Starberry

My first piece of advice, and thing I most often see people struggling with, is figuring out what goes in between the Important Scenes™. The truth is, every scene is important, even the ones you only added to fill space and even the pacing. Writers often fall into the trap (and I am very much including myself in this) of picking a few favorite scenes, planning them in advance, and then realizing they don't really have anything to put in between. they have vague ideas of how they get to the land marks that are the preplanned scenes, but they don't know what to actually write. They don't know the words they want to put down.

The truth is, that's okay. it's normal and natural and it has a really easy fix, but only if you're willing to put a decent amount of effort into thinking about what these "filler" scenes should be. I often find that the easiest filler scenes to add are the exposition ones. Maybe you're choosing to start with the inciting incident, maybe you're planning a little bit of a lead up. either way, the scenes where we are first introduced to your characters and setting are some of the most important.

When I talk about expositional scenes, what I really mean is your main character's back story. Maybe we see a childhood prologue. Maybe we get a day in the normal life right before the inciting incident, maybe we see it in flashbacks, or maybe the character tells it as a story right smack dab in the middle of the book. it doesn't matter where it lives, the expositional scenes are the where we first see, "who is this person before the plot happened to them?" And that's important, so it's really easy to flesh out and add. There are three main questions an expositional scene needs to answer: Who was this person before the inciting incident? What was this world like before the inciting incident? And why does that matter to the reader? The last one is the hardest for most writers to answer when they think about their expositional scenes, or any scenes at all for that matter, but don't fear. the answer is usually something simple. something along the lines of, "this helps the reader understand the character" or "this ensures that the reader recognizes ____ when it comes back later." And any scene that can answer those three questions are sure to add a decent amount of word count (not that you should be stressing about length. I mention word count simply to emphasize that you're adding substance) and a beautiful amount of development for your characters and setting. (note that this can be used for multiple characters, as many as you want in fact. even side characters can have a small expositional scene.)

The next kind of filler scenes are the rising action. how do we get from the inciting incident to the climax. the best way I know how to do this is to sit down and really objectively think about four main things: Where do the characters need to be physically and emotionally for the climax to happen? Where are the characters physically and emotionally as of the inciting incident? What is required to get them from the latter to the former? How hard can I make it for them to get from the latter to the former? Now, the last one might seem a little bit silly. It sounds like an evil villain talking, not a writer who's taking things seriously. But trust me, I can be both, and I can write a pretty great story while doing it.

The fact is, any obstacles you can come up with will test the physical and emotional limits of the characters, which will add substance to your story, help the pacing move realistically, and most importantly, it will draw the reader even further into your plot. You can probably come up with as many scenes as you need to fill space, if you can just come up with a few answers for the last question in the list. a writer's real job is creating people, and then making life a living hell for those people, and if you can answer those four questions, you're making your job ten times easier.

I have a few other kinds of filler scenes, including: internal conflict vs external conflict, side quest, and side characters. if you want me to go through any of these, please let me know!!

Number 2

My second piece of advice to develop your story and create something bigger, and more whole, is to get to know your characters really well. this can be as simple as Spotify playlists and go as deep as short stories. The fact is, some authors start writing with half finished characters, and then find themselves unsure of how a character would actually react in a certain situation, which can create a trap, where a character's choices are made entirely for plot convenience, and it becomes boring for the reader.

Spotify playlists and Pinterest boards are a big staple in the community. people make them for their original characters and fandom characters, and everything in-between. There are certain people who would write them off as useless, but here's the thing, they aren't. Music is human emotion expressed through sound, and even one song can inspire people to write entire books. Music also has a million genres and sub genres, and it's often very helpful, even just to identify the genre of music you feel fits a certain character. Pinterest boards are fun to play around with, and can often make a writer more excited about writing, which can increase productivity. The aesthetic of your character, and how your character feels to you, are a big part of the decisions they'll make in your story, and using a Pinterest board to collect ideas for that can be extremely beneficial.