{"id":5488,"date":"2016-05-19T01:00:12","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=5488"},"modified":"2016-05-12T04:51:19","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T11:51:19","slug":"5488","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/5488\/","title":{"rendered":"Components for a great story – by Guest Blogger Francis H. Powell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Blogger Francis H. Powell writes about creating a great story.<\/p>\n

Confronted with a blank screen, poised to\u00a0 tap away,\u00a0 how to go about creating that great story. Perhaps one primary consideration is the theme.\u00a0 Maybe the theme should\u00a0 be a ghostly shadow within the confines of the story, not screaming at the reader, but there none the less.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 If you are writing a novel there may be a number of conflicts interspersed, but a short story will have only one principal conflict.<\/p>\n

Moving onto story structure,\u00a0 the story has to entice the reader, right from the first sentence.\u00a0 Equally then, ending has to round things off perfectly.\u00a0 You may have your theme and an outline of the story, but how are you going to tell it\u2026 a writer needs to decide about writing the story either in \u201cfirst person\u201d or in \u201cthird person.\u201d \u00a0Will you be using \u201che,\u201d \u201cshe,\u201d and \u201cit\u201d\u2014so writing in third person means telling a story as if it\u2019s all about other people., or will you be writing using \u201cI\u201d\u2014so writing in first person means telling a story as if it happened to you.\u00a0 If in your head you have a rough idea of the theme,\u00a0 you will also know which tense you are going to use,\u00a0 either \u201cpresent tense\u201d or \u201cpast tense.\u201d Writing in past tense means writing as if the story already happened, which is typical \u00a0manner in which most stories are written. Writing in present tense means writing as if the story is happening right now. \u00a0Normally you can\u2019t mix the\u00a0two.<\/p>\n

An important consideration is the characters.\u00a0 I like to \u201clive\u201d with characters in my head, before committing to write about them.\u00a0 For me the name of the character, says a lot about the character, for example in my short stories, I have a character called \u201cBugeyes\u201d and the story revolves around the fact that he is a person who suffers intensely, due to his oversized eyes.\u00a0 Lead characters should be someone readers can feel something in common with, or feel empathy. In my stories I love to create evil characters.\u00a0 My characters are far from perfect, have flaws and idiosyncrasies.\u00a0 Characters are interesting if they are not too one dimensional,\u00a0 even evil characters have to have some kind of redeeming feature, or perhaps they have been victims themselves in one way or another.<\/p>\n

Settings are also paramount. In my book there is quite a range of different settings,\u00a0 some are set in America, for example my story \u201cOpium\u201d is set in America, post-civil war.<\/p>\n

Then there is the question of language,\u00a0 it has to really correspond with your story.<\/p>\n

A writer will tend to use actions and speech to let readers know what\u2019s happening.\u00a0Showing , rather than telling,\u00a0<\/em>using\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>direct more \u201creal life\u201d quotes like \u201cGo away!\u201d instead of indirect quotes like \u201cShe told him to go away.\u201d<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to write over elaborately to write well. Don\u2019t shy away from using simple words and simple sentences, so you words and sentences cut through easily.<\/p>\n

I often spend a long time mulling over what is the best word to use, glued to a thesaurus. Each sentence and paragraph should resonate, I often spend a lot of time, writing and rewriting so as to get the optimum sentence. Some sentences or paragraph can be redundant. You can get carried away, lose sight of the story, or go off on tangents.<\/p>\n

\"Francis<\/a>Francis H. Powell<\/a>‘s, Flight of Destiny<\/em> , is a book of 22 short stories.\u00a0 <\/strong>Born in a commuter belt city called Reading \u00a0and like many a middle or upper class child of such times, Powell was shunted off to an all-male boarding school at eight, away from parents for periods of up to twelve weeks time. \u00a0What better way to put all angst into short stories.<\/p>\n

Powell began writing while living in Austria.\u00a0 His writing evolved while living in Paris. Flight of Destiny <\/em><\/a>won the Compilation\/anthologies category in the Pacific Rim book festival.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Blogger Francis H. Powell writes about creating a great story. Confronted with a blank screen, poised to\u00a0 tap away,\u00a0 how to go about creating that great story. Perhaps one primary consideration is the theme.\u00a0 Maybe the theme should\u00a0 be a ghostly shadow within the confines of the story, not screaming at the reader, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[104],"tags":[776,775],"class_list":["post-5488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-flight-of-destiny","tag-francis-h-powell"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s43Dj8-5488","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5488"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5494,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5488\/revisions\/5494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}