Tell Me a Story

There I was, typing words, lots of words about life, photography and biscuits. 

Never once did I think that I was doing something that would compel me to write fictional stories.

You see, in my Life category those stories are true, mostly. They have comedic embellishments but the core of the story is true. 

Aha!

I had a moment. Like the flash from a camera. A bolt of lightening scurrying across the sky. 

The realisation made me run and make another mug of coffee and raid the biscuit tin (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it like a sticky stick). 

See, I was telling stories. 

And that revelation astounded me. Because I’ve loved stories since I was a boy. We all love stories. 

So, I vowed to write stories all the time. I’m an ageing blogger. I have plenty of stories from ordinary life I can tell. 

That was me, thinking through segments of my life, conjuring up stories from things that have actually happened. And I thought of loads. 

My fingers flew over the keys. Which made it hard to type, obviously. I politely asked them to behave like fingers again. 

Once I got control of them, the words poured out like soup from a cauldron. 

But when I read back what I’d written? 

Hmm, not so good. I couldn’t feel the story. Now this was a tale from my own life. So I knew it was true. But where was the tension? The stakes? (Note: not meat, the other stakes.)

So, I tried again. Remodelled the whole thing. Tried to insert more panic. More drama. The trouble was, the story (it was about an incident involving jam and some rogue toast) didn’t really have that much tension. 

I gave up. And tried another one. About the time I did some gardening using blunt shears and a step ladder that was past its retirement age. 

Now, that one worked. Would I manage to prune the large bush in our garden? Or would I simply fall into it? 

While I let the story unfold, I noticed it was working more like an actual… story. 

So, I learned an important lesson. Stories don’t have to be multi-layered and complex. BUT they MUST have tension. Something that makes the reader what to know what happened. 

Now? When I write a story, that’s the first thing I think about. What’s the situation and what makes it tense? (An empty biscuit tin usually does it.)