This made me
think. I suppose it all depends on what we mean by ‘story’.
We all live
inside a web of stories. We learn our family histories going back more than two generations through the stories that
come down to us. This will weave its way into our fiction whether we do it
consciously or not. I discovered this when I sat down to write my memoir The Romancer and discovered in retrospect
that I could trace many of the themes and much of the texture of my novels in story- or anecdote -driven elements of my own life.
Such stories
from life might well be labelled anecdote.
I call these fireside stories and
would link them with fairy stories and spoken sagas coming down through history.
I feel it is natural that writers, when
they begin and cast around for a ‘story’, will make use of such anecdotes – and
quite right too.
However when
we are writing a story that will stand alone as true fiction, the familiar anecdote
can only stand as one element, as one strand of certainty which might give
the fiction authenticity.
Our story
becomes literature, it becomes fiction, when we take liberties with it, when we
play about with the probabilities, when we invest it with imaginative insight
and set our fantasies flying.
It becomes
fiction when we strive to meet the challenge of finding the precise, right
words to express the action, the setting and the atmosphere of this new story
which will take wings and make for the writer and the reader a new literary
reality.
It becomes
fiction when we shape it with elegance, when the story arc is taut and true.
Interestingly enough part of that truth can be the anecdote - the fireside
story - that first inspired the writer to take the leap into fiction.
Having just
launched our Room To Write Short Story Competition we are hoping the some of
the entries will be taut and true and the same time great fiction.
Links for You...
To listen
the Avril and me discussing to and fro on these points and many others click my Soundcloud link
Click here to see The Room to Write Short Story Competition
Read Avril Joy on ‘StartingSmall - Short Story Competitions':
Read me on: 'What is your Short Story About?'
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