Tapwing

These can range from Werewolves to dragons, or swords to magical items.

I've got 2-3 slots open. And I've got some examples below for you!

If you're interested, you can DM me, or email me at: [email protected]

Thanks!

When I start writing something, I tend to have a lot of junk floating around my head too.

Generally I don’t think there’s any one specific place to start. There’s a lot of disparate things I might be thinking about. So like for example I might be thinking “man, I wish I could see a movie where someone jumps out of the top floor of a building” and at the same time “man, I wish I could see a story about someone who is mad at capitalism and wants to stick it to corporations” or “man, I wish I could see a movie about a giraffe person.” Start to write down these different things you’re interested in and see if there are any common themes.

As you give it time and these various, seemingly unconnected ideas sit with you, maybe you start to realize that the length of a giraffe’s neck can symbolize rising up the corporate ladder. Your main character should be someone who would be most adversely affected by the world you’ve built, so ok, maybe your main character is a neckless giraffe. Now you have a rough idea of what your world is and what your main character is: a world of giraffes where everyone is trying to get higher up the corporate ladder, using their long necks to reach higher up in the building they’re in to get into higher positions of power, but one giraffe (named Dylan) can’t because he has no neck.

There you go. There’s a concept. Now what? Well, if you look at story structure, you’ll find that many stories start with characters in a state of normalcy before the inciting incident. This sets up who the characters are and what they’re looking for out of life. Often the characters really want something out of their life, then it is upended somehow or an opportunity comes along that they can’t pass up. Here’s what a basic story structure looks like:

You likely already have seen this, because most of us were taught about this in junior high, but I’ll run through it again as a quick refresher:

INTRODUCTION/ESTABLISH ROUTINE: Show who the characters are, what the world is, what we need to know about everything before the story starts.

INCITING INCIDENT: The event that sets off the story.

RISING ACTION: All the trying and failing and relationship building that we need for the rest of the story to feel like it matters.

CRISIS: The moment when all the trying hasn’t worked and our character gets to their lowest point.

REALIZATION: Realization and Crisis are usually counted as the same thing in story structure, but I split them up for easier digestion. This is when the character learns something from being in this lowest point that helps them achieve their goal.

CLIMAX: This is when the character puts their realization into practice.

FALLING ACTION: All the stuff after the realization put into practice works.

RESOLUTION: The new normal is established.

———

So lets see if we can set up a story with a couple of the random ideas we had up there:

INTRODUCTION/ESTABLISH ROUTINE: The short necked giraffe (Dylan) is going about his normal life working at a mattress company. He goes in, he does his work, but he wants so badly to be a long necked giraffe so he can move higher up in the company. All he has to show for anything he’s done is a pen that says “thank you for your years of service”.

INCITING INCIDENT: When an announcement comes over the speaker that there’s a new positions opening up at the top of the company, Dylan gets super excited, so he tries to get the help of his friends.

RISING ACTION: They help him to get further, but it’s still not enough. He grows greedier and greedier, trying to make his neck longer so he can get to the top of the building, but it’s not working, so he eventually starts using and manipulating his friends. He makes them stand on the ground and he climbs on top of them to get higher, crushing them beneath his weight.

A CRISIS: He finally reaches his goal of getting to the top of the building, BUT, it turns out, at the top most floor of the building, it’s just a bunch lions eating the giraffe heads. All the other giraffes that got this tall are just super long, floating, neck stumps that the lions have eaten. The lions said there was a new opening to fill because they were feeling hungry again.

REALIZATION: Dylan realizes that he has spent all this time climbing on the backs of his friends to reach a lie fed to him by the lions at the top of the food chain (uber wealthy capitalists).

CLIMAX: Dylan, being a short necked giraffe, is able to use what he once thought was his disability to jump off at the top floor, run around the lions, then stabs the head lion in the throat with his “years of service” pen. As blood gushes out of his neck, the other lions pounce on him, unable to stop their bloodthirsty urges. Dylan jumps out the window, leaving all the lions at the top scrambling, confused, and devouring each other.

FALLING ACTION: Dylan lands on one of the very mattresses this mattress company makes.

RESOLUTION: He apologizes to his friends, and sagely decides that anarcho-communism is the best form of government.

THE END.

——

This story took me 20 minutes to write. I made it up as I went along, based purely on those three, unrelated ideas (which really were unrelated when I wrote them).

As an example of how the story changed while I wrote it, when I got to “how should Dylan kill the lions?” that was the first time I went back to the beginning of the story and rewrote the introduction. I added a “years of service” pen that would add some irony to the killing of the lions. Then, when he had to jump out the window, I was like “Wait what does he land on?” so I then went back to the introduction again and rewrote it to include the fact that it’s a mattress factory. Don’t be afraid to change things, nothing is precious.

Now obviously, this story could use a few rewrites, but the bare bones are there and you can kinda understand what happens and why. Start super super simple and then build out from there. Don’t get caught up in dialogue or describing worlds until you have the foundation. The main theme of the story and the actions that take place to show that theme will give you the proper foundation to build everything else your story needs. Once you have that, it will all feel like it somehow just falls into place.