6 Tips to Create the Perfect Story Part 2

[Ingrid, Just another writer.]

5. Write Meaningful Dialogue


Make your readers hear the pauses between the sentences. Let them see characters lean forward, fidget with their cuticles, avert their eyes, uncross their legs. -Jerome Stern

Dialogue is what your characters say to each other (or to themselves).

Each speaker gets his/her own paragraph, and the paragraph includes whatever you wish to say about what the character is doing when speaking. (See: “Quotation Marks: Using Them in Dialogue“.)





“Where are you going?” John cracked his knuckles while he looked at the floor. “To the racetrack.” Mary edged toward the door, keeping her eyes on John’s bent head. “Not again,” John stood up, flexing his fingers. “We are already maxed out on our credit cards.”




The above paragraph is confusing, because it is not clear when one speech stops and the other starts.





“Where are you going?” John asked nervously.
“To the racetrack,” Mary said, trying to figure out whether John was too upset to let her get away with it this time.
“Not again,” said John, wondering how they would make that month’s rent. “We are already maxed out on our credit cards.”




The second example is mechanically correct, since it uses a separate paragraph to present each speaker’s turn advancing the conversation. But the narrative material between the direct quotes is mostly useless.


Write Meaningful Dialogue Labels

“John asked nervously” is an example of “telling.” The author could write “John asked very nervously” or “John asked so nervously that his voice was shaking,” and it still wouldn’t make the story any more effective.

How can the author convey John’s state of mind, without coming right out and tellinig the reader about it? By inference. That is, mention a detail that conjures up in the reader’s mind the image of a nervous person.






John sat up. “Wh– where are you going?”





“Where are you going?” John stammered, staring at his Keds.





Deep breath. Now or never. “Where are you going?”





John sat up and took a deep breath, knowing that his confrontation with Mary had to come now, or it would never come at all. “Wh– where are you going?” he stammered nervously, staring at his Keds.




Beware — a little detail goes a long way.Why would your reader bother to think about what is going on, if the author carefully explains what each and every line means?


Let’s return to the first example, and show how dialogue labels can affect the meaning of a passage.





“Where are you going?” John cracked his knuckles while he looked at the floor.
“To the racetrack.” Mary edged toward the door, keeping her eyes on John’s bent head.
“Not again,” John stood up, flexing his fingers. “We are already maxed out on our credit cards.”




In the above revision, John nervously asks Mary where she is going, and Mary seems equally nervous about going.But if you play a little with the paragraphing..





“Where are you going?”
John cracked his knuckles while he looked at the floor. “To the racetrack.”
Mary edged toward the door, keeping her eyes on John’s bent head. “Not again.”
John stood up, flexing his fingers. “We are already maxed out on our credit cards.”




All I changed was the paragraphing (and I changed a comma to a period.)Now Mary seems more aggressive — she seems to be moving to block John, who seems nervous and self-absorbed. And John seems to be bringing up the credit card problem as an excuse for his trip to the racing track. He and Mary seem to be desperate to for money now. I’d rather read the rest of the second story than the rest of the first one.


6. Use Setting and Context


Setting moves readers most when it contributes to an organic whole. So close your eyes and picture your characters within desert, jungle, or suburb–whichever setting shaped them. Imagining this helps balance location and characterization. Right from the start, view your characters inhabiting a distinct place. -- Laurel Yourke

Setting includes the time, location, context, and atmosphere where the plot takes place.
•Remember to combine setting with characterization and plot.
•Include enough detail to let your readers picture the scene but only details that actually add something to the story. (For example, do not describe Mary locking the front door, walking across the yard, opening the garage door, putting air in her bicycle tires, getting on her bicycle–none of these details matter except that she rode out of the driveway without looking down the street.)
•Use two or more senses in your descriptions of setting.
•Rather than feed your readers information about the weather, population statistics, or how far it is to the grocery store, substitute descriptive details so your reader can experience the location the way your characters do.





Our sojourn in the desert was an educational contrast with its parched heat, dust storms, and cloudless blue sky filled with the blinding hot sun. The rare thunderstorm was a cause for celebration as the dry cement tunnels of the aqueducts filled rapidly with rushing water. Great rivers of sand flowed around and through the metropolitan inroads of man’s progress in the greater Phoenix area, forcefully moved aside for concrete and steel structures. Palm trees hovered over our heads and saguaro cactuses saluted us with their thorny arms.



7. Set Up the Plot

Plot is what happens, the storyline, the action. Jerome Stern says it is how you set up the situation, where the turning points of the story are, and what the characters do at the end of the story.

A plot is a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance. -Jane Burroway

Understanding these story elements for developing actions and their end results will help you plot your next short story.
•Explosion or “Hook.” A thrilling, gripping, stirring event or problem that grabs the reader’s attention right away.
•Conflict. A character versus the internal self or an external something or someone.
•Exposition. Background information required for seeing the characters in context.
•Complication. One or more problems that keep a character from their intended goal.
•Transition. Image, symbol, dialogue, that joins paragraphs and scenes together.
•Flashback. Remembering something that happened before the short story takes place.
•Climax. When the rising action of the story reaches the peak.
•Falling Action. Releasing the action of the story after the climax.
•Resolution. When the internal or external conflict is resolve.

Brainstorming. If you are having trouble deciding on a plot, try brainstorming. Suppose you have a protagonist whose husband comes home one day and says he doesn’t love her any more and he is leaving. What are actions that can result from this situation?
1.She becomes a workaholic.
2.Their children are unhappy.
3.Their children want to live with their dad.
4.She moves to another city.
5.She gets a new job.
6.They sell the house.
7.She meets a psychiatrist and falls in love.
8.He comes back and she accepts him.
9.He comes back and she doesn’t accept him.
10.She commits suicide.
11.He commits suicide.
12.She moves in with her parents.

The next step is to select one action from the list and brainstorm another list from that particular action.

8. Create Conflict and Tension


Conflict is the fundamental element of fiction, fundamental because in literature only trouble is interesting. It takes trouble to turn the great themes of life into a story: birth, love, sex, work, and death. -Janet Burroway

Conflict produces tension that makes the story begin. Tension is created by opposition between the character or characters and internal or external forces or conditions. By balancing the opposing forces of the conflict, you keep readers glued to the pages wondering how the story will end.

Possible Conflicts Include:
•The protagonist against another individual
•The protagonist against nature (or technology)
•The protagonist against society
•The protagonist against God
•The protagonist against himself or herself.

Yourke’s Conflict Checklist
•Mystery. Explain just enough to tease readers. Never give everything away.
•Empowerment. Give both sides options.
•Progression. Keep intensifying the number and type of obstacles the protagonist faces.
•Causality. Hold fictional characters more accountable than real people. Characters who make mistakes frequently pay, and, at least in fiction, commendable folks often reap rewards.
•Surprise. Provide sufficient complexity to prevent readers predicting events too far in advance.
•Empathy. Encourage reader identification with characters and scenarios that pleasantly or (unpleasantly) resonate with their own sweet dreams (or night sweats).
•Insight. Reveal something about human nature.
•Universality. Present a struggle that most readers find meaningful, even if the details of that struggle reflect a unique place and time.
•High Stakes. Convince readers that the outcome matters because someone they care about could lose something precious. Trivial clashes often produce trivial fiction.

9. Build to a Crisis or Climax

This is the turning point of the story–the most exciting or dramatic moment.


The crisis may be a recognition, a decision, or a resolution. The character understands what hasn’t been seen before, or realizes what must be done, or finally decides to do it. It’s when the worm turns. Timing is crucial. If the crisis occurs too early, readers will expect still another turning point. If it occurs too late, readers will get impatient–the character will seem rather thick.-Jerome Stern

Jane Burroway says that the crisis “must always be presented as a scene. It is “the moment” the reader has been waiting for. In Cinderella’s case, “the payoff is when the slipper fits.”

While a good story needs a crisis, a random event such as a car crash or a sudden illness is simply an emergency –unless it somehow involves a conflict that makes the reader care about the characters (see: “Crisis vs. Conflict“).

10. Find a Resolution

The solution to the conflict. In short fiction, it is difficult to provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently.

Yourke examines some of the options for ending a story.
•Open. Readers determine the meaning.



Brendan’s eyes looked away from the priest and up to the mountains.
•Resolved. Clear-cut outcome.



While John watched in despair, Helen loaded up the car with her belongings and drove away.
•Parallel to Beginning. Similar to beginning situation or image.



They were driving their 1964 Chevrolet Impala down the highway while the wind blew through their hair.

Her father drove up in a new 1964 Chevrolet Impala, a replacement for the one that burned up.
•Monologue. Character comments.



I wish Tom could have known Sister Dalbec’s prickly guidance before the dust devils of Sin City battered his soul.
•Dialogue. Characters converse.
•Literal Image. Setting or aspect of setting resolves the plot.



The aqueducts were empty now and the sun was shining once more.
•Symbolic Image. Details represent a meaning beyond the literal one.



Looking up at the sky, I saw a cloud cross the shimmering blue sky above us as we stood in the morning heat of Sin City.

[L]

Some very interesting points made that certainly are 'food for thought' and which i shall be taking on board as i continue to write a short story (current WIP).