Just having an idea isn’t enough to write a good story.
For example, you might come up with a cool idea for a story like: an alternate world where dragons are the size of chickens and people farm them.
And then your brain might fire off a bunch of other details like: there are lots of different dragon species that lay different-flavored eggs, farmers have to wear protective gear when taking the eggs, and Kentucky Fried Dragon would probably be a chain restaurant too.
Those are all fun details, but they’re not a story. To get a story, you need to have a setup and a payoff that uses your idea.
During the last stream, we went over how to make a good setup/payoff for a story idea.
You can watch a video of it here.
There’s lots of great examples from chat!
To sum up the process, basically the setup answers the question of: How did we get here? What’s the next actual, tangible event involving the main character?
Then the payoff answers the question of: Who cares? What’s the satisfying ending that will use the setup?
For example, let’s pretend your idea for a story is this: “You have two demons on your shoulders instead of an angel and a demon.” The setup would be something like this: “You meet someone else who has two angels.” Then you to go one step further with the payoff: “You swap a demon for their angel, and they go crazy since their angel is too soft from never having dealt with a demon before.”
Just the idea, setup, or payoff alone wouldn’t make a good story, but all three together creates something that readers can be happy they spent time with.
After that, we applied what we learned about setups/payoffs to the prompt that chat voted for, created by gay_bot42: “All humans are placed into a simulation where everything they wish comes true. The program quits when they realise it is not real. You are the last remaining ‘dreamer’, and have been cluelessly living in your perfect world for 14 years.”
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-11:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch Rubbish to Published, the writing exercises, or the writing prompts on YouTube, or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso