How to Write a Killer Story: Tips and Techniques for Crafting Award-Winning Narratives

One of the bestselling fictional series in the world was never meant to be a series in the first place, but a bedside story that Rick Riordan had written for his son.

JK Rowling never once imagined that she would have to jot down the idea for her lightning-scarred brown-haired boy (or the boy who wasn't unalived) on a piece of tissue paper. So what does it mean when you realize that the books which shaped your childhood and nurtured your love for reading in the first place never really started out as great stories, but as mundane everyday short stories? It means, that writing a killer story is not difficult, not boring, and most definitely not impossible.

CHAPTER 1: OPENING

So, first things first, every story needs a good OPENING.

I have always been attracted towards mainly two types of openings. Either the author begins from the very beginning - an incident which introduces us to the characters and builds up the plot and eventually reaches the climax OR the author starts from the climax itself, applies the brake after a few pages and rewinds back the tape to explain what really happened and how the characters found themselves in that situation. 

Now, which type of opening is better? Well, that strongly depends on the type of story you are writing. If you are writing a fictional story with a lot of action and drama then go with the climatic opening. But in this case, make sure of two things. Firstly, don't spill out the entire climax in the first chapter itself. Instead, leave it on a cliffhanger and then rewind the tape. Secondly, make sure that whatever jargon you are using in the opening is explained to your readers in the next few chapters. This is all the more important if your story contains dystopian settings like Divergent or Hunger Games.

If you're going for the other type of opening, then don't simply introduce your charcters as if you are introducing your friends. Rather, introduce a thought or a belief of your character. Think about it, which introduction makes you want to flip the page and read more?

I'm Aidan Cara, the sixteen-year old boy of our town's most reputed chief, Richard Cara - a man whose footsteps I never want to walk in. I don’t hate my Dad, but I'm not a big fan of his profession either. That area of expertise is taken up by my brother Samuel Cara who is the spitting image of my Dad. I don’t know how else to describe him except as perfect and annoying (just out of principle cause he is my brother)

I'm not afraid of my death. I dread the day, of course, but that doesn’t mean I’m scared. I believe that everyone has their expiry date - when they no longer remain of use to the world and are discarded like last week’s half-empty milk carton. I accept the fact that a higher power is in control of that, but, sometimes, this expiry date is brought catastrophically closer by external factors. And that is what I fear. 

Because the second introduction starts off with a belief that the character has, it encourages the reader to turn the page and find out why the character has that particular belief and whether there was an event which shaped that belief or whether there will come an event to change that belief. 

CHAPTER 2: CHARACTER BUILDING

Now, since we are on the topic of characters and situations, what type of character should you build? A good novel is one which makes you relate to the person on the other end and empathise. Your main aim should be to make your characters as relatable as possible. In reality, no one is ever really good or really bad. No one ever really has one single personality. Sure, they might have something unique about their personality - like a small quirk or a trait - but they have many other aspects too. Focus on building complex characters with layered and three dimensional personalities. Ask yourself: Does my character seem too perfect? Does my character seem too cliché? Is my character too weak? The point is to make your character as human as possible.

So for example, Aidan Cara is scared of clowns and grasshoppers. He does not know how to cook, but he knows the lyrics to every Sabrina Carpenter song. 

These small quirks that Aidan has contribute to his overall personality.

Don't make your characters easy to label, in other words, don't make it cliché. The don't judge a book by its cover teaching should apply to your characters too. Another important tip which you can keep in mind is that while building your characters and stitching a story around them, try to go opposite to the trope. Maybe in the end, the princess never wanted the prince or true love or anything sappy like that. Maybe what she really wanted was to fool everyone into thinking that she loved the prince and then one night killed him in his sleep and inherited all his money, while at the same time, playing the role of the victim and the vulnerable wife. These types of twists and turns make your story memorable and separate it out from the rest of the haystack. Remember, a good story does not necessarily have to have a happy ending, but a real ending, and in reality, endings are never really happy, are they? They can be sappy and bittersweet, but in most cases, no one gets both the prince and the money.

Another important part of character building which is more often than not overlooked is the way they interact in conversations. No one uses perfect British English while talking to their friends, but at the same time, no one uses words like LOL, or TTYL in daily conversation either. Think about how you would talk to your friends if you were in that position. If you told your friend about a stupid mistake that you did in the exam, her first reaction won't be to console you, but to make fun of you and then tell you that everything will be okay and in the long scheme of things when you both are billionaires with trophy husbands, this grade would never matter. And then you will spend the next fifteen minutes blaming it on the teacher. 

So, while writing conversations, always think about the real conversations that you have had before and what aspects could you handpick from it to make it seem more relatable. 

CHAPTER 3: CENTRAL CONFLICT

Most stories that we write, we write them backwards. Our characters never land in situations in our minds, but rather, our situations land on the characters. The “idea” that you get for a story is essentially your central conflict and the key to building a good central conflict - one that keeps readers hooked - is to create a complex one. A complex central conflict does not mean that it needs to address important social or political issues such as racism or immigration as is done in many young adult novels, but it should place the characters in such a challenging situation where they are forced not just to confront their beliefs, but also make difficult choices and face their fears. Now, when I say “face their fears”, this could mean fighting a dragon or going to your parents and telling them that you don’t want to become a doctor, but an actor. This is how you essentially build tension in your story and this is the secret ingredient to make the readers flip one last page. Secondly, complex plots often reveal some unexpected catastrophe or tragedy, and this catastrophe falls in the middle of all that tension so that it brings the characters to such a point where they can no longer procrastinate on making a decision or fighting their fears. For example, the boy’s father denied him from becoming an actor and told him that he will be going to medical school, only to wake up in the middle of the night to a gunshot (Yes, this is the plot of the Dead Poet’s Society).

Now, how do you build your story around the central conflict?

Well, to build a story before it, ask yourself these questions: What does my character want? What prevents my character from getting it? Is my character already defeated and learns to overcome that OR does my character fall from a high place? These are just examples of the type of questions you should ask yourself to build a character and a story leading to the central conflict. So, up until the central conflict, your main aim is to build your characters and their multidimensional personality and explain to your readers their backgrounds and how their surroundings shaped their current beliefs. With the help of all this context, you now start building a situation and all that tension until that one catastrophic event happens when the character realises that he needs to act fast and make a decision. That's when everything that was waiting to happen happens.

Maybe the character sacrifices his life.

Maybe he tells his Dad about his secret passion for poetry.

Maybe the character finally says "I love you".

Maybe the character finally leaves her toxic family behind.

Maybe the character finally gains acceptance and moves on.

Maybe the character succumbs to the dark side.

The point is, anything can happen as a consequence of your central conflict, BUT, it should be a moment of catharsis. This moment is the one where the reader makes the decision - maybe this story was actually worth reading. Maybe this book was actually worth the guilt I felt while reading it the night before my Physics exam even though I have not completed the entire syllabus.

And dear reader, this is how, you write a killer story.