How to Fix a Broken Story (Writing Advice)

get ready cuz today we're going to talk about how to reboot a story that isn't working by the way my name is Brandon MCN I'm the author of bad parts also the author of Entry wounds and welcome to my riding Channel I'm going to let you in on a little secret here today both of my books the ones you see up on the shelf right here both of them were complete and total disasters the first time I wrote them like the first drafts I I came into them with great ideas and great intentions but over the course of the writing process all I ended up making was this giant mess that it was ultimately a failure and the reason why I'm telling you this is because I want you to understand that the writing process is not something that needs to be perfect from the start in fact sometimes you need to have great failures before you can have any level of success now with that being said today I want to help you out I want to give you some advice on how to know if your story is broken and I also want to give you some advice on how to fix a broken story I have seven steps for fixing a broken story we're going to talk about those today now as for how to know if your story is broken I came up with three simple guidelines for this there's probably plenty of other reasons why your story might be broken but let's focus on these three today and the first one is that your characters have nothing to care about or they have no reason to take action and this is a problem because if you do have this kind of situation going on in your story you probably have long stretches of of chapters or scenes where you have characters sitting around waiting for things to happen maybe they're doing nothing maybe they're just having conversations that go nowhere you need conflict in your story conflict should be present from start to to finish there are of course different levels of conflict you might have high conflict in one scene and then lowkey conflict in the next but it's important to have conflict over the course of your story to keep yourself as the writer engaged and also to keep your audience engaged second reason why your story might be broken is because it's inconsistent or poorly structured and this can often lead to Major pacing issues pacing issues are something that can take anyone out of the story now the thing is when it comes to plot structure I'm a big believer in it I talk about it a lot on the channel and I believe that no matter what type of writer you are you should be aware of plot structure and people who like to plan things ahead of time people who are you know maybe they're outliners they plotters these people are of course familiar with plot structure they need it in order to craft their story from the start now you also have different types of writers who like to figure out the story as they go and I think there's still value in understanding plot structure here as well because if you do understand plot structure you can aim for certain guideposts along the way and it can help Drive Your Story toward its conclusion and it can keep your story on track and then the third reason why your story might be broken is because you've identified some major issues but small changes cannot fix those issues sometimes we get lucky sometimes we make a few small edits to a story and it fixes whatever was wrong with the story but other times when we make some edits to a story it's not enough and we have to accept that there is something wrong with the story at its core maybe one of the major characters doesn't fit with the plot or maybe the plot is full of holes or maybe there's some other large issue going on and you have to be honest with yourself sometimes you just have to burn down the story and start over and if you are at that stage there's nothing to be ashamed of and I've got seven steps for you today that'll help you rebuild your story the first step is a simple yet difficult one and it's that you have to accept that failure is part of the growth process now I know nobody wants to fail we hate failure it's shameful it sucks but the thing is you have to accept it and you can't beat yourself up for it just because you write a novel and you invest tons of time and energy and passion into it and it doesn't work out that doesn't mean that you should be holding it against yourself don't do that don't beat yourself up for it forgive yourself for your mistakes and move forward and if you can't forgive yourself if you're not the type who likes to accept my forgiveness just you know take the brand in forgiveness and move on let's write some great stories second step is to Define your story's core idea and your core idea is probably what got you into this writing process in the first place you came up with a cool idea or an imaginative idea that made you want to write a novel that made you want to write a longer work and that's great and that's great you're passionate about something something excites you about the writing process and you want to use it here at the start of your reboot process now another thing to keep in mind here with this core idea is you want to build around it and I suggest that you take out a piece of paper and at the center of that piece of paper write down your core idea maybe it's a few words maybe it's a sentence whatever it is but write it down down in the middle of the piece of paper and then what I want you to do I want you to write other ideas other story elements that connect to this idea maybe some important characters and if they're if they really gel with the idea put them closer to the center of the page now if there's something that's like a little less connected to it maybe put it towards the edge of the page but you want to get like a visual representation of what's going on in this story what is orbiting your core idea and this will help you narrow down what needs to be in the story it'll make you more focused as you ENT this reboot third tip is to separate what's working from what isn't working and this is a piece of advice I came across in Stuart hitz's book blueprint your bestseller I've talked about this on the channel before I'll link it in the description below this is one of the best books out there on the revision process so if you're struggling with that sort of thing you might want to check this one out but what the idea here is you want to take out a piece of paper fresh piece of paper and without looking at your novel without you know flipping through it or anything like that write down everything you love about it it can be a scene you loved it can be a character you loved whatever you thought was working whatever you thought was just on fire over the course of the story you want to write those things down then what you want to do you want to write down all the things that weren't working in your story the things you were unhappy with the things you didn't believe in the things that weren't relevant to your core idea once you've assembled this list then it's time to you know take inventory see what needs to stick around for the reboot and then look at also some of the those things that weren't working in your story ask yourself if any of those things need to be in the story and then ask yourself the question how are you going to improve them fourth step is to cut and combine your weaker ideas and you have to be honest with yourself here and it helps if you go back to that list you just made of all the different things that you were unhappy with in the story things that weren't working and now it's time to ask whether you should cut these ideas or you should try to combine them into stronger ones and I think a great way to think of this is to go back to your core IDE a and ask yourself okay do these ideas that I have here the ones that I'm not happy with are they relevant to that core idea if they're not relevant at all then just get rid of them now if you do have some ideas that you're you're unhappy with but they're important to the story maybe you had like a character who served an important function in the plot if you have a situation like that then it's time to combine ideas and let me give you an example from my book bad parts when I wrote the first draft the main character Ash she had her father as one main character character and he played like an important role in the plot and then there was the town cop who was also an important character who played a major role now when I was doing the rewrite and I was going through the second draft what I realized was that her father and the town cop had a lot of similarities and in the end what I did I just combined them into one character and it made for an interesting dynamic because now she had to respond to him not just as a father but also as a policeman fifth step is to pick the best possible cast of characters and we just talked about this a little bit when I talked about how you can combine two characters into one but the thing to remember here is that your protagonist your antagonist and your major supporting characters they are critical to driving your story you're not going to have a plot unless you have solid well-rounded characters so take the time to develop and understand these characters and then figure out how they're going to factor into the story and I think it helps if you go back to that central idea that core idea and then maybe go back to your sheet of paper the one where you you were writing different things down on and make sure that your main cast is closely orbiting that core idea make sure they connect to it step number six is to write the islands and this is a great piece of information I got from the book refuse to be done by Matt Bell this a great writing guide has a lot of simple bite-sized strategies for just pushing through the writing process and one of those is the idea of writing the islands and what this is it basically means that you want to write out the most important scenes in your story before actually writing the full story out so let's say you have maybe five scenes that you think are critical or it could be 10 scenes or seven scenes whatever the idea here is you want to pick a limited number of scenes that are critical to the beginning middle and end of your story and you want to write these key scenes out and you don't have to worry about getting them perfect just write them out figure out what happens in these scenes and as you do this you will realize that certain scenes in the middle of the story or toward the end of the story they need to be set up in a certain way and as you write out these scenes you'll see characters at different stages of the plot and you'll realize that okay well they have to have certain mindsets at this stage of the story or that stage of the story or whatever the idea here with writing the islands is you want to simplify the writing process and also prepare yourself for the major events that will happen later along the way and then step number seven is to rewrite from scratch and yes you have to rewrite your entire story I know there's this this temptation to go back to the original draft and try make it work at certain points but you need to move on from that it's important that you start a brand new story you come into it with a fresh mindset a fresh attitude and you test out your new ideas you make things work on this second draft if that draft was broken it's time to just move on for it accept that it was a mistake it was a failure and grow from it write the new story and write a good one this time so I hope this helps question of the day what is the number one thing you need to improve in your current work and progress let us know in the comments section below thank you guys for watching if you want to support the Channel please pick up a copy of either one of my books and be sure to leave reviews on Amazon bad parts is great if you like small toown whr it's about people trading away their sick and injured body parts in order to get healthy again and then entry wounds is great if you like Thrillers it's about a guy who picks up a Haunted Gun and he can't put it down till he kills six people with it also be sure to check out my other videos like share and subscribe maybe even hit that thanks button for me and as always remember to keep on writing

Channel: Writer Brandon McNulty

Views: 15,870

Keywords: Writing, Writing advice, Writing Tips, Fiction, Creative Writing, How to write a book, How to write a novel, novel, book, storytelling, story, structure, plot, character, rewrite, how to rewrite a novel, how to revise a novel, revise, plot holes, mistakes, mistakes writers make, first novel, editing, writing process, broken, stories, first draft, drafting, second draft, failure, how to know if your story is good, story idea, writing hacks, conflict, pacing, fix, issues, step by step, step, how to

Id: ZSkgvELYTrw

Length: 10min 29sec (629 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024