Creative writing techniques for developing stories in scripts, plays and novels.

Mrs Beaton famously began her recipe for Rabbit Stew with the instruction, ‘First catch your rabbit.’ My guidance for writing a story begins the same way: first write your story.

This may seem rather perverse. After all, you probably came here seeking advice on exactly that: how to write a story. The truth is, no one can tell you how to write it. You write it with passion, enthusiasm and imagination. So go away and write your story!

When you’ve got a complete story, come back and read all the other pages on this web site about writing technique. The secret is, they're not about writing at all. They’re about re-writing. And first you have to write your story.

The trouble is, filling blank pages is hard work. (If it were easy, then everyone would be a successful author.) So here are a collection of creative writing techniques I have found useful in the process of developing a story. But please remember The Sanity Clause.

I worried about this for many years. Some writers devise a detailed story outline before they attempt a first draft; others just dive in and start writing, discovering the story as they go.

Personally I like a detailed scene breakdown before I begin. I prefer to know how the whole story develops before I start writing the first scene. But a colleague says he starts writing without any real idea where the story will lead. He discovers as he writes. (And once he’s written around 90 per cent of his word limit, he knows it’s time to start wrapping everything up.)

Finally I realised, it doesn’t matter which way you do it. The purpose of both approaches is exactly the same. It’s all a way of generating a rough draft of your complete story — which becomes the basis for your next draft.

Another friend told me about meeting a successful screenwriter who explained that, whenever he had an idea for the current story, he would type up that short scene and add it to a pile on his desk. Once the pile was about an inch deep, he knew he had enough material to begin work on the complete screenplay.

So it doesn’t matter, either, whether you write your rough story sequentially — beginning on page 1 and working through — or write scenes out of sequence, and connect them into a sequence later. Whichever way works best for you.

Ideas often come when you go for a walk. There’s something hypnotic and relaxing about the regular rhythm of your feet hitting the ground one after another. After five or ten minutes of this, your mind begins to freewheel and daydream, and that’s when ideas pop up.

A simple technique is to carry a small notebook with you at all times, so you can jot down ideas as they occur.

I find there are often short periods available to me during any day — sitting on a train, waiting for a bus — and these are good times to think about story. Just let your mind freewheel, and see what comes out. Once you get one idea, others follow in quick succession, and a small notebook is perfect to jot them down for later use.

The nice thing about writing ideas down is that, once they’re written down, you can forget about them. This has a releasing effect on the brain, and frees it up for new ideas.

The great thing about a rough draft is that it doesn’t matter how good the writing is. It’s only a rough draft.

Sometimes you’re inspired even before you sit down to write. The scene springs to life in front of you, and the writing flows easily. But mostly writing is like scratching for water in the dust. You know vaguely what’s supposed to happen in a scene; but there’s only a few unconnected half-ideas.

The important thing to remember is that this is a rough draft — and all you need to do is write the scene as functionally as you can. There’s no point in prolonging the agony, so just bang it out as quickly as possible and get it finished. All you’re doing is joining up the dots that get the scene from its beginning to its end — connecting the essential actions in a purely functional way.

Sometimes inspiration will comes to you as you write. But often you end up with a terrible piece of writing! This is fine. It has the great advantage of being words on a page, which is always better than a blank page. When you’ve finished the complete story, you can work through it again and rewrite the bad sections — and by that time, you’ll be able to see ways of making it work better.

A creative technique I use for building a story outline is to look for gaps in the story.

Work through your outline and, whenever you sense that something is missing or unexplained, add a brief question in the margin (or in brackets if you write on a word processor). You’re looking for any plot or character motivation that needs expanding — such as:

how did they get here?

when did he discover this?

why does she hate him?

This requires some sensitivity and feeling for story development, and is best done at a slow pace so you can become aware of all the gaps.

Then, as soon as you’ve noted down each question, immediately let your mind suggest two or three possible answers (or more if they come quickly), and jot them down. Only spend a few moments thinking of these answers, and then move on to finding the next missing piece. You’re not actually trying to find the right answer. You’re simply jotting down a couple of ideas which might answer the question.

For example, you might ask the question

why does she hate him?

and then note down a few possible answers

maybe he offended her accidentally? or maybe he offended a close friend of hers? or maybe she’s never met him before but her best friend warned her against him?

These aren’t necessarily the right answer to the question; they’re simply possible answers to that question.

The general technique is:

• notice each story gap
• phrase it as a question
• immediately jot down a few answers

Once you’ve worked through the whole outline adding questions like this, you then work through it a second time. This time you’re concentrating on coming up with the best answer to each question. Often you’ll find that one of your ‘possible’ answers was actually a good solution to the problem — or maybe it points in the direction of a good solution. If you can’t find a good answer to the problem, go for the ‘least worst’ idea. It will fill the gap for the time being, and you may discover a better idea as the story develops.

You may find it useful to sleep on your questions and answers before trying to choose the best ones, so the ideas can brew at the back of your mind. Identifying some ways to expand the story is a positive way to finish a writing session; and reading through your ideas is a good way of getting back into the flow at the start of the next session.

Working with a writing partner or editor is often an excellent way of generating material. Your ideas bounce off each other and lead to even better ideas. (But see the Golden Rules, and be aware of the potential pitfalls of co-writing. Good writing partnerships are not easy to create.)

Doing research has been popular with writers for centuries because it’s an excellent way to come up with new ideas. You can research your story by reading books and visiting places, and you can research characters by careful observation of people around you. Research often throws up lots of new ideas that you wouldn’t otherwise have thought of.

A small note: Some writers find it more helpful to do story research after they’ve come up with the story outline. Everyday life usually lacks the dramatic power needed by fiction, so it may be better to create a strong story first. The golden rule (within the bounds of libel) is:

Never let reality get in the way of a good story.

If you can’t think of a solution to a story problem, maybe the better solution is not to solve it, and start thinking of ways that will specifically not solve the situation. So if you can’t think of a way for a character to discover a secret, maybe you can think of an interesting way in which they would fail to discover the secret.

This technique might show the problem in a new light so you suddenly see a way of solving it. Or it may take the story to a different place where you can find an alternative way forward. Or not solving the problem may simply make the story more dramatic and interesting.

If you know what you want to achieve at a particular point in the story, but can’t think of a way to do it, there’s a useful technique to discover ways forward. Start by writing down what you need to do at this point in the story. Then ask yourself, ‘Why?’ and jot the answer down.

Whatever answer you write down, ask yourself why that is so. And continue repeating the process, asking, ‘Why?’ about each new answer, until you’ve done it five times.

For example:

The husband needs to discover his wife’s secret.

Why?

He needs to doubt the entire history of their marriage.

Why?

He must believe that he is not the father of their child.

Why..?

And so on until you’ve answered the question Why? five times.

This will give you a much better understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve, and you may find that it’s the deeper problem that points a new way forward.

Another technique when you know what you want to achieve at a particular point, but can’t find a way of doing it, is to ask yourself, ‘What's stopping them?’ — and then think of five different answers.

For example, if you start by writing down ‘the husband needs to discover his wife’s secret’, ask yourself, ’What’s stopping him?’ and write down five different obstacles to this discovery.

Once you know the various problems that are preventing the story moving forward, there’s a good chance that at least one of them can be cleared out of the way (either here, or at an earlier point in the story).

Robert McKee in his workshops describes a useful technique for turning the story around. Think about ‘What’s the best possible thing that could happen to this character right now?’. Then think ‘How could that be transformed into the worst possible thing to happen to them?’

This can also be done the other way: start by thinking of the worst possible, and look for how it could turn into the best possible.

If you can’t get your character out of a problem (or, just as frequently, you want to get them into a problem) try looking at other characters and think about how they might intervene in an unexpected way. Maybe their personality or behaviour can be used to create a catastrophe. By trying to help, they create a disaster. Alternatively they may have some unexpected skill that saves the day. Maybe a shy librarian turns out to know all the techniques people use for stealing books, which can be put to new purposes.

This technique works even better if the central character themselves makes the unexpected intervention in the situation.

Story problems often happen because we get stuck inside the story and need a wider perspective to find an answer. What we need is an outside stimulus that gives us fresh ideas. A good technique is to open an art history book at random and choose the first picture you see. Then imagine that this picture is trying to tell you the solution to the problem.

There may be something in the picture itself, or there may be a wider idea suggested by the picture, which leads you to a solution. If you study the picture in depth, noticing all the ideas and associations that come up for you, and asking yourself, ‘What message is this trying to tell me?’ you may find several new possibilities.

An art history book is a particularly good source because it covers a wide range of subjects and styles, and the pictures themselves are rich in detail. (Alternatively — if you're trying to solve a problem while on a train or bus journey — you can use the succession of images and words that pass by in posters and billboards.)

Stories need atmosphere — and a variety of moods from scene to scene. If you’re having difficulty finding the right atmosphere for a scene, you could try listening to atmospheric music before (or even during) writing. For example, listening to something by Frank Sinatra may help you get the right mood for a romantic tryst. Or a scary scene might be helped by listening to soundtrack music from a horror movie.

You don’t have to limit yourself to music. Anything evocative might help you find the tone for a story, a scene or a character. Some writers collect a few photo postcards or pictures clipped from magazines, and fasten them to their word processor screen. Or perhaps you can find some small object in a junk shop to stand on your desk. And script writers may find it helpful to watch videos of outstanding movies to help get the feel of how the words will eventually come to life.