okay just a warning, this chapter is fairly long.

When people find out that I write stories or if they read some of my stories, the most common question asked is “how do you come up with this stuff?”

So first of all, I want to clear up a common misunderstanding. Authors or anyone who writes stories a lot will be able to agree with this. It’s really not like people who write good stories are born with better, more creative, more imaginative brains that can just come up with some wicked cool plot out of thin air on command. Nonono. I mean… there might be people like that out there but I guarantee that 99% of authors aren’t like that.

We get story ideas from everything. By everything, I mean EVERYTHING. Let me give you an example of something that inspired me that you would think OH NO WAY GIRL.

So I took US History over last summer (at summer school ew) and honestly, I think I got story ideas from the lectures almost every day.

Okay you can laugh if you want.

I know what you’re thinking… You’re thinking ew this girl must write really boring old history stories ew. (false)

So for example, we learned about WWII in class and we learned about the atomic bombing of Japan (I think we all know this one? I tried to pick a topic that everyone knew about).

There are literally SO many story ideas that can come off of this. Let me just say one that JUST came into my head. 

            (fantasy) When people die, their souls are allowed to travel the world for 21 days before they need to leave Earth forever. Thousands of people died during the bombing, but because of the abrupt and terrible way they died, the souls can’t find peace and haunt the land for generations.

            Many years later, a boy and his girlfriend get into a car crash. The boy dies immediately, but the girl falls into a life threatening comma because it turns out her body and soul got separated. While the boy’s soul is on earth for 21 days, he needs to find the girl’s soul in order to save the girl her loves. (wow this is a lot longer than I meant it to be)

            So yeah, I literally just came up with that in less than 10 min. A key thing to just keep in mind is that it’s so much easier to think of a story line if you base your ideas off of an object, an event, or a real life situation.

Alright so moving on. SETTING.

It is always best if you declare a set setting whether it’s a real place or not. You can use an already existing city or school or make one up. Your choice. But there are just so many reasons why it’s easier to have a set setting AND to announce it early on in the story. I’m not saying your whole story is limited to that certain place, definitely not, but it’s probably where most of your drama/action is going to take place.

Next. Having a .

This is pretty important in my opinion. I’ve seen a lot of stories of AFF where they’re just 100+ chapters of just non-related events happening to the characters and those are fine but if you want to write like an actual story, then have a .

Using the atomic bomb story I just made up up there, the would probably be when he finds his girlfriend’s soul. If I were to actually write that story, I would probably make that part of the story super intense ya feel.

So the break down would be:

• Intro: explaining the whole atomic bomb and soul wandering/haunting thing. And then the car crash.
• Build Up: the process of the boy finding the girl’s soul.
• : when the boy find the girl’s soul.
• Resolution: what they decide they’ll do. Die together? Make another deal with the haunting soul? Idkkkk

I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE ALL THINKING. “woowwwwww this isn’t some English class wowwwwwwww get out wowwwww”.

When I first started writing stories, I literally did ZERO planning and just dived head in being like I’ll just nail it.

What happened to those stories? Bad bad bad. The plots got SO out of hand because why? BECAUSE THERE WAS NO PLOT BECAUSE I DIDN’T PLAN AND I .

So I threw them away and started planning.

You might look at that whole intro-build up--resolution thing and go “psh… way too much work. I just write for a hobby.”

But don’t you write because you like to write? And usually, when you’re doing something you like, most things aren’t ‘too much work’.

Sorry this chapter is getting kinda lengthy, but one last thing. Just to tell a small bit about how I plan.

I usually do it on a piece of paper because 1. I’m so OCD about life and 2. I usually do planning in school when class is boring and we can’t have phones in class.

So first, I write down my characters and just really basic info like age and where they’re from so that I don’t get any of them mixed up.

Then I basically just write a list of events or happenings that I want to happen in my story (usually chronological order). And it’s always best to plan all the way to the end so that you don’t get lost while writing your story.

Then I just use that sheet and write my story. Yep.

Alright so this’s the end and let me just say I am NOT saying you HAVE to do any of this. If you want to just write, just write. Please go ahead. But this is just what I’ve learned from experience and stuff I wish I had known before. You can take all of my advice, some of my advice, or none of my advice.

OKAY THANKS FOR READING FOR ANY WHO READ THIS WHOLE LONG CHAPTER. NEXT CHAPTER IS ON CHARACTERS. THAT WILL BE A BIT MORE EXCITING THAT THIS. OKAY BYE.