Writing a Story

I remember that movie 'Never Been Kissed' the character Josie said that someone told her that to write a story you have to write something that you know. You cannot just write something without having any knowledge about what you are writing, so what you need to do is find your story. There are so many guidelines on how to write properly but you mainly need to focus on the main process and what you know best.

First there is what we call the Prewriting; this is the first stage of writing, this includes planning before writing your first draft. In Prewriting you collect ideas, details, make a plan, your target audience, then you find and develop your subject.

Ernest Hemingway once said "My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing." Before you write your prewriting will occur in your mind, we think and think but to put this on writing you have to make a lists, notes and outlines.

• Choose a subject that interests you.
• Choose a subject that most likely capture the interest of your readers.
• Choose a subject that you can cover thoroughly using your own knowledge or a subject that you can research with.
• When you already have a subject, limit this to one person or one example that represents that subject. You need to have a limited time, place, event, condition and purpose.
• After deciding on a subject you should then start collecting information about your subject, in collecting you need to observe and use your senses, sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings associated with your subject to bring your subject to life.
• Then you need brainstorming. Write the subject on a piece of paper, brainstorm about facts, examples, incidents, reasons, connections and associations. You can also do clustering in which you can connect ideas rather than list them. This is most likely a diagram of your ideas.
• Then inquiry, ask questions that begin with who, what, where, why, when and how, these will help you develop your subject.
• Then organize your details by classifying and ordering. To classify you have to check thoroughly to limit and choose the category that is exactly for your subject. Then ordering, this is arranging and compiling all your details, like which is first, then second and etc.

In drafting, you have to draft each part of your story, you have to draft the introduction, write a clever idea that will interest your reader to draw them into reading more.

• Then you have to draft the body of your story, the body of the paper should be well organized, and each paragraph should include a topic sentence that supports the main idea of your story.

• Then you need to draft your conclusion, this should include the memorable image or idea that your readers will remember.

• This is the stage when you have to rethink what you have written and rework it for you to increase the clarity, fluency and power of your story.

• You can add ideas and details, when you look in your draft you can check whether you need to elaborate further.

This is also the time when you can rearrange and delete check if all are in order and if you need to remove some details. You may also need to substitute some words, if any part of your draft seems confusing think of a simpler way to express the same idea.

• This is the stage which you polish your work by correcting errors, grammar, usage, mechanics and spelling.

• Find sentence fragments, it is helpful to begin with subjects and verbs because they are the foundation of every sentence.

• Use a book to consult your grammar if you are unsure of some things.

• This is the final stage in the writing process, when you publish your work; make sure you present it neat in final form.

• You can ask someone first to read your story, and or read your story for yourself.

If you have problems with any of the steps in this article, please ask a question for more help, or post in the comments section below.

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