ It!

Show And Tell Worksheet

Show And Tell Checklist: General Checklist

9: Editing: Did I Do That?

Extras: Final Writing Checklist

Bonus Chapter: Beginning Your Novel

When Starting a Book Don’t Forget:

Conclusion

Bibliography

About the Author

Books By Meredith Bond

CHAPTER ONE

A Fun, Fast Way to Learn to Write Fiction

Meredith Bond

Copyright © 2011 Meredith Bond

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Please visit my web site at www.meredithbond.com for more information.

Published by Anessa Books, www.anessabooks.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank Leslie Ruby at Frederick Community College for giving me the opportunity to teach wonderful classes there and for coming up with such a terrific title. I’d also like to thank Jeannine Covington, my editor, who did a meticulous job on this book. Any grammatical or punctuation mistakes are entirely my own fault for not following her excellent advice. And finally, to my husband for his unending support.

INTRODUCTION

Do you love to read a good story? Do you wish you could write your own? Have you ever started writing a story and then got bogged down and didn’t know where to go after the first page or two or five? Well, this book is going to help you.

I’m going to guide you in writing not just a good story, but a great one. I’m going to teach you how to engage your readers and have fun while you’re doing it. Now, don’t think for a minute that this is going to be a breeze—writing is hard work! It takes a lot of time and energy. But it can also be fun and exciting. You get to create people and whole new worlds, and then you get to live in that world and interact with those people. You decide where those people go, what they do, and what they say. You put thoughts into their minds, give them a history and a life—you make them into real people. In this story of your own creation, what you want to happen is what’s going to happen and I’m going to show you how to get started.

With this book, you are essentially going to be taking the writing course I teach. Each chapter in the book equates to one class. In class, my students and I discuss and learn about the day’s topic and then, in almost every class, I give out a worksheet (or two) to help the students organize their story and put what they’ve learned into practice.

Because you’re reading this and not having to listen to me while I’m standing in front of a classroom, you get to take this class any way you want. You don’t have to listen to my entire lesson. You can go directly to the meat of each idea by reading The Basics, which gives you just the basic idea of the lesson, and then skip to the end of the chapter and get started on the worksheet. Or, if you want or need more information on any topic, you can read The Details and get the whole lecture, all of my explanations and examples. Or, you can do both—first, learn the basics and try to do the worksheet; then, if you get stuck or don’t understand something, you can go back and read through the details where, hopefully, all of your questions will be answered. However you choose to use the book is the best way for you do it.

I believe that the easiest way to learn how to write fiction is by starting with the bigger concepts first. For this reason, my first course, and the first half of this book, deals with those—characters; goal, motivation, and conflict; setting; story structure; and the hero’s journey. With these basic building blocks you can get started either writing or just planning your story. The second half of this book (from chapter 6 onward), which corresponds to my second writing course, I get into more of the detail— point of view, dialogue, show vs. tell and editing. But as they all say, it’s best to start at the beginning.

Speaking of the beginning—where do you begin when you start to write a story? I like to begin with the characters, and so that is where I begin this book. You might like to begin with the plot. If so, start with the chapter on story structure; that’ll help you get your plot going and then you can go back to the chapter on characters when you start working on them. You should feel free to start wherever in the book you like—but do be warned, I sometimes refer back to previous chapters, so if you start in the middle, you just might find yourself flipping back to figure out what something means.

And one last note—you’ll notice that I switch back and forth between the male and female pronoun when referring to characters. Please read it in whatever way you feel most comfortable or is appropriate for your character. Likewise, I frequently refer to the hero of a novel; please assume that I mean the heroine as well. Unfortunately, English is an inherently sexist language—when we say man, we mean man and woman. Please read it in that light.

Reading a novel takes you on a wonderful adventure into someone else’s imagination; writing your own story is even better because you get to go on a fabulous adventure into your own imagination. Be wild, be wacky, be sweet or romantic, be brave and strong and daring, or be cruel and nasty. But whatever you do, have fun because if you are having fun writing your story, you can be pretty sure your readers are going to have fun reading it.

Enjoy!

Merry

Addendum: While the information in this book I wrote a number of years ago still holds up to the test of time, happily technology (and my skills with it) have advanced. The worksheets in this book have been made into a workbook (available wherever you bought this book). Through the workbook, you will also have access to all the worksheets on-line as fillable PDFs. I encourage you to take a look and see how useful that can be. Thanks!

1

WHAT A CHARACTER!

THE BASICS

Harry Who?

I start my planning process with characters because they are the most important part of any story. Without characters, you wouldn’t have a story because there’d be no one acting out your fabulous plot. Imagine Harry Potter without Harry, a Stephanie Plum novel without Stephanie, or Artemis Fowl without Artemis. You just can’t do it. These books don’t exist without their heroes. They are what the book is about, for the most part. Yeah, it may be about magic or another world or even a murder, but the reason we read these books (and many others) is to get to know the heroes and, maybe, live in their shoes for a time.

So, you’ve got to start your story with the characters who will enact it. You need to know who your hero is and your villain. You need to know where they come from and what they want. You need to know what sort of person they are, how they talk, and what happens when they get mad. At the end of this chapter is a basic worksheet for getting to know your main characters and a quickie for your secondary characters. In the next chapter, we’ll get into more details about your characters, get to know them a little better, and have a more detailed