In yesterday’s article, I suggested three ways to pick stories from everyday life. Today I am going to talk about how to develop them into a stories.

You have to keep in mind that this form of storytelling is different from plot-driven storytelling, where the plot thinks for you.

There is basically only one plot in all plot-driven stories, whether you consider Christopher Booker’s Seven Basic Plots or Georges Polti’s Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations.

And that plot is — there is a central character who wants something intensely and goes after it. He struggles and faces obstacles after obstacles, leading him to climax, after which he either wins or loses.

In this format of storytelling, the plot leads you to the considerations such as theme, setting, point of view, structure, narrative arc, etc. Plot-driven storytelling works well for anything above 5000 words.

Usually, stories from everyday life events are written as micro-stories (300 words or less), or flash fiction (up to 1000 words), or short stories (1000–2000 words). Anything longer than that, you need to follow plot guidelines.

Now that we have got plot-driven stories out of the way, let’s concentrate on non-plot-driven stories.

There are five elements to consider while writing stories from everyday life events. They are:

1. Emotion
2. Characters
3. Conflict
4. Scene
5. Insight

Emotion

Emotion is the most important consideration to write everyday stories.

When reading a story, readers want something to touch their hearts. They want to feel something — love, compassion, hatred, pity, anger, wonder, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, hope, trust, joy, shame, envy, anticipation etc.

In the short form, you can’t have too many emotions. So you need to concentrate on one.

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need to find your short story. — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Characters

Stories are always about someone. Micro-stories or even a story of few paragraphs has a character. Even the stories about animals, vegetables, or machines have central characters.

One of the main characteristics of a story is that the lead character goes through some form of transformation. However small, but the transformation is there. It doesn’t even have to be a positive transformation.

Long-form fiction has several characters in it. You do not have that luxury in short stories. The more characters you have, the more words you will need to describe them and their relationship and interactions with each other.

Keep the number to as few as possible. Two are ideal. Three or four are permissible. Anything more and you will end up writing a novella or a novel.

Conflict

conflict is the breeding ground from where the stories emerge.

It could be an internal conflict (conflict happening in the protagonist’s mind, also depicted as man vs. mind) or external conflict (man vs. man, man vs. nature).

Since the short stories don’t have much space, they mostly start when the central character is at the end of the road—a desperate man taking desperate measures.

Once you have chosen the key emotion, elaborate on the conflict around it. Make it simple and focused. Narrow down your ideas as much as possible.

Think of all the things that can go wrong for your character. Everything you don’t want to happen to you or your friends should happen to your character. The only conflict is interesting. 

Scene

When you write a story, you have two choices. You can show, or you can tell. If you are showing you are writing a scene. If you are telling you are writing a summary.

A scene is vivid and intimate; a summary is distant and efficient. The scene is where the writer engages the imagination and the emotions of the readers. Everything important in your story should happen in a scene.

You now have a key emotion, one or two-character, and a conflict. Next, think of a scene where this conflict unfolds.

You start writing from the middle. When the action is over, and the aftermath is unfolding. Suppose it is a story about a long-standing marriage in trouble. You don’t need to write about the years of prosperity and bliss.

Insight

When does an anecdote become a story? When there is an insight.

Stories from everyday life are reflective. The writer examines an event or a memory to draw home a message. Sometimes the message is explicit, other times it is implied. But it is always there. Without a message, a story has no reason. 

When reading a story readers are on the lookout for insight. It invites them to introspect and examine their own thoughts and beliefs. It is through insights that readers build a connection with the writer. 

When the readers feel the same emotion you as a writer want to convey and get the same insight you want them to get, you have succeeded in writing an emotive story.

Here is a story by Nardi Reeder Campionthat appeared in Readers Digest a little while ago to illustrate the significance of insights in everyday stories.

Nardi describes a time in her life when she was down in dumps when she discovers a diary that had been kept more than forty years by a maiden aunt who had gone through some bad times herself.

Aunt Grace had been poor, frail and forced to live with relatives. 

“I know I must be cheerful,” she wrote, “living in this large family upon whom I am dependent. Yet gloom haunts me. Clearly, my situation is not going to change; therefore I shall have to change.”

To help her hold her fragile world together, Aunt Grace resolved to do six things every day:

1. Something for someone else

2. Something for herself

3. Something she didn’t want to do that needed doing

4. A physical exercise

5. A mental exercise

6. An original prayer that always included counting her blessings

The rest of the story described how these six steps help change Aunt Grace’s life.“Can life be lived by a formula?” Nardi asked herself. 

“All I know is that since I started to live by those six precepts, I’ve become more involved with others and less ‘buried’ in myself.” Instead of wallowing in self-pity, I have adopted Aunt Grace’s motto, “Bloom where you are planted.”

“It is extraordinary how extraordinary the ordinary person is.” — George Will

And even more extraordinary is the number of stories they’re carrying around — waiting to be written.

Now write the first draft.

Write the story as it comes to you.

Remember, it is only the first draft. The aim of the first draft is to find the story.

Don’t worry about polishing it or introducing various storytelling elements to it. All that can be done later. Don’t worry if you can’t take it to a conclusion either. Take it as far as you can.

When you get really stuck, use the TPIOM technique.

TPiOM is the refined version of James Altucher’s Idea Machine technique for fiction writers.

TPiOM stands for Ten Ideas in One Minute. If you can’t figure out what bad thing will happen to your protagonist, list ten possibilities in one minute. You must write ten doesn’t matter how unlikely they are to happen, and you must write them quickly before your left brain gets a chance to interfere. 

Then chose the most unusual one and proceeded with it. 

Don’t worry about the word count.

Write as many words as you need to tell the story. 

Don’t worry about bringing it to a certain length. 

If your story is about a conversation you had over coffee, capture as many details as you remember — describe the cafeteria, the smell of coffee, what your friends were wearing, the waiter in the background, the crockery. Try capturing dialogue as best as you can.

Once you have done it, put it aside and pat yourself on the back.

Today’s work is done.

Your draft is rough, but we can smooth it out in revisions.

Because stories aren’t written, they are re-written.

——-

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Everyone likes stories. Stories are how we communicate. But, the best stories are the stories that are close to home – stories from everyday life.

Storytelling is important not only for fiction writers but the non-fiction writers too. What makes non-fiction interesting to read is the stories.

One way to practice storytelling is to write short stories based on what happens around us. There is a story in practically everything. You need to develop a knack to pick them up.

Getting good at writing short stories can set you up for success in other writing ventures as well.

Even if your end goal is to write a novel, you should learn how to craft solid, captivating short stories.

If you think writing short stories is easier because they are short, you are mistaken.

Writing short stories is hard.

The truth is to tell a story in a limited number of words takes more skill than writing a full-length novel or a nonfiction book.

And writing short stories from your life is even harder. Mainly because you are too close to the incident. But stories from your life are more impactful and insightful. They relate better.

There is an art to writing amazing stories. I am going to write a three article series on how to write stories from everyday life.

Today’s article is the first one of the series where I will suggest how to pick ideas for stories.

There are three ways you can pick stories from around you.

Be on the lookout for something unusual.

Out-of-ordinary things are happening around us all the time.

A next-door neighbor whom you know like the kind and docile man turns out to be a crossdresser.

A couple you know as an ideal couple divorced after twenty years of marriage.

The well-dressed old lady at the end of the street is a shoplifter.

We see and hear about these things all the time, but instead of making a note of them, we dismiss them.

If you take a moment and start thinking about them, each one has the potential to become a story.

Take the crossdresser man, for instance. How did you find out he was a crossdresser? Was he embarrassed? How often would he have felt that embarrassment? What does his family think about him? How made him a crossdresser? What would his world be like? What he really wants in his ideal world? Of course, you don’t know the answer to all these questions, but that is exactly the place to develop your fiction writing skills.

A non-fiction writer will try to find the fact and write the story from the factual aspect; a fiction writer will fill the details from her imagination.

Another source to pick unusual events or things in the newspapers, TV, magazines, or even other fictional stories. Start collecting them as you come across them. For example, a young man jumping from the Sydney Harbour Bridge is a story. Two drunken young women arrested for revealing themselves also is a story.

Keep the cuttings in a folder, and let them rest there for a while. Then, when you take them out months later, you will be able to see them with fresh eyes and weave a story around them.

Add something unusual to every day happening.

Not all daily happenings are out of the ordinary. But they still can be turned into a story with a bit of imagination.

Three friends driving out of town to a winery for lunch is hardly an out-of-the-ordinary event. But with some imagination, you can add something unexpected to it.

They can meet an accident where just the driver survives, and the other two are killed. The driver holds herself responsible for their deaths because he knew it was his fault.

They can meet an extraordinary woman in the winery whom all three want to be friends with, so they toss a coin.

The winery could be closed due to renovation, but they decide to poke around and find a stock of bottles. Seeing no one around, they decide to steal a few boxes.

Imaginary stories have been used in non-fiction writing too. They can become hypothetical scenarios.

Write it as it is but give it an insight.

Some events are complete stories in themselves because they hold meaning in them. You don’t need to do much with them other than highlight that insight.

Have a look at the story below:

One afternoon, Martha Sweeny, was in a coin laundry outside her hometown of stonewall Texas, when half a dozen young motorcyclists suddenly roared up to the gas station next door.

They were all a boisterous, rough-looking lot, and one of them — younger than the other, no more than seventeen — was the loudest and roughest-acting of the bunch.

With several of his friends, the boy entered the laundry, and then something happened when he looked around this small, rural town laundry and, especially when he notices this older woman observing him.

In one of those revealing moments we’ve all lived through, Martha made eye contact with the boy and saw him hesitate.

Later after his friends had gassed up their cycles, he told them his starter was on the blink to go on without him. He said he’d catch up.

After the others went roaring off, the boy brought some dirty clothes into the laundry. “His shoulders sagged as if he were terribly weary.

Dust and grease and sweat-stained his shirt and jeans. A beginning beard faintly shadowed his chin and lean cheeks. He turned, briefly, our eyes met again. Emotions flickered across his face. Doubt, longing, pain?”

Moments later he ran his clothes through the washer and dryer, then disappeared into the men’s room.

When he emerged ten minutes later, he was wearing clean pants and shirt and he had shaved his scraggly beard scrubbed his hands and face and even combed his hair.

He now grinned in Martha’s direction and jumping on his motorcycle, zoomed away.

Not following the others, but going back the way he’d come. Back towards home.

I read this story in a Reader’s Digest years ago (unfortunately, I didn’t note the writer’s details). Every time I read, it gives me a lump in the throat. And that is the point of the stories — to evoke emotions. 

The insight here is highlighted by a single line ‘He now grinned in Martha’s direction and jumping on his motorcycle, zoomed away.’ It gives you hope that a single moment can change the course of your life.

I have published some stories on Medium The Flight, Aunt Olivia, A Christmas Wish, The Blessed, and The Goddess based on observation of everyday happenings in life.

I wrote them six to seven years ago and haven’t done much with them since. I am trying to get back into fiction writing, and this is my way of revising what I learned about story writing years ago.

In the next article, I will explore how to develop stories once you have collected some ideas.

Photo by Silas Tolles on Unsplash