This one's for all the people who are still casting around for an idea. How do you create a story? What matters to you, and what matters to readers?

You have a story in your head—if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here. So how do you turn it from an idea into a polished, professional, un-put-down-able work that people will love to read? That’s what good editors do, and that’s what we’re here for.

Video Transcript: How to Create A Story

Hello, my name is Mary Kole. This is Good Story Company and our YouTube channel. I want to talk, for all of my people who are still casting around for an idea, I wanna talk on the idea track about how to create a story. This is an easy one for you guys. There are only two components that I really want you to focus on for creating a story.

First of all, why it matters to you, and why it matters to readers. That second component is something that a lot of writers don't really take into account. But how you wanna think about your story idea is, you are telling the story. Yes. Fine. Good. It is a story of your heart. It is something that you're coming up with. This matters a lot to you. So ideally, you have that piece of the equation in place already. But why does it matter to somebody else? And I talk to my memoir clients a lot about this. It's this idea of you know your story. You are already developing it. If it's your memoir, you've lived it yourself. This is your life story.

For fiction writers, it's the story that sprung to your mind, the idea, the germ, the "nugget" as we like to call it. You have this. You love it. But now you have to start thinking about telling it to somebody else, sharing it with the world. So that means knowing who your reader is. So that audience component, and then why would it matter to your audience. So there we take it potentially from something that's only gonna resonate with you, which is fine. But if you wanna write for a bigger audience, if you wanna write for publication, if you wanna write for self-publishing, if you wanna write for any of the many reasons that a lot of writers get into the game, the sooner you start thinking about your audience, the better for you and for your ideas.

So one thing to avoid here is to explain the theme or to be overly expository when it comes to the point of the story, the message. For example, my picture book people, we never want to explicitly state the moral of the story. But it's something for you to know. And it's something for your reader to be able to get an access after they read the story so then they close the final cover after reading the whole thing. They're gonna inherently know, ideally, this all depends on execution but we're not quite there yet, they're going to inherently know what this book was about. Was it about loss, healing, love, family? Some of these very big universal things.

So when you're thinking about your story idea, what is it about to you? Very important. Secondary consideration, what will it be about for readers? How will it connect to more than just you? Because when you think about story, you don't want it to be one of those inside joke things that's only really gonna be resonant to you. One of those things where it's like, "Oh, you should have been there. The story doesn't make sense unless you were there." That is not what you want when you're aiming for publication, when you're aiming for bringing this to a wider set of eyes and hearts and minds.

So why is this going to matter to readers? To your audience, specifically. Who is your specific audience? That is the conversation for a different day. But why would it matter to them? What universal thing are you saying with your story? I think without that component, you might wander around in the wilderness a little bit trying to pick things up, put things together. If you know what you're saying on the grand scale, to yourself and to your audience, those are the two key ingredients for me when you're starting to cast around for a story idea.

My name is Mary Kole. This is Good Story Company. Here's to a good story.

Whether you’re still working on your first manuscript or you have an idea for your tenth, Good Story Company’s expert editors are here to help. We offer a variety of options for writers at all stages of the process.