November 2006: History (cont.)

What kind of history does your character need? Everything that happened to him from the day he was born until the day your story starts? Well, you could gather that much history, but it would take you a long, long time to do it, and then you would find that most of what you gathered wasn’t useful in writing your story. What will be useful? The history of your character’s story problem.

Let me use one of my stories, A Bear Named Trouble, to demonstrate the kind of history you will need. This story has two main characters, because it develops from two different story problems, the problem of an adolescent brown bear whose mother has run him off and the problem of a young boy, Jonathan, who will encounter the bear and eventually help save him.

But there is one more piece to a story plan. I recommend that you have an ending in mind before you begin to write.

Really? But doesn’t the ending just come to you in a flash of inspiration as you are writing? Maybe. Maybe not.

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