ELEMENTS OF STORYTELLING:
KNOWING WHY YOU WRITE HELPS YOU
WITH HOW YOU WRITE

Once you start to see the world in terms of story and dedicate yourself to writing the story you want to tell, set yourself up for success by spending time living with the idea. The more it marinates in your mind, the greater will be your ability to write it and the tastier the final product for the writer and reader.

Think not only about what you want to tell and how you're going to tell it, but get familiar with why you want to tell this story.

The time to ruminate, reflect - and even critique an idea - is not while you are writing it but before you sit down to write it.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Why do I want to write this story?​

• What makes it a book that I'd like to read?

• ​What is it about this story or subject matter that interests me that should also interest others?

• What do I hope to achieve with this story?

• How much do I care about this concept? Does it touch on things that matter deeply to me or will keep me entertained and interested enough to commit to telling it the very best that I am able?

• Am I ready to dedicate myself to telling this story the way I believe it needs to be told?

Your ideas have to be able to withstand your own self-scrutiny before they are ready to be scrutinized by others. The more you have thought about them and nourished them, the easier they will be to write.

Whether you are a plotter or a panster, when you fall in love with an idea for a story you want to write, make sure that you are able to distill it down to its barest essence and then commit it to paper to give it legitimacy and make it real.

Play with the idea on paper, write freely about what you want to write or pretend that you're writing the back cover of the book or a New York Times Book Review of your own book. In this way, you not only start to believe in the idea of the story as a finished product, but by writing about your writing, you learn what you need to learn about the idea, about what you think about it, what questions you wish to answer or pose as well as what you hope to convey to readers about your story and your concept.