Quick Movie Reviews X has been ready for public examination for a few days now.

Today I attended another writer's meeting with my cousin, in which we discussed several occurrences happening during the process of building up a story. I decided to share some of the information we've gathered.

Characters Acting for Themselves
After a while your characters are so fleshed out and alive that they start making decisions on their own. For example, you want a character to threaten another fictive person, but refuses to, telling you that it would be, in fact, out of character. Or telling a character to go along with the rest of the group, but she tells you that she'd like to stay with her parents because they need her now.

Change in Style of Writing
A few pages into the story you'll notice a slight or even a significant change in your style of writing, compared to the first few paragraphs. This is either because after a while you're really "getting into it", thus your style improves, or you're writing from a character's view and the character is more sophisticated and influences the words you're putting together. Notice that the world itself often represents a "character" as well, and the more you describe, the more you're influenced by your descriptions. If you reach a point where you're sure the style has changed, it's probably best to go back to the first few paragraphs and adjust the text to your newly acquired characteristics.

The End
Knowing where the story will end helps a great deal avoiding writer's block. The ending will vary depending on your character's decision, but without an end in sight it may occur that you write yourself in a corner and you will have to rewrite a few parts, or even give up on the whole project.

Inspiration
To make a story more appealing you can try to incorporate everyday events. Even if you're writing in a medieval setting you can still write about a spider falling into boiling hot water (which in my case really happened right before my eyes). If you think about it, most rooms or places you write about are based off areas you're familiar with or which you have seen somewhere. I've been writing on a science-fiction story once until I realized that the house and the basement I had described were actually from the TV series Sliders. If you can use this real-life-inspiration intentionally, your stories will feel a lot more varied, alive and authentic - if correctly translated into context.

Different Worlds
One of the most interesting parts of writing is that the readers will never see your world as you do. Even describing every detail won't assure the exact same picture in the reader's head that you had in mind.

More as our journey continues.