  Short Stories
This week: I'm Nobody! Who are you? Edited by: Legerdemain  
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" I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!"
— Emily Dickinson
Wait! Don't click that page! This really is the short story newsletter, not the poetry one. But I liked what dear ole Emily had to say. Or at least how I interpreted it. As a fiction writer, I sometimes find the people I know, love or bump into on the street finagling their way into my stories. I find my neighbor's voice coming out of my fiendish character in one of my chapters. She's really a lovely lady but she has a wicked good laugh and knows how to use it. When she laughs like that, a broomstick appears and takes her off into the night.
When writing, I'm really a nobody; creating characters from my imagination and the world around me. But as it's been said, there always has to be a little truth in your fiction or your reader can't believe. To truly enjoy a story, I think a reader needs to suspend real life and believe your written word. Even if the main character is a fictional creature, their challenges, feelings and conflicts have to jive with the feelings of your reader. If you can't feel the heartbreak of a dragon's lost love, you can't enjoy the story. It's still important to have all the essential elements to your story arc, but adding the richness of supporting characters, colorful scenes and the occasional foreshadowing here and there helps surround your reader with believability.
So perhaps while your Varnak is exploring a new frontier, remember your character and give them some human elements to keep your story real.
This month's question: Do your friends and family end up as characters in your writing? |
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Excerpt: It's not fair. Brett shall get me into trouble like always. The last time I spent the weekend at Brett's, he broke Aunt Suzie's favorite cat statue. When she saw the broken pieces I got sent to my room without dinner. Now Mom wants me to spent an entire week with him at Grandma's and G-Pa's. G-pa, my special name for Grandpa. No way, no how!
Excerpt: The old and dirty gasoline station was located in the middle of nowhere and, as commonly said in Portuguese - onde o vento faz a curva - (where the wind makes its turn) meaning a place where no one wants to be. I was far from Pernambuco state and I had thought, sometime during the drive, that I was lost or going to be completely lost soon. I had double checked my map and saw that I was on the right BR Interstate toward Brasilia. Yet, I just needed to be sure. I wasn't worried about time or because I was alone in my car. It was still daylight. I was worried because I was a woman driver in the middle of Brazil --- besides, the only other person I saw driving past me, was a big, weird looking truck driver that honked his horn when he saw a lonely woman behind the wheels.
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Excerpt: Uncle Lucas was one of those folk with a knack for finding water. He was a dowser or water-witcher. Uncle Lucas could take a couple pieces of wire, or a forked tree branch, walk across a field and tell you where the best vein of water was, how deep, and the gallons-per-minute of flow you could expect from it.
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Excerpt: He joined the war on July 10, 1944, just after the Normandy Campaign. He missed the D-Day battle but was well acquainted with the rigors of war from months of slogging across France and Belgium. Yesterday, he spent Christmas in a hole somewhere around the village of Fraiture. He was promised a Christmas supper of turkey and dressing, and was pleased when the mess unit delivered on their promise. Unfortunately, the turkey leg was frozen and was therefore discarded in favor of a can of K-ration. It was a Christmas to remember.
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Excerpt: It had been a fun summer, but in three weeks, it would be time to go back to school. She knew that it was only right that she spend some time with her grandparents. After all, they were getting up in years.
Excerpt: The bride's grandmother, Trudy, stood next to the punch bowl with her hand covering her mouth. Her eyes were riveted on the swirling pink punch. Trudy motioned to her husband to join her at the table.
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Excerpt: Rizon glanced away and tugged on the wolf's claw tied around her neck on a suede cord. She listened to the faint groaning of the wind outside. The granite castle seemed remote, high on its hill overlooking the capital city, Bailsoillse.
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Excerpt: Tristan watched the police unroll the yellow tape around her neighbor's yard. The lights flashing in her bedroom window had awakened her. With her curiosity piqued she dressed and headed out toward the front yard.
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Excerpt: Now I won’t tell you that Josh and I were swimming around in my neighbor’s pool on a warm sultry Saturday night, innocently. You wouldn’t believe me if I said that -- not if you heard that we were nude. But back then, when I still lived at home with my parents, I was pretty naïve, and our swim didn’t start out that way, honestly.
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This month's question: Do your friends and family end up as characters in your writing?
Last month's question: Have you had a secondary character run off with your plot line?
atwhatcost replied: Hard to say, but I had to put the story on the back burner, because of the choice I made for protagonist. Twin sisters living together, because the antagonist accidentally caused her sister to become a paralyzed. The narratation was through the paralyzed sister's POV, and the protagonist was an unseen woman on a social network. Thus the many problems with the story. First it was hard to get across who was the protagonist and antagonist, and harder still, since most of the "action" was online. Is that a case when the progtagonist and antagonist were both upstaged? Probably. I have yet to figure it out, but I will one day.
SkyHawk - Into The Music  submitted: I've not had a secondary character run off with an overall plot line, but I've had them open doors that I never expected them to. I've also had times where primary and secondary characters divulged something to me that I never suspected (like looking up from several pages of writing to learn a pilot had been a widower for over five years, and a nurse he was talking with had spent her early adulthood constantly drying out her alcoholic mother). Central to the overall plot? No, but things like this can enrich the background of your characters and move them away from cookie-cutter status. And as you said, don't let them steal your story.
BIG BAD WOLF is hopping  answered: I'll be honest, my wolfess Zena was originally a secondary character, a wife of my main, but after the third story, she stepped into her own right.
Kylin sent: I've sort had a secondary character take over the story before, only I realized afterwards that he was the main character. |
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Short Stories: August 31, 2011 Issue [#4587]
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