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    How to Write a Story: Second Edition
    How to Write a Story: Second Edition
    How to Write a Story: Second Edition
    Ebook166 pages2 hours

    How to Write a Story: Second Edition

    By Kathleen C. Phillips

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    About this ebook

    Got a story you've been itching to put on paper? Reading How to Write a Story, now in its second edition, is a great place to start. In print for 14 years with Franklin Watts/Scholastic, this book by Kathleen C. Phillips remains timeless and valuable. It takes aspiring authors—and writers who might like a refresher course—on a thorough tour of what it takes to conceive, draft, revise, and refine a good story, using clear examples of specific techniques and tips. It sets out “building plans” that guide writers step-by-step from the glimmer of an idea, to a gripping beginning, to a complicated middle, and finally to a satisfactory ending. It provides ready-to-write suggestions that will have both an immediate and lasting impact on the quality of your writing.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKathleen C. Phillips
    Release dateMar 30, 2012
    ISBN9781476076584
    How to Write a Story: Second Edition
    Author

    Kathleen C. Phillips

    Kathleen C. Phillips has co-authored Catching Ideas and Journal Keeping With Young People with Barbara Steiner, and has written children’s books Sly as a Fox and Cross as a Bear and Katie McCrary and the Wiggins Crusade. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

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      Book preview

      How to Write a Story - Kathleen C. Phillips

      HOW TO WRITE

      A STORY

      Second Edition

      By Kathleen C. Phillips

      with Sean McCollum

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      Published by Kathleen C. Phillips at Smashwords

      How to Write a Story

      Copyright © 2012 by Kathleen C. Phillips

      Excerpts from Hailstones and Halibut Bones, by Mary O'Neill and Leonard Weisgard III. Copyright © 1961 by Mary LeDuc O'Neill. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Excerpts from Zero Weather, Runny Days, Sunny Days, by Aileen Fisher. Copyright © 1958 by Aileen Fisher. Used by permission of the author.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Phillips, Kathleen C. How to write a story / Kathleen C. Phillips, p. cm.— Includes bibliographical references. Summary: Examines the basics of writing a story, from finding a title and beginning the work to completing and revising it.

      ISBN 978-1-47-607658-4

      1. Authorship—Juvenile literature.

      All rights reserved

      e-book design: Matthew C. Holmes and Sean McCollum

      e-book cover design: Anna-Maria Crum (annamariacrum.com)

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      About the Author

      Kathleen C. Phillips has co-authored Catching Ideas and Journal Keeping With Young People with Barbara Steiner, and has written children’s books Sly as a Fox and Cross as a Bear and Katie McCrary and the Wiggins Crusade. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

      For Jane Fitz-Randolph and Brad Phillips, with appreciation

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Introduction:

      To Begin With

      Chapter One

      Building Houses and Creating Stories

      Chapter Two

      WHO Are the People In Your Story? WHY Do They Behave the Way They Do?

      Chapter Three

      WHAT'S the Problem and HOW Does It Get Solved?

      Chapter Four

      WHEN Does All This Happen and WHERE?

      Chapter Five

      Are You Ready to Write?

      Chapter Six

      Titles and Beginnings

      Chapter Seven

      Middles and Endings

      Chapter Eight

      Let's Talk About Talk

      Chapter Nine

      Tips and Techniques

      Chapter Ten

      Revision—Seeing Again

      Appendix

      The Writer’s Notebook

      Frequently Asked Questions About Publication

      For Further Reading

      Glossary

      ********************

      Preface to

      the Second Edition

      How to Write a Story was originally published by Franklin Watts in 1995 and remained in print for 14 years. While much in the world of writing and publishing has changed since then—including the advent of e-books like this one—one aspect has remained constant: the value of good stories. The ability to create compelling plots, engaging characters, and vivid settings in clear, crisp prose, can never be generated by a computer program, replaced by a smart phone app, or downloaded from the Web.

      To become a good writer requires dedication and practice, just like learning to shoot baskets or play the trombone. The 10,000-hour rule described by journalist Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers applies: the key to success in any field requires some 10,000 hours of deliberate practice and refinement. For writers, that works out to about five years of steady 40-hour weeks of turning words into sentences, sentences into stories, first drafts into revisions, and revisions into polished manuscripts.

      While such dedicated practice is essential to improving as a writer, study of the parts and pieces of the writing process can give beginning writers the terms and concepts to analyze and improve their craft. Just as it helps a carpenter to know why one uses screws versus nails when building something, it helps the writer to know the differences between first person and multiple viewpoints in constructing a story, and why the edict SHOW DON’T TELL is the first commandment of creative writing. Knowing the tenets and terms of the author’s craft can help writers identify techniques while reading and begin to incorporate them into their own writing.

      And that is why this wonderful book by Kathleen C. Phillips is so timeless and valuable. It takes aspiring writers—and writers who might like a refresher course—on a thorough tour of what it takes to conceive, draft, revise, and refine a good story, using clear examples of specific techniques and tips. It sets out building plans that guide writers step-by-step from the glimmer of an idea, to a gripping beginning, to a complicated middle, and finally to a satisfactory ending. It provides ready-to-write suggestions that will have both an immediate and lasting impact on the quality of your stories.

      This Second Edition of How To Write a Story is updated with current resources. However, the expertise and guidance it contains has never gone out of style—and never will.

      –Sean McCollum

      www.kidfreelance.com

      Boulder, Colorado

      March 2012

      ********************

      Introduction:

      To Begin With

      To begin with, why write? Writing is rather like talking to yourself. Writing gives an opportunity to remember, to relive, and to rethink experiences, and it helps to give perspective and shape to your own thoughts and ideas. Writing is a way of getting acquainted with yourself.

      Why write for others? Writing is communication. It is moving a thought from one mind, yours, to another mind, your reader's. In all the world, in all of time, there is only one you. Only you see the world through your eyes, your experiences, your imagination. Writing creatively is not necessarily saying something that has never been said before in a way that has never been said before. Writing creatively is saying something so that your readers will see in a way they have never seen before. Whether you have thought about it or not, you, from the perspective and viewpoint that is yours alone, have something to say, something to share with others.

      Why read books on writing? One of the oldest clichés about writing is that it is a talent that can't be taught. True, talent can't be taught ... but Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out that talent alone cannot make a writer. Becoming a writer is a journey of writing, of trial and error, and writing again.

      Travelers going to unfamiliar places use maps prepared by those who have gone before. Books about writing are the charts and guideposts that experienced writers prepare to make easier journeys for the inexperienced, and to help good writers become better writers.

      To quote novelist Phyllis A. Whitney, No one can light in you the spark that will make you a writer, make you want to write. You must supply that yourself. But if you have the spark, you will find many people, through books and magazines, classes and workshops, who are eager to help you fan that spark into a lively flame.

      ********************

      Chapter 1

      Building Houses and Creating Stories

      Remember those house builders, the Three Little Pigs? And remember that demolition expert, the Big, Bad Wolf?

      The first two Little Pigs were in such a hurry to go off and do other things that they built their houses too quickly and too carelessly. The Third Little Pig built a house of sturdy bricks instead of sticks or straw, and he put it together with care. The houses of sticks and straw tumbled down when the Wolf huffed and puffed, but the carefully built house stood strong.

      Have you ever thought about the ways good stories and good houses are alike?

      The careful house builder starts out with a solid foundation, then puts up a strong framework that can support the walls and roof, and, last, adds doors and window glass, paint and trim.

      The storyteller needs to build a foundation and framework that is dependable enough to support the details of a story.

      A story and a house might be compared this way:

      Idea = Foundation

      Story plan or plot = Framework

      Details of story = Walls and roof

      Ways of telling the story = Floors and doors; windows, paint, and trim.

      BUILDING PLANS

      The builder follows a plan, one step at a time. If the builder tries to put up a framework without the foundation first, or a roof without the framework first, the house will fall apart.

      For similar reasons, storytellers need plans. Their plans are not as detailed and complicated as builders' plans, but by following a few simple steps as they work, storytellers can keep their stories from falling apart.

      The builder's working directions are scale drawings and lists of specifications—the requirements to follow and the materials to use.

      Our storytelling directions include a short plan for making a story framework and a list of questions to help in working out details. But first comes the foundation.

      IDEA = FOUNDATION

      Where do ideas for stories come from? The answer to that question is

      EVERYWHERE!

      Ideas are all around us, so the first steps in finding them are learning to recognize them and then remembering to catch them.

      Are you a people watcher? Do you like to roam the malls or sit in airports and study the people going by? Watch how they walk, listen to how they talk and to what they say? Do you notice what they wear, wonder about their jobs, imagine their family life?

      Where else, besides by watching and listening to people, can you find ideas? They are there in the movies and television programs you watch, in the music you listen to, in what you read, and in your memories and your day-to-day experiences.

      You'll find ideas in your travels away from home and in your own neighborhood, at parties and special occasions and in your everyday life.

      You can find ideas in almost everything you read, and sometimes those ideas come quite unexpectedly. Something you read reminds you of a person, a happening, an experience, and it starts you on a new train of thought. This doesn't mean that you are taking someone else's idea to use and call your own, it means that someone else's idea, considered through your experience and your perspective, can inspire a new idea that is your own.

      Many writers carry pocket-size notebooks with them in order to jot down entries, because they've learned that note-taking has two benefits. First, the most wonderful idea in the world will be of no use

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