Column: Moving the Story Forward

Creative writing has become notorious to be a narration of "made-up" facts that transform a seemingly impossible circumstances into a realistic world. Most of us are lost in these worlds, each of us starting to care for the characters as they maneuver themselves from the imagination of dangers and conflict transcribed through words, intrigued as to what will happen next.

All of these happens as the story moves forward. Chapter by chapter, we are led into information (little by little) that makes the mystery even more interesting, and all of us are already dying to know. How these things happen depends on the skill of the author. Probably a murder keeps on happening or maybe they are pursuing something sinister, and clues are littered in the pages everywhere as to who might have done it.

To this, the genre of commercial fiction is a critical part of how the novel pushes forward. But one thing remains the same, the reader should not know everything from the beginning. The moment readers sense that there is something going on that they don't know yet, they become interested into reading further.

As an author, this interest for the story is important to be sustained. Every chapter, questions must be playing in the readers' minds that they are dying to get answers from. From the hook, intrigue must be kept brewing and alive. Authors usually answers some of the questions every chapter, and then new questions are starting to pop up as the plot becomes complex and complicated.

The cycle goes on and on, until the story unexpectedly ends. Some people might be disappointed in the ending. They might find the denouement to have failed on the promise on how the tension has built up in their minds, which is not a good sign.

Or the ending would be as explosive as the hook, in which case, get ready to be the next bestselling author. Always know how to move the story forward. Make that idea become a realistic world where readers are free to roam, and welcome to peek in, to go back over and over again.

Only then you know you have a story.

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