Storytelling Run Rampant

Last time I talked about the difference between good strong stories and weak ones, and used very well known examples. Well, often in life, one's critical abilities will outstrip one's power to perform. I found that out yesterday, after I completed a story and sent it in for critique. One of the people who offered to read started talking about botany sci-fi. But I knew I hadn't written that sort of story, I started going over everything in my head, and I realized that my ideas about the story were all over the place, that there was no resolution of the problems that I'd introduced at the beginning except for superficially, and what I'd done to start the story wasn't tied in enough with the overall plot. Furthermore, instead of creating a completely new version of the story, I'd just tacked on a new beginning and tried to run the rest of it pretty much as-is. I seriously need to work on tightening the whole thing up.

But, on the bright side, I now have a clue as to what I need to do in order to make the story better. Outline. Yeah, I've been told to do that all along, but I didn't understand completely before what exactly I need to do in order to make the outlines really live. The very first outline that I wrote just told stuff that happened. No conflict. Or there was one conflict, but it kind of petered out. The next outline I tried to write was just way too detailed. By the time I got done, i felt like I had already written the story--no room left for surprises. And plus the conflict still seemed to peter out. But I found the solution in a wonderful book that has already paid for itself, even though I haven't read the whole ting. It's called the Writer's Idea Workshop, but Jack Hoffman. The idea pressed upon me, is that the conflict needs to have complications. Other things need to happen in order to move the story forward--you can't just have one conflict, one problem happening, or the life just goes out of the story.

That excited me so much that last night I used the method on a story generated from another exercise in the book--a memory one (That was my starting point. The end story is nothing like what I experienced in real life. Which is a blessing, because I really don't want to get into that. Respect for friends' privacy is a good thing.) The completed outline is great, I can't wait to get started (what am I doing writing here?) The first outline I've ever done that has me excited to get writing after I've done it.