Guide to Making an Epic Story

This is going to be about how to make an epic story! Or, what Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Star Wars all have in common.

1. A young, (usually male) reluctant hero who doesn’t a thing about what he’s getting into. For example, Frodo Baggins in LOTR does not know about the existence of the ring until the wizard Gandalf tells him to go destroy it. Or, Harry Potter is informed by the gatekeeper and half-giant Hagrid that he’s a wizard at age 11, when he is promptly introduced to wizard society.
2. A wise, old, and bearded sage who is always cryptic, kind, and has more connection with the hero than he thinks. Gandalf the Grey, Dumbledore, and Obi-Wan Kenobi serve this role. In all of these roles, the sage is killed off for the hero to become independent and then appears in some form again, guiding the hero’s decisions.
3. A dark, absolutely evil villain who wants to do nothing but kill everybody and take over the world (or in the case of Star Wars, the galaxy). Sauron (with Saruman and Morgoth), Voldemort, and Darth Vader are all highly dark villains. Sometimes, as in the case of Star Wars, you can redeem your villain in a final twist, where Darth Vader throws his master, the Emperor, down an energy reactor with his final breaths.
4. Two or three sidekicks, one of whom is incredibly brave but hot-headed, one is intelligent, and one is fiercely loyal to the hero. The greatest example is from LOTR, where Frodo’s cousins and gardener Merry, Pippin, and Sam convince Frodo to let them tag along. Indeed, they end up being more useful than Frodo himself in the ultimate story.
5. A twisted ending in which the hero almost dies, but with the help of his friends is able to defeat the villain (Sam pushes the creature Gollum off a cliff after both it and Frodo are controlled by the One Ring and it bites Frodo’s finger off; Harry almost getting killed by Voldemort but then killing him; and the epitome of the Star Wars Original Trilogy, in which Luke Skywalker is incapacitated and electrocuted by the mysterious and shadowy Emperor Palpatine, after which Luke’s father and Palpatine’s right hand Darth Vader gets electrocuted himself and throws Palpatine into an energy reactor.

And those are the basic components of a GOOD story. That’s where this post ends now, so get writing!