Writing Fanfic with OCs--Rule 3 part 1

3.  A good story does matter!

Yes, yes it does.  You can't just plop your original character into the canon and pretend that it was always that way.  Well, you can't if you want people to care about OC.

Your OC has to have his/her own life.  That means they have their own story line that is separate from the canon characters.  It can closely interweave with it, but that is what it is--a weave.  The OCs story comes in and out of the main story.

As I said in the last installment, your character has to have personal movement.  S/he gets that personal movement through their individual story line.

How do you make a good story line?  Let's start with a story line itself.

A story is made of three parts, beginning--middle--end.  When you start to write, you should have an end in mind.  When you start to write, you should have an the end of the story already happening in your mind!!  You don't just start writing and hope to get a good story.   Why do you need an end?  So that your start has somewhere to go, ie the middle.  

Within this very simple structure of beginning-middle-end, there is a arch.  It looks like this:


 You start out with introducing your OCs.  In this first part of the story, we find out who the characters are, where they are, what they're doing, and (maybe) why they are there.

Then, you have the first event, which is called act one.  It has its own little climax, but it isn't the end of the story.

You have act two, or the second event.  This is the "middle of the book".  This is where all the depth happens, where the characters start to change and the situation doesn't look too awful good.

You then have event 3, which is also act 3.  This propels the story to the climax, but it isn't quiet there yet.

The climax is the big bang of the story.  This is *why* you wrote the story.  This is what the story is for.  You need this before you start writing.  This is where the character is trying to get to from the beginning.  This is where you character has the actual growing experience in their psyche.  This is where they become the person you want to your OC to become.

Then you have denouement or falling action.  This is where the character deals with whatever happened in the climax.  This is the coming to the resolution that the character must come to in order to end the story.

The resolution is the end of the story.  The "happily ever after" or the "life is meaningless" message at the end.  

This is what makes a story.  This isn't what makes a good story.  However, having a story line is the first part of having a good story.

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Writing Fanfic with OCs--Rule 3 part 2 -->