post 7

Writing a story isn't something simple.  Even if you have good idea forming them into a good story can be a challenge and then you have to be able to translate that story onto paper without ruining it in the process.  So what does it take to write a story?  Let me tell you what I personally think goes into writing a good story.
The first step it writing a story is to figure out what you want to write about.  There are many ways to create the concept for your story which have different results on how it will turn out.  One way to create your story is through planing it out before you start working on it in depth.  You first need a basic concept for it that will act as a starting block for your story.  The concept can be a goal or person or even just a setting, you can't really go wrong with the concept but some concepts can be harder than others to make a good story out of.  Looking at other peoples stories can help you get ideas for your concept but you half to make sure that your story doesn't rely too heavily on others work.
The next step would be to start turning your concept into a sort of story egg that has the basic plot or goal of the story along with some settings and characters you would like to use.  Don't worry to much on whether or not all of the pieces of the egg fit together because you might decide that you don't want to use them later, the important part of these steps is to experiment on what you want to write about and how the pieces interact with each other.  You may find out working with them that some might be trash, a character may be too generic, a setting might not fit with the story, or the plot might have too many holes but while working with them you might find some gems that you can use in a different story.  You can never tell in the beginning whether or not an idea is going to turn out good so you have to work with it until you can decide whether or not it works and you may have to go through several story eggs until you are satisfied with the outcome.
With a story egg in mind you need to start expanding on it.  Test the egg in many different scenarios.  See what happens when your characters are put in certain situation, would the main character enter the supposedly haunted house or would he say "F#ck this!" and run away?  Build upon the setting figure out what the inhabitants would do on a regular basis and how they would act when confronted with different issues as well as what happened in the past.  Play with certain elements of your plot seeing what would happen at different points of it.  None of these ideas have to be used in the story and may give you new ideas you want to work with.  The point is to discover how they work, fleshing out your ideas so that they are dynamic.  You want your characters to become actual people instead of puppets and you want your settings to feel alive (or lacking life) and have a purpose instead of being a backdrop for the plot.  All three of these things also help you figure out how the plot is going to form and what will happen with it.  These things also help you decide if your pieces fit together well.  If your making a horror story having a character that says "F#ck this I'm out" at the first sign of danger might not make a good story.
Once you have your pieces fleshed out you want to start building the foundation of your story.  Decide what events you want to occur and where your characters will be.  This part is not an easy one because too much structure can cause the story to feel like a bunch of random events tied together.  If you have too little structure you may find parts in the story that contradict each other and you may find that much of your isn't usable either because of those contradictions or that it isn't as good as you want it to be.
The final step is to actually create the story.  At any point in the previous steps you can skip to this point or even start here by designing a story on the spot which although can easily fail can sometimes become gold or at the very least create ideas to be used for another story.  Throughout all of the steps especially this one it is important to get others opinions on your ideas.  You are probably writing a story so that other people can enjoy it so it is important to see what parts they like and what parts they don't.  It is always a good idea to get the opinions of as many people as you can but at the same time figuring out what there interests are.  Someone who hates action stories might not give you as useful of an opinion as an action buff.  You should build the story around how you want it to be but not to the point that others won't like it.  If you can't seem to find a compromise in making your story so that both you and others will like it you might have to scrap it and start over.  As you work with it you will start to see the others perspectives while making it and it becomes easier to make the story enjoyable to all.  You can also look at the stories of others to see what people like in them and if you can use some of those ideas to improve your own but once again remember not to take to much from them or your story might become a shadow of their work.
Once you are done with your story or while you are still working on it you will begin to write it down.  Turning a story into words is not an easy thing and can turn even a great story into trash if not done well.  Your story may be interesting but it has to sound interesting for others to want to read it.  You have to find a balance in how descriptive you story is.  Too much description and your story becomes lengthy while not enough can make it confusing and in both cases the reader can lose interest in the story.  The way you write also can impact people interest in the story and should not be taken lightly.  You can become better at writing through practice as well as looking at how others write and as before others opinions can also help you write better.
That is about all there is to writing.  Once again these are my opinions, you or someone else may not agree with any or all of it and that's fine.  These steps are not the only way or necessarily the best way and as long as your work accomplishes what you wanted it to do that's all that matters.  I hope reading this helps you become a better writer whether you follow it or not.