Creating a story is like creating anything else.
It takes time, some reflection, and a little bit of improvisation. Of course, like anything, your story might not exactly come out right the first time. The good thing is that it’s easier to rewrite a sentence than it is to fix a painting or remodel a building. Words are malleable.
This semester I’ve spent a lot of time creating, and not just stories. What I’ve learned is that stories are so much more than what they may seem. Before you create your story, you must also create characters and worlds and plots. Trying to write a story without them is an exercise in futility. And then the really hard part is taking each of those things and making them into a whole.
I probably make this more difficult by jumping from scene to scene in my stories. Currently I have about ten pages that don’t really go together at all, and only about one finished scene. It doesn’t really bother me until I get close to the deadline and realize that while I have all these awesome scenes, they have to somehow become a whole piece in just a few hours. Oops.
It may not be the best way to write, but I don’t think I could make it work any other way. There’s something comforting about being able to just stop working on something that’s frustrating and move to a different part of the story. It’s like a quilt in that way, where the scenes are squares that you can cut and paste until the whole thing just looks right.
Sometimes you realize that two pieces you’ve been working on separately come together seamlessly (unintentional sewing pun, I promise). Sometimes you realize that the one piece you’ve been working on is actually two, or maybe even three.
It’s like the ultimate puzzle, because you don’t know what it’s going to look like when you finally put it together. That’s why I think the process of creating is so rewarding.