Guest Blogger Francis H. Powell writes about creating a great story. Confronted with a blank screen, poised to tap away, how to go about creating that great story. Perhaps one primary consideration is the theme. Maybe the theme should be a ghostly shadow within the confines of the story, not screaming at the reader, but there none the less. It may make the reader think about their own lives, there might be a moral to be learned, but a writer should not take on the role of a preacher. Then there has to be a plot, all the conflict or struggle that the main character or characters go through. The conflict should develop in intensity and excitement, reaching some kind of climax. If you are writing a novel there may be a number of conflicts interspersed, but a short story will have only one principal conflict. Moving onto story structure, …
Tag: Flight of Destiny
Flight of Destiny by Francis H. Powell
Reviewed by Anthony Jones Flight of Destiny is a great collection of quick reads that will linger with you after you’ve read them. Powell has mastered his craft and, more importantly, clearly acquires his material from an authentic place. I’m a huge fan of surreal/disturbing/magical realist stories and am always on the lookout for authors who work in that genre. I find it frustrating, however, that the majority of them usually “fake it.” It’s usually pretty obvious that they’re engaged in a race to the bottom in a mad scramble for the oddest or most disturbing ideas they can come up with. The ethic of weird = interesting ironically results in nothing weird at all. Instead, it usually amounts to little more than sophomoric stories with no arc and no emotional engagement. Not so with Powell. His stories are genuinely unnerving and very original. He doesn’t just throw weird random…
The perfect evil character by Francis H. Powell
In this guest blog post, Powell discusses the perfect evil character. Readers love an evil character, literature is strewn with them. I would say an interesting evil character is often multi-faceted, never straight forward, they themselves are often in a way, victims. Who can forget the Stephen King character Jack Torrance, who has slipped into insanity, a danger to his wife and child as well as other people who cross his path. He is interesting in that he himself has been victim, having watched his father, who he adored, abuse his mother. There is this baggage, along with the fact that the hotel where he and his family reside over a bleak winter is slowly taking control of him. Evil characters are full of character flaws, Jack Torrance, for example, has a major problem with alcohol. There are a whole range of character flaws a writer can imagine. Many evil…