I wrote yesterday about how challenging I found it to write with the same power as the combination words/pictures in the anime/manga I loved best.
My friend David has done a fine job of showing me how it's done here.
Another classic. I liked doing these short and sweet short story exercises. I'll probably do some more over the course of next week just for fun.
My good friend, David Rochester (who is well worth reading) put up some 50 word stories he had written some time back. Presumably, they were part of a recurring challenge to convey something meaningful in a tidy package of 50 words. (I’d recommend reading David’s far superior work if you find any of these intriguing.) I have done some recurring 100 word challenges before, but I’d never tried 50 word challenges. So I did.
Conflagration
A careless spark and it had burned to the ground, the walls his father once designed, the art his father had created and collected. He wandered through the charred bones of a once great building, eyes dry. No lives lost, but a man’s lifetime lay in ashes at his feet.
Predator
He knew her vulnerability, had sensed it at first sight. He had been drawn to her weakness, her susceptibility, and had known instinctively how best to exploit them. Now, she lay beneath him, desperate for him and the soft lies he’d whisper and immediately forget. Tomorrow, he’d find other prey.
Flashback
He kissed her sweetly, his mouth minty. Instantly, she was taken back to a dark room, trapped below a man so much larger, his hungry mouth hot and wet, filling her senses with cloying peppermint as he filled her young body with unspeakable pain… She had to run. Again.
Thirteen Candles
Thirteen candles. She placed them on the ugly cake she knew he’d love, orange and blue. She thought of cleaning his sty of a room and dismissed it. Not yet. She lit them, thirteen candles. Dead now as many years as he had once been alive. Only then, she wept.
Euridice
She followed him, they promised, risen from the dead if he could but believe. His ears strained for her footfalls, a breath of sound to reassure his faltering faith. At last he strode into the light, then turned to see her still shadowed shadow slip back into the depths. Forever.
Hippolyta
She closed her eyes and felt the wind on her face. Beneath her was the powerful horse she had raised from birth. Around her rode other women, her sisters, as formidable as she was in battle. No one would dismiss an Amazon… “Mom!” She sighed, eyes opened. Back to reality.
Siblings
Mother and Father, they loved this new creature. The face was small and squished, the head bald. With his finger, he poked the tiny hand. He felt nothing when tiny fingers gripped his. She opened her eyes and gave him a toothless grin. All at once, he fell in love.
I’m not sure what it means that they almost always convey negative emotions. Perhaps it’s just easier to make short works powerful with the dark sides of the force…
Oh, yeah, I'll be back.
In an old blog (now gone) I wrote a number of posts addressing writing, how and what I write. It seemed fitting to repost them here over time rather than at Rocket Scientist. Enjoy.
I know writer wannabes (and writers) ask that question all the time. Or, at least, those of us addicted to fiction do. What makes a good story?
People frequently ask me what kind of stories I write, what kind of stories I read. I have quite a bit of science fiction and fantasy on my shelves, but I have historical and romance and even murder mystery and horror. No western though. But it’s more about the authors than the genres because the authors on my shelves are all people who know how to tell a good story or , at least, know how to tell a story well.
Naturally, that’s my own goal. In fact, I can’t remember when I didn’t want to tell stories. Prose and essays assignments were as likely to turn into stories as anything else when I’d slip out of my own skin and put myself in someone else’s. Oh, they were a little like me, perhaps a facet of me that I took out and warmed in my hand, then planted to see what might have grown if the garden were different. The tendency toward science fiction and fantasy was as much laziness on my part as anything - you can make more than a character to suit your fancy, you can make a whole world. And why not?
But I don’t tell the story to give a reader a world. I tell a story so I can give the reader what I get from the very best stories: a chance to wear a new skin for a while, to understand myself better by pretending, if for only a bit, to be someone I’m not. That’s why my heart thunders when Val Con senses that Miri is in danger. That’s why I sobbed when Moreta disappeared in the colds of between. That’s why I laughed with Beautiful made that newbie thank Captain Redhead for nearly spitting him on his own knife.
And I want to give that to others. I want you to thrill when Venetia rides the wind to her lover’s bower. I want you to wipe away a tear as Charley waits for eternity for the little girl that will never return. I want you to feel the lightning dancing from your fingertips with Stormna as she calls the storm to replenish a land stricken with drought. I want you to stumble with Tander trying to follow his stealthy wife as they infiltrate a mountain fortress. I want you to ache for Laren and the mother he lost - and the mother he spurned.
I’d like to think I’m doing you all a favor by writing all this, but I love doing it. Painting the pictures with words when my hands are too clumsy to do them in reality, setting the sky or the world, hitting the right phrases so that, when you read it, you can hear the voices talking. Perhaps these skills are all in my head and I miss with words just as I do with paint. But, if I can give one person, just one, what I want them to see, to hear, to feel. If I can make one person cry or laugh or gasp, well, that would be worth it all.
So, what makes a good story for you?
