Life Coach Q&A: #1

Dear Life Coach,

How do you find a writing topic that you can stick with and not get bored of?

Sincerely, Jackson.


Well Jackson, you asked a great question! In terms of writing, I cannot count the amount of times I've been so excited to start a topic and create a story... and then just went blank. And if you can't be interested while writing your story, there's no way anyone can be interested reading it. It's far easier to get bored with a topic than one might think, so based off of experience I've created a checklist I encourage you and other writers to follow.

1. Choose a topic you genuinely enjoy. By this, I mean choose something you find yourself wondering about often, something you yourself would actually like to read. If you'd want to read it, then why not write it? If you've had a passion, for say leprechauns and building bridges, since you were young, write a story about a leprechaun designing the bridge other leprechauns will use to access the human world on St. Patrick's Day. Go wild! It doesn't have to be perfect. I know it seems like a self explanatory step, but it's a crucial one nontheless.

2. Get to know your characters. Before you do anything else, create your characters! Get real with them, you know? It's almost like meeting someone new, have your first impressions on your character, and make sure the reader gets the same impression, but then unearth everything about them until you really know them, and make sure the reader experiences this as well. Discover and create their most deepest, darkest secrets, as well as their most fondest memories! Make them odd, make them evil, make them everything you've ever wanted to be. Make them complex, make them like onions with millions of layers. The best part about this is that you don't even need a plot, and the characters decided the pathway of the story anyways. If you have interesting characters, your half way to an interesting story!

3. Think about what themes you want to convey through your story. What do you want your reader to take away from your writing? Will you make a complex story with irony and double meanings that all come back to mean something? Do you wwant to just convey a lesson? What's the purpose of your story? Picking a theme, or several, can also help you design a plot, as well as move it along.

4. Create a general, three point diagram of what you want to be the beginning, middle, and end of your story. It seems like a third grade tactic, but sometimes it's all you need to put your story together. Think of the beginning, and what you want to be the highlight, or obvious part, of it. Put in great detail what this point is, so that it interests even you to know what happens, and then do the same for the middle and end. Put these points at the top of your paper and then make columns underneath them. As you think about them, starting adding bullet points for your ideas beneath each point to act as fillers and chapters to use under that main idea.

5. Establish your protagonist, antagonist, and secondary characters. If you've already broken down and met your characters, as it was strongly recommended in step two, then you should already have an idea who your protagonist, antagonist, and secondary characters will be. But think in depth about it; throughout your story, make sure it is obvious who is who, but also why. Why is the antagonist the antagonist? How are they in the way of the protagonist? Remember that the antagonist isn't necessarily always evil, just the opposing side of the protagonist. And the protagonist doesn't always have to be good, either. Maybe your writing from the bad guy's point of view, so he becomes the protagonist and your good guy is the antagonist! As for your secondary characters, have fun with them too! Create secondary characters for both the antagonist and the protagonist, and make them so they help your main characters achieve their goals. Create relationships between them and your protagonist/antagonist, and make the reader love, or even hate them. They help the story along more than anything, so don't forget them. Whatever you decide to do, just have fun with it!

6. Use filler characters, filler settings, and overall just filler moments that will give something important to your protagonist that they will use later on in the story, even if you never refer back to that character, setting, or moment again. Sometimes you've got your plot down, but you just cannot move it along. In a situation like this, it's smart to have your protagonist take a break from the storyline, and send them on a walk or into the coffee shop. Have them meet a barista or overhear children laughing, and have that be the conversation/piece of information that the protagonist needed all along. Or have them go somewhere that sends them a sense of deja vu, that sparks a memory to help the protagonist get their mission going again. Filler characters and settings and moments are really helpful for those moments when not even you know what to do with your story.

7. Don't stress the plot. Of course you want to have a general idea of where your story is going to go, but don't stress out too much if your story takes a turn away from it. Keep it in check, but your story will be much more entertaining to your readers if even you aren't 100% where it's going some times. It'll be much more fun to free write a bit around the idea of your plot, rather than try to follow it black and white. Ideas will also be allowed to flow more freely if you're willing to be flexible with the idea of your plot.

8. Don't overuse sensory details. Of course they are always a good idea, but it's never good to use them so much that the whole story just seems like you tried too hard. Just let your ideas flow and insert adjectives and details when needed, and the whole thing will come together nicely.

9. Use comedy and irony at some point in your story. Bring something ironic or hilarious into your story, even if its a crude sense of humor. Use comedy to break the fourth wall a bit, and use it to entertain your readers. Take a serious moment and completely ruin it with humor, or just throw in little bits here and there. Even if you make one character a sort of comedian, that works too! That way, you can include dry humor, as well as sarcasm. Just add a little bit of everything if you don't know how to incorporate it, humor is always a good idea.

10. Don't overread your story too much when editing, and take time between writing chapters. Anything and everything will become boring if you overread it, or if you write too much at one time. You'll lose sight of what you're trying to do until the storyline just doesn't make sense anymore. So take your time, enjoy what you're writing, and don't be afraid to mess up and start a complete section over. You can't make a masterpiece overnight, so don't stress it!

I hope that this list has helped you a lot, Jackson, and I hope it helps everyone who comes across it as well. Of course there are a probably a few points I missed, or some that work better for you than the ones I listed, but I found these as ones that help me the most. But, we're all bound to be bored with something we're writing at some point, even if we follow the points on the list above. We just will, we'll zone out, we'll lose interest. Don't be discouraged; just go at it again!

I wish you luck, Jackson, and all writers, on you're next story or writing project, and I sincerely hope this list helps everyone who uses it in some form or another.

Best wishes,

The Life Coach