Story is about story. And no character is indispensable.
If you can remember these two rules, you will hurt fewer people in your art of story writing. Writing a story sometimes, is like telling on people. However, how the writer handles sensitive situations and, on the other hand, delivers a wonderful story into our bosom is an attestation to the storyteller’s mastery of human emotions.
For every writer, at some point, the bulk of the worry shifts from how to write a story to how to write a story and not hurt people. I think what I have here is a fair bargain if the only thing you yield is your time.
1. Randomly Selecting Names for Your Characters –
For the love of God, do not pick names associated with your locale. In deference to people’s feelings and if you honor your integrity as a writer. Nobody would like to read about their obituaries or scenes describing their termination in the hands of some monstrosity in your story.
If you write horror like I do, do not slaughter your neighbors in your story if you want to live to tell another story.
2. Duplicating Sexual Characteristics –
I started typing How to Write a Story and not Worry about Hurting People as the title of this post and then opted for the one you now have, instead. The basic idea the former title represented is still the bottom line of this post.
Injecting the personal experience into your stories means you can’t not talk about people you meet each day. In the special cases where your story involves embarrassing scenes, which you can’t afford to toss out because it is relevant to the flow of story, here’s one positive step you should take: change the gender of the real people when adding them into the story. It’s one sure-fire method of loosening the impact of discomfort on the real people recreated in your story.
Unless you’re writing a personal essay or a memoir (which, in any case demands that every rambling around other people’s private business be severely curtailed), you don’t have to reproduce the original setting of incidence as your fictional geography.
The month of June had me buried up to my elbows in a writing challenge I set up for myself. I called it NaShoWriMo and challenged myself to write 30 short fiction in 30 days. I think I came off with about 30,000 words in all. Much of what came out was crap but I guess I can live with that. The stories were all drafts, anyway. Now, here’s the real whopper; I can tick off the fingers of my left hand those occasions I mentioned Nigeria in those whacky thirtysome short stories (and I assure you those fingers are not more than five).
I write speculative fiction with emphasis on horror. And since I couldn’t predict how my fellow countrymen would buy into the idea if I murdered them over and over again in my stories, I improvised. If that sounds loco to you, I won’t argue.
Nevertheless, keep in mind that where you choose as the setting for your stories matter. People who live in those places might react. For better or worse. The accent is on worse.
4. Tinkering with Peculiar Personality Traits –
Everybody in the neighborhood knows Papa Jones loves fingering his prick after five or six beers. And here you are a young fine writer, writing a pretty good short story about an aged protagonist who exhibits traits similar to Papa Jones’. The irony of the whole business is that Papa Jones’ son is the local law.
If you’re lucky, you might end up with a broken jaw. On other hand . . . they don’t exactly build those lock-up cells for nothing, do they?
It’s best to focus on story. Leave off any explicit description that might earn deserved chastisement. And ‘thou shalt not get paid for your stories in cuffs and blows.’ That’s in the Bible, Egyptians, chapter ten.
5. Choice of Genre –
You really have to take special care when you pick a genre to write in. Many people don’t care if the story gets a happy ending or not. The genre you select can make the difference between like or dislike for your work.
Writing for yourself is still the best approach to writing terrific stories. The story is always your story whether people accept it or not.
Write for yourself!
Let your pen bleed.
Akpan
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