Story to Tell...

Prov.10:20 The tongue of the just is as choice silver: the heart of the wicked is little worth.

As a leader in the world and the writing community, I see something that knits us all together. We all have a story to tell. Even if it was not a dream of ours, or maybe it was and we just got lost along the way (see yesterdays post) we all need to be aware that we have a story to tell and how you write, effectively drawing out emotions in the reader, will either spell success or fail in your journey.

As our story unfolds, heartstrings will be tugged and like a rubber band, it will snap something in the reader. Either a tear will exit the eye and make a beeline for the chin, or maybe a crinkle will appear on the mouth and form a smile. Maybe a fevered pitch will drive a stake right in the heart of your reader, and anger will bubble up to the surface and a scream will bolt out of the mouth. Whatever emotion that is elicited, it will have to come from bringing it home for the reader.

I have met quite a few people that have said, “I’m a writer,” and I know many who are ‘published writers’, I know many who write, but again, it isn’t the story you tell or the perfect sentence structure, it is the emotions that are tied to the story. I don’t care if it is a sci-fi thriller, a Western, or Romance, (I think we all relate to them in some way) or a supernatural thriller, we have to tell the story with the reader in mind. We need to reach them, or we have no story.

Allowing your best friend to say, Good story! Loved it! Really does not tell us how we’ve done in pulling on the heart and making them feel as if they were in a Narnia-like closet, lost among your very words. We need them to express how their heart pined for the star-crossed lovers, we need them to say “I cried when I read about Mary’s death.” Why did they cry? Because you reached into their heart, and touched a cosmic emotion that wriggled the tear ducts and left them feeling pangs of pain.

Is that what we want? Pain? Not necessarily, but we do want to get an emotional reaction. If we just TELL a story, we are not going to get any reaction except maybe, “Well that was nice.” When we take it to the level of a writer, we are going to show them the same story, only they will say, “Wow! That was great! Touched me all over!”  Can you see the difference?

I know a lot of people who read my poetry, who really don’t even like poetry, say things like, “I got it! It touched me! You moved me.” That is what I like to hear.  I wrote my dad a birthday poem (as always) and my mother said, “It was beautiful. I could really feel the emotions in it.” I know I know, it was my mother, but I said, “Did dad cry?” She said, “I don’t know about him, but I sure did!”

YES! I scored! I got a tear out of the reading of my poem. I went back, read what I wrote, and even *I* welled up at the reading of it! Daggone it! Not me. I’m not supposed to cry! But as a writer, even sometimes WE need to cry too at the good writing of our souls. Every one of us has a story to tell!

Atmosphere

The wishbone will never replace the backbone.
- Will Henry

In writing, it is all about atmosphere. When you have a story to tell you’re not going to have the setting in a grassy knoll and just leave your characters there, no, you’re going to give them an atmosphere.

An atmosphere lends to the story what milk lends to cookies. And a good atmosphere lends what cookies dipped in milk does. Can everyone say, YUM? As a reader, I want to walk through the park with the writer, I don’t just want to see grass, I want to smell it and taste it.

If we can’t paint a picture for our reader then we are missing our mark. Even in our non-fictional tales there has to be an element of atmosphere where if the reader is sitting there with cookies, his one hand is seeking out the milk to dip it in as he is reading because he is so enthralled with your words.

As writers, we know that the very first sentence will lure the reader in like Lucifer to Eve. It will be life altering if you can hold your readers attention and give to them a story that will keep them reading page after page. I wonder sometimes if God knew of this concept and that is why he made the bible so atmospheric. With the very beginning, “God breathed life into the void.” To the powerful ending, “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly.”
 
I mean come on, there is power in those words and every reader is moved. And every writer wants to emulate that power of the written word, so that our readers for many years to come are still wanting more; loving our words and tasting them years down the line.
 
Atmosphere..it is what spills into your readers hearts, and no one is left there to clean up the mess except your hero or heroine. I myself like to give my readers little bits and pieces to nibble on throughout the story; a leg to stand on so to speak. I like to give them an entrance into the unexpected, then deal the unexpected, make the words do a ghostly dance in their minds, then I go for the cha cha cha...and boom, the story gets completed with a bow.
 
One of my favorite fictional tales is The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Not only is the story good, but the atmosphere is well, you guessed it, haunting. From the opening scene of Eleanor and her paranoia, to the entry of the supposed haunted house to the banging and rapping of ghosts to the climactic ending where all the characters are consumed with the final showdown.
 
This is just a well written story and can really give the novice writers a new perspective on the inverted check mark that we read about so often. What are you going to do writers, open your story with the same old same old tried and true...or lend your tale a handful of atmosphere to kick it in the rear and get it moving?
 
Write Right...most importantly!