A story is not a story without conflict. After all, why would the reader follow your main character if everything goes to plan and everything is rainbows and butterflies?
A conflict is something: a person, event or philosophy that hinders a character from reaching his goal. Whoa, you might be thinking, goal? Did you say goal? I thought we were talking about conflict! Well, there can be no conflict if there is no goal.
A character should be driven by a main purpose, say, finishing a race in first place so that he could use the prize money to pay for his mother's hospital bills. All throughout your story, every action made by the character should lead to this goal. Provide reasons why this is his goal, make it his passion so that the readers would root for him to succeed.
A good conflict to this would be a rival who is just as passionate as your main character, may be even more so, because of even bigger reasons. Make this rival ruthless in his pursuit of his own goal, thus, preventing your main character from reaching his goal.
Another conflict would be an injury, say, a previously broken foot that prevents him from sprinting at a high speed.
Look around you. Look at your office mates or friends. What are their goals? What's preventing them from reaching their goals? Look at yourself, what are your goals? Why should you achieve them? What's preventing you from reaching them?
Create a good conflict. Make readers root for your character. Make them hate the conflict. This is the main ingredient of a good, engaging story.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
The Hacker
Note: This blog serves to help you in coming up with ideas to write as a short story/novel/script/whatever. Please note that some of the ideas in the blog are downright silly and not meant to be taken as is. You can get the gist of the entry and alter it any way you want, for any purpose whatsoever.
Genre: Action/Science Fiction
Plot:
You are a former hacker for a company, and you were good at it. For reasons unknown to everybody, you left the company you were working for and just disappeared.
Several years later, while tilling the land in a remote town, you receive a letter from a former colleague, he needs your hacking skills to "destroy a force far greater than your own". You hesitate, because you know that there are tons of better programmers/computer experts in the field today. You tell this to your colleague when you meet him, but he tells you that all the computer programmers, hackers and experts in the world were kidnapped by the agents of a supercomputer gone sentient. It is up to you to save the world, or at least figure out how to.
The Twist:
Your colleague is an agent of the supercomputer. You figure this out halfway through the story, but much later, after you kill him to save the world, he reveals that he was fighting the supercomputer all along, and he was covertly helping you in some of the things you did to get to that point. He didn't reveal this when you found out he was an agent because he believed you would be more determined if your state of mind was that of a betrayed person.
Genre: Action/Science Fiction
Plot:
You are a former hacker for a company, and you were good at it. For reasons unknown to everybody, you left the company you were working for and just disappeared.
Several years later, while tilling the land in a remote town, you receive a letter from a former colleague, he needs your hacking skills to "destroy a force far greater than your own". You hesitate, because you know that there are tons of better programmers/computer experts in the field today. You tell this to your colleague when you meet him, but he tells you that all the computer programmers, hackers and experts in the world were kidnapped by the agents of a supercomputer gone sentient. It is up to you to save the world, or at least figure out how to.
The Twist:
Your colleague is an agent of the supercomputer. You figure this out halfway through the story, but much later, after you kill him to save the world, he reveals that he was fighting the supercomputer all along, and he was covertly helping you in some of the things you did to get to that point. He didn't reveal this when you found out he was an agent because he believed you would be more determined if your state of mind was that of a betrayed person.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Top Gang
Note: This blog serves to help you in coming up with short story ideas. Please note that some of the ideas in the blog are downright silly and not meant to be taken as is. You can get the gist of the entry and alter it any way you want, for any purpose whatsoever. If you do use the idea, please remember to link back to this blog. It's not a requirement, but I'd appreciate it if you do. :)
Genre: Romance/Action
Plot:
A man joins a gang and becomes its leader. With his leadership, his gang becomes the top gang in the City.
The City, alarmed by the sudden rise of gang wars, launches an all-out campaign to capture the leaders of the gangs.
When the man is captured, along with leaders of the other gangs, he discovers that the leader of their most-hated rival is also his first love, who is still bitter after he left her ten years ago.
The Hanger:
Will they set aside personal feelings to help each other escape?
The Twist:
The City Mayor is the girl's father.
Genre: Romance/Action
Plot:
A man joins a gang and becomes its leader. With his leadership, his gang becomes the top gang in the City.
The City, alarmed by the sudden rise of gang wars, launches an all-out campaign to capture the leaders of the gangs.
When the man is captured, along with leaders of the other gangs, he discovers that the leader of their most-hated rival is also his first love, who is still bitter after he left her ten years ago.
The Hanger:
Will they set aside personal feelings to help each other escape?
The Twist:
The City Mayor is the girl's father.
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