Tips, tricks & discussions: How to make your story better

[fcukforcookies]

Hot to create a good villain or Turn to your dark side ^^

“Every villain is the hero in their own mind.”
Tom Hiddleston of his character, Loki.

Now note, that in this post I won’t include psycho/socio types. Here I wanna talk about completely sane villains.

I tended to have problems with writing, or even picturing a villain in my head, maybe because I just couldn’t relate. Most of us want to be heroes, right? We can easily find the motivation and qualities to ground the hero. It is not so easy with the villain.

The things you need to define for your villain, in order to create one are:

• Motivation
  And it’s that thing, where it is easy to fall into cliche motivations. Your villain might commit evil deeds to gain power, or get revenge. But who says you should go down this easy lane? I think in order to find your own kind of evil motivation, that will reflect you, as a writer, and also make the villain more appealing to the writer himself is to take his place .
  What you should understand is that regardless of how good you feel you are, all of us can be villains or evil from time to time . We all have these evil urges depending on the situation, or event or other things that are happening to us on a daily basis. Your colleague bashed you in front of your boss, and you shyly smiled, avoiding confrontation, while picturing how you strangle her to death. Not so dramatic, but I can bet it has happened to you at some point. The difference between you and the villain you want to create is that the villain won’t turn to the social norms, or empathy, or conscience. Just imagine what would you do, if your moral boundaries would lift? You won’t feel the guilt or care about other conviction. Your lack of morals or some twisted understanding will let you do these things, that you can only do in your imagination.
  I’m not telling you to become mean and nasty, but to get into your dark side long enough to know what makes a good villain. Giving your villain a motivation will make him more than a cardboard cutout.
  There have been countless studies where people have been asked if they’d commit crimes if they were guaranteed to get away with them, and the majority always say ‘yes’, whether the crime is something relatively harmless, like the theft of a chocolate bar, or something abhorrent, like murder. If there were no consequences, and we could gain something, we too might easily turn to the dark side. Think about it.
• Reasoning
  The thing you should keep in mind, that villains don’t usually think that they are evil. They think they are different, maybe that they understand more than average people. He/she is convinced that he/she is a good guy. Remember Tanos? He is convinced that he is doing the best for the world and that the world just doesn’t understand him. Hell, let’s take a look at the real-life villains, like Hitler. He was sure he is doing the right thing. So the villain must have reasoning within himself, why he thinks these actions he does are justified, although not accepted by society.
• History
  What made him this way? Why his way of thinking is different than of average person?
  Villains are people to whom terrible things have happened. Maybe when they were kids, maybe in adolescence, or later. At some point, rather than learning and overcoming something, their stopped developing empathy, or understanding or other qualities. On the outside, they may have many, if not most, of the same attractive qualities of your hero, like strength, or cleverness, maybe humor. But just under the surface, there are some qualities, that you can access in yourself only if you allow yourself to. Give in into temptation kind of thing
  
• Boundaries
  Now there are different kinds of villains. The spoiled high-school girl might be as evil as some superhuman in comic books. How far each of them can actually go, in order to achieve their goals? Usually, the more power you have, the fewer boundaries you have. Can he/she kill? Steal? Rape? Even villains have some things, that they won’t do, unless under heavy circumstances, and these boundaries sure may disappear in the story progress. Make this codex for your villain, define what would make him/her break it.
• Likeability
  Now your villain might be plain scary and horrifying. But why not make the reader more conflicted and emotional, by giving the villain likable traits? Maybe he is funny? Or loves animals? Or cares for his/her sick mother? His history might contain some facts, that may make us feel sorry for the villain, but why not grant him with something, that will make us like him. Love/hate relationship between the reader and the villain are the best.
  
• Horror
  Maybe you don’t want to make your villain too likable? Maybe you want to create him/her really scary.
  You can make your villain more interesting and frightening by avoiding cliches. Evil is creepier when it’s found in unexpected places and shapes.
  How do you feel about Harry Potter’s Voldemort? The main villain, with creepy appearance and a lot of evil shit done in past and present. I dunno about you, but he wasn’t that scary. You know he is evil, and that he can kill, and torture, but you’re not really afraid of him.
  And then there’s professor Dolores Umbridge. Personally, I found my emotions way more strong towards her, because she is something more real, something that can happen in real life, and something we sometimes can’t fight, due to subordination principle. She is a cruel, sadistic woman with a sugary voice and freaky pink outfits, and an office decorated with pictures of fluffy kittens. While her resemblance with real life was very frightening and causing strong negative emotions, her contradictory exterior made her very memorable.

Good to remember

• The villain must be worthy of your protagonist.
  What’s the point in creating a villain that doesn’t match your hero? The powerful villain will make your hero shine even more while giving them both a kick in character developing.
• The reader must like if not the villain himself but at least watching him in action
  He must be exciting, captivating, and create contrast in his and hero’s actions.
• Avoid creating completely evil villains .
  This concept of pure evil works of course in horror/monster stories, definitely not in drama, or fantasy.
• The villain should sometimes be kind.
  Because reader must like the villain in some point, and also because giving the villain humanly moments will make him more realistic. Even Voldemort expressed affection towards Nagini
  

Who’s your favorite villain ever?

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[ChaoticDeluge]

Darth Vader is an all time classic >.< for a very good reason.

Personally I’m particularly partial to some more recent villains like Eric Killmonger from Black Panther or Thanos. Especially Thanos.

I love villain writing and designing, it’s so much fun

[fcukforcookies]

Never been a fan of Darth Vader xD He’s too grumpy.

Love Marvel’s Loki.

I guess my all time favorite is Killgrave from Jess Jones. I dunno why, but his cruelty is entertaining.

[ChaoticDeluge]

Darth Vader was at his best in Empire Strikes Back to be fair, but he is very grumpy xD

I liked Killgrave too, even if I’m not the biggest fan of the Netflix marvel shows. It’s hard to not like David Tennant, but he tried his damnest. And obviously, yeah, Loki rules >.<

[Crazygirl]

Okay, honestly, this is EXTREMELY helpful. I wish I had this when I first started writing. But it gives me just as much help now, so thank you!

[fcukforcookies]

How to slay dialogues/monologues

Give a voice to your character

Imagine walking on the street, and asking for directions. Ask 5 or 10 different people, and you will get a different answer every time, maybe not in terms of reply content, but in a way, it’s told.
Even the “I don’t know,” answers will probably be different, even in a bit,
“Sorry, dunno.”
“No idea, man.”
“Get a map, moron.”

So the question is how does your character talk? Your speech is affected by various things:

• Your location - maybe your character is originally from France? Or the UK? Or some other part of your country, or state, where some kind of accent is used.
  I have a couple of characters in my story that came from other countries, or culture. To recreate their accent, I just look on the Internet about their speech specifics, some catchphrases, words etc.
  
• Educational level - now, here I don’t mean just what kind of education your character has. Your character might’ve read a lot of books all his/her life, and this affects your speech maturity a lot. So think about it - what kind of education your character has, was he/she a bright student (cause the fact you finished uni, doesn’t mean your speech is well rounded), does he/she read books, or maybe watch Kardashians?
• Age - like, is your character, like, a total teenager, or maybe a senior, who’s using a lot of anachronism words.
  
• Personality - is your character nervous, cold, flirty or simply rude?
• Your character’s relationship with the person she’s speaking with
  No one speaks to their boss as they speak to their husband or wife etc.
• Your character’s attitude toward the conversation topic . Maybe he/she is very passionate about the subject Like @NelidaU about Texas, or maybe they don’t want to talk about the subject at all and will try to tune it down.
• Mood - maybe your character is pissed, or tired or very happy.

All these things simultaneously affect your speech, so always think about them and analyze before writing dialogues.

Seems like a lot to take into account? There are certain ways to make it less complicated:

• First of all get in the habit of listening to how people talk . Just take a look around and take notes on how everyone’s way of speaking is different. This might give you some ideas on how to make your own characters speak.
• Get to know your characters well. And here we go again to the fact that you NEED to write character questionnaires.
• Once you have a clear vision of your characters - play out their conversations in your head. This is a kind of practice. Just put your characters in some kind of situation in your head and play the dialogue.
• Clean it up. Good dialogue is not always the same as the way people really speak. Repeat that a couple of times and change if necessary.

How to not bore your character with dialogues

Now some things I noticed in reviewed stories, that make a bad dialogue.

• A lot of unnecessary details
  In real life, we talk about a lot of unnecessary crap, but we are more invested since it is our life. It works much more different in stories, and especially in Episode stories. If your dialogue doesn’t contain important information or something that shows the essence of the character - you don’t need it.
  Dialogue shouldn’t be just for the sake of dialogue itself. It must show character personality, attitude towards others.

• Amy Schumer syndrome
  At least that’s how I call it. When authors try to make their dialogues funny and witty and forget that they’re writing a story, not a stand-up monologue. It’s fine to put a couple of jokes into dialogue, but when you make a complete dialogue made from jokes and “witty” comebacks only - it’s just doesn’t work. And it’s a legit thing, I’ve seen it in a way too many stories.

• Superficial dialogues
  By this, I mean dialogues, that seem to have zero personalization in them. Characters just say very common phrases, that doesn’t show any character trait.
  For example, you can answer differently on a question “Do you like tea?”
  “No, I don’t.” or “I’m indifferent to tea really, though I sometimes have it to be sociable.”
  It’s fine to keep short occasionally, but when it’s too often, or even always - the whole story gets kinda dull and boring. Little details matter.
  

• Cut dialogue in the right moment
  Now let’s check this example. How we tend to have dialogues in real life:

SHE: “Um, my car broke down and I left it on my work’s parking lot.”
HE: “I’ll take care of it.”
SHE: “You will? Great.”
HE: “Yeah, well, I’ll try.”
SHE: “Okay, great, thanks a lot. Appreciate it.”
HE: “Anyway, I should get back to making dinner.”
SHE: “Okay, then, talk to you later. And thanks again for the help.”
HE: “That’s nothing. All right. Got to go.”
SHE: “See you.”
HE: “Right, on Saturday.”
SHE: “That’s right. We’ll be there at six.”
HE: “Okay, see you then.”

If you do it this way, the reader is likely to stop reading, if he’s still awake. Learn to cut short, while grabbing the essence of dialogue.

When to write dialogue/monologue and when to sum it up?

It makes sense to write dialogues/monologues in case you want:

• To let the reader hear your character’s thoughts - basically, monologue.
  I feel like this thing is kinda abused in many Episode stories, and used a lot by some lazy authors, that prefer to write a 200-word essay instead of building a scene/flashback/memory using visuals. No need to show every possible thought. Write ones that show us character’s personality, or maybe a sense of humor on some occasions.
• When a conversation is a key event in the story . Basically, if your characters are chatting about the weather while they’re sitting in the cafe, that might just be background. But if your story’s about a teenager pregnant by bad boy vampire gang leader, the conversation where the guy proposes marriage/abort is probably a critical event that will change the direction of the story and must be present.
  
• As background, to set a scene - in tiny quantities. These dialogues might be a preparation for a more important part of the dialogue. Or. They could lack in the subject while showing important emotions. Like ex-lovers meeting for the first time in 5 years, and being really awkward and having a meaningless convo.

In other cases, it is best to just sum it up with narration.

What NOT to do in dialogues.

• Information stuffing
  “Hey, is that your mother friend’s cousin Peter, who dropped out of college to become a porn movie director, causing your father to have a stroke and diabetes?”
• Excessive babbling
  “Like, I was, you know. Like. Right. Okay, well. Um. What’s that? Right. Anyway.”
  
• Putting YOUR words in your character’s mouth
  “My mom called me a hoe because I have a sugar daddy, which made me cry because I’m an independent woman and still the victim of gender stereotypes.”

Hope you don’t need any explanation why these approaches suck but feel free to ask.

Summary

• Give each of your characters a different way of speaking
  Play out possible dialogues taking into account your character personality as part of the practice.
• Know when to use dialogue
  If it’s an important conversation, your readers will want to read it for themselves.
• Know when to cut it
  If a character talks for an hour about how his phone broke down, you can’t include the whole speech in your story. Instead, you can summarize it really short, without boring your reader.
• Feel free to mix dialogue and summary
  You can mix a few lines of monologue into a conversation to give readers the insight into your character’s thoughts. Just don’t put too many monologue lines, and make sure visuals stay at least a tiny bit dynamic, not just 2 characters standing in idle animations.
  
• Use animations .
  Often, people don’t express what’s on their mind directly. Instead, they hint at it in other ways. If a guy is attracted to some girl, he might not come out and say to her, “I like you” Instead, he might become shy and awkward around her. The best dialogue often has two levels, what characters are saying on the surface, and what they really mean.
• Use pauses
  Pauses in a conversation can be as expressive as what is said out loud. You don’t talk non-stop yourself. We think about what other people say, before saying something (mostly). During a pause, you can show the characters’ body language (aka animation) or what’s happening around them.
• Trim the unnecessary
  Real-life conversation contains a lot of polite filler, false starts, and repetition. If you include all of this in your written dialogue, it can get boring. Instead, you can include just enough to give the realistic dialogue, then cut the rest.
• Don’t pile on distracting dialogue tags
  Dialogue tags such as, “he whined,” “she commanded,” or “he queried”. This is not a book or Wattpad story. It’s Episode. We have animations for this stuff. And yes, I totally saw it being used in some stories.

NelidaU:

Dialogue is special, because it doesn’t have to be written perfectly all the time. As people don’t always speak perfectly in their language, they interject, they speak in fragments, DON’T BE too obsessed about making sure the dialogue is perfect English because it feels less natural sometimes.

For an example, “Time to make breakfast,” is technically a fragment, but totally normal for someone to say right? It is missing a verb, though. In perfect English, this should be, “It is time to make breakfast.” Depending on the character, they might always talk in perfect English like this, so it really also comes down to the fact that YOU HAVE TO KNOW THE CHARACTER YOU’RE WRITING FOR!

In order to help you figure out if your dialogue is good, a good thing to do (albeit maybe embarrassing sometimes LOL), say the dialogue out loud and see how it sounds to you. If it don’t sound right, make it right.

NelidaU:

However, if you are a’narratin’, you better watch ya dang grammar! >.>

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[fcukforcookies]

How to write a good major story plot without messing with the minor plot lines

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So first of all, what is the story plot?
A story’s plot is what happens in the story and the order it happens in.
The essence of the story is that something has to happen, something has to change. Something goes from some kind of change to its escalation, then climax moment and resolving the situation.

This change could be:

• A physical event . Start - MC is arrested for a murder, that he/she didn’t commit. The end - the real killer is found and MC is acquitted. Example: “Seven” movie.
  
• A decision . Start - MC is forced into arranged marriage. The end - MC decides to leave town with her family’s gardener. Example: “The Invention of Lies” movie
• A change in a relationship . Start - MC hates the guy/girl. The end - MC falls in love with him/her. Example: “Friends with Benefits” movie.
• A change in a person. Start - MC has some deep psychological problems and struggles with them. The end - MC goes nuts and blows up the small suburban town before riding into the sunset. Example: “Rocky Horror Picture Show” movie.
• A change in the reader’s understanding of a situation. A bit like the first example with the false accusation, but the difference is that in the beginning reader doesn’t know it, but only finds out the truth at the story end. Example: “Crimson Peak” movie… Maybe?
• This change might be as well the realization that nothing will ever change. MC has some kind of dream, that she is trying to achieve through the story with shifty success, and in the end, she realizes that she failed and can’t change anything. Example: “Requiem For a Dream” movie.

Basically, the plot is the road that leads from some kind of conflict to its solution or realization of lack of solution/giving up.

Happiness is so last season…

OK. So I gotta say, even real life would suck if it was just happy.
A small moment of mushy philosophy. Crap, that happens to us makes happy moments more exciting, more meaningful and memorable. Constant happiness would bore us to death. Just as much as we need a tiny, or a whole tablespoon of crap in our lives, we need it in stories, and movies and games. Happiness that comes without struggle is just a coincidence. It gains some meaning when you have to fight for it, overcome something. Same applies to stories.
No one wants to read stories about people just being happy. Happiness doesn’t develop persons, it doesn’t change them. And we want to see changes, even bad ones.
Why am I saying it? Well, I’m sure some of you, or I’d say the biggest part, at some point was reading a story, and it was great, and had a lot of drama, and the conflict is solved, and MC and her friends/family are happy… And yet they won’t finish the story. It gets boring quite fast. So yeah, I kinda get big authors, who are milking this whole thing and want to drag the story as long as they can. But there’s gotta be closure when the plot came to conclusion. I can’t even count how many stories I have dropped when this kind of things happened, and I gotta tell you, I don’t bother to check these author’s stories anymore. Know when to stop.

How to come up with the plot?

The most logical thing is to start with your character.
Now there are a couple of ways to go from. Think about:

• What’s something MC really wants? What difficulties might get in the way? In these difficulties, you might find this conflict. Example: “The Black Swan” movie
• What would force MC to do something he or she is really uncomfortable with? Something he or she doesn’t feel capable of doing? Create this situation, and you’ve got a conflict. Example: “Buffy TVS” TV series
• There might as well be some external situation, that is escalating without MC affecting it, but this external situation will directly affect MC and will force him/her to act, to change for better or worse. Example: “Hunger Games” movies.

How to plan your plot?

OK. So you’ve figured the story plot, and you created different interesting characters with the help of questionnaires . Now what?

Here’s the simplest way to build the plot structure:

• The reader gets to know your characters and to understand the essence of the conflict. And the thing in this step is to show it, not just tell it like many authors love to do. To explain this. You can say that character is badass in your narration. But without showing it, these are just dry words and a very lazy approach, that won’t build an emotional connection between the reader and MC. Take some time to show what the character/characters are all about. Show how this conflict affects MC and other characters. What this conflict brings out in them.
• Now, you have to build up the conflict to a crisis point, where things just can’t continue the way they are. This is the climax point . Something has to change. Maybe MC itself has to change, maybe he/she have to make a crucial decision to solve some major external situation. I’m gonna go with my love BTVS to show examples . If we are talking about the first season - when Buffy finds out she is destined to die. This is the climax, that requires some kind of decision. Is she gonna try to kill the Master anyway, or quit the whole slayer thing? Or 5th season, where Dawn is captured by Glory, and something is gotta be done to save her and the world.
  
• The story’s resolution. And it all depends on how the climax played out. Everything character did, every change he/she got through, every sacrifice is leading to this point.

Before you even start first lines in your stories you have to go through these points and write them down. This way you won’t get stuck with the plot , you will avoid many possible plot holes, and this will help you to build better minor plot lines, that will complement the major plot.

Minor plot lines

I won’t focus much on them this time, just a brief comment.

In my opinion, you have to have some minor plot lines along the major one, they can definitely make the whole story much more enjoyable. Also, more, different minor plot lines will help you to capture a wider audience.

@ShanniiWrites

I’d like to add that smaller plot lines make the world feel a lot bigger, too! Especially if they involve other characters than the MC

Your plot is about some major political conflict? Or maybe apocalypse? This will grab the attention of one small reader part. Add romance! Not just some happy sloppy romance, but some kind of conflict revolving around romance, that will add to MC misery, will help to develop her/him more, that will bring some qualities in him/her that will help to deal with the major conflict. There might be family drama . There might be also the betrayal of a friend , or sickness that will force MC to act differently. These minor conflicts will help you to add depth to your characters. No one says that the conflict have to be about MC. Some minor plot lines might be based on secondary characters, that will somehow affect MC.
There are so many possibilities. But you have to write it all down, and see if these minor plot lines are compatible with the major conflict , if they won’t contradict it, if they will help you to move character towards your desirable climax and end of the story in a most realistic way.
And remember that you don’t have to drag minor plot lines until the very end of the story. You can resolve them in the middle of the story, or at any other point.

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[ShanniiWrites]

@fcukforcookies

In my opinion, you have to have some minor plot lines along the major one, they can definitely make the whole story much more enjoyable. Also, more, different minor plot lines will help you to capture a wider audience.

I agree with this for sure! I’d like to add that smaller plot lines make the world feel a lot bigger, too! Especially if they involve other characters than the MC

[fcukforcookies]

That’s very true.

[Tom_THE_Best]

I’m glad that even though you got banned from Episode you are still helping us here!

[Mysterious_Tea]

Welcome!

[ThatRandomCaraPerson]

Heyo! Welcome to the forums, Tom!

[Tom_THE_Best]

Thx!

[Tom_THE_Best]

Thanks!

[ChaoticDeluge]

Welcome

[fcukforcookies]

Choices. Thoughts and prayers. high five for dramatic title

I’m might be not the most reliable person when talking about choices in Episode.
Why? Because I’m completely fine with the story without choices .
So while I totally appreciate the author’s effort in making choices, point system etc., I am totally fine with no choices at all. So we established that.

Here’s a TOP 5 LIST of choices authors do, that I hate with all the fibers of my soul (?)

Do you think I have a soul?

• No way. Nonono
• I really want to believe this
• Of course!

The top is aligned with my hate level.

5

• Choices for secondary characters.
  I really don’t get why people do them. And yes, I know, sometimes we have more than one MC, and it’s totally fine. But why would you make choices for secondary characters? First of all, I don’t know them enough to care, or to understand the perks of some choices. Secondly, choices are meant to connect you more with the MC. Why would you do it for secondary characters? If we have MC/MCs, we play as him/her/them, it is legit to have power over them. Why would you give that power for secondary characters? They are supposed to act indifferently.

4

• Choice with no meaning.
  It’s fine to add choices that won’t matter in a long run. You can add conversation choices (where the only difference would be dialogue line or two) to show MC’s personality, as well as other character’s personalities. But when you give me a choice on freaking food… I don’t care if you give me ten options choices on coffee/latte/tea with vodka if the only difference would be my character saying it while ordering in a cafe. Well, if u want to include it - work a bit more, change some dialogue lines at least, to show some reactions.

3

• Choice without a context.
  This pisses me off when putting with the point system. You introduce to me some characters, let’s say. They have an ordinary convo, and you put a choice on being rude or nice. Why do you make me pick something, with no information on characters, possible situation consequences - this is just either beyond idiotic or beyond evil. Now I don’t mean that I have to know the possible consequences on every choice, no. What I mean, is that the reader should know enough information to have some idea about possible consequences, or reasons to act according to each choice’s option.
  Very exaggerated example.
  Story starts. I see my character, maybe 16yo. Her parents argue, and I have no backstory on them or my attitude. And suddenly one of them asks - decide who do you want to live with, and this is an impactful choice. This is the choice, that won’t be driven by any of reader’s opinions, impressions etc., just a guess.

2

• Tricky choice.
  For example, the author gives me a choice to go or not to go on a date. Let’s say I hate the prick and decide not to go . And… I STILL HAVE TO GO! Like what the hell dude? Why do you give me a choice to screw me over, when I pick an option u were too lazy to code? My hate is so strong for this, that I exit the story, regardless of my love for it. Cheaters don’t deserve a second chance, may it be your gf/bf or an Episode story writer.

1

Yeah, I kinda have only 4 things to mention, but TOP 5 sounds way cooler, than TOP 4. Top 4… how lame is that?

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[Kanubish]

@fcukforcookies

You introduce to me some characters, let’s say. They have an ordinary convo, and you put a choice on being rude or nice. Why do you make me pick something, with no information on characters, possible situation consequences - this is just either beyond idiotic or beyond evil

I hate that when authors do this. I mean, if you already write a story and create characters - give them a personality as well. The authors are responsible to give their stories’ characters a personality.

About the meaningless choices - I’ve seen some stories with choices, some of which do not matter what you choose, in the end, the same thing will happen on both choices. It’s not that I have any problems with people including choices in their stories, but if you already do it - then make them meaningful, instead of doing them with the same results.

[Cheyara_M]

I bloody love you!
Half of this pisses me off to no end

[fcukforcookies]

It’s still a copy-paste from old forums xD But m’kay xDDDD right back at ya

[Cheyara_M]

I know… but it needs pounding into people’s heads