Sequels are a very sensitive subject when it comes to storytelling. It is very easy to completely ruin a sequel story. This week I will be going into how to properly set up a sequel and even tips on how to write a good sequel.  The first way to set up a sequel correctly is as follows. You need it to be subtle. You do not want to set up your sequel blatantly. You never know if your story is ever going to be good enough to warrant a sequel, so setting up an obvious sequel is a very bad move. In order to set up the sequel properly you should have the current story end, yet some plot threads are still open and could be answered. The plot threads should not be incredibly important to the current books story but could be explored later for more world building. Now there are a few key points that you should make sure to hit when you write a sequel. The first is making sure you expand the universe. There is no real point in making a sequel without expanding the universe of the story. Introducing new characters, new plot threads, and new character interactions. The second is remember that your characters are still the same characters that you left them as. Make sure that their characters stay consistent. At the same time, you need to understand that the characters need to go through character arcs for the story to be as compelling as it was before. Do not turn loved characters into one note stereotypes. That is an insult to the story and a sign of a cash grab. There are more steps, but these are the biggest ones I think should be known. That is all for this week. I hope you found it informative as always.

Heroes are loved by everyone. That’s just what they are. They fight the villain, beat them, and go home to great praise and rewards. That’s how the stereotypical hero is written. This is the very reason that the hero and the main protagonist are not always the same person. Most of the time they are but the story can be about the relationships that the main protagonist develops along the way. The growth of their character over the course of the story and how they change and overcome their flaws. The hero can still come in at the end and save the day, but the majority of the story could end up being about the main protagonist. Now if the main protagonist IS meant to be a hero there are a few things that need to be considered. First, how familiar is the hero with their powers, if they have any that is. If not, then the world they are in determines what that means. If it’s meant to be reality, then that’s normal. But if this is in a world where people have powers then how does this affect them. How do they overcome their disadvantage in this world? Another thing to pay attention to is making sure that the hero wins in an understandable way. Pulling out a win form absolutely nowhere just will make the reader question the whole story. How they win should be foreshadowed long before it is actually used. Whether it is an item or a skill, it needs to make sense. The hero can’t just pull something out of thin air to win. That would make them a Mary Sue. That being a character that never loses or does wrong in a story. It’s a horrible character type to have. You should avoid any characters being like that at all times. That’s all for this week I hope you found it informative as always.

Villains are the most important part of a story. Without a good villain the story just won’t work. Villains create the conflict, drive forward the story, and are the main enemy of the protagonist. If you write a villain wrong, it can ruin the flow of the entire story. I know I say that a lot but there are just several ways that certain elements can make or break a story. Now moving on, there is a difference between a villain and an antagonist. Think about it like squares and rectangles. All villains are antagonists but not all antagonists are villains. The villain is the source of the conflict for a story. The villain drives the plot forward and is at odds against the protagonist. A good villain is one you enjoy and want to see fail. An incompetent villain will fail to engage the reader as they will only be wondering how such an idiotic villain ever got into a position of power in the first place. Villains need to be a presence of great power in the world you are creating. Depending on the story it could be a lot of power, or only a little bit, however a villain with no power poses no threat and as such the only thing a weak villain accomplishes is weakening the story. Antagonists can work for the villain, but the main villain does not need to be forgiven or made into a protagonist. A villain can work as just a wall for the protagonists to overcome. Heroes are very similar to villains in this respect, but I will go into that more next week. Villains give a sense of urgency and conflict to the story they are in. Failing to make an engaging villain can kill a story before it even begins. That’s all for this week. I hope you found it informative as always.

Tension is a writing element that goes incredibly well with conflict. The right amount of tension can cause a scene to go from boring to interesting, or interesting to amazing! The key to good tension is for the conflicts to be believable and the characters to be likeable. If you aren’t interested in the characters and you don’t like the conflicts, then the tension will be weak. Good tension can lead to very strong emotions, whether they be positive or negative. Relief if a character in a dangerous situation manages to escape with their life, or if a dangerous mission goes off successfully. At the same time, they could experience dread as a very intense situation slowly goes bad and characters get hurt or are threated. It is important to understand which scenes deserve lots of tension and which ones don’t. If you give every scene an insane level of tension, then it would be the same as if they had no tension at all. Nothing will feel more important than anything else and it will be difficult to understand what is really going on, and what is really important. Examples on what to give tension are as follows.

1. Rivalries
2. Fights
3. Tests of ideals (the hero and villain having a debate about whether what they are doing is right)
4. A trial scene
5. Characters having a debate/disagreement

There are more situations of course but these are just some of the options. Tension is yet another element of story telling that can make or break a story. Doing it poorly can lead to the story being completely thrown off the rails. However, on the opposite end doing it well can lead to the story being enhanced to completely new heights. That’s all for this week I hope you found this informative as always.

Conflict is a central part of any story. Without conflict nothing will happen, and the readers won’t be pulled into the story. There are good and bad ways to achieve conflict, and the bad ways can completely destroy the narrative you are trying to build. Good conflicts are natural. You can tell where they originated from and why the characters are arguing or fighting. Without this there is nothing compelling in your story. Without anything compelling your story is boring and lacks anything that could bring in readers. There are two main types of conflict that take place in a story. Those are Internal Conflict and External Conflict. Internal conflict is a conflict within a character’s mind. It is what tends to drive a character to do what they do in the story. A character’s morals and ideas are some of the biggest examples of internal conflict. Morals and ideals exist to help give characters more well… character! A character’s morals should define how they act. Define what they will and won’t doo, and any exceptions to those self-imposed rules. External conflict is usually centered around two or more characters relationships with each other. Conflict between characters should be set up early on in order to not come completely out of left field. The reader needs to be able to understand what happens when characters disagree on something or get into fights with characters. This includes the conflicts between protagonists and antagonists. The internal conflicts of characters could be shown through subtle actions they take. What these actions are is up to you, but it could be as grand as defining a massive part of themselves or struggling to make a decision if even for a second. That’s all for this week. I hope you found this informative as always.

Brainstorming ideas for a story can be difficult. Writer’s block is a real thing and it effects pretty much every writer. There are a few things I do to help alleviate the stress and strain of writer’s block. The first is to go for walks every so often. The more the better. Going for walks keeps you active and gets your blood pumping. Getting your blood pumping helps with staying energized. Laying around all the time isn’t just unhealthy, but it also won’t lead to coming up with any new and improved ideas. Staying in one place for too long isn’t healthy for the body and isn’t healthy for the mind either. A creative writer needs variety in their life to be able to come up with new, unique ideas. Another method that works well is listening to music. It can be whatever music you want, any genre, artist, length, anything. It could be a video game soundtrack, a movie soundtrack, anything. It doesn’t even have to just be music. You can listen to random clips of your favorite media. Anything that you find enjoyment from can be listened to. It’s especially effective if you listen to something while going on a walk. The combination of going for a nice walk and listening so something enjoyable tends to cause many wonderful ideas to spawn inside of your mind. Taking inspiration from certain things you are listening to is incredibly helpful, more than you would tend to think. Coming up with new ideas can be a difficult and complicated process. Using these tips perhaps you can have an easier time with brainstorming ideas. I hope you all try some of these tips yourself. You can make alterations however you want but the same That is all for this week, I hope you all found it informative.

Self inserts are when you develop a character that is meant to be you inside of a fictional story. Most people make their first character a self-insert but this is not something that should be done. Not because it is hard, but because it is very conceited. Developing a character like this can lead to people thinking you are full of yourself, especially if the character is a main character. The simple truth is having a self-insert character can only lead to issues down the road. It may seem fun to put you in the story, but that just complicates things greatly. There are multiple ways that can be explored to create a self-insert character, but I would never recommend actually doing it. In my experience it causes several dead ends for characterization and plot. I will demonstrate a couple of examples of how a self-insert could be done correctly, and incorrectly.

First example of how to do it correctly is as follows. Have it just be a background character or a character you will rarely see. Like a merchant or random civilian. This is out of the way and harmless. Don’t bring attention to it either. That will take readers out of the story and can be seen as extremely annoying. As long as they don’t have too big of a part in the story everything should be okay.

Second example of how to do it correctly is as follows. Have it be a one off character. If it is a one off character then you can do whatever you want with it, within reason. It’s important not to treat your character too seriously.  Doing that would lead to a massive disconnect from the main characters and your side character, as well as the story itself.

Moving on how it can be done incorrectly, there are quite a few ways it can go wrong, but I will only go over a couple of them here.

First of all, never make yourself insert a love interest for another character. That comes off as creepy and self-centered. As such it should be avoided at all costs. If not then it can lead to some extremely disgusting behavior.

Going on the final point I will go over, it’s important to not name the character after yourself. This would lead everyone to think you are very egotistical and self-centered.  I would recommend avoiding using your actual name for a fictional character at all cost.

That’s all for this week I hope you found it informative.

It can be easy to get too attached to certain elements of a story. From design choices to characters, some aspects of the story, you can grow extremely attached to the world you have created. This isn’t necessarily bad as it can help to motivate you to develop that part more, but it can be a hindrance in the long run. Getting too attached to a story element can lead to you never wanting it to change. This is not always good. Most of the time it is never good. In order to increase the quality of your story you need to be open to changes. Changes to characters, plot, setting, everything. If you don’t accept any changes then eventually the story won’t make sense and will become incredibly stale. This is a massive problem since a stale story will lead to bored readers and if you bore your readers then your story will end up completely forgotten. A forgotten story is the worst thing that can happen to an author. By being open to change you can keep the story fresh, and creative. Perhaps you come up with a new plot point for the story you wish was implemented. If you are too stubborn to change things to better the story, then the new ideas can eat away at you as you wish later that you had done something different. It’s important to understand and accept change. This applies to life and writing. It’s like writing a rough draft. You make revisions and changes to improve the overall product. The final draft being the culmination of all your revisions and hard work. A product of extreme quality that can only exist through changes and redesigns. It’s necessary for any great work of art. That’s all for this week. I hope you found it informative.

This week we will be discussing how to properly get your story to flow naturally and effectively. Flow can make or break a story depending how you implement it. A well flowing story can draw in the readers and keep them reading for long periods of time, engrossing them in the world. This can only be done if your story is structured and explained effectively. It is incredibly important to keep your readers well informed, and to avoid any jumps in logic or unexplained events from happening. If this happens then the flow of the story will be completely thrown off and the reader will be questioning the story repeatedly, causing them to not be as engrossed in the story. If the reader is confused, then the quality of the story will suffer as a result. In order to have the story flow nicely you must do as follows. First, make sure everything in the story makes sense. If you don’t explain enough then the story will weaken to the point where the readers suspension of disbelief will be completely shattered. If the readers suspension of disbelief is destroyed, then they will begin to complain about the fantasy elements of the story. Even if it is realistic fiction suspension of disbelief is important. Suspension of disbelief is basically what lets your reader enjoy settings that don’t really exist or understand ideas that don’t make sense in reality. If it is broken, then that will cause the flow of your story to completely fall apart, and when the flow falls apart the story really slows down and becomes jumpy. This will lead to the story being incredibly hard to understand or follow. Bad flow can completely kill a story before it even begins. That is all for this week’s post. I hope you found this informative!

Last week I talked about the setting of the overall book. This week I will discuss establishing setting from chapter to chapter. This is much more complicated to perform correctly if you don’t know what you are doing. Starting the story, you should set up the world the story takes place in, but each time the setting goes through a massive change it should be brought to attention. IF you are in a crowded room and you move to the streets of a city, if it’s your first time being there you should describe what the area is like. If where you start the chapter is different from where the previous chapter left off your writing should reflect that. Once you set up a location you don’t need to describe it in such vivid detail again. There is a delicate balance of telling the reader too much and too little about the area. Too much and it will overwhelm the reader. On the other hand, too little and the reader will be confused as to where the story is. The only real way to figure out what is a good balance is to write and get feedback. The more people that give feedback the better. The only way to find out what works is to keep trying and seeing what sticks. Without a proper description the readers will be lost and that will detract from the overall quality. You need to remember that while you have the entire setting built in your mind the readers are relying on you to describe it to them. You never want your readers to be confused as to what is going on. There is a difference between mystery and not giving enough information to understand what is going on. That is all for this week I hope you found this informative.