Having a good story is every author’s target. But it is a bit challenging most times to articulate how to plan a captivating story for your readers. Every good project ever executed was properly planned. The planning stage of everything determines to a great deal the resulting output. 

There are so many things to factor in to achieve an interesting, engaging and captivating story. 

But not every writer gets this right, thus, end up having poorly scripted stories that have either unreal characters, scenes, plot or structure. These key features are among the factors you should prioritize to have a good, interesting and captivating story.

Here are verified step by step guide to help you figure out how to plan a captivating story;

How to Plan a Good Story

Brainstorm on the Idea

After this thought, ‘I want to write a story’, you need to come to a decision on …what type of story you want to write? Fiction or nonfiction? Is it a love story, tragedy, comedy, a quest, horror, a reality series, or a beginner’s story for kids? Who are you writing the story for? You need to put the category of audience into consideration. This will determine everything about your story; the tone, voice that the target audience would easily relate with, the type of characters and personalities, the type of message to communicate with the story, the scenes, structure and plot.

Then choose a caption that would captivate a reader to pick up the book to read in the library, to buy in the market, to pause while scrolling through amazon or online reading platforms. 

Develop your Story Arc

Draft your story’s arc, this is the same as a story plot. What will happen from beginning through the middle, to the end. How each scene will unfold sequentially….all the series of actions that you intend to take place in the story. The exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement. This is one of the key factors that engages a reader in a story and keeps the reader with you.

Create Characters

Decide the number of characters you need in your story. Males, females, children,…their social status, personalities, likes and dislikes…create memorable characters. 

Assign Roles to the Characters

Assign roles to the initially created characters, where each will appear, what to say, do or not do. Who would interact with who. Who will be related to who. You determine the fate of each character, if they would suffer some tragic moments, terrible diseases, etc

Create Your Scenarios

Decide on the scenes to have in the story. Whether it is a school setting, classroom, workplace, market, a war scene, accident scene, haunted building. Bear in mind that a plan is dynamic. While writing your story, your inspiration can wake up some new and better ideas to upgrade what you had earlier planned.

Choose scenarios you can describe. Don’t write with scenarios you can’t describe properly. If you are writing about an age or generation you didn’t experience, do proper research and get someone who lived through such a generation to give you a proper description of that scenario.

A wrong assumption would tend to fail your readers who lived through such scenes and that pulls them off the genuity of the story. A reader should feel some sense of genuity in your story. Don’t jerk them off with inconsistencies.This is where you lose the interest of a reader or your viewers in the case of a movie. 

Draft Your Story

Drafting your story involves putting all your characters to play their assigned roles in their scenes according to the plot. Choose your starting scene to be intriguing. You can start with a surprising action or reaction, a dialogue or monologue with the main character introducing himself, an introduction of the scene, describe the setting, or ask a question that keeps the reader inquisitive. 

“Why would he raise his fingers at me? Who does he think he is? Angela lamented with so much fury written all over her face………” 

Don’t start from a boring inactive scene. Your start is what prompts a reader to want to read more. Make the lines flow such that a reader is inquisitive enough to keep looking downwards to read more. Let each scene connect to the next, be real in actions and reactions. Don’t be too dramatic, fake or unreal. 

Add Climax and Actions

Let your story have a progressive action upon action and reactions that fit in reality. Remember to not be too dramatic. Don’t just paint a totally happy life for your characters or a totally bad one. Give real actions and consequences to your protagonist and antagonist. This is where you drive the quest of your readers to want to know what happened to Angela, how she resolved the challenge. 

Avoid being too detailed with irrelevant actions or activities in the lives of your characters. Readers want the important things about the characters, not irrelevant things. If it doesn’t add to the progression of the plot, then it is irrelevant…delete without mercy. Don’t bore your readers.

Write Conclusions

Have a conclusion that still keeps the Reader’s mind thinking a bit more about your character’s fate. Give them some part to imagine the future of your characters. Don’t tell all there is to be told such that a reader is left with nothing.

Proofread and Edit 

A plan of how to plan a captivating story is incomplete until it captures proofreading and editing. Proofread and edit to make adjustments where necessary, punctuate, restructure sentences then keep aside for a day or days when your mind is more at ease before returning to proofread again. 

Tips on How to Generate Story Ideas

Story ideas can be generated from; your imagination, your personal experiences, a dream you or someone had, a friend’s or family member’s experience, a story from a movie twerked and replotted better with different trends of actions and structure. 

Picking a story from a movie isn’t plagiarism if you don’t just copy the story word for word, let it just serve as an inspiration from which you recreate yours.