User blog:Cards777/Writer's Workshop- Starting your Story

This is a Writer’s Workshop for: getting your story started. I had ideas for starting your own story so I decided to put them into a Writer's Workshop.

Types of Stories
Now, there are a couple different types of stories; there are competition stories, one shots, and non-competition stories. There are different methods to starting each type of story.

Competition
 Competition Stories are stories that are like Total Drama Island. There are many of them on this wiki. Competition stories have eliminations and challenges.

Theme
For starting a competition story, first, you need to come up with a theme.

ÿ     Some themes are like have it on a deserted island or like a unique theme like in Total Drama Reality, where every challenge is based on a different reality show.

Title
Once you have your theme, now you an either come up with a name for the story or the characters.

ÿ     For the name of your story, try and make it somewhat involved with the story. Like in my stories, Total Drama States goes with the theme of the story because they travel around the United States.

Characters
Okay, now that you have the theme and title, it’s time for the characters.

ÿ     How I come up with characters is that first, I check the names on the wiki because I like to use names that aren’t taken, but there are some instances where I put a period behind the name.

ÿ     After you have the names, I would come up with the personality. There are many different personalities. There’s the jock, the mean person, the nerd, the animal lover, and many, many, many more. There are also some instances where the characters are the Total Drama characters or characters from other television shows.

ÿ     After you come up with personalities, try and form the teams to where you can have interactions with your characters. If it’s an interaction that would do best after the merge, then make it happen during the merge. There are many different interactions; there are friendships, conflicts, relationships, and alliances.

ÿ     After that, come up with an elimination order. This is very important. This is where you can decide on a winner, runner-up, first out, second out, etc. I try to make it an elimination order that will make since. Also, I try to come up with reasons that they were eliminated. Some reasons are like they’re a threat, they lost their team the challenge, or like if they make it to the end, they will win. Also, in some situations, characters need to be removed from the game. There are examples like this in Total Drama Mania and Total Drama: Boney Island. In the elimination, I include who wins the challenge, who is safe, and who is almost eliminated; sometimes, I include who they vote for.

Challenges, Interactions, and Chapters
Now, you have the theme, title, characters and their personalities, and the elimination order, it’s time for ideas of challenges, interactions, and chapters.

ÿ     I come up with challenges early before the chapter is posted or even written. Challenges are important because that decides which person or team will be safe and which team or group will be voting someone off. I try to keep the challenges to go along with the theme. Like, in Total Drama States, all of the challenges, except one, go with the theme: traveling around the U.S. In each state, I made the challenge go with something that goes with the states; for example, in California, I made the challenge to make a movie, which is something that goes with the state because of Hollywood. The one challenge that didn’t exactly go with the theme was when they had the U.S. trivia, which does go with the theme, but not as well as the others.

ÿ     I plan friendships, conflicts, and relationships before the story starts, you can develop them as they go along. Developing friendships, conflicts, and relationships is very important; as is character development, for that, go here: User blog:Sprinklemist/Writer's Workshop: Characters.

ÿ     Alliances are important, too. This is how people can make it far into the game. I try to make some alliances where all of the people get along, and then there’s the alliance with a very controlling person in it.

ÿ     For the chapters, I try to come up with ideas and what will happen in them. I have made the mistake of planning the later chapters first and then when I’m writing the early chapters, so now, I plan the early chapter first.

Starting your Story
Okay, now, make the page where your story will go. Also, if you want to, you can make character pages that include info about them and a re-color or a pic that was drawn on a computer program or on paper. The picture is optional. If you draw it on paper, you have to have a scanner to get in onto this website.

Okay, you have the theme, title, characters and personalities, elimination, challenges, friendships, conflicts, alliances, and relationships. Now, it’s time to start writing.

ÿ     Sometimes, the first chapter doesn’t include elimination, but sometimes it does, it’s completely up to you.

Okay, now you have started writing and story is off to a start. You can update it everyday, every week, or randomly.

One-shots
One Shots are stories that are just one chapter. I usually don’t write one shots, but many people do. One shot stories can be short when it takes place over a short period of time. Or, they can be long if it takes place over a long period of time. An example of a one shot is Blonde Date.   === Characters === First, I decide on the characters.

ÿ     One shots can be of your own characters and their lives after the competition, they can be about the Total Drama characters, too.  

Now, you have the plot and the characters, now you can start writing.

Plot
Okay, you have your characters, now you need to decide what it will be about.

ÿ     One shots are usually either funny or dramatic, or both.

ÿ     There are many plots. There are dates, a certain characters life after being on a reality show.

ÿ     The decision is up to you, you can make it whatever you would like.

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Writing and Starting your Story
ÿ     When writing, always stick to the plot. I always try my best when doing this.

Okay, now you can make the page, post it, and read what other people think. One shots don’t have mare than one chapter, that’s why it’s called a one shot.

Non-Competition
 Non-Competition Stories are stories that have multiple chapters, but it isn’t a competition. I write two non-comp stories: Total Character Collaboration and A Journey Like No Other, but there are many more like Total Wikia Elementary. === Characters === First, I come up with the characters.

ÿ     The characters can be original characters, Total Drama characters, or another shows characters.

ÿ     I think of characters that will have plot lines and interactions.

Plot
Then, I try to think of plot lines.

ÿ     This type of story can be either a comedy, drama, or both.

ÿ     I try to make it both in TCC, but not in Journey.

ÿ     This can be harder to try to think of ideas for.

Getting your Story started
Then, I create the page. After that, I type up a chapter and post it. Non-comps can be any length, but usually, they are longer. After the plot lines are thought of, I try to plan future chapters.

Written by yourslef or a Collaboration
So, now you have tips on how to start you stories. Your stories can be written by yourself, or they can be collaborations with other authors where you write every other chapter.

Final Tips
Here are some final tips: I hope this helped!
 * 1) I always keep a notebook by me or a dry erase board to write ideas in.
 * 2) I usually keep a different notebook for each of my series.
 * 3) The most important thing is: always have fun writing and be proud of your stories.