The Writing-Practice Journal

All Those Details and Unfinished Stories

         If you’re a researcher like me, probably you’ll feel bad when forced to cut down the major part of your research from your story for your story’s sake, especially if you spent an enormous amount of time on the research part of it. Readers enjoy being introduced to varied settings, cultures, and new knowledge; however, they don’t want textbooks in front of them. You and I have to understand that the story comes first. So we have to use our mental shears. If some certain knowledge is not relevant to the story, then the recipe is snip snip, so our storyline can stand out in its glory.

         The same is true for descriptions. I may have written the best description of my lifetime, the one Steinbeck would pat me on the back for if he were around to read it. Yet, if all those descriptive phrases did not progress my storyline, their function would be nothing more than Crazy Katharina’s gaudy jewelry.

         Sometimes a beginning writer gets so wrapped up in his descriptions that he forgets he has a story to tell. I have read work that was beautiful but went nowhere. In one of them, the writer became so winded that he wrapped up his story in one short paragraph after three very long paragraphs of describing the story’s setting.

         I can think of one other way, the way I am still guilty of, that gives the feeling of an unfinished story. It is getting stuck into an idea. At one time I wanted to write a tragic story against illicit drug use. Once the story completed my mission, I wrapped it up in a hurry. Please be aware that I said “my mission”. What about the story’s mission? Cliché though it may be, I remind myself, “the story’s the thing, the story’s the thing, the story’s thing” over and over. Yet to this day, I didn’t get around to fixing that one, but I will. “Who killed Johnny?” is still in my port staring back at me each time I open my fiction folder. Maybe I should design a separate folder and name it “Repair Garage”, but then that folder would get filled up with most of my work needing service. :)

Today’s tip:
“errare humanum est” : To err is human. from Latin Words and Phrases :)

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Joy
"A witty saying proves nothing."