Help With Story

[RoomierTiger]

So my stories are terrible, really bad.
Here was the story of the last game I made...

You wake up and decide to walk around your town for a little bit.
You meet your friend who was just out on a little quest by the king and would like to spend time with you.
Both of you decide to go to the nearby mountain cliff just north of the town.
There are monsters there, you learn to fight from him and go through a small cave to get to the top.
At the top there's the main antagonist who is summoning monsters to the area.
You defeat him and some fairy shows up and says, "Please save the world, he is terrorizing all of the world!"
You agree and inform the king.
Some other friend decides to join your party and you set off on your quest to go to the east because the fairy said trouble was happening there.
You go through a forest like thing and defeat some boss who is helping the antagonist.
You go to a hidden away forest village meet someone who joins your party and leave.
When you go back to your village there are monsters in it and you try to defeat them all.
You then find out the king has fled and you sail across the ocean trying to find him.
Then there's an island and this weird rock thing that someone touches and you go into a dungeon.
At the end of the dungeon there's the person who was summoning monsters in your village, you defeat them and carry on.
You go to a castle ruin like place.
Then you fight the guy at the beginning again, you beat him and get teleported back to your town.
Dumb ending thing shows up explaining what happened to the characters briefly like "That person became a great wizard and saved many lands" or something like that.

And that's it... it looks like when you look at it but that's all that happens.
I need some ways or ideas to spruce up my story and make it not boring and just like this.
Thanks for reading!

 

[Aoi Ninami]

Give the player a hook as early as possible: either a mystery to make them curious, or something happens that the characters care about, which also helps with developing the characters' motivations. We should know why the characters are fighting before the fighting begins (even if their initial reason for fighting is not their eventual reason -- e.g. at first they are lost in a dangerous forest; later they discover the villain is trying to take over the kingdom).

Give the antagonist a motivation that makes them an individual and not a generic villain. If the antagonist is operating on a large scale, show how other groups / nations / heroes are responding to their threats. If the antagonist is attacking the protagonist's village, show us what they hope to gain from it, and have things go the antagonist's way at first to make them feel like a serious threat.

 

[Parallax Panda]

I too find writing a good story very difficult. Fact is, I'm having such big problems with it that up to date I've never finished writing anything. Because I think it's trash and I throw it away.

However, most stories does look weak when you present them like you did there above. The details (presentation, characters, dialogue, etc) matters... often more than the core concept. Because you can make a good, or at least decent, story out of a generic and weak plot, although it depends on the genre too. If you're writing a mystery then I'd argue that the core plot is pretty important, but for adventure or horror (which are common themes for games made in RM) then maybe not so much.

Not saying a good foundation isn't worth pursuing, just that maybe, just maybe you are being too critical of your own work and that it hinders your progress? I know it's true for myself. Like I said, I haven't finished writing any story, ever. And I've tried written quite a lot of them.

But to add some good advice to this post, I'd advice you to practice writing shorter stories for practice. This advice is as much for you as it is for myself, I guess. Start small. If you can't write a good story in 1000 words, don't expect to be able to write a short novel in 50.000 words. Makes sense, right? If you can't write a good story in 1000 words, try to write one in 500, 200, or 100 words. You can translate this to RPG maker as well. Can you make an interesting 5 or 15 minute game? Try it!

 

[Kes]

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[mod]As this thread cannot be moved, I am closing it.[/mod]