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You can't really insert these things artificially, but
when they are missing even the most unsophisticated reader senses their
absence.
The path to grandma's house and the wolf leads through
the forest.
Huck and Jim share the stage with the Mississippi River.
The Gift of the Magi is told by an irreverent and
somewhat cynical narrator.
Thanks to the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and
Future, Scrooge becomes a better man.
Billy Budd dies because . . . . ?
Let's take the scenario I
tossed together in about five minutes, the stuff about Dad's watch.
We know that father got that watch from his father on
the day he graduated high school.
We know that he no longer wears it because
his father is dead now, and well, why not wear a watch that keeps
time?
We know that father grew up in a little town called
Henry, Indiana, that grandfather is buried there, that the watch
is now in his daughters house in suburban Chicago.
We know that father once had a girl friend in
Crown Point, and while that doesn't seem to be part of the story,
it does tell us father was more than merely a man who owned a
watch.
We also also know that the narrator is his daughter, and
shehas always wondered about certain things,
And so on.
We also know that we want this story to run about
ten typewritten pages, double-spaced, of course. (Perhaps we
have a magazine we would like to send it to, and their guideliness
suggest stories should be between 1500 and 3000 words)
Where do westart?
Try this for an opening line:
My grandmother had a cousin who was hit by a train.
Or this:
I always thought Crown Point was a grim little town,
and that was before I learned of my fathers lady friend.
Or this:
One morning when Mr. Harris went to wind his watch,
he heard a soft metallic snap.
Or this;
It was Christmas and . . .
Every different starting line suggests a different
approach to telling this story.
A story will take shape if you let it. The
biggest mistake most beginners make is that they won't let it. They try
to hurry it along.
They try to force it to go in directions it may not be
inclined to travel.
But if you start with the idea that certain things ought
to be in the story, and that the story ought to be long enough to
include them, you have already taken a giant step forward. And if you
look for a way to include material, rather than trying to find a way to
exclude it, you will be able to keep on going. Eventually you will see
that a fully developed story, fiction or nonfiction, is going to
involve more than one passage.
If you write your story one page at a time, one passage
at a time, and if you stop and take a breath between passages, you will
be able to
concentrate on what is in front of you. When you get to
the end of a passage, that does not mean you are at the end of the
story. (if youget to the end of the first passage at about page one and
a half, you are only about one tenth of the way through! So, take that
deep breath and start that next passage, even if it means you have to
wait till you find time tomorrow.
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