Story CircleHow to come up with story ideas
Ways to generate story ideas instead of waiting for them, a test for whether an idea is a story, and how to cut it to one sentence.
Writing guide
How to write a story for beginners
To write a story, start with a character who wants something and an obstacle in the way. Sketch the beginning, middle and end in one sentence each, open the first scene where the trouble starts, build the middle from scenes that each change something, end on what it costs the character, then read the draft aloud and cut.
The seven steps below work the same for a class assignment, a first short story or a single chapter of somebody else’s book. Each step moves one example story forward, so you can see what the advice looks like on the page rather than just in theory.
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Step by step
What are the steps to write a story?
Want, obstacle, a three-sentence plan, an opening scene, a middle, an ending and a revision pass: each step uses the answer to the one before it.
Pick a character who wants something concrete
A story starts with someone who wants something, not with an idea. Make the want concrete enough that a reader could tell whether it has been achieved. “She wants to be happy” is a mood; “she wants her brother to answer the phone” is a want.
Example: Ada is the night clerk at a railway station that closed twelve years ago. She wants to know who is still paying its electricity bill.
Put something in the way
The obstacle is the engine of the story. The best obstacle is rarely a wall; it is another person who wants something different, because a wall can be climbed once and a person keeps pushing back.
Example: The station manager, Tom, pays the bill himself, and he does not want anyone asking why.
Sketch the beginning, middle and end in one sentence each
Before you draft, write three sentences: what starts, what gets harder, what changes. They are the map you come back to when you get lost, and you are allowed to change the last one later.
Example: Beginning: Ada finds the bill. Middle: the closer she gets to the payer, the harder Tom pushes back. End: she learns why the lights stay on and has to decide whether to switch them off.
Open the first scene where the trouble starts
A first line has one job: make the second line necessary. Skip the weather, the alarm clock and the backstory, and begin at the moment the obstacle first shows itself.
Example: Weak: “It was a cold, quiet night at the station.” Stronger: “The station had been closed for twelve years, and someone was still paying the electricity bill.”
Build the middle from scenes that each change something
By the end of every scene the character has learned something, lost something or decided something. If nothing changes, cut the scene or turn it into a sentence of summary. In dialogue, let people avoid saying what they mean.
Example: “Who pays for the lights?” “Your tea’s getting cold.” Tom does not answer, and that silence tells Ada he is hiding something. In the next scene she finds the old timetable with one train still marked on it.
End on what it costs the character
A strong ending shows whether the character got what they wanted and what it cost them. End on an action or a decision rather than a paragraph explaining what it all meant.
Example: Ada could switch the lights off and close the matter. It would cost Tom the last sign of the train his daughter never came back on. She leaves them on and signs the next bill herself.
Read it aloud and cut
When the draft is done, read it out loud. Every place your tongue trips is a place a reader will trip too. Delete the sentences nothing depends on and the paragraphs that explain a moment the scene already showed.
Example: “It was a quiet night, like every night at the station, and Ada was alone, as usual.” If the story loses nothing without it, it goes.
If step one is where you get stuck, the problem is usually the character, not the plot. The guide on how to create a character works through want, obstacle and contradiction one at a time.
Structure
How do you structure a short story?
Most short stories use three parts: the beginning sets up who wants what, the middle makes it harder to get, and the end shows what it cost.
| Part | Its job | In Ada’s story | Common slip |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginning | Answers who, where and what they want. | The night shift, the bill that should not exist. | Explaining the character’s whole past first. |
| Middle | Raises the obstacle; each scene moves the character closer to the want or further from it. | Tom’s silence, the old timetable, the one train left on it. | Repeating the same obstacle scene after scene. |
| End | Shows what the want was worth and what it cost; the character is now someone slightly different. | Leaving the lights on and signing the bill herself. | A happy ending that costs nothing, or a moral. |
Beginning, middle and end describe the parts of the text; want, obstacle and cost describe what drives them. The middle is almost always the longest part, and a story speeds up noticeably when the beginning and the end are kept short.
Craft
How do you write dialogue in a story?
Good dialogue is two people who want different things and do not say so directly; the information leaks out of the collision.
- Carry wants, not information. Characters telling each other what they both already know (“As you know, this station has been closed for twelve years”) is the most common dialogue mistake there is.
- Let the real subject stay unsaid. People do not say “I’m angry with you”; they ask what time it is. Tom’s “Your tea’s getting cold” says more than “drop it” would.
- Use “said”. It disappears on the page. Verbs like hissed or expostulated pull attention away from the speaker and onto the writer.
- Give each voice its own rhythm. Cover the names and read the lines: if you cannot tell who is speaking, give one character shorter sentences and the other a verbal habit.
Craft
How do you end a chapter so people keep reading?
End on a change rather than a summary: the strongest chapter ending answers one question and opens another.
A new question
The chapter’s question is answered, and the answer raises a new one. Readers get a payoff and a reason to continue.
A decision
The character chooses, and you stop just before the consequences arrive.
A reversal
The last line changes the picture the reader has been building. Two or three times a book is plenty.
A quiet close
After a tense chapter, a calm, concrete image. It lets readers breathe and gives the next chapter room to accelerate.
In a book where the next chapter is written by somebody else, your ending is the brief you hand them. End on a change and you have given them something to write; end on a summary and you have given them a blank page. When several continuations can follow one chapter, this matters even more — see how to write a branching story.
Mistakes
What mistakes do beginner writers make?
Most beginner mistakes live in the sentences written before the story starts and in the explanations written after it ends.
| Mistake | Instead | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Opening with the weather or waking up | Start where the obstacle first appears. | The first paragraph tells readers nothing has started yet. |
| A vague want | Pick an object, a fact or a person the reader can see. | Nobody can tell whether a mood has been achieved. |
| An obstacle that gives way at once | Give the obstacle to someone who wants something else. | A person escalates; an object is overcome once. |
| Backstory up front | Show the present first and let the past leak in. | Readers do not care about the past of a stranger. |
| Dialogue that delivers information | Make the lines about conflicting wants. | People explaining what they both know sound fake. |
| Dramatizing everything | Show what matters and summarize the rest. | Readers arrive at the key scene already tired. |
| Explaining the ending | Stop on the last action or decision. | The explanation takes the meaning away from the reader. |
When it stops
What should you do when you are stuck or have no idea?
Being stuck is usually missing information rather than missing inspiration: you do not yet know what changes by the end of the scene.
- Write the scene’s purpose in one line. “By the end of this scene, this will have changed.” If you cannot finish that sentence, the scene does not exist yet.
- Write out of order. If the next scene will not come, write the one you are looking forward to. The gap often fills itself.
- Stop mid-sentence. End a session where you know what comes next, so tomorrow starts with half a sentence instead of a blank page.
The different kinds of block, and a fix for each, are in the guide on how to overcome writer’s block. If the problem is earlier than that, start with how to come up with story ideas.
In practice
What does writing a chapter look like in Story Circle?
In Story Circle you write one chapter of a book somebody else started, not a whole story, and the seven steps above shrink to fit that one chapter.
- Steps one and two come ready-made. Whoever set up the book wrote the first chapter, described the characters and set the book’s rules. Your job is to read the chapters so far and find what the character wants now, and what is in the way.
- You tap “Start writing” on an open chapter. The first writer to start an open chapter writes it. Your writing time is whatever the book’s owner chose, between 1 and 72 hours (24 by default); if it runs out, the chapter opens to everyone again and your draft stays with you.
- Step three shrinks to one chapter. The chapter has to fit the book’s character range, for example 1,500 to 4,000 characters, so it usually carries one change: a decision, a discovery or a loss.
- You submit, and the chapter is reviewed. Every chapter passes an automatic content review before it is published; once it passes, it goes live and becomes a permanent part of the book. The book’s owner can choose to see reviewed chapters before they go live.
- Your ending is the next writer’s beginning. Instead of closing everything in step six, leave a door open: a question the next writer can work with.
The whole cycle is explained on how Story Circle works, and the wider question of sharing one book between several people on collaborative writing.
The easiest way to finish a story is to make it smaller: in Story Circle the unit of writing is a chapter, not a book.
Building one scene well is a far smaller job than planning a three-hundred-page novel — and the chapter you write becomes somebody else’s starting point.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
How do I start writing a story as a beginner?
Write one sentence naming a person, what they want and what is in the way. Then write the first scene in which they try to get it and fail. You do not need the title, the ending or the whole world yet; you need one person trying something.
What are the five elements of a story?
Character, setting, plot, conflict and resolution; many teachers add theme as a sixth. In the steps on this page, the want and the obstacle are what create the conflict, and the cost in the ending is the resolution.
How long should a short story be?
There is no fixed rule. For a class assignment, use the limit you were given; otherwise make it long enough to hold one real change and short enough to read in one sitting. Pieces under roughly a thousand words are usually called flash fiction. In Story Circle, chapter length is measured in characters and set by whoever set up the book; the preset ranges are 500–1,500, 1,500–4,000 and 4,000–10,000 characters.
Do these steps work for kids and students?
Yes. The steps are the same at any age; younger writers can do the first three out loud before writing anything down. For a school story, the beginning, middle and end in step three usually matter most, because that is what the assignment is marked on.
How do I end a story?
Show whether the character got what they wanted and what it cost them, then stop. Do not add a paragraph explaining the meaning; readers remember an ending longer when they put the meaning together themselves.
Where can I share my story and get it read?
Having someone read what you finish is the strongest reason to keep writing. Story Circle is a mobile app built for that: you start writing an open chapter of a book someone else began, the chapter is published once it passes an automatic content review, and somebody else writes what comes next.