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This week: Story Components--or Just Details? Edited by: Jay's debut novel is out now!  
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This issue:
Story Components--or Just Details?
Is that new idea you're working on the full idea of a story, or is it merely a cool premise, setting or detail? |
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Some friends and I were recently having a conversation about how hard it is to start a new short story. It can be surprisingly challenging to come up with what the heart of your story is from scratch. One thing we encountered while trying to talk out the details is that one of the things he had thought was a plot point was actually more of a detail about his worldbuilding instead of a fully-formed piece of the plot!
It can be hard to distinguish these, and so I thought I'd spend a little time on it today because I think it's a very common issue here on Writing.Com, too. It can be very hard to distinguish something as a fully fledged story idea versus a detail that will help you enhance a fully fledged story idea.
To my way of thinking, one of these little details is more like a color of paint to use in the painting of your world, rather than the only color in your paintbox! (Not that I don't like monochrome! it's just nice to paint in full, sharp pops of color sometimes.) Or maybe the different pieces of a puzzle, if that's how you prefer to work. In any case, it's a useful way to look at things that don't single-handedly drive your plot!
You could use, say, something like "a space station that functions like a lighthouse at the end of the universe," to borrow one of my own details instead of potentially revealing my friend's. Alone, "A space station that functions like a lighthouse at the end of the universe" works well as a detail, but it works less well as the actual heart of the story. It would add richness and texture to a painting but it does not, on its own, have a story fully formed. This is honestly one of the hardest things I find about issuing prompts for writing contests here on Writing.Com: Sometimes the story itself is suggested by the prompt, and sometimes the prompt is so open-ended that I struggle to find the seed of a story in it!
So, if we extrapolate from my example that this is a prominent detail that we want to incorporate, what I would suggest to do next is to diagram out little branches in whatever way works best for you. If this detail is part of the setting, for example, what type of action happens in this place? Who might work there? Why are they so far out from civilization? Where are we defining "the end of the universe" to be? When does this story take place? How does the function of this lighthouse change the lives of the people who live there? Interrogating the detail so that you can be sure it makes sense for the story you are telling is a great way to make sure that your story and characters have some internal consistency and make sense to the reader!
So, using the questions above, in my case, the "who" question produces some interesting results. What kind of person would live in a lighthouse like the one I just described? Are they happy to be alone or sad to have no company? Do they get to go home every so often? How do they live all the way out there? Digging deeper on that, I now have a setting AND a character, so I'm starting to get enough pieces together to be able to see the bigger picture hidden in this puzzle!
Once you've started challenging your detail item and it starts to pay off in terms of fleshing out other details, you may find that you have enough of a suggestion of story to go on! If not, you may need to think about more details that will complement or enhance the ones you've already come up with in order to keep going. It takes a little practice to start putting the pieces together and being confident enough to see what those puzzle pieces even *are* in the first place. Every effort makes it a little easier to see the next time!
Take care and Write on!
Jay |
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Thanks so much for your feedback from my previous issue, "Character Entanglement" ! Here are some of them:
Loreli writes:
If you like character entanglement...and a good mutant story, check out Legion :)
Oooh! That's on my to-watch list but I wanted to let them get a few episodes in and then I forgot about it. I'll have to give it a look!
Detective writes:
It's always good to take a second look at the characters in the story you're writing. When you do that, you find that some characters are no longer necessary, other characters have changed into other characters completely or split into multiple characters and some characters that were supposed to be minor have become major. This can occasionally be frustrating and/or confusing but it helps too.
Great thoughts! All of these are solid possibilities for ways to tighten up and improve a story. Thank you for sharing this!
brom21 writes:
I am on my 17th chapter of a book I have been writing secretly off from WdC. A few chapters ago, I killed of the co-protagonist. In a nutshell, my protagonist is a sage that had earlier obtained the power to time travel. But with each passing through time, his health degrades. He next seeks The Pool of Healing that can make a person completely whole by drinking its waters. If he finds it, he can survive more trips through time. This other man the sage meets also wants it to heal his sister who dying from a disease. My point is the common interest they have. As you pointed out I want to include rival scenes. I already have a plot and two characters that is perfect. Anyway I really enjoyed learning a bit on relationships. This has incited more focus on relationships more. It will make my stories better and mind appealing. Thanks!
I'm always glad to hear when an editorial has sparked someone to take a second look at something in one of their stories!
{suser:innerlight) (ID #0)
I've a question; How many characters should be murdered off to make a good plot.
Interesting question!
There is no such thing as a right answer, in my opinion. Plenty of great plots have zero murders in them! I, personally, because I have strong feelings about the use of death as a plot point, generally adhere to "As few characters as possible should die to make a point about something."
There is also the topic of killing off characters as a motivational tool, especially as it applies to women murdered to motivate male characters. This trope is really stale, so I definitely recommend avoiding murder as a motivational tool for your heroes! This trope is often referred to as "Women in Fridges" after a particularly gruesome comic book death involving a superhero's girlfriend stuffed in--you guessed it--a refrigerator, as a tool to motivate the character.
I'm not saying not to write about murder or death! Just be careful how you use them to ensure you're not just trying to use the reader's feelings about murder and death to manipulate their emotions about your characters. Do it deliberately and with intent. 
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Short Stories: April 26, 2017 Issue [#8260]
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