“Let the story tell itself.” – Author Tim O’Brien Want to write a great story? Get out of its way. Your story isn’t about you. Characters might share facets of your personality. Issues you care about might be woven throughout the story. However, the story is about your characters and their conflicts, obstacles, drama, decisions. Give your story center stage. Show, don’t tell: avoid adding comments and clarifications and over-explaining setting and characters’ thoughts and actions. Develop unique metaphors and similes that tie into your story: the setting, characters. Let the story unfold as it needs for the characters present – not how you want it to unfold. Readers don’t want coincidences; they want consequences authentic to the story being told. Focus on the story , and it will be told – not your version of it. ----- Writing in 140 is my attempt to say something somewhat relevant about writing in 140 words or less. Shon Bacon is an author, doctoral candidate, e...

You know what you need to write a good story? Yes, dialogue, characters, plot, conflict, etc. are important components, but without the WORDS to develop these things, you just have a really good idea. I want to touch on a few things that can hinder your words from being appreciated by your reader. OVERWRITING Overwriting is a redundancy issue. We see this in newspaper articles all the time. A writer will quote a source, and then he/she will paraphrase the quote. The paraphrase is repetitive, redundant. In stories, we can see this when an action occurs and then the characters talk about what just happened instead of moving the story forward. We see this when a writer uses dialogue to “tell” instead of to “reveal” – especially when what he/she is telling has already been shown. When we overwrite, we slow the reading for the readers because they want to know what happens NEXT – not what already happened. Outlining can help to combat some overwriting issues. If you h...