In a previous investigation I talked about what a story is and I defined thirteen potentially essential elements of a story; that is, thirteen things that every story must have. But there was something missing, a driving force that may not exist in the most mundane story, but should be present in any good story. That force is conflict. Conflicts drive a narrative forward; they are the challenges...
I’ve been toying around with my character development web, or character chart, a sort of visual character sheet to help me quickly identify the key attributes of a fictional character. This is a work in progress and I will continue to add, remove, and rearrange items as time goes on. You are free to use this character chart in your own storytelling process. Please leave comments below or on...
I like to write down themes in my writing journal so I can refer to them later when working on a new story. The following are some themes I wrote down yesterday along with a brief note on thought. Themes to write on: The role of the teacher Tolerance as an intellectual covering for intolerance Division as conflict: as long as there is a division between observer and observed, there is division...
I will be going into whether Character is an essential element of story or not in a followup entry on “What Is a Story?” but for now, since I know for sure that all of the stories I will be writing will contain characters, I have started working on a “character web” which allows me to determine the basic attributes of any character I write about. This character web, or...
When trying to define something, one is categorizing it, taking a set of elements which are present in one or more things and grouping them with a label. So in order to define what a story is, I must uncover the set of elements which are present in all stories, from the daily stories we tell ourselves and others to professional stories. Like songs, stories are easier to recognize than to define...
Today I would like to build on my investigation into what a word is by trying to answer another deceptively simple question: What is a sentence?
If you remember, I observed, through my own investigation, that words are learned identifiers that point to groups of ideas stored in my memory. If this is true about words, my investigation into sentences should reflect and support this idea.
Today I want to investigate a deceptively simple question: What is a word? In a previous entry, I explored why we tell stories, and I will continue that investigation in future entries. For now, I wanted to change tracks from story investigation to language investigation, because in order to tell a story, one must understand how language works. I will attempt these investigations without the aid...
Yesterday I posted a story sketch “Evening at the Bus Stop” about an old man and a distressed woman having a conversation in which both are unable to really listen to each other. Today I want to go over some of steps that I took to complete that sketch. It all started with an idea. I knew I wanted to write a story sketch. I hadn’t written one in a while and they are, in my opinion, the best kind...
Yesterday I spent some time on the question of why we tell stories. I started by going over the functions of story outlined by professor Harvey. Today I wanted to break from her list and start listing some functions of story that I observe, note any overlaps, and examine these functions more closely. I would also like to try and identify which functions of story are most important for socially...
“Let’s start at the very beginning / A very good place to start” —Julie Andrews, The Sound of Music Today, as Julie Andrews suggests, I want to go back to the beginning and explore a basic question: Why do we tell stories? Not only in creative writing, but in daily life as well. A couple of years ago I listened to a lecture series by Professor Hannah B. Harvey, an Adjunct...