I had a pastrami sandwich for dinner last night, and it wasn't good. What's wrong with the world?

How to write a full length (book, story, novel, screenplay, etc.)

1. Get an idea and write it down. Once you’ve gotten it and it won’t leave you alone, write down every scrap of inspired information you have about this idea. Write in on anything you can find, and write it as fast as you can. You aren’t writing a story. You aren’t even necessarily writing a list. Just put down everything in your head that meshes with this idea. Keep writing until you run out of steam. Generally that should be enough to help you pick back up when you get the nerve up to write again.

2. Organize your idea. Pick out important points that you see happening in your story. An easy way to do this is to follow a basic formula like Freytag’s Pyramid.

-Exposition

-Inciting Incident

-Rising Action / Complications

-Struggles and Growth

-Moment of darkness / Moment of loss / Moment of Recognition

-Climax

-Falling Action

-Denouement / Resolution

It is not requisite that you use these points to set up, but be aware that by the time you finish your story these points will most likely all be present. It is a story format that closely reflects life, learning, and growth, and so is extremely familiar to the human experience and. So it is sometimes easier to get these points out first since they will most likely be some of the points that you think of first.

3. Write down Key moments or ideas. These are the moments that you see happening in your minds eye. The little girl blowing a dandelion into a wind that carries the seeds into...? The epic battle that rages between two clans who rose from feuding brothers until two families finally destroy themselves with blood. A man who has lived with a woman for twenty years and she just finds out that he...? A poignant scene between two lovers. the funeral on a hillside frozen in time and covered with dust. The rise and fall of a heretical prophet. The rise and fall of a political party. The pain of being a double agent.

These are the moments and ideas that you write for. They may not be the moments that matter when you finish, but they will carry you to the next point.

4. Answer this little question.

Why in the world are you writing this? Why would anyone else be interested in what you want to write?

Here are a couple of possible answers.

a-I’m writing this to make money. The idea is very commercial and it’s been done before so I know people will like it still.

b- I’m writing this because I think that the current (Romantic Comedies, Spy Novels, Horror Flicks, Kids stories, Epic movies, thrillers, etc.) are becoming stagnant, and I think people will appreciate something new.

c. I eat drink and sleep this story, and I think that other people will catch on to my passion and make this a cultural phenomenon.

d. A message trapped for millennia has found out that it can come into this world by means of a writer from our realm. And if I don’t write it, it will force its way through another less good route.

e. (and this is the worst and best of all the answers.) I don’t think anyone will like or even appreciate what I have to say. But I have to say it. I don’t know how to live without telling my story.

5. Write.

6. Write.

7. Write.

8. Get a second opinion.

9. Rewrite.

If it’s not done by now, look at your answer from number 4, then go back and repeat steps 7 - 9.