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Chapter 4: Assassination Classroom
- Once you've completed planning, it's now time to write the story!
A. Remember your outline? Go back to it and decide if you will write your story the way you outlined it: as in from beginning to ending (which is always boring);
or will you start in the middle or near-ending, and then everything is explained through flashbacks before it catches on to the present?
For example, you start a story with the death of the main character and then you start narrating what happened from the beginning to explain how it got to that point and then move on to the resolution.
B. Choose your point of view (POV) - how will the story be narrated? First, Second, or Third person?
- First person - The character is telling the story based only on what he knows. For example, "Call me Kris. I grew up in the slums and this is where I met the boy who forever changed my life."
- Second person - The narrator is telling "YOUR" story. For example, "Your name is Kris. You grew up in the slums and this is where you met the boy who forever changed your life." This is very rarely used in regular stories, but you'd normally find this in choose your own adventure books. I'm also working on a story called "Alpha", and it's going to be written using this POV.
- Third person - The narrator is telling the story and he knows everything. The narrator is never a part of the story. For example, "Kris grew up in the slums where he met the boy who forever changed his life."
C. Whatever POV you choose, always be clear in describing what your characters are doing, seeing, feeling, and thinking. Don't assume that the readers will see things the way you imagine them to be.
It is YOUR DUTY to CLEARLY describe the character's appearance, CLEARLY DESCRIBE how they see their surroundings, how they feel, what they're going through at the moment, etc. In other words, show your readers what you see!
D. Your story MUST have a SATISFYING ending.
It doesn't matter if the main character dies or survives in the end but whatever you do, make sure there will be closures to satisfy your readers. You must resolve your original conflicts before introducing a new conflict in case you want to write a sequel.
A common cause of dissatisfaction is when writers go for an open ending to tease the readers that there will be a continuation whithout resolving the main conflict first.
An example of a poor ending is this: a suspense story where a serial killer who has been killing people suddenly disappears without explanation and everyone thought things are back to normal, then suddenly he gives a sign that he's coming back and then the story ends. Even better if the serial killer meets his end instead of just disappearing (this is the resolutuion of your original conflict) and people start to live a normal life again. One year later, someone gets killed in a way this killer does his job and then people will say, "He's back!" (In the next book, he could be the actual killer who managed to survive or someone who has come to avenge the first killer).
Some of my favorite endings are from the Last Samurai, Star Wars: Rogue One, Wolverine, Glitch, Assassination Classroom, Samurai 7, and Basilisk - while the major characters died in end, there were proper closures so viewers were given the peace of mind that this was for the best.
By the way, Assassination Classroom has the most curious opening and saddest but very satisfying ending I can remember.
What's your favorite story? Write it down in the comments section below amd don't forget to vote ^_^
