As you think about creating your story, keep in mind two important things.
First, your story is not going to start out perfect! You’re going to make mistakes, change your mind, cross things out, get stumped, and just generally make a mess, both in your head and on the page.
AND THAT’S GREAT! That’s how creativity and writing work! They’re MESSY. All writers make tons of mistakes. The best stories come from RE-writing your original ideas. Geoff Rodkey, the author who built Stuck in the Stone Age out of Vince’s idea, had a bunch of ideas that didn’t work out. He wrote whole chapters of the book that he wound up deleting! He also added a bunch of new ideas later.
As you write your story, give yourself the space to change your mind and rework things. If you’re writing with a pencil and paper, it can help to skip lines so there’s room on the page to cross things out and rewrite them. You can always clean things up in your next draft.
For example, here’s how that paragraph looked in our FIRST draft:
Second, give yourself PERMISSION TO GET WEIRD. Some of the best ideas sound incredibly weird…at first. In order to come up with an amazing story, you need to try out lots of ideas on the page to see how they look. Let your imagination run wild! Get that weird idea down on paper in a first draft! Once you do, you might decide it’s the best idea ever! Or you might decide you don’t like it at all. If so, that’s fine! Just cross it out and write something else! That’s why pencils have erasers and computers have delete keys—don’t be afraid to use them!
THE BEGINNING
Storytelling 101: What Kind of Story Is This?
One way to start writing a story is by asking yourself what kind of story you want to write. Most stories fall into categories called genres. Genre is the type of story you’re telling—for example, drama, comedy, science fiction, mystery, romance, horror, or historical fiction.
It’s helpful to know your story’s genre for two reasons.
First, it helps set the tone of your story. Do you want to write something that makes your audience laugh, like in a comedy? Do you want to scare their pants off, like in a horror story? Depending on the answer, you’ll probably tell your story in very different ways.
For example, Stuck in the Stone Age is a comedy—so when Hank the janitor turns into a chameleon, it happens in a (hopefully) funny way. If Stone Age were a horror story, Hank might have eaten Dr. Palindrome instead of just yelling at him, and the audience might have been more frightened than amused.
Second, knowing your genre can help you come up with ideas for your story. In addition to being a comedy, Stuck in the Stone Age is a science fiction story. It’s fun to write science fiction because science itself is crazy—it’s full of wild, strange, and amazing but true things that happen in real life. Sci-fi is different from fantasy, because the things that happen in science fiction are usually not magic. They’re things that could maybe actually happen one day.
You probably know some science fiction stories. They can involve:
•Spaceships flying to faraway planets
•Superintelligent computers or robots
•Getting a glimpse of the distant future, where amazing technology is everywhere
•Scientists creating crazy inventions (like time machines)
Before people ever traveled in space, science fiction writers were imagining what it might be like. Before there were internet-connected computers in our homes, sci-fi writers were imagining devices just like that. Science fiction lets us imagine a world we’d like to live in someday (or a world we’d never, ever want to live in!).
Write Like a Pro: Starting Stories Off with a BANG!
Have you ever picked up a book, read a page, and then put it down because you’re just not into it?
And have you ever picked up a book, read the first page, and thought, “OHMYGOSH, WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN NEXT??”
THAT’S what you want your reader thinking when they start your story—you want to get them so interested in “What happens next??” that they have to keep going to find out. Sometimes, this is called a hook—as in, getting your reader hooked on the story right away.
So how do you write a great opening hook? A bunch of different ways. With action! Or conflict! Or even a startling noise! For example, you could start your story with …
KAZOOM!
Your reader will wonder, “What on earth made that ‘kazoom!’ noise? Was it a spaceship taking off? A robot running at the speed of sound? An exploding volcano?”
It can be anything. Just make sure it’s somehow important to your story.
For example, Stuck in the Stone Age begins with Hank the janitor yelling: “THIS IS THE LAST STRAW!”
What’s the last straw? We don’t know! We just know Hank is very angry, and if we want to find out why, we’ll have to keep reading.
Remember how we said it’s okay to get messy and go back and change things when you write? Here’s a secret: A LOT of things got crossed out in the writing of Stuck in the Stone Age—and the opening hook was one of them! Geoff Rodkey added Hank’s big entrance after he’d written most of the novel. And to make room for it, he threw out the whole first chapter from his early draft. If you aren’t in love with the hook you have now, remember you can always go back and improve it later! An artist’s work is never finished.
Storytelling 101: The Main Character
Every story has a main character. Sometimes, this character is called the hero. You can also use the term protagonist, which is a fancy word for “main character.” The main character doesn’t have to be a person—it could be an animal, an alien, a monster, or even a pencil, as long as the pencil can talk or think.
In Stuck in the Stone Age, the main character is Tom Edison. (This name is sort of a joke. As you probably know, there really was a famous scientist named Thomas Edison. He invented the lightbulb, among other things. But our Tom Edison turns out to be much different.)
The main character is usually the person (or animal or pencil) who your audience will root for. When the character faces a problem—which will happen, because stories are all about characters facing problems—the reader wants to see the character solve it and succeed. That’s why it’s important to make the main character as detailed and interesting as possible. Your reader will be spending a lot of time with them and will get to know (and hopefully like) them.
When you’re creating a main character, it’s helpful to write down the most important things about that character so you can see them all in one place. At the Story Pirates, we like to use a “Character Creator” for this. Here’s what our Character Creator looks like for Tom:
Pay special attention to that last box: what the main character wants. This is VERY important. Sometimes, the whole story is about the main character trying to get what they want. In this story, Tom wants to be a famous scientist. Trying to achieve that goal is a big part of the story—but it’s not the whole story. There’s a much bigger problem he’ll need to deal with very soon. (Stay tuned!)
Here’s one more important tip: The character will be more interesting to read about if you make it very, very hard for them to get what they want. One good way to do this is by picking the right weaknesses. For example, Tom’s weaknesses are that he’s bad at science and math. But he’s not just bad—he’s so bad that his physics teacher had to create a new grade for his work (an H, two letters below an F). Plus, he’s obsessed with a science fiction TV show called Star Trip and thinks all the imaginary things on the show could be real (like something called a “fluotanium capacitor ray”). It’s going to be very hard for Tom to get what he wants with these weaknesses—but very interesting for the reader to watch him try.
Science Fiction Zone: Astronauts, Aliens, and So Much More!
How do you create a main character that’s right for a science fiction story?
The short answer is: Any kind of character can be in a science fiction story. You just need to figure out a reason why the character would be around some weird s
cience experiment, invention, or problem that could maybe really happen someday.
Here are a few examples of common science fiction characters:
•Someone flying in an intergalactic spaceship
•An alien
•A regular person in the future with crazy technology
•A reporter or detective checking out a crazy science event
•A scientist
•An adorable kitten with genius-level intelligence
You get the idea. It can be any kind of character, as long as there’s going to be some wild and weird science in their future.
Idea Storm: Main Character
Now you try it! Make up a main character, and use the Character Creator as a guide. It can be any kind of character you want—a human, an animal, or something imaginary. Remember to think carefully about these questions:
•What does my character want more than anything in the world?
•Does my character have any weaknesses that might make getting that thing very, very hard?
•Does my character have strengths that might help them succeed?
While you’re brainstorming, don’t forget to give yourself PERMISSION TO GET WEIRD. Write down any ideas you want, no matter how weird! You can always change them later.
Write Like a Pro: Show, Don’t Tell
You may have heard at some point that good writers should “show, not tell.” How do you do that, exactly?
There are a lot of different ways, and we’ll discuss a few of them in this book. Here’s one big thing to focus on: Show the reader what your characters are doing, instead of just telling facts about what they’re like. For example, back in the Character Creator, we said that Tom Edison is friendly and that people naturally like him. But in Stuck in the Stone Age, the text doesn’t say, “Tom was a friendly character.” Instead, it shows what Tom does that makes him friendly:
Tom had brought Doris a jelly doughnut (her favorite), which was almost knocked out of his hand by the angry man who stormed out of CEASE just as Tom was walking in.
“Excuse me! Sorry! Have a great day!” Tom said with a smile.
With your own characters, find ways to do the same thing. Don’t just take the words out of your Character Creator and tell your reader what the character is like. If your character is friendly (or annoying or sad or hilarious), show this to the reader by writing what the character does that’s friendly (or annoying or sad or hilarious).
Storytelling 101: Villains, Shape-shifters, and Minor Characters
What’s the deal with this Dr. Palindrome guy?
Most stories have more characters than just the main one. Some have hundreds! Every character has a purpose. Take Hank the janitor, for example. He’s a minor character—he’s mostly there to quit his job (so Tom can get hired as CEASE’s janitor) and to help show us that the job Tom is taking is very dangerous.
What about Dr. Palindrome? From Tom’s point of view, he seems like an ally—a “good guy” character who’s on Tom’s side and might end up helping him solve his problem or get what he wants. He just gave Tom a janitor job and promised it could lead to his dream job as a scientist!
But we know more than Tom—enough to be very suspicious. In Chapter 1, we saw that Dr. Palindrome knows being a CEASE janitor is dangerous, even life-threatening. He doesn’t care—he just wants to fill the job. When he tells Tom that taking this horrible job might lead to the scientist job Tom really wants, we’re pretty sure Dr. Palindrome is lying.
This makes Dr. Palindrome a likely villain. A villain tries to stop the main character from solving the problem—or, in some cases, they’re the one causing the problem in the first place. Just like the fancy word for main character is protagonist, the fancy word for “villain” is antagonist.
It’s often the villain who really makes a story fun and exciting. Think about your favorite books, movies, and TV shows. Is there a villain in them? Now imagine taking that villain out of the story. Would the story be as much fun? Probably not.
Like the main character, a villain can be anyone. If a puppy dog is trying to stop your main character from getting what they want, that puppy can be the villain of your story. If a talking pancake keeps spoiling your character’s plans, that talking pancake is a villain. Villains don’t ALL have to be evil geniuses or wicked queens or super mutants.
Sometimes, they don’t even seem like villains at first. A character who seems good but turns out to be bad, or seems bad but turns out to be good, is a shape-shifter. Characters who surprise you like that can be the most fun characters of all, both as an audience and a writer.
So is Dr. Palindrome a villain? Will he end up doing something much worse to Tom? Or will he surprise us and turn out to have a heart of gold? Keep your eye on him as the story continues.
Storytelling 101: ANOTHER Main Character?!
Most stories have just one main character. But Stuck in the Stone Age has TWO! Dr. Marisa Morice is also a main character. Does that make the story twice as much fun? We think so!
When a story like Stone Age has two main characters, they’re usually very different. How different are Tom and Marisa? Turn the page to see a Character Creator for Dr. Marisa Morice.
Marisa has a big—and kind of heartbreaking—want: She doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. This will probably be very hard for her to accomplish, because one of her weaknesses is that she gets nervous around other people, so she’s not good at making friends. In this chapter, just talking to Tom was stressful for her.
Tom, on the other hand, is great at making friends! It’s his biggest strength! So what Marisa wants is something Tom already has, and her big weakness is his big strength.
Likewise, Tom wants more than anything to be a scientist—and Marisa’s already a brilliant one! Her knowledge of science is her biggest strength, while Tom’s lack of science skills is his biggest weakness.
So Marisa’s and Tom’s wants, strengths, and weaknesses are all opposites.
What does this mean for our story? If they can figure out a way to work together, Tom and Marisa might make a pretty great team!
BUT…until they do that, they’re going to really get on each other’s nerves. This conflict is clear in the first words they say to each other, when Tom is excited to meet Marisa, but she’s frightened and annoyed by him:
“OHMYGOSH! Aren’t you Marisa Morice? The youngest winner in the history of the National Junior Science Competition? HOLY COW! You were Rookie of the Year in my Famous Scientist Trading Card set!”
“Who are you, and why don’t you have any eyebrows?”
It’s no fun to be annoyed by someone in real life, but reading about someone who’s annoyed can be awesome. Stuck in the Stone Age is a comedy, and a lot of the humor comes from the fact that the characters are constantly butting heads. Will they ever get along? Can they help each other overcome their weaknesses and get what they want or solve their problem? It will be fun to see what happens, no matter what.
If you decide to put two main characters in your story, you’ll need to spend as much time thinking (and writing) about the second one’s wants, strengths, and weaknesses as you did for the first one. And to make the story extra interesting, try to make those things the opposite of what they were for your first character.
Storytelling 101: The Setting
The setting is where (and when) your story takes place. A setting can be anywhere, from a regular town to an imaginary world. A story can have just one setting or dozens, depending on what happens and where the characters go.
In Stuck in the Stone Age, there are two main settings: the CEASE science lab, and the Stone Age of 12,000 years ago.
When you’re building a story, it’s helpful (and fun!) to imagine tons of details you might find in the setting. What kind of people (or animals or aliens) are around? What are they doing? What’s the weather like? Is there scenery? Is it pretty? Ugly? Clean? Dirty? Smelly? Fun? Boring? Is there anything unusual, dangerous, or interesting going on? What’
s your main character doing there? Do they like it? Do they hate it?
The more you know about your setting, the richer your story will be. Thinking in detail about the setting can also help you come up with ideas for what should happen in the story.
One good way to help build your setting and keep track of what’s going on in it is to draw a map or a picture. For example, here’s a map we drew of CEASE:
A drawing like this can also help you keep track of minor characters (like Doris the receptionist or the other scientists), as well as planning out interesting details for your readers to enjoy (like lasers that go bew or supermonkeys that screech!).
Science Fiction Zone: Sci-Fi Settings
If you’re writing a science fiction story, picking a setting is part of the fun. Will you write about a normal-seeming neighborhood, where a scientific experiment is about to go horribly wrong? Or maybe a place full of futuristic inventions, where wild and amazing things happen every day?
A science laboratory like the CEASE facility is a common science fiction setting. Here are a few others:
•A spaceship
•An ordinary house or city, but in the future
•Another planet
•A secret fortress with advanced technology
•Another dimension: a place that looks like Earth, but has some weird differences (These could be big differences, like dinosaurs never died out so highly evolved velociraptors have built huge cities; or small differences, like toasters were never invented so people make toast by roasting bread over a fire.)
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