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Author's Chapter Notes:

I have gotten quite a few story requests and praises about the style of my writing in my inbox lately and have decided to share some of the techniques I use when writing both longer chapter epics and short story one-shots. Some other writers such as Poison pens and Jacksmith (one of my favourites) have already touched on this, but I would like to share my own spins, tips, and tricks on how to write a great story.

I have created a set of subsections that will make this a lot easier and clearer to follow

Before Writing  

1.       Before writing from scratch make a rough story outline: Many writers don’t like to plan because they think it’s a waste of time, but I personally do it because it really ensures the story has a strong structure. It also ensures no great ideas get forgotten. Believe me when I say ideas can just randomly pop into your head and disappear just as quickly within a few hours. So, whenever an idea pops into my head I just jot it down quickly before I forget. Every story and chapter follow the basic structure of introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction sets up the story, the body is where the action of the story happens and the conclusion is where the story wraps up or resolves the conflict. Try to classify your bullet point ideas under these categories to flesh out a nice structure and make sure your ideas flow together. I will attach an example of my very first story ‘it’s just a Bug’ rough plan as an example

2.       Create a list of characters including names, gender, and ages: Remember your characters are what carry the stories. Their interactions and behaviours with the surrounding environment are the main bulk of the story. What I tend to do is write their name, age and gender along with a short and sweet description of their personality and identity. I will give a more detailed outlook on how to create great character development and a great character in a later section

3.       Create an intriguing title: Remember 90% of the time, when a reader comes across a title, the very first thing that will catch his or her eye is the title. Try to have a short to a medium-length title that sells the general idea and the concept of the story without giving too much away but leaves them with a catchy memorable title. For example, ‘It’s just a bug’ gives the impression that the giantess interactions in this story will involve unaware crushing and tragedy of tinies similar to how most girls squish bugs in real life.

4.       Get a rough estimate of how long the story is going to be: Is it going to be a single one-shot short story with no chapters or a longer story with several chapters?

5.       Always use an anonymous pen name when posting a story: especially if you are writing adult-orientated, sexually explicit, or offensive material: Poison pens touched on this as well. While it is fun, entertaining and sometimes arousing to write adult material some people, especially serious type professional boomers could find it offensive. You can never know who can be reading your story: your friends, your mother, your sister, your teacher, or your boss! This particularly applies to me because I have a very unique name that no one else has. Even my first name is very unique, I have never met a single person in my entire life who has the same name as me so if I post with my first name all my friends, family and people I know in my life will immediately know it’s me. That is why I took the penname LittleBigPlanet. Also is quite exciting and exhilarating to take up an anonymous identity online 😂

While writing Your First Draft  

6.      Describing the scene and setting of the environment: You should start any story by setting up the general environment and describing where it takes place. The environment of a story has a big impact on a character’s personality traits and behaviours so you should try to make the audience understand why the characters are the way they are by the upbringing they have had. Setting up the scene also gives clues to the audience about what kind of a story it is going to be. This leads me to my next point

7.       Do Not over-describe: I sound a bit hypocritical because I do it sometimes myself, but you don’t need to describe every single detail. Remember your audience has an imagination of their own who like to envision the story in their own head. Give them that little bit of freedom to have their own interpretation. For example, when describing a house there is no need to describe the types of bricks used or the shape of the house because everyone knows what a basic house looks like. If you describe too much it can be tedious and overbearing for the audience and on top of that your word count balloons.

8.       Always paragraph: It is very imitating and unappealing for a reader to see a giant block of text and really demotivates readers because it is really hard to follow. Each specific giantess and tiny character interaction should have a separate paragraph as well as a specific environmental setting description as well as feature description. Each dialogue line should be a new line for each different character, so it is easy to follow the conversation

Once the first Draft is finished

9.       Always proofread at least once before submitting: I know proofreading can be a pain in the ass, especially if your chapter or story is quite long. But there is nothing more unappealing to the reader than poor grammar, missing words, pronouns, and prepositions as well as spelling errors. I am not a grammar Nazi, but if it is quite frequent it can ruin the flow of the story. I tend to use the read-aloud function on Microsoft word to catch out any poorly structured sentences, missing words and additional descriptions or dialogue to polish it up. Because I am a student, I also use Grammarly which is super helpful however just the two points should be enough

10.    Save your story on your hard drive, DO NOT DELETE IT EVER: You can never know what will happen, maybe the site could go down or some uptight moderator could force you to delete it. That is why I save all my stories on my hard drive, so I have a backup to post somewhere else if that happens

11.   The summary: The summary is just like the blurb of a book and is very similar to the title and is what catches the audience’s eye. Always make sure to explain the main concept and premise of the story without giving away any spoilers. But always leave it on sort of a cliff-hanger to entice the audience into what happens next. For example, for the story ‘It’s just a bug’ I used the following summary:    

A physics student and her boyfriend are working on a shrink ray for an upcoming science competition. However, when an accident happens that causes her boyfriend to be shrunk to a few millimetres tall, she rushes out to gather equipment and information to reverse the process

Unfortunately, her dim-witted and nosy younger sister arrives home and begins snooping around her room.

And she doesn't like bugs.................

See how I didn’t spoil the story but highlighted the key character traits and concepts of the story. The audience is thinking: What happened to that guy? How small did he get? How does the stupid little sister treat bugs? It is questions like that that will entice the audience into reading the story

First Perspective, Second Perspective and Third Perspective  

When writing a story, it is important to consider the perspective you will be writing from which essentially is what point of view the story is told by.

12.   First Perspective (Also known as POV): This perspective is the most common one used for younger writers and relies on a single character’s point of view which is almost always the protagonist or one of the major characters. Pronouns such as “I”, ‘Me’ and ‘Myself’ are often used. When I was a younger kid I loved using the first perspective since I liked to envision myself as the character to whom the action was happening and in situations the character found themselves in. (Ironically, I am writing this guide in first person and second person 😂). The main problem I discovered as I got older is that the first perspective is quite limited. Remember a first-person narrator can become quite unreliable. Since the story is being told from their perspective only, so their biases, personality and opinions could skew how the story can be viewed. Another issue is that since the first-person narrator is an active participating character in the story, they can’t describe what they did not witness or is not aware of. Limitations like this eventually made me switch to the third person later on as the preferred method. However, there is nothing wrong with using the first person as long as you think about what you want your audience to experience. Personally, I would recommend the first person for shorter stories but not longer ones

13.   Second Perspective (Hardest one to master): This is the most difficult one to master. Jacksmith’s entire A Little Blackmail series (One of my favourites) with the exception of A Little Blackmail 4: Big Sister Diaries is written in the second person. The Choose Your Own Adventure books are also written in the second person. The perspective aims to bring the reader (whomever he or she might be) into the story by trying to have the story told through the reader’s perspective. The reader could be anyone with different opinions and perspectives which is why the second person is so hard to write since you are trying to directly engage the audience. Pronouns such as ‘you’, ‘your’, and ‘yourself’ are used frequently. If it is not used correctly however the flow of the story can become really awkward. This is why beginner writers should not use the second person until they have mastered the other two. I personally have not used the second person yet however I might in the future

14.    Third person (most common for longer stories): If you are going to write a longer story like I am with ‘Antopia: The Greatest Story Never Told’ with multiple different chapters it is highly recommended you used the third person. The third person is essentially a perspective where the perspective is being told by an external outsider who does not participate in the story in any way but instead watches it from and describes it from afar. There are two types of third-person: third-person objective and third-person omniscient. The third-person objective is limited as it is only able to describe the physical actions and events of the story without being able to know the motivations or thoughts. It is kind of like a sports commentator who is able to describe the action. Third-person omniscient on the other hand (the favourite one I use) can describe a lot more, being able to describe the main character’s thoughts, feelings, backstories, and motivations and can be used for many characters. Essentially think of this as a sky god watching from above who is able to peer into his creations’ heads. Third-person omniscient is my favourite since it provides so many different story perspectives and I have very few limitations on how to tell the story, after all, the characters are my creations, and I am their literal god 😏.  When writing third person pronouns such as ‘they’, ‘he’ ‘she’ ‘him’ and ‘her’ are used.

15.   Multiple Perspectives: This is essentially an extension of the first-person perspective but instead of using just one character protagonist, they use several. This is common for longer stories that want their reader to experience the story as the characters themselves but don’t want to be limited to just one character’s POV. Some novel authors such as Rick Riordan have done this with his Kane Chronicles series. Personally, I have never done this but would like to experiment with it in the future  

Other story elements to Consider

16.   Difference between erotica and pornography: Poison Pens also touched on this as well, but I would like to expand on this as well. Contrary to popular belief (including my friends), erotica and pornography are not the same things. Pornography is used primarily for sexual gratification and arousal and nothing else. There is little character development or coherent storyline. The main body of the text focuses on sexual interaction and nothing else, tending to be purely explicitly sexual and portrayed.  Erotica while having sexual themes does have a coherent storyline with character development. It can also serve as a standalone purely entertainment story while being sexually arousing to the ones who choose to use it that way.

17.   Unintentional erotica and Intentional erotica: The truth is that anyone can be sexually aroused by anything, even the most innocent of things. In fact, that is why I think the real reason Disney cancelled their animated musical Gigantic (I was really pissed off about that) was that they were worried about it possibly becoming erotic. In reality, you can’t control if some of your audience become sexually aroused by non-sexually explicit content. That’s the reality because people are individuals with different tastes. Intentional erotica on the other hand contains explicit sexual material because they want their audience to become aroused and the majority of the audience would be aroused by it.

18.   Character Development: When developing a major character, especially a protagonist and antagonist, first think of a name, gender and age. Then introduce key personality traits, family members and friends as well as the interactions with the world around them. When including a backstory to a character, make sure it is relevant to the current interactions of the character. For example, in my Antopia story, Lucy Firewall sucks at maths and is bullied at school so she uses this bottled-up anger to take it out on the ants. Divya Bandaranayake on the other hand is an animal-loving vegetarian, a nerd with a single father and very few friends which explains why she hangs out with Lucy a lot of the time and tutors her. Her animal-loving nature and religious Buddhism also explains why she is so sweet and gentle with the ants. Her best friend being the polar opposite also creates a very interesting character conflict of personalities. You see my friends using past character traits and backstories really helps sells and explain the present-day interactions.

19.   Character Description: Character description is very similar to setting description. Be careful not to over-describe and rather describe while they are doing something or engaging in something rather than describing them upfront. What I like to do is pick out a few traits and focus on them and let the audience use their imagination to envision the rest. For example, I focus on Lucy Firewall’s ginger-red hair and Divya Bandaranayake’s Sri Lankan Sinhalese ethnicity. Some traits can become important, such as Divya’s ethnicity, since it plays a pivotal role in her interactions   

20.   Age of the characters:  The age of the characters plays a big role in deciding the behaviour and personality of the character. Have that character behave appropriately to their age. For example, a 7-year-old Lucy Firewall in my Antopia story would be playing with dolls while a 12-year-old Lucy Firewall would behave quite differently and be more mature and stop playing with toys and focus on more teen-oriented activities such as pop music or fashion. I have seen some authors make this mistake in the past. No 12-year-old girl is playing with barbie dolls and talks at the same vocabulary level as an 8-year-old.

21.    Underage characters (Under 16): This is one of the most controversial things to write about. Many authors (including myself have gotten backlash in the past). What I classify as underage characters are characters under the age of consent. Here’s my principle: If you don’t make anything explicitly sexual with underage characters it’s completely fine. Explicitly sexual refers to sexual intercourse, the character becoming sexually aroused and nudity. Young teens and children are not mature enough to participate in anything explicitly sexual, so this is primarily why I don’t have them engaging in that activity. The reason why I sometimes write about underage characters is that it’s interesting to see a young person in a position of unlimited power when they are normally mostly powerless against the world around them (A Little Bit of Everything explains this the best). There are some people who just can’t understand that for some reason and that’s their problem. Also, there are books such as Lolita and the 120 days of Sodom that are considered literature art and have sexually explicit content of minors in them and I bet some people get aroused by that. This ties into my philosophy of you can’t control what content an individual will get aroused by. As long as you don’t make anything explicitly sexual since 90% of the audience will be when into stuff like that, you should be fine. Remember the younger the character is the more limitations you will have.

22.   Who is the story for? This ties into ratings and adult-orientated material. You need to think about what is considered adult-oriented and it’s not just sexually explicit material. It’s graphic violence, blood and gore, profanity and mature, pop culture and political themes a younger audience would probably not understand. You need to think about the average age of your audience. For me, since I am a young lad, most of my characters tend to be between 15 and 24 since that is the age group I associate with the most and understand the most. The ratings on Giantessworld use the American Motion Picture Association film rating system which, to be honest, I am not familiar with. That is why I use the Australian system and try my best to convert to the American one.

23.   Be careful of your tense: Sometimes I have made this mistake; I go into the past tense for one paragraph and then accidentally switch to the present tense in another paragraph. When a reader reads this, it can seem weird and awkward. Always try to keep it in the same tense.   

Final Notes:   

24.   If you see a story that is of high quality, and you really enjoyed it don’t hesitate to leave a review. Even if it’s just a sentence a few words or a rating, I will tell as a writer which puts in a lot of effort, nothing makes me happier than to see a person having an opinion of my story. It will really make their day

25.   Brainstorming using music: Sometimes I like gently listening to Confederate civil war songs while brainstorming ideas and I know some other authors like to listen to different types of music as well. It isn’t for everyone but if it helps you get the creative juices flowing go for it.

26.   Always respond to your reviewers unless it’s spam or trolls: Your audience is why your story is being written in the first place. A person reviewing means they have taken the time of day to judge and voice their opinion on your story. It’s just a bit of common courtesy that I always try to do……eventually

Happy Writing! 

Chapter End Notes:

If have any questions to ask me about how to write better feel free to leave me a review. 

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