How to Build a Good Story
By J. Braiden Oram, and Declan J. Barbezat, Grade 6
Many people do story-telling to create art and express themselves, if you are one of those people you should know how to create a good world with an exciting backstory, good characters, and a compelling story that your main character is going through.
The first thing you need for a good story is to make a world. You can do this in several ways. The first of these is to use a random generator. Now I do not suggest this option as it is a dreadful idea as it is only in the artificial intelligence's 'hands'. Another thing you could do is ask your friend for a 'quiz' . This quiz will ask you for the name, physical features, key locations, main conflicts of the past, and a briefing of the history in general. This quiz could also have neighbors, main foods, and trade partners. This option is by far the best thing. The only thing I could see that is better is just thinking for yourself and coming up with no help.
Next you also need to figure out the time period. For example the past, present, or future. One example would be in The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit, these books by J.R.R. Tolkien are set in Middle-earth, which is based on the medieval ages, on the contrary the book The Giver is based in the future. You also need to pick the theme for example, going back to The Lord of The Rings, it is set in a fantasy setting, also, using The Giver once again. The Giver is a science fiction novel. Last example: The Hunger Games are a dystopia. One way to build a good theme of the story is to research and read books that have to do with that.
One of the things that is required for a story is a character and a character arc. Whether it is a book, a game, a DnD game whatever it is, it needs these two things. One thing that you can do to make a good character is to just "pull a DnD" which is to make a character card, you can do this by making a design, a name, a backstory and many more things that you need for a character, and remember making a story is an art form so it's okay for it to be somewhat abstract but as the story goes on a line starts to become clearer and that line is one you should not cross. All you have to do is take a Glancs at the dark crystal Movie critics and even fans of the series itself know that it went too far several times, it did this by creating too much character and not enough backstory, there are tons of characters and detail however they all lack backstory. If you want a deep dive into it you can watch a video by The Odd1sout where he goes into a review of the movie and states this exact thing in different words.
One example of a character is The Legend of Zelda, there are several games that can be used as an example, I will be using The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. The main character, Link starts the game in a humble ranch village, but the village is raided by a pack of monsters, Link is "kidnapped" along with the other children in the village. The rest of the game is Link trying to save the children. However they are found, this would be a good thing but, one of the kids is taken by the same monster that attacked their village, and has to be saved by Link, after helping the kingdom, Link comes across the fact an evil man is trying to take over the kingdom for his own selfish needs, however was sealed in the "twilight realm", Link after learning this, saves the kingdom and the game is beat. The entire time during the game the character is developing. This is a perfect example of a character arc. When creating a character you should keep this in mind. The character should adapt, be changing all the time, and have a good satisfying close to their story.
In conclusion you shouldn't make a story right on the spot with little to no backstory, and you shouldn't take your advice for making a book or story, completely from a school newspaper article, but take it into account and keep it in your mind one last piece of advice I can give you is if you research characters across the same genre as you, you can be successful in making a good character.