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Elements of Story Structure in Contrast
How do you use the key elements of storytelling to build good stories?
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Whenever I'm feeling stuck for story and structure help (like I am right now, as we speak, unfortunately) I like to retreat into Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook for some insight and suggestions.
Wonderbook is aimed at fantasy, science fiction, horror, and other speculative subgenres, but really, much of the advice is nuts-and-bolts practical; it's just presented in a way that is geared toward the fantastical (in the same way that many other well-regarded books of writing advice are aimed at mainstream genres).
The core elements of narrative are something I've been picking at recently as I have discovered that some of these things are much weaker in my work than I want them to be. These core elements are: characterization, point of view, setting, situation, dialogue, description, and style. Each of these components factor in some way into a written narrative that we would classify as a short story. (There are some formats of short story that call for the elimination of one or more of these elements--that doesn't mean those elements don't factor in; they simply factor in as "not used in this piece," if that makes sense.)
I don't want to simply reproduce the essay here, but I figured I would follow on from my discussion last week about using description as a jumping-off point, since we spent lots of time on that last week!
Each of these elements is vital in its own way, and what is most important will vary from writer to writer. Character is one of my personal preferences as a starting point for my stories. If I'm not invested in the people, I'm not interested enough to write the rest. (This is why I really struggle with certain types of writing prompts!)
Point of view is linked with character and provides a window into one or more of your characters' perspective. Controlling this will give you ways to provide insight, done well, and engage your reader in the events of the story. The events themselves need to make sense for the set of characters you have chosen--an important thing to consider is how and why these characters would be in this situation, in my style of writing. For other types of writers, it's more interesting to come up with the events first and then figure out the characters who fit.
Dialogue, for me, is one of the strongest elements of characterization. Not merely what a character says, but how they say it, why they say it, and how they receive the interactions with the other characters--all of that stuff is catnip to me. One has to be careful with it, though, as it is easy to end up in the weeds discussing something totally irrelevant! All story dialogue should serve the purpose of driving the story forward while also allowing the reader another glimpse inside the inner workings.
A trick I've found for making dialogue work for me is to do my first drafts with dialogue where the characters speak very directly about their wants, needs, inner knowledge, secrets--and then I obfuscate it as appropriate in revisions. If left to my own devices, my characters would simply hint at everything they want to talk about and it's super frustrating to fix, so I have found I now vastly prefer the more direct stuff.
Setting is another thing many people like to start with first, especially in my chosen genres, but I find that I often like to let my characters and situation control my scene-building. There's no one right way!
Style: ah, style. I'm not touching that question with a ten-foot pole, at least not in this particular breakdown. I could dedicate a series of newsletters to it and never begin to give out anything bordering on useful advice--your style is your own. Try stuff. Experiment. Tear it down, spackle it back together.
Until next time,
Take care and Write on!
Jay |
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Feedback from "Ah, Details, Details" !
D.L. Robinson submits "Give Up" [E] with the following:
Hi Jay:
There are some excellent insights here about story and character development. I absolutely fall in love my characters as they show me who they are. I hope my readers feel the same affinity for them as I do, or whatever other emotion I'm trying to illicit in reference to a particular character- their personality traits, the things they do/say, likes/dislikes, etc. I'm including with my comments a short that I hope you'll consider for your newsletter. Thanks!
Characters are definitely the anchor point for me as well. I have a lot of trouble constructing "proper" plots, which I think is probably a common problem, but starting from good, interesting characters will always lead you somewhere interesting!
willwilcox writes:
I don't want to get into a long description here, but that was a good newsletter. 
Short and sweet is hard to beat, when it comes to feedback, Bill!  Glad you enjoyed.
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Short Stories: August 15, 2018 Issue [#9055]
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