I started reading how to books on fiction writing. I read the beginning of a bunch (free kindle samples) and half of one that I paid for. With my new found tools I took a closer look at the stories I wrote before and realized that none of them were really stories. Unknowingly I was a disciple of the school of anti-story and I learned well. But do I really want to be an anti-writer? The following are some of the reasons why my stories aren’t actually stories:
1. Easy does it: what is this story about? The protagonist is a money manager. What is his main action? What is his motivation? If you strip away the cool narrator voice the plot basically boils down to - a guy drives a girl around for work and gets in a car accident and then wakes up in the hospital, the end. Not a story.
2. Edie: a girl comes home from college and gets raped by a chimp, end of story.
3. BBBB: this is the only story where the progonists actually wants something. He wants to impress a girl. He threatens his dad and gets sent to jail. End of stor.
4. Love melancholy: this is the best, most of the story is the mom’s flash back but the daughter is actually the character that does anything. Plot: girl gets hold and goes to store to buy a coat and comes home, end of story.
5. October painfest: this story could have been cool if the protagonist had any sort of motivated action whatsoever. But pretty much, he doesn’t do anything. By the time the story begins he already finished what he set out to do, put posters up. After that he just stands around and talks to people. Not a story.
I’m not saying that non-stories anti-stories are the worst things in the world but I wish I had known that that was what I was doing when I was doing it. I think I just figured that was cool. Or something. A less generous reading would simply be that, I wasn’t out to share a story. I was out to impress myself with words on a page and the character and story were just an afterthought.
This is very unfortunate I think. Odysseus knew what he wanted. Dante knew wha the wanted. My characters are just fashionable crash test dummies. How did this happen. I’m kind of mad.
