Stories are, fundamentally, all about conflict.

In most stories, your protagonist wants something—to change a law or the government itself, to avenge a death, to hook up with the cutie, to dispel a curse—and your antagonist usually wants something that is in direct opposition of whatever the protagonist wants.

From those opposing wants come the narrative conflict and thus plot.

The term worldbuilding conjures images of secondary worlds, far away planets, and magic systems, so much so that it has become ubiquitous with writing and game development, particularly within fantasy and science fiction genres. But what exactly is it? How does one go about building a world in the first place? And what do you mean, I should consider worldbuilding even when the world I'm writing about isn't big and fantastical?

Which of your characters is going to lie to your audience, and why?

Now that we’ve established what a point-of-view (POV) and a Narrative Voice are, let’s talk about Unreliable Narrators. These are narrators who, either because of the way they interpret the world, omissions in their story, or outright falsehoods and manipulation, lie to the reader.

Once you’ve chosen your narrator, your next job is to figure out how they speak. Have a good long think about how their upbringing, social class, race, gender, sexuality, education, job, family home life, nation, etc. interconnect and serve to shape their morals, choices, preferences, and understanding of the world.

Depending on how your plot is structured and the way your scenes are woven together, both your narrative and your readers may benefit from being able to experience your story through multiple different narrators. 

The Easy Stuff

Welcome to the first of five articles about creating a narrative voice.

Deciding who your narrator is going to be is not only vital for you as a creator —because without someone to tell the story on your behalf, you can’t tell it at all—but it will also effect how and why your story is exists at all. This makes narrative voice the most important decision you can make before plunging into the actual writing itself,

Protagonist vs. Antagonist

Every story needs a main cast, but which characters qualify? How do we know who is important and who plays a supporting role?  Let's talk about characters!

Stories have heroes. Stories also have villains.  Sometimes stories have neither. But that's a special case. Let's break things down first.

Protagonists

"Exposition" can be a scary word. In some writing circles, "experts" will warn you to exercise extreme caution when using it, or they'll make it out to be a difficult but necessary evil. But ultimately, exposition is just another writing tool, and it's used in all sorts of writing, even beyond fiction. Think of it this way: no matter what you're writing, you want your readers to understand and follow your train of thought.

All good story beginnings should accomplish four things: Introduce the Character, Introduce the World, Introduce the Themes, and Introduce the Conflict.

Introduce the Character