Creative Writing 101: Plot, Characterization, Description, Setting by MTabek
	1. The Plot One Small Step... This brief, basic article is written to help all aspiring writers get that good foothold which always seems to be the hardest thing to find. Now, every story must begin somewhere. I know all of you know what we're talking about. The dreaded idea! Yes indeed, every story, believe it or not, actually has to be about something. We call this the plot. What, you knew that already? Oh...right. Still, the hardest part is actually coming up with something good. Ah ha, there's the rub. Every person will believe 'good' in their own way. That means that when you come up with an idea, make sure you like it! Write from your heart. You know all that you need already. Infuse your story with love, humour, terror, whatever you wish. But be forewarned. A writer is always looking about him. Life is his mirror, you must watch everything and everyone around you to garner and learn all you can about human nature. In this way you can write believeable characters, but that will be a topic for another time. In your story you have to have something at stake. A bone and two dogs, there's your story. Be aware where your "bone" is. Be it a love to an evil prince, or a hero that has to save a village, to even having the most unlikely person imaginable to save an entire world of races. Most importantly though, we have to believe that these people can do this. Once you have something good that needs to be done, saved or discovered, then, and only then, can the rest follow. Usually these elements (like characters, setting, dialoge, etc) will all come with time as you write the story. I am a strong advocate to the story writing the characters and their actions, not the other way around; if you want to write about a certain character, make sure it's the right story for the character. * * * 2. Characterization "He Thinks, therefore he is Real" Characterization is that horribly difficult, but ultimately most rewarding aspect, of writing. As everyone knows, it is the people that really make stories go. In fact, though you most definitly can write stories focusing on a plot and letting characters swim along, having characters which drive the plot along is usually the more interesting. Now I'm not saying this is an easy task. For myself, I have the most probly creating believable characters, and that is because I was what I described earlier, a plot writer. I have great plots, great stories, but my characters, the people, turn out a bit wooden or stereotypical. Again, nothing wrong with that, but I've always been a perfectionist, and so I delved into the realm of characterizing last year in my Creative Writing class. What I found really surprised me. I could actually do it. When I first began my story those many years ago, I had a good story, or at least I thought so. What I lacked though, was characters who could really propel my idea into new uncharted territories and make what my plot was real and tangible to those who read it. What I learned was that it really helps to first, as you begin your tale, to make up a bit of backstory about your characters. How might they react to this or that based on previous experiences in their "lives." You might even find by doing this you can add in foundation - like beginnings or flashbacks to help develop your characters. Also, it really helps to know how your characters look, and I will be going in to more depth on this later as well as with dialog, but definitely know the limitations of your stars physically and mentally is essential for good Characterization. * * * 3. Description "Wonder...Beyond Imagining" Descriptions, or how to make all those little details come alive and make a place feel as real as, well, real life! How does one accomplish this? That's a good question. Over my years of writing, I have found this to be one of the more difficult aspects of writing, as I think really good writing is found not only in the heart of the people, but in the ability to make things seem so real as to see, touch, taste, smell and hear. While I will be going over settings later on in this series, for now I will focus on a more personalized approach. With my story, Cry of Echoes, I found the best thing to do with my story, which is focused right now on the Starship Nelson, is to make as best I could the sounds and sights of the bridge around my characters. With the addition of the "beeps" and "rumblings" on the bridge, I can create a sense of calmness, security and strength. By adding in crashes, sparkings, and deep explosions you can now increase tension and action tenfold. Also, the addition of smell can add to the realism of a place. The smell of burnt ozone mixed with the frying of electric wiring can certainly send you a different image that roses and spring air. Then of course is the description of place, the setting, using sight and touch to help add to the image you create. With touch, I kept adding in the tapping of controls, having the captain grip his armrest as the ship rocked back and forth under him. Mix in the sight aspect watching lights blink on and off, the lighting changing from soft white to blood red, can all add to the aspect you create with the senses - all senses. * * * 4. Setting Your characters, your plot, even your dialogue, are all inherently interconnected with your setting. So how do you make everything come to life? In the last part, I talked about descriptions within a story's set of parameters. Well now is the time to put those to the test. Now you have to tell those who read the story the hardest part of all. What all those places of your mind really look like. Bring out the aspect of writing setting by introducing to your readers the sights, the sounds, the very smell of the place in which you are taking them. Take this example from my story, Cry of Echoes: Beams of golden-green energy cut through buildings like blocks of ice. They carved up the surface of the planet into unrecognizable heaps of burnt dirt creating spirals of dust and smoke that drifted toward the clouds as if the planet itself yearned to protect itself and attack those that were hurting it. Photon torpedoes smashed into the seas, boiling the waters, and careened through the crust, creating geysers of fiery magma from just underneath the surface. The Earth herself was bleeding along with those who lived upon her. With the use of vivid words you can bring alive the look of a place, in my example, the "boiling waters" and "geysers of firey magma" these all create a look that this is a horrific world you would not want to be upon right now. That brings about the next point of writing in the setting. Creating a tone and feeling for your characters to live in. Obviously any characters in my example would be in a hellish type of area and so they would be running for their lives, etc. But if characters are placed in my next example, the tone changes so completely and you can feel that they are much more at ease seeing things from a distance. Of course, in space, its hard to get a feel for setting, so you can focus more on the detail aspect of descriptions in terms of the ships, as they are your only link to the characters. Here is another example from my story. Hawk-like in design, the ships forward facing 'beak' melded seamlessly into the upper 'wing' of the ship. Curving downward from the top, the wing attached to the top of the two pulsing blue nacelles. Like the top, a bottom 'wing' curved upward to attach to the underside of the nacelles. Between the wings, and to both sides of the beak, open space showed through. Equivalent to two Sovereign class ships in size, the Romulan ships matched to the Nelson in firepower. By just describing the ship sitting in space and its relation to the Nelson, you include within the aspect of setting, as even long are not truly the "set" per se, they are in fact just that as long as you stay outside, and thus are quite important to the tone of a story. Here, the tone is much more tentative and suspenseful than my first one in which I have a full out horrorific attack. By setting these tones as well, we can use them to influence the characters. Now of course, setting can be as minimal or as much as you desire, in fact, I usually focus more on the characters and dialoge then in describing a place, but I go with the assumption that by now most of my readers will have had knowledge of the things I talk about, all I have to say is my characters are on the bridge of a Prometheus class ship and they will know what I am talking about. BUT, and this is a huge but, if you ever write a full novel, you NEED, in fact you MUST describe all the detail you can, so as to bring in a greater audience for your story. Also, in my case, I have entirely new ships to explore. While you don't want to overload a person with detail, through the course of what I hope to take my story into book form, I will go on to describe in some detail the look of the new R'Tanga ship's bridges, so everyone knows the look of where my bad guy is. In terms of characters then, the shaping of setting is very important, as it can actually tell you whether a character is good, bad, insane, etc. So as you can tell by now, the setting of a story really is the second most integral part of any writing, as it sets the tone, shows the worlds of imagination waiting to be explored, and also makes (or breaks down) the characters within its embrace. I now leave it to your vivid imaginations and wonderful skills to help me make my job better. Good luck in all your writing!