DiancieIsBae's Guide on How to Write a Good Story

You know, I get this nagging feeling in my head about a couple or few years down the road, that I'm going to be asked this exact thing. And honestly I can kinda see why. As I have nowadays been more well-known as a writer (a Pokefiction writer at that) than an artist, especially more so since I never thought that in a million years I would actually take up writing as a hobby. So I figured, why not just make this now for people to read, so people can get a rough idea of what they should keep in mind when writing their stories? I know I know, I probably don't have anywhere NEAR enough experience to make a thread pertaining to something like this. Or maybe I do, who knows. I guess you guys will be the judge of that. I just thought that I would share my opinion to you guys on this whole matter since the beginning is really the most difficult part. So here we go, how I think you can write a good story.

Now when it comes to a topic such as this, it really boils down to three simple pieces of advice.

1) Come up with an interesting enough premise worth reading about. Yes, the very underground level of your series is perhaps the most important. There are so many stories out there, and so many of the premises have already been created. I won't say going with a premise that's already been created before will guarantee failure. In fact, one of my series (Solace Originate) literally has an overdone premise. But try to find some way to take a trope pertaining to the type of series you're planning on writing, and defy its norm. "Breaking the mold", as I often call it. What this does is it gives the reader the sense of "this is new" despite it not being very new to begin with. Take my aforementioned Solace for example (another reminder to myself that I should continue writing it); most romantic relationships take a long time to fully develop into one of love. Like, 5/6 of a series usually. In my series, I did it...in the very first chapter. Yeah. In doing this, I "broke the mold" of that particular trope. I also did it with another trope regarding high school series as a whole, but you get my point.

Now an alternate way of making a story interesting pertains more to fanfictions. Wherein you take elements from two already existing official series (hard cap it at 2, any more and your story becomes too jumbled), and fuse them into (hopefully) something entirely new. Key example from my own experience is PAC, which combines the Trainer's Journey genre of most pokefics, with the MMO genre that's been quite the rage lately.

This next point is highly dependent on how comfortable you are with this, but 2) make a decently sized group of main characters for your series. The very next step after creating your series premise. Drafting the amount of initial main characters. I'll give my recommended starting number of about 4 or 5, I find that amount usually gets the job done 9 times out of 10. Now you can add more main characters to the roster as your series goes on (depending on your series' planned overall length), but ultimately you want a nice amount of starting characters that can play off of one another's core personalities very well. At the same time, however, don't restrict the story to just ONE main character. As that can get pretty...meh, in my opinion.

You will also wanna make your characters interesting in some way. Either by the aforementioned "playing off of one another", or by giving them quirks of some kind to enhance their likability. Character flaws are also recommended because honestly having flawless characters...just...*sigh*...just, makes them kinda bland in some regards. Rem from Re:Zero is a perfect example of this. I'm sure most of you will know why, and will probably give me hate messages for saying this. But whatever.

And lastly, 3) Make yourself a decent uploading schedule - one that most conforms to YOU. And this is especially important if you're planning on making your series a long one. Writing a story with an interesting premise that can keep readers engaged is great, yeah, it can get you started on becoming an actual author. But if your uploading schedule is utter shit (and trust me, when it is, it's noticeable), then those readers might a) feel they're reading too much new content too soon, or b) waiting too long for new content and thus jumping ship. Having a reasonable uploading schedule, even if it DOES end up being a wacky one, ensures that your series' following won't lose interest via waiting too long or reading simply too many new chapters at one time. Especially since there's a shitload of other fanfics out there to follow as is. What I would suggest for an uploading schedule is to have your minimum wait time between chapter uploads be 7 days, and the maximum a month. That range, I've found, is the sweet spot for getting your interesting series as popular as it can possibly be. I do it, my friend does it, a bunch of other writers do it too. Because it works, and I bet it'll work for you if you follow it.

Another point to add on to this one is DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, BULK UPLOAD YOUR SERIES. This, from my own experience and from what I myself saw from other writers, is the ultimate death trap for any series. Simply put, bulk uploading is a bad idea. A further explanation, it basically means that unless your readers are die-hard and will read any amount of content you throw at them, no matter how much that amount ends up being, the general reader-base of your series will most likely turn away from it. I saw a series that started its run-time not too long ago with a bulk upload of 11 chapters in the span of basically an hour. And it killed its potential view-count from the start, or at least greatly reduced it. Which is why I urge you to never bulk upload. Even if it's to catch up a site on uploading, you're much better off doing the weekly release schedule to catch up since it nets you more views. I know in the end, it's not about the number of views your chapters have but rather if the story is good or not, but honestly I'd be lying if I didn't at least partially care about my series' view-counts. I mean come on, we all have and do. It's just human nature.

And yeah, that's about all I have to say on this matter. I think if you follow these three main points and keep in mind most of what I've said here, your story will be both enjoyable AND interesting.