3 Ways to Connect Your World to Your Story

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Your story’s world can create unique problems for your protagonist.

Every story starts a different way—not in the “Once upon a time” aspect, but in how the idea first comes to you. Maybe it’s a line of dialogue, or a character, or a puzzle that needs to be solved. Something flashes through your brain and ignites a spark of imagination that you just have to explore further.

For my novel, The Shifter , the idea of a boy who could shift pain came first, and a world where that would be a problem. It quickly led to the creation of pain merchants who bought and sold pain, and how this boy thought going to them for help was a bad thing to do.

I had nothing beyond that. I had no plot, and no conflict. I didn’t even know this boy’s name.

But I did have a very cool world to play with, so I started brainstorming how a world that could buy and sell pain would operate. How did the mechanics of that work? Why did people even need to do it?

Eventually, I figured out the how and why, and then I found my story.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com