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If you read this essay
carefully and apply the principles it presents, you will be able to write a
short story. What constitutes a good short story differs from reader to reader.
For one reader, it's a slice of life marked by a gripping conflict. For
another, it's a fascinating character study with a distinctive setting. For a
third, it's a compelling use of science based in the future. And so on. We're
going to concentrate on the "bare bones" of what, in my opinion, all
good stories should have.
To write a good story,
follow the numbered steps.
1. Immerse yourself in language.
To be ready to write a
story in English, your consciousness must be steeped in the best writing in
English throughout history. Consider someone who wants to compose music. Before
doing that, she probably performs in a band, and before that, she probably
studies singing or an individual instrument. She learns how to read music, she
studies harmony, she listens to all kinds of good music for years, and she may
study at a conservatory. Wynton Marsalis didn't just decide to go into his
first recording studio to play the trumpet one rainy day while he was
recovering from the flu.
Author Dean Koontz is on
record as opposing "literature writing", which is what he calls the
classics. But he suggests no alternative for the best and most elegant writing
of the ages. He is one of the rare few successful writers without much formal
training. His critics insist they can tell the difference in his writing.
If you want to write
stories, you should study the literary form. You should study the great masters
of storytelling, starting with Homer and progressing to Stephen King and John
Irving,, and specifically the great masters of the short story, starting with
Turgenev and Chekhov. Read as many books as you can find. You must read
classics, not just current popular books. Tolstoy will teach you more about
writing than Dean Koontz. You are steeping yourself in language. Keep a
journal. Write letters (not just Emails) to your friends. Take writing classes.
2. Think of an idea for a story.
To a trained writer,
this idea usually comes in a flash, you have to know how to cultivate the
flash. Usually one element of the idea is settled from the start: "I want
to write a story about my Uncle Leo" or "The summer we lived in
Honolulu" or "The day President Kennedy was shot".
What about that summer
we lived in Honolulu, then? Concentrate on what makes that experience
significant to you. What other idea would you like to attach to it? Suppose it
were "the professional surfers".
That gives you "the
professional surfers the summer we lived in Honolulu". What about them to
you want to write a story about? Maybe it would be "the surfer who stole
my sister's wallet".
"The professor
surfer who stole my sister's wallet when we lived in Honolulu one summer".
That's a start.
3. Figure your angle.
"Angle" is a
journalistic term meaning significance. You need to decide the angle or
significance about this larcenous surfer. Your story could be about the theft
itself, or tracking him down afterwards, or deciding not to prosecute him and
meeting up with him again, or dozens of other alternatives.
If you can't determine
an angle, return to Number 1 and tinker with your idea. Maybe you need a new
one.
4. Outline your scenes.
Once you have an idea
and an angle, it's time to map out your scenes. The story we'll going to tell
will be about ten pages long, so we need three good scenes.
(Whether to concentrate
on writing scenes or not is a lively literary controversy. For the beginning
writer, writing scenes is tidier and easier. In addition, this story you're
going to write will be in 3rd Person. That's the best point of view to learn
with. 1st Person is too easy, and Omniscient is rarely used.)
Using our larcenous
Honolulu surfer idea, we might create scenes of: (1) meeting surfers at
Waikiki; (2) holding party at Royal Hawaiian Hotel, where theft takes place,
and not reporting it; and (3) encountering larcenous surfer the next week.
Or we might say: (1)
party for surfer friends at Royal Hawaiian, with theft taking place and no
report made; (2) flashback to happier days at Waikiki; (3) encountering
larcenous surfer the next week.
The outline you make can
be loose and general, or it can be as precise as an agenda.
5. First of all, some writers conceive their characters as step 1.
You do it as you please.
For a ten-page story,
three main characters is plenty. Don't plan more than four. You can have many
minor characters, but they shouldn't get under foot or make the action
confusing.
At this point, with your
idea, outline, and characters, you're ready for the hard part: actually
writing.
6. Write.
You should swing into
this with the enthusiasm that you had when you first learned to dance. You knew
you weren't Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers, but you were still having fun.
Put as much life into
your story as you can. Don't worry about mistakes, because those can be edited
later. Life is enthusiasm, and seeing something fresh for the first time.
Once you write a couple
of stories, you'll see most of what you did wrong. You'll be able to edit
yourself, for the most part.
7. Edit.
Editing is not only
fixing all the mistakes, but also buffing the story to make it shine.
Every story needs
editing, and this was once true even of Chekhov and Stephen Crane stories. It's
not unusual for some professional writers to take their stories through 30, 40,
or 50 editing cycles.
You will learn to sense
when you've reached the Point of Diminishing Returns. This is the point where
further editing will not appreciably improve your story. Let it go, and get to
work on your next story.
Conclusion
That's how to write a
story. Writing a novel isn't much different. Of course, writing a good story or
novel is a different subject. We'll treat that later. For now, remember that
practice is the only thing that can make you a good writer. Put it into perspective.
For example, it's far easier to get accepted by a medical college than it is to
publish a short story in THE NEW YORKER.
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