↠ WRITING TIPS

↠ multiple chapters

In case you are working on something that is not a poem or a one shot, but is going to have multiple chapters – or even sequels or more stories added up – here are a few helpful tips:

A multi-chaptered story can be difficult to create. I used to make the mistake of just starting to write, without figuring out where I want to go with my story. Personally, that's not the way to go for me.

A Song Of Ice And Fire's author George R.R. Martin put this to a nice quote:

"I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners.
The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up.
The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows."

Sometime people work with what comes at them. I used to start a new story, upload a chapter, come back to it some random time and only then think of what was going to happen next.

Now, I'm more of an architect. I develop a rough plotline, timeline and plan of events that I want to occur in my story. For that, I create an actual table, label the charts with "chapter 1" and "chapter 2" and roughly write down keywords as to what I want these chapters to be.

Still, I believe a good balance is important. Being in full control of your own story can easily become dull to yourself as well as the readers. It doesn't have too, but it can happen. Just as it's likely for the gardener's story to get too wild and not make any sense anymore.

An example of how a nice balance works, in my opinion, is this:

My favorite OC, her name is Reika, used to be a Mary Sue. I controlled her in every way I could, I had her act a certain way that I found was appropriate, I determined her backstory and character traits and adjusted them to my liking.

I've been using Reika as an OC of my stories for at least 5 years, if not longer, now. She has qualities that I don't approve of. She takes actions that I never would and that I even judge. She's her own character and I don't have her on a short leash, telling her what to do. At the same time, she still is my character and I know that if something ever would be too out of hand, I can always draw a line.

This should be the same with stories. Do not be afraid to let them continue on their own and maybe take a path that you didn't really expect to take when you started writing. Be adventurous. But at the same time try to stay a little down-to-earth and stand your ground as the creator of your fictional world the moment you think it's too much.