How to start writing a story (even if you're not a writer)
To start writing a story, write your idea down in one plain sentence, pick the first moment where something changes, and write that scene as flatly as you need to: what happens, in the simplest words you have. Don’t fix anything until the scene is down. Improving a flat draft is far easier than writing a good sentence from nothing, and it’s the part that can be learned.
That’s the whole method. The rest of this post walks through it with one small story, so you can do the same with yours in the next ten minutes.
Do I need to be a good writer to start a story?
No. You need a story, and you probably already have one: a person you keep thinking about, a situation that won’t leave you alone, a scene you can see but can’t seem to write down.
What stops most people isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s the gap between the scene in their head and the sentence on the page. In your head the moment is vivid. On the page it comes out as “Lisa looked at her watch and crossed the street.” and it feels like proof you can’t do this.
It isn’t proof of anything. That sentence is a perfectly good first draft. It says who, what and where. Every writer’s first pass has sentences like it; the difference is that experienced writers expect them, keep going, and fix them later. The sentences you admire in books were rewritten, often many times, after something plain held their place.
How do I turn an idea into a story?
An idea is usually a picture or a situation. A story needs a person who wants something, and something in the way. Before you write a scene, write one plain sentence that has both.
Idea: A woman waiting outside a café in the rain.
Story sentence: Lisa is waiting for her brother Tom, who is never late, and tonight he doesn’t come.
The first is a picture. The second has a person (Lisa), a want (to see Tom), a problem (he doesn’t come) and a question the reader will want answered (why not?). You don’t need to know the answer yet. You only need the question.
If you’re stuck, fill in this line:
[Someone] wants [something], but [something gets in the way].
It will sound too simple. That’s fine. It isn’t the first line of your story; it’s a note to yourself about what the story is for, and it will stop you wandering when the scenes get long.
Where should a story start?
Start at the first moment something changes, or is about to. Not with the character’s childhood, not with the weather, not with a page explaining the world. With the evening Tom doesn’t come.
A useful test: if the scene could happen on any ordinary day, it’s probably not the start. Lisa’s usual Tuesday is not a scene. Lisa waiting outside a café that has already closed, for a brother who should have been there ten minutes ago, is. The background can come in later, a sentence at a time, when the reader needs it.
How do I write the first scene?
Write it flat. List what happens, one plain sentence at a time, in order, as if you were telling a friend what happened in a film you saw.
Here is a whole first scene, written flat:
Lisa looked at her watch and crossed the street. The café was closed. Tom wasn’t there. She called him and it went to voicemail. She waited. A bus went past. It wasn’t his. She decided to walk to the depot where he works.
It’s not pretty. It is a scene: it has a beginning, a problem, and a decision at the end that pushes into the next one. Notice what’s missing, too: no description of the rain, no feelings named, no clever lines. Those come later. Right now the scene exists, and an hour ago it didn’t.
Some things that help while you write flat:
- Write in the order things happen. Don’t jump back to explain.
- Leave notes instead of solving problems. If you don’t know what Tom’s job is, write [his job?] and move on. If you know what should happen next but not how, write it as a note: Lisa finds a note on the door. (More on notes like that in how to write story beats.)
- Stop in the middle of something. End your session halfway through a scene, with the next sentence already in your head. Tomorrow you start by writing it, instead of staring.
Why shouldn’t I edit while I’m drafting?
Because drafting and editing use different parts of your attention, and the editor always wins. If you stop to fix every sentence as you write it, you will spend an evening on one paragraph and never find out how the scene ends.
So separate them. Draft the scene from start to end, ugly. Then go back once and improve it. If a sentence makes you wince while drafting, put a mark next to it and keep moving; it will still be there when you come back.
How do I make a flat draft better?
Go back through the scene and ask, for each sentence, what the reader is missing. Usually it’s one of three things.
Detail. “The café was closed” could become “The café’s shutter was down, a handwritten sign taped to it, the ink already running.” Same fact, but now the reader is standing on the wet street. (There are five techniques for this, with examples, in how to describe a scene.)
Voices. “She called him and it went to voicemail” might want to become a line or two of what Lisa actually says to the voicemail, which tells us more about her and Tom than any explanation.
Feeling, shown rather than named. Instead of “She was worried,” let her check her watch, then her phone, then her watch again.
Here’s the opening of that flat scene, after one pass:
Before: Lisa looked at her watch and crossed the street. The café was closed. Tom wasn’t there.
After: The rain had thinned to a mist that hung under the streetlights. Lisa looked at her watch and crossed the street. The café’s shutter was down, and the doorway where Tom always waited was empty. Ten past nine. Tom had said nine, and Tom was never late.
Look at what stayed. Lisa still checks her watch and crosses the street, in the same words. The improvement didn’t replace the flat draft; it grew around it. That’s why the flat draft is worth writing: it’s the frame everything else hangs on.
You don’t have to fix every sentence. Fix the ones the reader will remember, and let the rest stay plain. Plain is often what a sentence should be.
Where ProseSpun fits
ProseSpun is a fiction writing app for people with more story than sentences, and it is built around exactly this loop: you write flat, then you improve, one passage at a time, and you decide what stays.
A story is the only thing you need to start. Name it (or don’t; a working title is fine, and an untitled story is listed by its first words) and press Enter, and you land on the first line of Scene 1. There are no forms to fill in first. The empty page says it plainly: “Write it however it comes out — a flat line is fine.”
Then select, ask, compare, keep. Select a sentence you wrote and choose Describe to add detail around it, Dialogue to continue the exchange, or Rewrite to say it another way with the same events. Describe keeps your sentences word for word and adds around them. Whatever comes back is a proposal, with the changes marked and the word count before and after, and you accept it, discard it, or try again. Nothing touches your page until you do.
Notes become beats. Start a line with // and it’s a beat, a note of what
should happen next: // Lisa finds a note on the door. You can keep writing
past it yourself, or ask for a draft of it and keep the sentences you like, one
at a time.
Cards fill in from what you write. You don’t have to set up characters first. As your scenes name people and places, ProseSpun notices the new names and offers each one as a card, Add as a character or Not a card, and proposes changes to the cards you already have. Each waits for you. Those cards are what keep later suggestions in character, so Tom stays the brother who is never late. (How that works across a long book is in A novel is bigger than any model’s memory.)
The writing is still yours. ProseSpun proposes, and you pick. There’s more on working that way in how to use AI without losing your voice.
Related reading: How to outline a novel and How to improve your sentences.
Frequently asked questions
How do I start writing a story for the first time?
Write your idea as one sentence with a person, a want and an obstacle. Then write the first scene where something changes, in plain sentences, from start to end, without stopping to fix anything. Only then go back and improve it.
I have a story idea but I can’t write. What should I do?
Write it badly on purpose. Tell the story to the page the way you would tell it to a friend, in short, plain sentences. A flat draft is not a failure; it’s the material you improve. Most of what makes writing good happens in revision, and revision is a skill you can learn one sentence at a time.
How long should my first story be?
Shorter than you think. One scene of a few hundred words is a real start, and a short story of a few scenes is a good first goal. Finishing something small teaches more than starting something large, and you can always grow it into a longer piece later.
Should I plan my story before I start writing?
You need less planning than you might expect: one sentence about what the story is for, and a sense of where the first scene starts and ends. Some writers plan every scene; others find the story by writing it. Either works, as long as the planning doesn’t become a reason not to start.
If you’d like to try this with a story of your own, you can start writing.