14 A technique for coming up with a topic – Sentence expansion (1)

Author:314

This is an article that I wrote a long time ago. I randomly found it again recently and felt that it wasn't completely outdated, so how about I publish it for everyone to see again?

When writing a new book, but you don't know what to write about or what specific content to use, you could try using this method. Here is my original article.

Many newcomer authors get stuck on the topic of choosing something to write about. Some people will have completely blank minds and have no clue what to write about, while other authors feel that there are endless topics out there but don't know what to choose.

Actually, choosing a topic has several fixed methods you can go about to help you simply figure out the topic and even your overall outline, step by step. Here, I shall introduce one of the simplest methods – sentence expansion.

Every single wish fulfillment out there can be summarized foundationally with one single word: "Strength." No matter what, and in any aspect, only becoming stronger is something that the readers will enjoy. This is basically the first law of wish fulfillment stories. It's a maxim of webnovels that's the equivalent of the conservation of energy for physics.

When I talk about sentence expansion for wish fulfillment novels, it starts with the word "Strength" as well.

Who is powerful? Of course, the main character. It's also fine to have a weak main character who has powerful parents, although this will be categorized as the main character belonging to a powerful faction. So in the end, this character still has some strength to them.

Now then, let's expand the sentence to "The main character is strong."

For a typical wish fulfillment story, the main character being only a normal level of strong isn't good enough. Nor will simply "above average" cut it. If the main character is only slightly better than average, then not too many people will be interested. And so, your main character must be strong, very strong, especially strong, or even the strongest.

That's why we now expand our sentence to "The main character is really strong."

That's the fixed method for you to start with. As for the rest of this sentence expansion, that's up to you as the author to decide. And the first question on how to expand this sentence is: "What is your main character strong at?"

Your main character's strength can be expressed in many different ways. For instance, the simplest method of all is to make the main character physically strong. But apart from physical strength, your main character could also be strong at knowledge, wealth, social status, factional power, and so on.

Here, all these different choices available to you will determine the overall topic of your novel. It should be said that these choices have no difference in good, bad, better, or worse. Making such a choice depends on the author's personal writing style and strengths. You should do your best to write something you're good at and avoid a topic you're weak at.

For example, if you're an author who's also in the financial industry, perhaps you're more knowledgeable than the average layman about this topic. In that case, you could write about a main character whose strength is being rich. Then, you could decide that your story's topic will be business competition. And since it's about business competition, normally speaking, it would also be a modern novel.

Or, if you're more knowledgeable about how to do business and all its strategies, but you're not quite as familiar with the financial industry, you could also set your novel in ancient times, and make it into a historical business competition novel. Or, if you really want, there's no restriction on writing a fantasy business competition novel either.

Anyways, when an author makes a choice on what topic to write, it definitely shouldn't have something to do with which topics are popular and have the most readers. This topic should be decided based on your own abilities, what you're familiar with, what you're good at, and what you like. Only that would be the best topic for you.

For example, if your writing style is hot-blooded and passionate, then you could consider having a main character who's physically strong or in a powerful faction, and write a similarly hot-blooded leveling story that gets into military warfare.

Now, the sentence has expanded into "The main character is really strong in ____."

After you confirm which area your main character is strong in, the next step is to consider why your main character is so strong. Basically, the reason.

From a certain standpoint, this is the most important core of your entire story, as well as the essence of wish fulfillment. When doing sentence expansion, you could try considering this factor as the priority. Brainstorm on this topic of what area your main character is good at.

Why is your main character strong in this area? Perhaps this question will puzzle many newcomer authors who can't come up with a good reason. But actually, as long as you think about it while reading other novels, you'll discover that the main character's strength boils down to a few common clichés.

With a classic martial arts story as the example, there's several common reasons for why the main character is strong.

First, there's excellent luck. This is the most common cliché of all in martial arts stories. Falling off a cliff and not dying, learning some incredible technique, eating a ten-thousand-year-old mystic herb, coincidentally meeting some strange old man that wants you to call him "Brother"… and such clichés have been used endless times to create all these powerful main characters. But in the end, all of them is simply the main character's excellent luck.

Second, it's having an excellent teacher or family. This was a common cliché in the earliest wave of martial arts webnovels. In the opening scene, a handsome youthful hero rides a white horse with an excellent sword strapped to his back, being introduced to the readers in a flashy manner. Obviously, this young hero must have an excellent background, which would always be either a powerful teacher or sect, or he would be from an extraordinary family. This is another common reason for the main character to be strong.

Third, there's excellent talent. If you don't wish to give the main character an excellent background or too many miracles, then your main character can only depend on having better talent than everyone else. Another concept that's similar is that the main character is incredibly hardworking. However, this last concept isn't too convincing, because there's only 24 hours in a day, after all. Even if your main character doesn't even take time to sleep, just how much stronger can he get compared to others? This is a reason that can make your main character strong, but not one that can make him extraordinarily strong.

Mostly speaking, those are the three main clichés of martial arts stories. Still, don't judge them simply because they're cliché. Clichés could even be called eternal. Even if you use a cliché, as long as you change the way it's used and give it a different setting, different characters, and different plot, it's still a brand new story that can attract a large amount of readers.

Of course, with webnovels having been around for so many years now, there are far more than just these three cliché methods for making the main character strong.

Transmigration, reincarnation, possession, making friends with an alien, an ancient artifact, a mystical ability since birth, artificial intelligence, racial talent…

There's an infinite number of strange reasons you could come up with. Choose one that's highly compatible with the remainder of your setting. Now, you can expand your sentence to "Because of ____, the main character is very strong at ____."

By now, there's only one final area where you need to expand your sentence. That is, what will your main character do after he becomes stronger, and what's his goal?

If the reason for becoming stronger is the core of a novel, then the main character's goal and process in completing that goal is the body of a novel. This is a point that many newcomer authors easily forget. Without a goal, then the main character becoming stronger will become meaningless.

When creating a goal for your main character, the simplest type of all is to link the goal with your main character's strength. For example, if your main character's strength is being wealthy, then you could have making money and becoming the richest person in the world become your main character's goal. This type of goal is usable for the great majority of novels out there, with the exception of novels where the main character is already ranked #1 in the world.

And apart from getting stronger, the second most common goal is probably getting revenge. You killed my father, you killed my friends or clan, you humiliated me, or even racial hatred… The main character has various grudges that must be dealt with, which will motivate him to take revenge. This is also something that can help move along the plot.

Taking revenge is a destructive action, while its opposite, creation/construction, can also become the main character's goal as well. Regardless if it's improving their family situation, or the clan's prosperity, or making one's own country stronger, all such things can be character motivations as well.

No matter if it's revenge or repaying a favor, destruction or creation, wanting to become strong, or desiring an ordinary life, what the main character's goal isn't actually important. However, the main character must have a goal, no matter what this goal is.

Also, it needs to be noted that for a novel to potentially go over two million words, this goal can evolve as the story goes on. For example, taking revenge. Just because the main character succeeds in taking revenge doesn't mean that your novel needs to end. You could simply give your main character a new goal. What this means is that you don't need to intentionally slow down the pace at which your main character reaches their goal just in order to write a longer story.

And so, the first part of our sentence expansion is complete. The sentence is now "Because of _____, the main character is incredibly strong at _____. He will use his ability to _____."

By now, your brainstorming, story's topic, and main plot should all be confirmed. Still, if you want to have it easier when you're writing, you need to continue with your sentence expansion.

First is to fill in all the information about your main character, as if you were writing a dating advertisement. You need to write detailed descriptions about your main character's physical appearance, figure, family background, job, income, friends and relatives, abilities, personality, and so on. The more detailed you write such things, the greater help it will be in your future writing.

As for your main character's settings, there are two main rules that they should follow.

First, they should fulfill the prerequisites for being a wish-fulfillment story. Or, in other words, don't create settings that make it more difficult to write.

For example, if you make your main character into someone who's weak-willed and useless at everything, this will obviously increase the writing's difficulty level. Surely, no normal author would wish that upon themselves.

That's why this first rule is actually quite easy to follow.

Second, make sure that there are no conflicts in the main character's settings. For example, creating a main character with an illustrious family upbringing while also saying that his parents died when he was young and that he's now an orphan. These two settings obviously clash with each other, so you need to change one of them.

This looks relatively simple, but is actually slightly troublesome. First, we need to complete our settings, then find out if anything about them clashes. Then, we need to fix the parts that clash…

If you're lucky, you can fix this quite quickly. But if you're unlucky, you might even find that fixing one contradictory portion will make another contradictory portion arise… You can only do this patiently and deal with all the conflicts in your own settings before you put pen to paper.

The second part to expand upon is the process by which your main character completes their goal. This is basically the overall outline of your novel.

As for the specific method to write your overall outline, that's a topic for a different article. What we want to focus on right now is how to mechanically expand our topic. Generally, there are two methods that are the simplest.

One is to slice it up into little pieces. Separate the path to your main character's goal into many sections and complete them one step at a time.

For example, if your main character's goal is to become the strongest person in the world, then perhaps your setting requires your main character to reach level one hundred, while he's starting out at level one. This way, you can separate the entire process into one hundred sections, and then write specific arcs for each little section.

The second is the obstacle method. You can intentionally give the main character all sorts of obstacles to make something that could have been really easy into something highly complex and even unexpected. Of course, with each plot twist, continue to give your main character obstacles and add even more plot twists. By doing this enough, it can also become the mainframe of your overall outline.

After you complete all of this, your end sentence becomes "My main character is a _____ person. Because of _____, he/she is incredibly strong at _____. He will use his ability to do _____, although ______ difficulties and obstacles will appear in his way."

Now then, that ends all the sentence expansion, together with the planning for your novel. Of course, perhaps this still isn't enough to help everyone completely understand, so I'll add another concrete example in the next article to help you out.