 Drama: June 03, 2009 Issue [#3080] |
  Drama
This week: Short Story or Long Scene? Edited by: esprit  
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Welcome to the Drama Newsletter! We'll bring you a wide variety of items to enjoy. We will also feature "how to" advice and items that will help to jump start the creation process on Writing.com. But mostly, we learn to write.
My name is esprit and I'll be your guest host this week. |
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"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." - Mark Twain
Short Story or Long Scene?
I read a lot of short stories, and one of the most common issues I run across are those that are scene, not story. An event happens to the main character and he deals with it, but he doesn't change in any way. Dying without change doesn't count.
Writing the short short story is a great exercise to improve your overall knowledge of writing. For one thing, you develop the ability to plot stories of all lengths. But when you think of writing a story that must begin, end, and include a conflict and resolution, all in 1000 words, you simply don't have room for any unnecessary words. So this is a good way to learn to identify that extra clutter and to discover that you actually don't need it in order to make your story work. While those extra details may add to the story, they don't have to be there, if word count matters - you can leave them out. You learn to identify wordiness that keeps your longer stories dull and slow. You learn to use those important opening lines to catch the readers attention.
Since you don't have lots of words to set up your problem and your setting -don't try. Jump right into the climax - the high point of the story. As the climax unrolls, you have plenty of time to let the readers figure out the problem and the reason our hero or heroine is here. If the character is fighting for his life with a dragon, do we need to know right now how he got there? No. Let him finish the fight and then let him tell us. Maybe he and the dragon have a conversation as they duel. Maybe he thinks about his past as he hides in a crack in the rock. You can figure out a way to give the 'back story' that would be the front part of a longer story, but must be back story in this short short form.
The Litmus Test
So what makes it a story instead of a scene?
The critical litmus test for story versus vignette or scene, is character change. The character is a different person at the end of a story than he is at the beginning. In a scene, the character might struggle with an assault, might fight off the bad guy and triumph, but if he is the same person at the end that he was at the beginning, then this is technically a scene and not a story, even though we have a clear conflict and resolution. So it's fine to begin with your climax and imply the rest of the story, but let your character change in some way. He or she should view the world with a slightly different perspective - that is what 'change' means.
Many new short short writers run into trouble in two ways. They try to follow the classic short story form: building to the climax and then resolving it. But the shorter your story, the less time you have to build it. When you are writing a 500 word story, you have no time to build to anything. Or, they begin with the conflict, for example, our dragon fight, but the character doesn't change. But if our dragon fighter realizes that dragons aren't monsters but are actually a sentient species and his people have it all wrong - well, there you have a story. Our character is no longer the same person as he was in line one.
Often when new writers start with books they get discouraged. It's too big a project. Start with something smaller and build up.
Thanks for reading,
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