Key Ingredients for Writing Intriguing Stories
Character Introduction
Characters are individuals, which means that they have their own speech patterns, ticks, eccentricities, moods, and personalities. They are more than their hair color and eye color. In fact, many of my favorite characters remain largely a mystery regarding their physical appearance. We want to know what makes them unique, which means the author must know the answers to these questions first. Characters are even more intriguing when they have some secrets. Without scattering too many loose threads, give your characters little habits or patterns that you don’t initially explain. This causes the reader to want to know more about the character, to realize that there is more to them than meets the eye.
The opening of Moon Knight introduces us to Steven. The moment we see him going about his daily morning routine, complete with a circle of sand around his bed, we already have questions. This is not normal, and it begs an answer. This automatically makes Steven’s character intriguing from the first ten seconds of the show.
Now your character may wake up in the morning sans pile of sand, but there are mysteries to be found in every character by withholding information until the opportune moment. Your character may wake up and begin brushing their teeth and washing their face, chanting in their head that they must stop thinking about “her”. Who is this person the character is trying to block out of their thoughts? We do not know, but it keeps us hungry for more information and invested in the character moving forward.
Show Don’t Tell is a Sloppy Phrase and I Hate It
Show Don’t Tell, like most maxims of writing, is only partly true. Less of a rule and more like a general guideline. Perhaps a better way to approach the issue would be with these two questions: What do I show? What do I tell? At some point in your story, you will have to tell the reader something. There may have to be expository dialogue. There may have to be a description of a setting or culture. The phrase “Show Don’t Tell” was likely utilized to cause writers to simply pause and ask themselves if the information they’re about to type out in a page of exposition would still come across to the reader and be more enjoyable to read if digested in the messy middle of the action. For example, consider this scenario: Steven from Moon Night is shown waking up from what seems to be a nightmare. He walks to a fountain in the city where a living statue street performer is stationed. He proceeds to tell the street performer all about this bizarre dream he experienced where he was chased by mercenaries through a cliffside road. Now that’s one way to shovel information to the viewer. Alternatively, without the explanation that Steven is dreaming, he could wake up in a strange countryside and actively be running from mercenaries. At first, the viewer might have some questions, but showing this action taking place is more intriguing than showing Steven talking about the same scenario. This is exactly what the show did, to much success. Any part of the story that can fit into ongoing momentum instead of causing you to pause everything and explain will most likely benefit the pace of the narrative. A notable exception could be events that transpired in a distant past, as massive time jumps are often hard for a reader to swallow. In this case, sprinkling bits of information about a past event through snippets of dialogue, local customs, traditions, and shared lore causes the plot to still move forward unimpeded. If you find that the backstory of a culture or massive event cannot seem to find its way into the everyday lives, conversations, memorials, or museums of your fictional world, I would question its relevance to the plot in the first place.
Plot or Character?
Again, I find this question to be a false dichotomy. While you can pose the question to a group of people at random and receive different answers to whether character or plot is more important to a story, I would posit that they are equally valuable. To me, it’s almost like asking if you would rather fly in an airplane with no engines or no wings. The lack of either is noticeable and debilitating. Instead of arguing the importance of one or the other, the focus should shift to the task of implementing both key story components as effectively as possible. Your character is your heart of the story, but your plot is the engine. Some people might say that after being introduced to the perfect character, they could watch paint dry with that character and be satisfied. But for your average reader, at some point they expect something to happen to the character. Some of the characters that audiences find most repugnant in fiction are characters to which no meaningful arc is assigned, where the character seems to float above the stakes and consequences of reality without having to confront either. And characters confronting meaningful growth, mistakes, tragedies, and successes as a balanced diet is what ultimately draws readers to engage with your story.
Character Introduction
Characters are individuals, which means that they have their own speech patterns, ticks, eccentricities, moods, and personalities. They are more than their hair color and eye color. In fact, many of my favorite characters remain largely a mystery regarding their physical appearance. We want to know what makes them unique, which means the author must know the answers to these questions first. Characters are even more intriguing when they have some secrets. Without scattering too many loose threads, give your characters little habits or patterns that you don’t initially explain. This causes the reader to want to know more about the character, to realize that there is more to them than meets the eye.
The opening of Moon Knight introduces us to Steven. The moment we see him going about his daily morning routine, complete with a circle of sand around his bed, we already have questions. This is not normal, and it begs an answer. This automatically makes Steven’s character intriguing from the first ten seconds of the show.
Now your character may wake up in the morning sans pile of sand, but there are mysteries to be found in every character by withholding information until the opportune moment. Your character may wake up and begin brushing their teeth and washing their face, chanting in their head that they must stop thinking about “her”. Who is this person the character is trying to block out of their thoughts? We do not know, but it keeps us hungry for more information and invested in the character moving forward.
Show Don’t Tell is a Sloppy Phrase and I Hate It
Show Don’t Tell, like most maxims of writing, is only partly true. Less of a rule and more like a general guideline. Perhaps a better way to approach the issue would be with these two questions: What do I show? What do I tell? At some point in your story, you will have to tell the reader something. There may have to be expository dialogue. There may have to be a description of a setting or culture. The phrase “Show Don’t Tell” was likely utilized to cause writers to simply pause and ask themselves if the information they’re about to type out in a page of exposition would still come across to the reader and be more enjoyable to read if digested in the messy middle of the action. For example, consider this scenario: Steven from Moon Night is shown waking up from what seems to be a nightmare. He walks to a fountain in the city where a living statue street performer is stationed. He proceeds to tell the street performer all about this bizarre dream he experienced where he was chased by mercenaries through a cliffside road. Now that’s one way to shovel information to the viewer. Alternatively, without the explanation that Steven is dreaming, he could wake up in a strange countryside and actively be running from mercenaries. At first, the viewer might have some questions, but showing this action taking place is more intriguing than showing Steven talking about the same scenario. This is exactly what the show did, to much success. Any part of the story that can fit into ongoing momentum instead of causing you to pause everything and explain will most likely benefit the pace of the narrative. A notable exception could be events that transpired in a distant past, as massive time jumps are often hard for a reader to swallow. In this case, sprinkling bits of information about a past event through snippets of dialogue, local customs, traditions, and shared lore causes the plot to still move forward unimpeded. If you find that the backstory of a culture or massive event cannot seem to find its way into the everyday lives, conversations, memorials, or museums of your fictional world, I would question its relevance to the plot in the first place.
Plot or Character?
Again, I find this question to be a false dichotomy. While you can pose the question to a group of people at random and receive different answers to whether character or plot is more important to a story, I would posit that they are equally valuable. To me, it’s almost like asking if you would rather fly in an airplane with no engines or no wings. The lack of either is noticeable and debilitating. Instead of arguing the importance of one or the other, the focus should shift to the task of implementing both key story components as effectively as possible. Your character is your heart of the story, but your plot is the engine. Some people might say that after being introduced to the perfect character, they could watch paint dry with that character and be satisfied. But for your average reader, at some point they expect something to happen to the character. Some of the characters that audiences find most repugnant in fiction are characters to which no meaningful arc is assigned, where the character seems to float above the stakes and consequences of reality without having to confront either. And characters confronting meaningful growth, mistakes, tragedies, and successes as a balanced diet is what ultimately draws readers to engage with your story.
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