I write well. Well enough, then let’s say. But I cannot tell a story. No-no; I’m not having another of my tantrums here, but being honest with myself and happy that I think I have isolated the problem. Furthermore, the cure is known and available to me, so I’m not so bad off at all. A way with words, a certain command of the language, knowing how to twist a phrase are all good and admirable points in an author, and are part talent and part practice and accumulated skill.
But story…story, now that’s a different thing altogether, and that is maybe an easier thing to learn—for most of us, it would seem. But then I delight in being different, rebellious, and strive for eccentricity whenever I can get away with it. I am no reader of directions until whatever I am building is beyond any recognizable reconciliation with the finally-sought out blueprints of Easy Steps 1, 2 and 3.
The cure, that which I know but either have stubbornly challenged or refused to allow as valid creativity because it is more mere “directions”, is to regain the sense of story arc, the plot, the conflict, the storyline; the narrative. Yes, that all-important narrative.
I’ll go and look them up again, these elements of story and reacquaint myself and reaffirm allegiance to their sovereignty over my work. I will go and read, and read and read some more until the skillful tales that sound so wonderful will also make their mysteries known to me. Then, I shall sit down and write a story.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Most people I know who pretend themselves writers have the most insurmountable of difficulties in achieving truly compelling stories. It’s easy well enough to say something clear enough to be understood, but I’d think more difficult entirely to be able to say something that wants to be read.
You got it, and therein lies the problem. We can only hope to find the proper mix that makes the common story into something that touches someone’s soul.
Luckily I have a young kid in the house and am surrounded by good examples of stories that have all the required goods of good stories:
1. Harold and the Purple Crayon and P.D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother.
Will the little bird find his mother? That’s the problem and the climacitic element. It needs to be that simple, even in the most complex of narratives. All else merely get’s us there.