Saturday 8 September 2012

What You Should Know About Good Storytelling

First of all, the secret behind good story-telling is: don't write something lame. Make your story interesting. Write a good story with a twist. Write about the unexpected. After all, the reader has paid money or visited the library to get your book.



"I'm coming...ready or not!!..."

So...don't write something lame. Why not? Well, it's boring. I remember my English teacher saying to us, "write something funny. I could do with a laugh...."

No, my English teacher wasn't Miss Krabapple. She wasn't pining over broken relationships (or maybe she was), but she did sound despondent. She spoke with little will-power. She was devoid of energy as if a drug trip had slowly worn off.

She must have got bored of reading dull and uninspiring stories. Who can blame her for wanting something funny? Maybe her salary wasn't enough to make her smile, so she took solace in reading?

Reading is an escapist past-time, so you...as the writer have a duty to make the story as exciting as possible. Otherwise your book will end up in the bin.

Everyone has a story inside them. A favourite genre of mine is the confessional story. These make inspiring stories. For example, you could write about how you stole a needle and pricked each and everyone of your parents' contraceptives, and nine months later, your little sister was born.

That was a story a friend told me. She would tell me how--as a child--she would spy on her parents' nocturnal activities and wanted to add more spice or danger. Fair enough, I suppose.

A great story, nonetheless. I say great because we, as people, are interested in other people and what they do in life. We hope they are living a worse life than us because then, we can take pleasure in their misfortune.

This is called Schadenfreude. We don't wish to know or be reminded how bad our lives are. We want something to take us away from our own pit of misery and look at others'. Maybe that's what my English teacher meant?

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