How to Write a Story

A common question at book signings and writing conferences is, “How do you write a story, a book, a novel?” And through the years I’ve heard a variety of answers.

Some answers have included the importance of reading books in your genre or magazines on your craft. Some have emphasized the attendance of writing classes, critique groups, and conferences. Still others tout the need to hone preplanning or editing skills.

Yet while each of these things is valuable, none equate a story. Reading may expand your knowledge of methods, but that’s not writing. Conferences, critique groups, and classes may sharpen your skills, but they can’t guarantee you can write a story. And preplanning isn’t a book, and you can’t edit a story that doesn’t exist.

Rather, the answer is much simpler: you write a story one word at a time.

For if you keep adding more word, you will soon have a sentence. Put a few sentences together, and you have a paragraph. A string of paragraphs fill a page, pages make up a chapter, and chapters form a book.

But it all begins
With one
Word.