Front Page || The best stories, chosen by you

Writing, like most of the Arts, has rules made to be broken.  The genius is deciding which rules to break.  The reason must be of equal or greater value.  One unwritten rule being this:  "A story must be written from start to finish."  Is this so?  That is the question to consider.  

An unfortunate occurence in the creative process is to create the beginnings of a story, write it half way, and suddenly realize there seems to be no tangible ending.  What a crime!  A single incidence is a fluke.  A repeat of this is happenstance in a long life.  Another reoccurence is a tragedy of human habit-formed mental laziness -- apparently.

How much detail should one include in fantasy novels, especially children's fantasy? If one decides to gloss over these details, what is the convention for effectively doing so and not raising questions in the minds of the readers that might snap them out of the narrative?

Any textbook out of a college sociology class preaches the power of gender roles. Gender is the oldest and most common form of stereotype, and the simplest way to segregate human beings. Pregnant mothers flock to squint at sonar images to figure out whether to buy pink or blue. G.I Joe saves the world while Barbie invites it over for a slumber party. Men break themselves spending their lives trying to figure out women. Women spend their lives trying to figure out men to break them.

How should writing be any different?

Deus ex machina is a latin phrase meaning "God from the machine". It its most literal sense, it means exactly that - a god character is lowered or swung onto the stage using a machine (such as a crane) at the end of a play, at which time the god character magically solves whatever insoluble fix the characters had gotten themselves into over the course of the play.

This literary device dates from approximately the 5th century BC, and was very commonly used in ancient Greek tragedies, but now it is considered a very poor way to end a story.

The points of view of the narrator can either distract or contribute to your story.

The writing process is far more than just slamming the words of a first draft down on paper, though without that step, there is no writing.

There are innumerable popular arguments against self-editing and self-consciousness during writing, but they only apply to the first draft stage of writing. All of the other stages involved in making a finished product should be highly self-conscious.

Forget your irritation with high school English class and searching for something abstract the teacher would accept as an answer to "what is the theme in this book?"

A theme is as important a part of your story as the setting or characterization. Unlike setting and characterization, however, a theme is best received subconsciously and is sometimes even added that way, so that the author would deny having included one.

Ok. Here's my problem and I hope you can help nudge me in the right direction...

For many many years, during school and then later work, I never wanted to write but I would get these bright and inspirational flashes. Parts of stories. The beginning to a story, the end, scenes, and much more. Yet I never acted on them.

This freewriting exercise will hopefully help you with dialogue and how to construct  realistic dialogue and use it to convey emotion. All this using fanciful objects from your pockets.

----------
----------

Directions:

1. Empty your pockets.
2. Construct dialogue between the objects in your pocket.

----------
----------

My example inside.

I'm sure most of you that have written anything have asked someone to read it.  That part isn't usually difficult; there is usually someone around willing to read a few pages.  Where it gets difficult is when you start to produce more stories, longer stories.  Book attempts, novellas, etc.  People will flip through twenty or so pages, and make the dreaded comment: "I liked it".

Some methods for turning so-so readers into editors exist, what methods do the aspirants of write-on use?