To write a story that could make the audience shed tears is a challenge for many authors. In brief, the keywords are three: character, plot, and your insight. Introduce your main character. What is his dream, weakness, struggling, etc. Tell your audience in smooth detail. I mean, make sure they read/watch real people with real problem. Secondly, the plot. Start with an alright condition. When everything seems fine and suddenly something drastic happens, your audiences aren’t so prepared, they’ll empathize. Last, read as many sad movies or novel as you can to give you best insight about how to touch the audience’s emotion.
Have you, as a fiction author, ever been asked by people pretended to know everything about work of writing and publishing? Were you boxed into a corner by those questions? I was. I have ever faced few “judges” like that. But I never give a damn, ha-ha. I have a list of what did my friends negatively say about work of fiction. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to translate those into English. But I bet you already knew things like: all fiction writers are liar, a words waster, ones who live in imagination without seeing the real world, blah. Insignificant accusations that can be easily countered.
Do you make a skeleton before writing your work of fiction? I do. It is important for me. The skeleton is like a railroad that makes the machinist saves his time from thinking all the time, “Where do I go after this station?” You can say, skeleton for a novel is the same as scenario for a movie. The audience does not need it, but the