Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion

I wanted to post this for a little while in hopes to encourage this group (that's what us mods are here for!). Here is a place you can look at what it takes for a member to make a story personally. You don't have to follow these tips. At the very least we hope this has at least inspired you to create something as a result.

Here's my experience on this: I start with a concept. Think of something anything that makes you interested. Do you think you can build a story off of that? Boom, there's your story!

I also use Google Drive because it doesn't take up storage on my computer. That is helpful for that and there is a feature called "Word Count" that helps out if you want to write something within the confines of the rules here in this group.

And one last thing.

I like to write Character Sketches.

You have any chance to do them as you like but what helps me make a well-constructed story is to include character development. You put the name of the character. Put how they are before the story develops (right at the beginning), what changes them, and then how they learned in life to be different.

This is all only as a guide. It certainly helps me write out a story while keeping focus on seemingly little but actually important things.

And

Note: I also started this thread so you can share tidbits as well. How do you write a story? Do you have a technique that we can do to learn to craft one?

I don’t think of myself as someone a reasonable person would want advice from when it comes to writing, and particularly when it comes to writing a story or a poem. I write a story (or a poem) to find out what happens in it.

I usually have a sketchy image or opening scenario in mind when I start, and a defining sense of mood, but my motive for writing a story or a poem is to have the experience of immersion in the inner world the image and mood arise from. Once I dive in, writing the piece is mostly a matter of describing what I see going on.

Sometimes I’ll take a relatively developed character and put him or her into a particular situation and write the story to see what happens. I did that years ago, for instance, with the character M (later Spades) in the Orchard Bay adventure in the Get to Know Your Character thread. That was a lot of fun!

My impression is that for people whose disposition is to craft a story--to think it out in advance, to detail the settings, to develop the characters, to devise a plot that can be wound tight like a spring--the preliminary planning is part of the thrill.

I can’t imagine what that must be like. When I try to plot a story in advance, I draw a blank. I encounter a mental tension that’s like resistance in a wire. I quickly find something else to be interested in.

hmm, this is an interesting discussion! My stories and poems usually happen as a kind of collision between something I've been feeling or thinking about and then something I see or discover that seems to connect or give insight into the ideas I've been thinking about or emotions I've been feeling etc I try to get the external physical world to somehow connect with my internal world. Does that make any sense? Hope so. I like to think I manage that in my poetry and in my general prose but I'd love to include that into my story writing which I often think is a bit lightweight and could include more depth. I think that's why I've got 4 half finished novels, they are ok but they don't have enough layers for my liking.