How to Write an Original Short Story

1. Lecture One: have you always wanted to write fiction, but dont know where to start or have you started writing but gets stuck and now you don't know how to finish? I've been teaching creative writing courses for many years and a lot of my students when they first come into the class, they tell me that one of their main problems is not knowing how to take an idea and develop it into a complete story into a complete story that makes sense. Another problem they talk about is writer's block. They start training, and then they get stuck or they just losing motivation. If you have experienced any of this problems, or if you simply want a clear and specific way toe, try the story and to develop your Indian story, you're in the right place. Welcome to the course. My name is Dr Julie Cosipa. I was born and raised in Russia, but now I live in the United States, where I teach a variety of college level writing courses. Creative writing courses are my favorites to teach. I'm also a writer. I like writing mysteries and historical fiction, said in Russia. This course will present an approach to writing stories that they have developed over a number of years and revised and defined with my students in my classroom classes. This approach is a strategy for crafting short stories that promises that you're going to write a good story if you're willing to follow the basic principles I will present here. If you stay with the course and do it step by step, you will have an original short story. That's the promise that the scores and I make for you. This approach is different from other systems in other techniques of fiction. Writing it's more structured, and it works really well for beginning writers. It gives beginning writers a lot of practical help with the nuts and bolts of building a short story. We'll start by discussing some general principles and will read too short stories. One is written by Give Them a Pass on the French writer, and the other one is written by Anton Chekhov, the Russian writer and we'll discuss these stories will discuss their structure, and we'll see how understanding this story's can help you structure your old story. And then we'll get to the sections with specific tips, specific procedures and step by step directions on how to go from start to finish off the whole writing process. This approach is not magic, and it's not from a lake, and it doesn't include all possible ways to write the story. It's just one way and just want approach. I realized that there other possible approaches. But my goal is not to do a survey off all possible ways to write a short story. My goal is to take beginning writers and show them how to develop the Razia from the beginning to the end. It's the most confident path I have discovered for beginning writers in how they contrive their short story. This course is designed to meet the needs off all beginning fiction writers. I have used this approach in my classroom courses for a number of years and my students fighting effective, efficient and enjoyable in the hope you will, too. I'll see you inside the course 2. Lecture Two: lecture to why write stories every class on fiction Writing should ask this question. And before we get deep into the content of this class, let's discuss your reasons for wanting to write short stories in how storytelling fits into the larger human existence. But maybe the real question is not why, but why not? Storytelling is human nature. That's what people do, it says. Natural is looking at sense. It's or listening to the birds sing. But you still might be asking why and then brings us to the question of human nature. Humans, in contrast to other creatures on Earth, tend to think about our existence in the meaning of life. By coming up with philosophical theories, we also develop elaborate belief systems such as religion. We examined the physical world s scientists, and we'll try to figure out where we fit in to this world. We create original works of art to celebrate the world and the beauty of life. Storytelling is one form of art. Storytellers want to express their ideas through their art. But again, more than just self expression, think about your reasons. Why do you want to write the story? Why do you want to read fiction? Could I ask you to pause the scores for a couple of minutes and write your quick answer in the Q and a section of the course? I look forward to reading about your reasons for writing a story and then come back here and we'll discuss some very interesting reasons for why other people write a story. Alright, right at the pause, fiction writers gain independence. They're their own bosses. They can write what they want and how they want. They also have to be self motivated to start and finish their projects. Begin power fiction writers can create worlds and destroy them. They can create characters out of their own imagination and make real people their readers care about these characters as if they're real, the gain new knowledge and discover new things. As fiction writers examined their characters, lives and surroundings, they learn more about human nature and motivations. They also learn more about themselves. The experience, a sense of accomplishment. Writing a short story, let alone a novel, is something that most people will never do and simply attempting to do it and taking a class like this one is already an accomplishment. 3. Lecture Three: lecture. Three Overview off section to learn from the Masters I'm glad you're back and raided the work of your story in Section one. We have talked about all the exciting reasons for writing a story, and I hope he came up with your own reasons for why you want to write the story. And if you haven't done that yet, please write down that reason in the Q. And a section of the scores in this section will define a short story. Discussed the three X structure that's calling the All short stories and will also read two stories by Master Storytellers. One is written by Don't You, half Russian writer, and the 2nd 1 is living by Give them up a son, a French author. The writing styles are very different, but we can learn a lot just from these two examples. All right, let's do it 4. Lecture Four: lecture for what is a short story there, lots of definitions of short stories. One famous one is by Edgar Allan Poe, and he included it in his essay, The Philosophy of Composition. In that work, he defined a short story as something that must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. He said that the short story should be read in one, sitting anywhere from 1/2 hour to two hours. All right, so that's one definition. They would have any other ones. I like the one by There's, ah, here's a definition. Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. Their journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner. When I think of short stories is special. Compare Cinta novels, and I like what he says here about in time for dinner. I think of a short stories, an intense experience, something to linger over and savor once you're done reading. And that's different from a novel and novel is like a journey right. It's a longer journey, and you won't be able to get back in time for dinner. And it's a longer journey, not just for the characters but also for the writer and for the reader. And there, lots of other definitions to and all these definitions can lead to different ways of writing a short stories because they express different writing philosophies for this class will pick a definition that will help us with a specific way of writing a short story that I'm trying to teach you. I'm not saying my definition is better than than these other ones, but this is just one way and why. Definition that leads to one way of teaching. So what is the definition? It's this one. A short story is a detailed and unified account off a few important events in an invented person's experience. Let's think about this definition for a minute. If the record isn't detailed, it's a summary or a sketch. If it's not unified, it's a collection of memories. If the person is not invented, its biographical history. If there are more than a few events and more than one main character, it's a novel or a t least a novella. And if these events are not important, guess what your readers will find something else to do and what's unified. It means that stories tend to have one theme, one overall mood, usually portrayed through one main character. All right and short stories have a specific structure, so let's talk about the structure briefly in the next two slides. The structure like to use is the three act blood structure. You have Act one, which is a set up EG two, which is a confrontation, and that tree is a resolution. So what? What do each of these acts have to accomplish? Act one. It's also called set up, and it has two main goals to accomplish. One is exposition, and the other one is presenting the inciting incident. Exposition means brief description of characters and settings and inciting incident is something that happens that changes the status quo. And that's something poses the main dramatic question off the story right, And that's what makes your readers want to read more. They want to know what's going to happen. Act two is confrontation, and usually it's multiple attempts off the main character to solve a problem or to answer that main dramatic question. Usually the main character fails and attempts again. And usually each attempt is more complicated than the previous one. Ex trees. Your resolution could be really short could be just a few sentences. The main character solves or fails to solve the problem right to outcomes. Two possible outcomes. Thus the main dramatic question is resolved in some way, and the main character is a result of this experience. Either changes or refuses to change. So let's redefine our definition of the short story as a unified narrative account in three phases off a significant set of events in the fictitious person's life. All right, so now that we have a basic understanding, let's look at two wonderful examples off classic short stories to get a glimpse into the mind of to master storytellers and also to see how this three act structure is used by professional writers by masters over. I'm short stories. All right, guys, you ready? Let's do it 5. Lecture Five: Lecture five to Master Storytellers. I know you're probably anxious to start writing and you'll get your first assignment very soon. But before we do that, let's take a look at two short stories by 2/19 century master storytellers. One is give him a pass on a French writer, and the other one is a Russian author, Anton Chekhov. Our goal here is to understand, to really understand the structure of a short story, more Pasanen chair have severe different storytelling styles. But you will certainly be able to see that structure in each of these two stories as you read their stories and think about them. Remember our working definition of a short story? It's a unified narrative account in three phases off a significant set of events in the fictitious person's life. So what we're going to do next is read the story by give them a pass on called the False Gems. And then we'll read the story called The Upheaval or Turmoil in Different Translations by Anton Chekhov and see how the definition plays out in their stories. And if you're ready, let's go to the next lecture and the focus on getting up a son first 6. Lecture Six: look at your six. Learn from give them Opus on. Let's start with a short story, the false gems by Give them a pass on you will find it in the additional resource is section for this lecture. As you read it, please think about the three main acts. Set up confrontation and resolution and try to identify them. Do you need a brief reminder of what these three acts are? You can find it in. The additional resource is section for this lecture. So go ahead and pause this lecture here and come back after you read the story so we can discuss it. All right. I hope you enjoyed the story. And the you can probably tell it's a moral tale in Opus, intended to write a lot of moral tales stories with a lesson. He introduces his first character in the very first sentence, which makes it easy for us to follow the story in Here's that first sentence muscle. Anton had met the young girl at the reception at the house of the second head of his department and had fallen head over heels in love with her. So will know this story will focus on Miss Yellen Town, The husband. All right, so let's talk about each of the three acts now. The 1st 1 is set up an inciting incident. So what's what do we learn from it in that first act? The set up is that the wife loves jewelry. And what's the inciting incident that changes things? And maybe you think it's the wives. Death right? It's a tragic event. It's an important event, but I think a little bit more. Does the husband change his attitude towards his wife? The whole stories about him, right? So how does he change? And the first thing that happens is he starts thinking about how did she manage finances so well, Right? How did the they manage with that little money? And he is suffering financially, so he decides to sell her fake jewelry. This is all still a set up. The inciting incident is when the jeweler, the first jeweler, tells him that the jewelry Israel right, so something is beginning to change. There's a doubt in the husband's mind, So then we get to act to confrontation. And who is he confronting exactly? He's not confronted the jeweler when he is in the way. But really his confrontation is with himself, right? It's all about the husband, and that's why I own all three sentences here. Have Husband is the subject of the sentence. The husband doesn't believe the jeweler. The husband tries to prove that the jeweler is wrong and the husband fails right in their multiple attempts, like we discussed before. So that's all second act, and he realizes that the purity of his wife and her innocence, maybe we're not. She was not a spurious he. I wanted to believe every as he believed at the beginning. So then we get the resolution. The husband starts to enjoy the money. He gets greedy, his moral superiority is gone, and what's funny is he accepts his wife's attitude, even her love for the theater that he found suborning. Now it's exciting. Suddenly so the husband changes and the irony Mobius unloved stories with a twist. So he loved to put this irony in the last sentence. Six months afterward, he married again. His second wife was a very virtuous woman, but had a violent temper. She caused him much sorrow, right, so that the reference to virtue up again, my son doesn't explain his irony, and we, as the readers have to think, the figure it out. And so I hope you enjoy the story. I hope you enjoyed thinking about the irony and also mainly hope that this story give you an idea of the three act structure in how it's implemented in the short story and when you're ready, Let's go ahead and talk about one more short story before you start writing your own. By Anton Chekhov. 7. Lecture Seven: lecture. Seven. Learn From Anton, Jack off Jeff was born in 18 60 on the 10 years later Mop Asan. But his style, his attitude and his approach to writing stories is very different. What are those differences? Let's take a look. Moba. Some was fatalistic and believed that people were pawns pushed around by circumstances. And probably that's why he focused on setting and on plot so much over character. Joe was different in his stories. He looks at characters, he thinks about characters much more and analyzes motivations that Dr Actions Jeff strongly believed in free will and people's ability to make choices. So he's focused on character. Over plot probably came from that belief. Both Jeff M. Opus on have ironies in their stories, But in Jeff's case, usually the irony is not the main point of the story, and it's not the final line. Well, are you curious enough? I hope you are. So then go ahead and read the story. Upheaval. It's an example of such exploration of character, but before we talk about it more, go ahead and read it. You'll find it in the additional resource is section for this lecture. When you read it again, like in the mobile cell story. Think about the three x structure and make sure to identify the main character and look at her reactions and decisions. Because, remember, the story is focused on character. Go ahead and pause the lecture here and come back after you've read the story so we can discuss it. Like Moba, son Anton Chekhov presents the main character right away. We know it's Marsh Inca after we read the first line. And here's the first line Martian ca Pavlovsky, a young girl who had only just finished her studies at the boarding school, returning from a walk to the house of the cushions with whom she was living as a governess , found the household in a terrible turmoil. So that's the first question sentence. And of course, it's asking us the question. What's the turmoil? Right? What's going on? And if you read the story, you know that somebody stole the approach of the mistress of the house and everybody's room is getting searched, including Martians mashing cause room. So that's where the term in turmoil comes from. Act one set up with inciting incident. The whole story is stole from Washington's point of view, and it's heavily focused on her feelings, especially once she walks into the room and realizes what's happening and that room is being searched, and it sounds like that's the inciting incident right before exposition. But if you think about it more and you think about the structure, it's still exposition. It's just done in this dramatic form. Status quo is that Marcia is a respectable young woman, and she cannot believe she's a suspect that's humiliating to her and the inciting incident . She remembers that she hit some food, some sweetmeats under her bed and realizes that now everybody knows it, and it's not a crime. It's just you thinks proper ladies don't do that. They don't hide food in the in the room and she's ashamed of that. Nothing to do with stealing anything. She didn't steal it. She's just ashamed of this behavior That's not proper, right? So that's the inciting incident and the demand. The question is, what will she do here? Spirit is being tested. Will she submit to the simulation to hold on to her job to her secure position? And that, too, continues with a confrontation, especially at dinner it's really accumulating to her. And remember, the author says she is ready to go and slap somebody, but she doesn't do it. Of course, she's a proper young lady, so she packs to leave. But as she's back and this is when Act three starts the resolution, Nikolai shows up and we find out that he was the one who stole approach from her from his wife, and he begs Marsha to stay so again. The question is, what is she going to do? She packs to leave. That's a resolution. She's not going to stay in that house, and this is the last line. Half an hour later, she was on her way. So her answer to the dramatic question is that no position is worth keeping if the price is humiliation. So it's a character study, and you might want to think, Well, what's the big deal? Everybody's room is getting searched. Well, maybe logically, that's correct. But the focus that Chekhov wants to bring to the story is on Marshall's reactions for her. That's humiliating, and that's why she decides to leave. Somebody else might might have stayed all right, so two different writers, two different stories, and we're getting really close to write in your own story, so let's go ahead and get to the next lecture. 8. Lecture Eight: lecture. Eight. Wrap up. Well, we're already at the end of the second section, and that means you're very close to starting your own story. Finally, you say right and writing your own story will be much easier now that you have a good grasp off what a short story is and how it's structured. I hope that looking at those two examples that two different stories by Give them Oppa summoned by Anton Chekhov helped you see that following a structure doesn't mean being formulaic. The structure simply gives you an idea of how to shape your story. Which one did you like? More? Want them off the seller. But I think I like them both, but in different ways. Well, are you ready to write? Let's move on to the next section of the course, then 9. Lecture Nine: Lecture. Nine. Overview off Section three Start with real life. So far we have been discussing story structure and analyzing other people's stories. Remember the Mamba Wamba son in the Monday in this section of the course, you will finally have a chance to start writing your own story. We'll start by finding an experience that feels real or that actually, Israel. Then we'll discuss which of these experiences can make a good turning point in how to build your story around that experience. And then you finally have a chance to do your first writing sign. Isn't that exciting? 10. Lecture Ten: lecture. 10. Find routes of fiction in real life. One of the first questions I always here for my students is How do I start or what's a good opening, or how do I hook my readers and those are good questions, but we're not going to answer them quite yet. The way that this approach works that I'm trying to teach you is we're going to start in the middle. We're going to start with the middle, seen the turning point, the most exciting moment of your story, the focus of your story. Once we're done with that, we're going to work on the ending scene, and then we're going to do the opening last, right? So that's the order. And it works really well. And I think you're going to enjoy it as you, even if you haven't written stories like that before in that in that order, but you will enjoy. Then you will like it and we will start with real life. And when I teach it in class, my students look at me, start with real life. But I thought we were writing fiction. I want to make stuff up right. I want to write about dragons and zombies and witches and aliens I want to use my imagination. Isn't fiction is isn't it about imagination? And you're right. Yes, it is about imagination, but imagination grows from real life. It's like a beautiful blossom on the flower, but the flower needs to have roots in the soil to nourish itself. Life is like that soil. Life nourishes your imagination, but you might be thinking away. The second. Our definition of a short story was a narrative account in three phases, off a significant set of events in the fictitious person's life. And you might be saying, Ah, I am not fictitious, right? I'm a real person, but the story will not be about you were just starting with you. You also might be thinking while significant set of events and I hear the launch of my students, nothing significant happens to me. My life is boring. No, it's not, and you're not looking at it in the right way. Have you ever read the Walden Pond by hand? You David throw. If you think about events and action in that story, well, what happens there? And by the way, it's one of the most famous stories in the medical literature and a great story. But if you look at it logically, what does he describe? He's living a little cabin and go into the pond and going to the woods right? That's about the extent of action that happens there. So it's not the action there. No dragons, no aliens, no zombies. But it's fascinating reading. How did you do it? How did he make it fascinating. It's interesting because he was interested in life and the next in life experiences, and those experiences were important to him, and he showed them is important to his readers. And actually, I'm going to repeat it because some people think events to be important have to be addressed. The great explosions and the Earth is in danger. I know these events have to be important to the narrator to the character, and then the readers see that they're important and the readers begin to care. Have you heard the expression? The devil is in the details, and that's one reason I'm sure you have. That's one reason his story is so interesting. He's using details to keep the readers immersed in the story like the five senses, but also the thoughts and the feelings over, Um, here's characters. All right, got it. So your next question is probably, How do we do all that? How do we use all these five senses and all the stock about roots and flowers and what not what they would do exactly? And that's a good question that we will answer in the next lecture. 11. Lecture Eleven: lecture. 11. Find an experience that feels riel. One question that many beginning writers ask is whether it's better to start with character with plot or with something else. And the answer is, it depends. Remember, we talked about no Pasanen check off in an earlier lecture and would discuss their different approaches. The stories. How do you think they would answer that question? What would mop a sansei? But some was a fatalist, and he believed that people were pushed around by circumstances, so he probably would start with plot. But what about check off? He believed in three will. He was interested in people's motivations. So he probably started with characters, right? And they both wrote really good stories. So both of these approaches work. You just need to find, well, the approach that works for you. Many other approaches could work to some people start with a setting. But in this class we can only focus on one approach, right. So we will start with an experience that feels riel. You know your own experiences best, right? So why not start with one such experience? You know the details. So you live. You will be able to describe them well, you understand your own hopes and motivations, so you can definitely write about them. And you might be thinking now, I still don't want through based anything on my own life. And even after that Walden Pond conversation, I still can't find anything interesting to write about. So if you are thinking that way, well, first, think a little bit more. But if you still believe that, then fine, be a convincing liar so you can make stuff up. But you will need to still keep it realistic. Imagine an incident that you can pretend happen to you. So, please knows. Obvious. No aliens, no time travel. Not yet. And you're thinking, Well, why can't I just make up some exciting stuff? You will be making stuff up here soon. This is simply your first assignment. Once you finish it, you can make up all kinds of things that promise and in the next lecture will talk about how to find or make up that realistic sounding experience and how to shape it in the turning point, the turning point that will become the middle scene of your story. All right, so let's do it 12. Lecture Twelve: lecture. 12. Find a turning point experience so we're one step closer to your first writing assignment into your story, and that's pretty exciting. But let's make sure we have something interesting to write about and to fight it. Something interesting will look for a turning point experience. So what exactly is a turning point? You can think about it as a specific moment in a specific day when important things happened and changed your life in fundamental ways. And now you're probably thinking, so do have to write something huge and dramatic, like a shark attack or a horrific curling accident or a near death experience from eating a poison apple. Not necessarily. These experiences will definitely lead to some action scenes, but an action scene is not enough for a good story. And those moments themselves are not always turning points. A turning point is a moment of realization, and that realization often comes after an event. Let me give you an example. Let's say you've always dreamt about the being circus acrobat, and you've been practicing from early childhood, and then one day you're practicing highway routine on the second story balcony and you fall down and that fall leaves you with some permanent damage that makes your circus career impossible. Off course, that moment that fall seems like a turning point, right, Because that moment change the rest of your life and you can think about it. That is yes and no, Remember was said that the turning point for a story has to be the moment of realization that the change had occurred when traumatic events like this one happened. You don't always understand their impact right away. In this example, with a circus acrobat, most likely the acrobat focused on the pain first, right then survival. And then later, the realization came at first the the acrobat probably avoided thinking about how serious that injury waas. So maybe the fall itself, if you think about how to write the story, would not be the best idea. Maybe we need to find a different moment, right? So when you're looking for the turning point, think about turning point vs Realization. So the turning point should really be the moment of realization. But maybe a physical injury just isn't a good idea to write about it all. And you can think, Why not? The definitely changes the other person's life in serious ways, and that's true. But a 13 point needs more something that stories of accidents lack and you might be asking . So what do they lack? And they lag deliberation. The lack thought the character needs to have some time to think about the options and make a choice, and the choice becomes a turning point. And if you're flying off the balcony, all you can do is brace for impact. There's no time to think about choices, right? So let's think about. I'm not saying you cannot write about accidents. You can. But the accident itself is probably not the best turning point. Let's think about the two stories were discussed earlier. One was giving up a sun story. And let's think about the deliberation moment when the husband learns that his dead wife's jewelry is worth a fortune. He needs first to fully comprehend what that implies about her supposed purity before he can decide whether he wants to profit from that new realization. Right? So he has a moment of deliberation in in Chekhov story mosh. Inca also has some time to think she needs to accept her on anger and shame before she can decide how to respond to those accusations. Off theft. Think about turning points as crossroads. Do you remember that poem by Robert Frost when he's writing two roads diverged in a wood and I. I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. That's exactly what you should be thinking about. A turning point should show a moment off choice. That's important enough for the readers to read your story right, and it's a chance to deliberate to think about it. All right, Do you have a turning point in mind? I bet you do. I have. But they have a bunch of them, and that's great. What I'd like you to do is pause the scores for a minute and write your answer in the Q and a section of the course. And then, in the next lecture will look at specific examples of turning points and choose the best ones 13. Lecture Thirteen: lecture 13 six Tips for choosing a turning point in this lecture will talk about the best ways to the side. Whether it's scene or a moment you have in mind will make a good turning point for your story. When I ask my students to come up with a turning point, they tend to pick something very dramatic. Here are some examples Maybe they're going to say, I wouldn't want to write about my visit to my grandfather in the hospital when he told me he was dying. Or maybe I'm going to write about going to a high school reunion and learning how much difference 10 years can make or 20 years to make it more dramatic. Or maybe I'm going to write about winning getting second place in the city's tennis tournament. So what do you think? All of these are dramatic moments, right? They sound like interesting moments. What these ideas work. They will. But we have to think about the more. And what can help us is my list off. Six tips for choosing a turning point, and I'll explain them right now and you will find this list in additional resource is section for this lecture. All right, so let's take a look at the tip number one. Pick a moment when real change occurs. What does that mean? Usually, real change happens. Not at the very moment of a dramatic event, but something after. Do you remember our example with the circus acrobat who fell off the balcony? The realization that the fall would stop his circus career didn't come at the moment of the fall. It happened later. So maybe if you were writing about the circus acrobat, you would need to pick a later moment. Tip number two. Make your character choose. Put your main character at the crossroads faced with the choice and give you character some time to make the choice. How much time? Well, it depends on the specifics of the turning point in the specifics of your story. Could be just a brief moment, but it shouldn't be just suddenly falling off the balcony. There is no time to think or to choose right, so making your character chooses important Tip number three. Avoid melodrama. Don't choose an episode that seemed unbelievable, even if it really happened. Maybe it's true that your uncle was married 19 times and every one of his wives was named Gwendolyn. But it's too hard to believe, and readers tend to prefer fiction that seems plausible. So my suggestion is to avoid writing about any event or choosing any event for your turning point that has a supercharged opera style, melodramatic quality to it. Such highly emotional events, then to turn into melodrama when redness fiction tip number four show a single short scene . Think about the time it took for the starting point seen to play out in real life. It should be short. It'll of thumb is under an hour. I would suggest that you came for about 10 minutes in jail time. And don't worry if the scene feels incomplete, it will lack the before and after, and that's fine. Remember, this is not the whole story. Right now. We're just writing the turning point moment, that middle scene of the story. You have a chance to explain it later. Tip number five is the focus on the specific issue. Make the central issue personal, not global. Your characters should not be discussing big controversial issues such as gun control or capital punishment. If they do, they will lose individual identity and become mouthpieces for political ideas, and your story will become propaganda. For example, jobs mash Inca doesn't discuss human rights are huge human dignity in general because her concern is personal. She isn't trying to win the political argument. She simply wants to defend her personal values. And that's what your characters should be doing as well. Tip number six. Make it a shared experience. The experience you writing about should be shared by another person who also has high stakes in this event and strongly felt its impact. It can be a friend, a collaborator, arrival or an enemy. And I'd like to point out this is not a requirement for all stories or any kind of suggestion. For all stories. This is course specific. I'm asking you to do this for this particular course, because the way I'm teaching requires you to have that companion, and I don't want to give any plot spoilers, but you'll see why you need that companion that shared experience later on. So please make the shared experience. Now let's discuss these ideas more, and let's talk about the three examples we talked about at the beginning. I remember the 1st 1 my visit to my grandfather in the hospital when he told me he was dying. Would that work is a turning point? Let's take a look. It's a single short scene. It's a shared experience and there's a specific issue of life and death. So far, we have three out of six, so it could work. But let's look at possible problems. The first problem is that this moment is very emotional into your life, some 100 down. It's very likely to end up being melodramatic. The second problem is the question of change. Your feelings were Grandfather may seem stronger at the moment, but in reality they're probably the same you've had all along. What about his feelings? He's known about his condition for some time, so the fact that he's telling telling you may not be the moment of change for him. Is there a real choice for either character? I don't think so, and that's the third problem. So my ovulation off the seen as a turning point is three out of six, which is 50 50. It may work, but most likely it will not work too well. Maybe there's a different turning point, it could be before or after this moment in the hospital. Maybe a turning point is not the scene in the hospital, but maybe an afternoon you spend gardening together or playing checkers. So my suggestion is, don't pick the most dramatic moment just because of its obvious drama, Let's look at the 2nd 1 going to a high school, the union and learning how much difference 10 or 20 years can make. The first problem I see is that you need to show a specific short scene. So discussing the holder union or even most of it, would get too long and too boring. You need to find one specific interaction that happened over the course of a few minutes that left you in 11 of your classmates changed, so it's possible to start with that. But you do need to find a specific moment. There's no clear short scene the way that it's presented right now. Now, remember the last one getting the second place in the city's tennis tournament? This could be a moment of great triumph or a moment of great disaster, right, depending on who the character is. But let's keep thinking maybe the center of the story is not in this moment may be the true turning point is running into the winter in the locker room after the game was over, right? So think creatively think outside of this big drama, finding the two cent of the stories, like focusing a camera lens on that main image and then the main image stance clear against the blurry background. All right. And once you've decided on the A turning point, you were ready to write and in the Lex lecture will finally get to your first writing assignment. All right, let's go. 14. Lecture Fourteen: lecture 14. Your first writing assignment in the previous lecture with discussed what a turning point is and how the choose one and we talked about the six tips. Do you remember what they are? Here's a brief reminder. You need to pick a moment when real change occurs. You need to make a character choose. You should try to avoid highly emotional moments. You don't up with melodramatic type scenarios. You should show a single short scene, focus on a specific issue and make it a shared experience. All right, have you selected your turning point? If so, you're really it right? And here's what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to summarise in no more than 400 words, which is about a page and 1/2. If it's typed, double spaced. The essential details off that central experience. Write it in the first person. That means you'll be using I and writing it as the narrator experienced it. Use regular English loosely defined. Don't be too fancy. Don't be too slaying you just kind of regular middle level English use chronological order . That means described the events in order, just as they happened in the life include the exterior world world off action and the internal world off perception. You won't be able to include too many details, but you should be able to tell us what happened and how you felt about it. This is a shortest Simon. But please put some thought into it as it will create the foundation for the rest of the scores. And for the story. You come up by the end and I don't I'm not say to make you feel stress. Please don't be. I'm just asking you to pick something that you won't get bored with, right? It's important to go through the process. I'm teaching here from the beginning to the end with that same topic. And if you don't like the result, you can always try again. This is a class. You should have fun. You're just learning. And we're in going from the Nobel Prize in literature. Not yet, anyway. All right, enough talking lets right? And to help you. I included the description of this assignment in the additional resource is section for this course for this lecture. After you finished writing, come back and we'll talk about your experience. Have phone 15. Lecture Fifteen: lecture. 15. Wrap up. You're back. Great. It means that you have completed your first writing assignment. Congratulations, like the same goes a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, and you have always taken definitely more than just one single step. And you know what? I know another saying. The first step is always the hardest, and I know you might say it's a fiction class and you're using cliches. But just because it's a cliche doesn't mean it's not true, right? So how did it go? Wasn't easy. Was it hard? I hope it was challenging, but in a good way in a fund challenging way. And you might be asking. But one day I get to make stuff up. Well, let's call it not make stuff up. Let's call it fiction. Look, fictionalize real life and we'll do it in the next lecture. All right, let's get started 16. Lecture Sixteen: Lecture. 16 Overview. Off Section four Fictionalize Rial Life Your first writing assignment was based on the memory, but it's still required. Creativity, right? You have to choose what to write about. You had to choose what did this to select and how to present them. You have to shave your memory like a sculptor shapes a piece of marble until a distinct and beautiful form emerges in. This section will discuss the differences between these you life in fiction. Well, think about our leaders and what they expect from a story, and then we'll do something really exciting. We'll take on you identity. Well, maybe not like that. Maybe not like a spy or not like somebody in the witness protection program. But almost we won't have to move anywhere will do it all right here. So that's advantage, right? Let's get started 17. Lecture Seventeen: lecture. 17. Understand real life versus fiction. The difference seems obvious, right? Living life and reading about it on paper are very different activities, and it's not possible to recreate life on paper. But let's think about it. What exactly is different? One way to think about it is in terms of the amount of information and the types of information that we get one bill of life. What do we mean by information? It sounds and smells and tastes thoughts, feelings, random associations, memories that seem to just pop up in their heads and everything else. It will be practically impossible to write all these things down. And even if you did, who would you eat it? It would be too chaotic, too disorderly and two random, just like life, right? You've heard the expression. Of course, truth is stranger than fiction. So if we flip it and if we focus on writing fiction, it means that fiction has a certain order, a certain structure and a certain type of predictability. And to write good fiction requires selecting your details very carefully, and actually, we select what we talk about every time with tell a story. Let me give you an example? If I asked you, What did you do yesterday? You could say, Oh, nothing much. I saw a movie with a friend. That's about it. And that's a perfect illustration of such selection of details. You said that yesterday. You watched the movie. Is that all you did the Jew brush your teeth? Did you take a shower? Did you eat something? Did you check your email off course you did. But when they asked you what you did yesterday, you didn't tell me any of those other things. You selected the most interesting thing to talk about right? And that's exactly what writers do. They select details, went telling stories, even writers of historical fiction and even writers of memoirs a thin. Maybe we can say that writing is fiction in the way any kind of writing us fiction, and that's probably true. Do you know how unreliable eyewitness is? Are you ask 10 people to describe what they saw and everyone comes up with a different account. You can see over the just liars know. Most of the time they're not lying. Different people tend to pay attention to different things, their attitudes, their life experiences play a role in how they perceive things and how they make sense out of life. And that's what fiction is supposed to dio. Fiction helps us make sense out of life. So what exactly does that mean? And, of course, you remember our definition off a short story. It's a detailed and unified account off a few important events in an invented person's experience, right and the In the Waldron story. Every detail contributes to that unified effect through its central purpose, and every detail supports the theme in this unit of the whole story. So choosing what to include in the story is important. It's very important for you is a writer and also for your readers. Readers expect fiction short stories to make sense, and we'll talk about your expectations more in the next lecture. All right, let's talk about it 18. Lecture Eighteen: lecture 18. Know what readers expect in the previous lecture will discuss the differences between the life and fiction. And what's interesting about it is that your readers understand the difference, too. Your readers expect to have a story that feels like it has a clear direction, a clear plan and that unity that we talked about. I'm not saying that each and individual and every reader can explain that difference. But they do understand it, and they based their expectations, maybe even subconsciously, on that understanding. The readers don't expect you to report the facts, even made up facts, because they won't yield the writer Teoh to take control of the story and to tell it according to a plan. They also expected not to simply explain what happened, but review a meaning behind a series of events. And what do we mean by meaning? That's different from the life? Because real life tends to meander along with no theme or focus, and with characters moving around kind of haphazardly, readers don't want stories like that. They want clues and meaning that develops from such clues. And if you have that, the readers will be willing to believe things that don't don't happen in your life. Have you heard of the expression suspension of this belief? It means that readers agreed to accept certain things that don't exist in reality, like unicorns and zombies and aliens of things like that, even if the rest of the story builds logically from the made up reality and actually expect that they're gonna let you create a crazy creature. But then that crazy creature needs to act according to the laws of your story. That's you establish All right, So now that you understand that truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth doesn't work in fiction, it's time to guess what? It's time for your second writing assignment, so let's go ahead and get it done. 19. Lecture Nineteen: lecture 19 your second writing assignment. In the first writing assignment, you wrote the first person account of a turning point experience. And if you follow the instructions, then you included another person who shared that experience with you and for whom. That experience was also important. Your second writing assignment is to write another first person account, also about 400 words, but this time he will write it from the perspective off the other person. So what you're trying to do is you're going to pretend to be that other person and write in that person's manner and voice, right? And you may be wondering, How does that assignment help? You become a better either. And if you are wondering that I have some answers for you, this assignment will help you become a better writer because it will give you an opportunity to get inside somebody else's mind and the chance to see the world from their point of view. It's an important skill for a writer because it will help you develop possible and realistic characters for any story you will want to write in the future. So it's like you're talking taken on a new identity and a new outlook on life, and that can be quite difficult. So include a couple of tools to help you take on the new identity, and you can do it before you start writing. What are these tools? My favorite one is Marcel Proust. Character question there. Marcel Proust was a French novelist and essayist who believed that answering these questions reveals wants to nature, and the other one is a checklist of 555. I know it's a lot personal characteristics that can help you think of qualities that otherwise you might not have considered. You don't have to use all 555 characteristics, and you don't have to answer all questions on the Marcel Proust questionnaire. You just need to answer enough to get an understanding of who your character is. And sometimes when I tell it to my students, they ask. Or what? If I don't get that character right, that's impossible. You will get it right, because your goal is to imagine what this character is like. You're not really becoming the character. You're creating something new, your writing fiction. You can find them. Marcel Proust, scared to question their the checklist of personal characteristics and your second writing assignment in the resource is section of this lecture. All right, so have fun with this assignment. Go ahead and write it and then come back and we'll discuss your experiences, and I hope you have fun. 20. Lecture Twenty: lecture. 20. Strap up. Welcome back. Did you enjoy this? Is silent. Was it easy or difficult? Maybe a little of both. You knew what the event waas. So that part was easy. But you probably were a little concerned that you were getting the attitude of the person. Not exactly right. And I can understand that if you're trying to accurately portray air you person, you always have these doubts because we don't know how people, even people that are close to us, truly feel and what they really think. But this is a classic writing fiction, and you life is just a starting point. We can do whatever we want with our characters and their perceptions. And how did you like rising in the first person point of view? Maybe it worked fine for these short scenes, but maybe you don't know if you would like to write the whole story in the first person point of view. Or maybe you enjoy that enough. But I think about it this way. What if you want things with this scene where this character is not present, what will you do? And that's a great question. And that's exactly what we'll talk about in the next lecture. All right, let's do it 21. Lecture Twenty-One: Lecture 21 Overview off Section five Change your point of View. So far, we've been writing in the first person point of view. You've written two accounts off the same scene from two different perspectives, but from the same grammatical point of view. In other words, you used I in both. These pieces in this section will discuss the differences between the first person in the third person point of view, and then you'll doing 1/3 writing assignment where you will switch from the first person for the third person and we'll discuss the differences. All right, let's get started. 22. Lecture Twenty-Two: Lecture 22 first person versus third person Point of view is one of the most hotly debated topics in fiction. Everyone is always arguing about the relative merits off the various points of view. And there lots of choices you could write in the first person or Third Person LTD. Or third person emission, second person or even sequential multiple points of view. We could have a called whole class on just point of view, and maybe we will, but not right now. This class is supposed to help you write your story, not get into a long philosophical debate about points of you. Don't get me wrong. It could be very exciting and enlightening, but it's outside of the scope of this class. In this glass will focus on two points of view. The first person in the third person limited dramatically. The first person point of view means that you're using I and me and talking about the main character as if you are that person, just like you did in the two assignments we have already completed. The first step of switching to the third person to the third person limited point of view is simply changing the pronounce. So I becomes he or she me becomes humor her and so on. What does limited means? It means that you're still presenting the story from the point of view off one person, but it allows you to write scenes without that character, and your readers will not mind. So limited means limited to one person had limited the one character. There's a little bit more to it, but for now, that's all we need to know. So for now, all you're doing is simply switching, pronounce, and even that small mechanical change makes a difference because it effects the whole angle of presentation and you will do it for your story will go ahead and change those pronounce . But first, let's take a look at an example. So before you start changing your story, let's look at an example. Take a look at the attached file. It's called point of view comparison. I took a short excerpt from one of my novels and later wrote it. So now you have two examples. One is in the first person point of view. The other one is in the third person point of view. It's in the additional resource is section for this lecture and the only thing I did this, I changed the just change the pronounce. Please read it two examples and then we'll discuss the differences between them. So this is a good time for you to pause the lecture Reeder two examples and then come back and we'll discuss them all right, so if you have looked at those two examples, they're pretty similar, right? And the only change was grammatical. But even with that small really minor change, you could probably see the differences in the first person account. The narrator is on yah, So she is the character of the story and the whole story. The whole excerpt seems closer. It seems more intimate it all. We feel like we are getting to know her better and the like were experiencing what she's feeling and experiencing. It feels more subjective and more personal. The third person limited account limited again because there no other characters whose perspective were seen in the story right. It's still just honest perspective. But just with that one change in the pronounce, the story feels more distant, more objective. And if you ask herself all who is telling the story. It's no longer the character. It's the narrator, and it feels like it's almost a voice over right, and you might be wondering. So which one is better? It depends. There's no clear answer here. Generally, I prefer well, I prefer 1/3 person point of view because I like to write historical fiction novels, and I feel that historical information is easier to present in the third person. And in terms of challenges, the main challenge with the first person narrator is that narrator needs to be exciting enough to keep the reader's attention for short stories. Probably not such a problem if you're planning to write the whole novel in the first person . And of course, yes, it can be down and it has been done. But it's just a little bit more challenging in this course. We have already talked about and practised the first person point of view, and our goal is the practice writing fiction, and that means putting more distance between yourself and the story. Otherwise, we might end up with a memoir, so your next assignment will be to rewrite your seen in the third person point of view. Let's go to the next lecture and talk about this assignment in more detail 23. Lecture Twenty-Three: our gardener developed in his book The Art of Fiction, and it's a really interesting concept. So let's talk about it next. Here's a quick breakdown. Let's take a look at these examples, so imagine that each one of these examples is the first line or a couple of lines at the opening of a story. So the 1st 1 it was winter off the year 18 53 a large man stepped out of a doorway. It's almost the this once upon a time, feeling right. We're learning a lot about the time and place, but we're not connecting with this person, right? So it's very long distance. And if we stay at the distance for the entire story, then we're not going to make our leaders care about these characters there to remove their too far away from us. Let's look at the second option. Henry J. War Berta had never much cared for snow storms. It's a little bit different. It gives us the person's name, and it gives us a little bit of a sense of this person's personality, right and attitudes and the look of how the name is written first in last name Middle initial, then we're getting closer to the character in number three. Henry hated snow storms, right? First of all, he's Henry now much closer, much more intimate. Way to name a character Hated is a stronger word, then had never much cared for right Number four God, how he hated these damn snowstorms. We're getting much, much better sense of attitude of this person, right? We're almost in this person's head, and then number five. We're not just in the person's head, but we're also experiencing. We haven't sensory experiences like the character does, and that last one also changes the point of view from the third person to the second person , which is quite unusual, but but still used snow under your color down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul. So this is definitely the closest distance that we have in these examples. Howard Gardner's point is not that one distance is better than the other, but that it's good to very those distances, depending on what happens in your story. And we can extend this concept to think about it in terms of the psychic range of a story from a very close range of close distance to a far distance, and all stories have this rhythm off action and reflection off intimacy and distance. So considering the psychic range of this story will add a different angle and more interesting in angle to your writing. All right, and that's something you should probably try in your third writing assignment. What I'd like you to do is the first simply write your first person narrative in the third person and then think about it some more and find a few places where you can use that knowledge of the psychic distance to move there either closer or farther away again. Don't worry about getting it right. Is Justin exercise and the But I think you like it. It's It's an amazing sense off control that you're gonna get over your writing. All right, so your third driving assignment is in the additional resource is section for this lecture . They could look at it, go write it and then come back and we'll discuss it 24. Lecture Twenty-Four: Lecture 24. Wrap up. Congratulations on completing your third writing assignment now. You should have a pretty good grasp on the differences between the first and the third person point of view, and on the way you can use the concept off psychic distance to create your stories. So far, we've been focused mostly on the character. But character is not enough for a good story. What else do we need? What should be the next step? Well, we need to make sure that your characters are living in a well developed fictional world that seems realistic and believable, and that's what we'll talk about in the next section. Let's get started. 25. Lecture Twenty-Five: Lecture. 25. Overview off Section six. Build your fictional world. Five sections of the course are done, but you might be thinking that your project still doesn't resemble Agiel story. Is that what you're thinking? Don't worry. You're progressing a just the right pace, and after this chapter you'll be half with them. And your progress will get quicker because we'll be talking about specifics and writing more and will be actually doing writing exercises more. And we'll be discussing general ideas about short stories less after the fourth writing assignment that you will do in the section. Your story will be about three times as long as it is now, but he will not be any more. Action or more characters, instead will focus on creating the fictional world of your story. Using carefully selected details. These details will be of two types. The ones that described the physical world and the ones that describe what's going on inside the characters. Mind and heart. We'll start by deciding which details to include and why are you ready? Let's get started 26. Lecture Twenty-Six: Lecture 26 Adding substance and details. If you read what you've written in this class so far, you'll probably get the sense that your story feels a little pale and the little vague, and that it needs some sharpening. Think about high definition and low definition images. What's the difference? The number of dollars per square interest, The more dots you have, the sharper the image. And that's what we'll do next will add more thoughts and make a high quality picture. And the of course, it's a metaphor. The main approach to this desk is pretty simple. Let's take a look. So how do you add details? If somebody writes, I walked into a room, but this room can be anything at all right? Millions of possibilities. So it's too vague, and it's hard for your readers to imagine the right kind of room. Let's change it. Let's say I walked into the living room. This is always a better. We've eliminated problem 99.9% of possibilities and made it easier for the reader to visualize what kind of room of this. But still, maybe it's this kind of living room. Maybe it looks different right, so we need a little bit more. Let's try something even more specific instead of just saying that's a living room. Let's see, There's a blue sofa, old plastic blinds, maybe a coffee table in some coffee stains from spilled coffee on it. This description is making your peace unique and real right. This is where your story is beginning to resemble real life. Life happens uniquely and individually to each one of us. And the closer s story comes to happening the same way. The morio. In real life, it will be like we experienced life with the five senses. So we're green, right? The details make stories unique. But now the question is how the we had these details. Whether we do think about how we experience life, we experience life through the five senses their sight, of course. And that's what beginning writers tend to rely on. But when you write your stories, think about the other four senses we have hearing, right. We have smell, we have taste and we have touch. If you start including more than just one sense in your story, then your story will be more riel and your readers will immerse themselves into your stories more. But how do you choose details? Are we saying that the more details we include the better like in this picture and that you probably know the answer? Of course not. You need to pick the details that are important in that support your purpose in this story . Remember, how would discuss that unified impression that the story is supposed to create? Of course you do. So what you're doing when you're selected these details is thinking about it, you know, unified impression. And as you develop your story, think about what purpose you're trying to accomplish by adding certain details. It's not always easy to know which details to include and which term it. But as long as you're thinking about these details with a sense of purpose in making decisions instead of simply writing anything and everything, you will develop a good sense pretty quickly for the use of details. And as you write more, you will also define your own attitude towards your stories, events and towards the views that the character has, and with that, if theme will emerge in the next lecture will talk about theme in more detail 27. Lecture Twenty-Seven: lecture. 27. Write the story, not a sermon. I called the section right a store, not a sermon, because today's readers, especially adults, don't want writers to tell them the moral of the story. Unless you're writing a fable or a specific type of fairy tale, don't tell your readers what to think and what to believe. So don't teach a lesson when you're writing a story. I'm not saying that people will not listen to straightforward moral advice. They will and they do, but under different circumstances. That's what sermons are for. Nothing wrong with sermons. But that's a different Johner. Geezers can accept more lessons and stories, but these lessons should not be presented in a direct way like a sermon. Let them think about more lessons and figure them out for themselves. So with that, I actually have a lesson for you. If you want your readers to get your point, then neither you nor anyone else in your story should speak it or think that lesson directly. And let's take a look at the example and let's call this example the fly in a spider web. Let's say that you're showing how establishment can manipulate the will of an individual. And let's say you're writing a scene where your person is sitting in the cold and impersonal reception room off some bureaucratic office, and then your person is looking across the hallway and they know this is Spider Web, and maybe that Spider Web was on the chair and the fly strapped in it. That's good. It's an image in It's a symbol, and it conveys the point. Maybe the person even feels sorry for the fly. That's fine, too. You're still telling a story. But if you decide to add that the sedation of the fly reminds the character off their own predicament, you're going too far. You're being too direct. Does that make sense? So let's take a look at that same citation in terms of interior and exterior details. The fly in the Spider Web are physical details in the world of your story, and so is the description of the character and the description made of the cheer that he's sitting on the character's thoughts about the situation in the spider web on the fly, our interior details and the good story should have a balance off both interior and exterior details. We'll talk about ways to great such balance in the next lecture 28. Lecture Twenty-Eight: lecture 28 Balance the exterior and the Interior at the end of the previous lecture with talked about the fly in the Spider Web and the character observing that fly. That little scene is a perfect example off the way fiction combines the interior and the exterior details. The flying, the Spider Web is the exterior or the physical world, and the thought that the character has about it is the interior world. And both of these worlds are very important. Both of these types of details are very important. Let's start with interior details, which are thoughts. It's a conceptual detail with no sense of reality. Right thoughts cannot be seen, heard, smelled or touched. But such information is Justus important as the more physical one because it shows your character's inner world and you readers care about that. At the same time, physical information is very important. Leaders cannot enter a world that has no air to breathe or no ground to walk on. You need to describe the physical existence of rooms and furniture, but you must never forget that the main concern of your story is to follow the progress off your main characters. Change in attitude. So when you're selecting those details, think about which details are essential and which ones are going to show that character change. So if you're shown the character change, it means that a lot off the story is going to take place inside your character's head, where there's no sensor data. If a character sees a fly caught in the Web, readers want to know how that registers in his mind, where most off that change of the characters happening. So remember, fiction is the combination between inner and outer events between interior and exterior details. So how do you balance the exterior and the interior? You're using some of the senses right? The character needs to be able to see and feel and touch and smell things like that. Spider Web and the character should also be thinking about the events that he or she is experiencing. And the thoughts, the combination of thoughts and physical details is what creates a well balanced world of your story. All right, in the next lecture will talk more specifically about creating the interior world off your character 29. Lecture Twenty-Nine: Lecture. 29. Create the Interior World Now that we have talked about the importance off balance between the interior and the exterior details, let's focus on one world at the time and enhance your story with details from both. And that will be what you're going to do in your fourth writing assignment. Yes, you create the interior world. The first question is what evidence deserves to be included. You don't want to include all characters thoughts, but maybe you don't know which ones to include yet right? Maybe you don't know what's relevant and what's not relevant, and that's OK. You can come back later and edit it. But for now, let's focus on the process and try to do it the best way you can for now. And that's still the optional have right? So here some steps that I think you can take to create this interior world to begin with a look at the personality traits that you chose for your character. Remember that earlier exercise? So take a look at those off them, read your third writing assignment again and see if he can find any discrepancies between the personnel to trades that you chose and the way that your character is behaving in that third writing assignment. If you find any discrepancies, you should be able to explain them so your readers won't feel like that. Behavior is not convincing with them. What you can dio is fine places in your thread writing assignment, where your character has a chance to observe something to react to something or the feeling emotion. Those a really good places to create those inner details. Once you find this place is, go ahead, of course, an act. Add your characters, reactions, observations and emotions. Make sure to look for logical places. For example, if you're writing a chase scene and your characters running by Rose Bush, you're not going to describe the scent of roses. Right? Or they're fresh pedals, your characters too busy to think about that. But maybe he gets caught on the branch and fuels the sharp thorns on his skin. Those details you can include are you ready to start your next to Simon? Let's talk about it in more detail. Then 30. Lecture Thirty: lecture Thursday, your fourth writing assignment. The goal of your fourth writing assignment is to greet the fictional world. You can find this Simon in the additional resource is area of this lecture, and to make it a little easier, we will work on this assignment in two steps. The first step is to create the interior world that we have discussed, and you can do it now. So go ahead and write it. If then come back and we'll discuss the exterior world. And what details to include when you do the second part of your assignment. All right, go ahead and write and then come back and we'll talk about physical details off the exterior world. 31. Lecture Thirty-One: lecture. 31. Create the exterior world. Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed creating a richer interior world for your piece and are now rated to work on the physical world. The principle of choosing which details to include is the same as for the interior data. Any detail you want to include must be relevant. It has to contribute to that unified effect that we talked about. If there any details that are extraneous and draw attention to themselves instead of to the story is a whole they don't belong. And here's another metaphor for you. Think about your story, as it seems, effort and the details. As team members, they must all work for the team. They should not be focusing on themselves, and they should not be distracting from the unity of the story. All these details should be focused on creating a good story. Each sentence needs to move the story forward, all right, And I'm not saying that every sentence has to present a new twist in the plot. Sometimes you simply neither description or maybe a little bit of action. But everything has to mean something. Count for something and have a purpose. Deciding what details to include can be a challenge. The best suggestion I can give you is to include the details that help clarify your main characters attitude and the change in that attitude for trade by your story. And it's best of Each detail serves more than one purpose and the Let's take a look at an example to help you understand that point. Do you remember our example with the character in the waiting room looking at the spider Web? He's describing the Spider Web and the fly that was strapped there. He isn't describing the chair itself or the questions on the cheer or the color of a chair . There. Lots of objects in the physical world of that waiting room, so all of them seem to be relevant. But they're not. Why did we choose the Spider Web? Because it helps in more than one way. It shows that the waiting room is dirty and not kept up well. But it also suggests that the characters mood is hopeless or desperate when you revise your piece. Keep in mind that the rule of thumb for choosing the exterior details is to look for what engages the reader's senses in the action and what reflects the status of your main characters. Feelings. Another point to keep in mind is that everything you present on the story should be presented from the viewpoint of your character, not your point of view, not your personal point of view. Even though you have changed the grammatical point of view from first person to third, you're using Third Person LTD. Which means you're still very close to the heart and mind of human character to make a character realistic, allow him to have subjective views and biases. And if you forgot what they are, they could look at the checklist of personal characteristics and Marcel Proust scared to question there. All right, well, I think we have talked about the exterior world enough, So why don't you go ahead and complete the fourth writing assignment, and after you finish, come back and we will talk about it some more 32. Lecture Thirty-Two: lecture. 32 wrap up. I hope you enjoy doing your fourth writing assignment, and I hope he didn't worry too much about which details to include in which the mitt like we have discussed earlier. It's not always easy to decide, and often you have to go back. And the just things after the first draft is complete. Such style of writing some writers call it writing in layers is quite common. We'll talk more about it when we get to the less known symbols, but not yet. Our next creative challenge will be to make your peace less quiet and include some dialogue . If you haven't done that yet, the dialogue is an important element in infection. So come on over to the next lecture and will work, and I look 33. Lecture Thirty-Three: Lecture. 33. Overview off Section seven. Bring your story to life with dialogue Most stories are about people and people are social creatures, so they communicate with each other. They talk, and that's where most stories have some dialogue, like everything else in the story that I look has to serve a specific purpose and move the story forward in this section will discuss techniques that make die look interesting. Will talk about the use of dialogue tags and will also work on correct ways. The puncture dialogue. And you also do your fifth writing assignment, where you will add some dialogue. Your scene. Are you ready? Let's get started. 34. Lecture Thirty-Four: Lecture. 34. The basics off good dialogue. Dialogue is important in a story, and it can serve multiple purposes. So let's take a look at what these purposes are. So what can dialogue do? And you see a list in front of you so you can read it. I'm just gonna comment on a few things here. The first couple of points is the dialogue helps you either advance the plot or change the direction of the plot. For example, somebody could be talking about in you some new pieces of information and got introduced, or somebody gets a leather, and that helps you change the plot. It can also help you highlight your characters, desire and motivation. And also, since dialogue by definition has more than one person, it helps you create different voices, and that creates a specific tone and voice for the story itself. Dialogue can change, can show change in characters, can add some drama. It can also emphasize theme. But be careful. You don't want to spell out the theme, right? You're showing it through the action through the characters. You're not just stating what the theme is. Dialogue can create the atmosphere and mood of the setting. Think about people with different accents, for example, like me and Ah or the way different people talk can also help you show off what that setting is by showing who the characters are, and Allah can help you inform your readers about your characters history. But be careful with that. You don't want to go into a long back story because that gets boring. And also it's not natural. When you talk to your friends, you don't talk to them like let me tell you what happened yesterday, what we did together yesterday. You're not going to be presenting it that way, So avoid those kind of information dumps, all right, One of the main rules off good dialogue is don't bore your readers, and that's very important. The difference between dialogue in life and dialogue and stories is that in stories you need to cut those day to day conversations that nobody would ever care to eavesdrop. Right? So take a look at my example here I love How was your day? She asked Good things. And yours It was fine. Thank you. I replied. Oh, my gosh. We have dialogues like that. All the time right, and we do them to be polite to, ah, show that we're interested in somebody. But these kind of dialogues don't have a lot of meaning, and then the story. It's boring. It does not serve a purpose. When you write any piece of dialogue in a story, I think about what you want, your dialogue to tell your readers about your characters, personalities, about their situation, about the plot. So think about the purpose and cut out stuff like that, like we have on the screen right now on Earth. Let's take a look at another point that's important in dialogue, and that is, keep dialogue, attacks to a minimum and the thinking. Look at my example. As a rule, you can establish who's speaking and how they're speaking without those dialogue tags. So in the 1st 1 he said, his face funders a thunderous right is your dialogue attack. The 2nd 1 I think, is a little bit more descriptive first. Well, I'm getting through that, he said. I'm just showing that he stood stiffly, arms crossed, so I'm showing the action vs telling you that he is speaking right so he can cut those he said, she said, and instead show action that will help you keep your dialogue tags to a minimum. The next suggestion is to cut out filler words so they can look at these two examples and I'll give human to read them. And you can see that the first dialogue or accept from dialogue. It's, Ah, just a bland, everyday scene, right, just like we talked about earlier. But the second example, it's basically the same scene, but it's written in a slightly more interesting way. So now let's think about it. So what makes that second example more interesting? Immediately we get a sense of story, because around your dialogue you have actions like the thrown down off the back and in the anxious worrying of the viewpoint character. And that makes this dialogue filled with a sense of an event. Something is happening. And if you cut out filler words and instead focus on finding this emotional core of each conversation, your story will be much more engaging even on this little level level of a small little interactions. So when you write these dialogues, think about what do they show about your characters and their circumstances. in this example, we can see that the viewpoint characters anxious, maybe confused because we're gonna assume it's the significant other is not communicating about something that's bothering that person. And most importantly, we can see that there's some kind of a sense of waiting, and that's really important. That sense of waiting is what drives the story forward because your readers are wondering, Well, what just happened and what will happen next and that makes them want to read more makes the story more interesting. All right, so when you're writing your dialogue, here's a list of questions to ask about your dialogue. So each line each each interaction should the focus on characters personalities on their present situation. Advance the plot, raise some questions or set expectations. So when you write in your dialogue, ask yourself what is my dialogue doing? Isn't doing any of these things, And if you can manage to do more than one in the same dialogue, your story will feel more engaging, faster, paced in a good way and more interesting the next. The suggestion that have about dialogue is to show setting and actions. So, in other words, show what's going on around your characters when they talk. Remember that the tone and mood are essential for a story. And if you characters seem to speak in this vacuum, their exchanges will feel dry and bland. And your readers will not be interesting. So, for example, if your characters are meeting in the restaurant, you can use this setting to your advantage. Maybe a waiter couldn't tear up to take their order, and that has happened at the key point, right? So then you create more suspense, so you're about to release something important, and then the waiter comes in and starts talking about the other sandwiches. This device can help create more suspense, and it can also help involve the readers in the emotions of that scene, because they're going to be expecting and hoping that that this information, whatever this, will be revealed, and it also creates a more realistic setting. Waiters do exist in restaurants, and they do come to your table, and some of them do interrupt our conversations. So I'm sure that in your story as well, another suggestion for good dialogue is not to make your characters say exactly what they feel. If you think about three people. Everyone tells little lies from time to time. Maybe we feel awful and walk into social occasion. But we're still smiling because we don't want to just create problems and and to spoil the mood for other people. There hundreds of ways to say I feel terrible including Oh, I feel great It's It's the way you say things that matters right? Some making the characters words at odds with their body language can be very effective for show and who those characters are. And maybe your specific character has a motivation for not showing any vulnerability in the sedation, right? And maybe they're going to be overly happy and joyful when they're not joyful inside. And you can the show little actions. Maybe they're fidgeting. And this is why it's important to not on the use characters, voices and words but also describe their movements, their bodies, body language and their little actions as their heaven. This dialogue to make your guy look interesting, remember that effective dialogue lets us see the why behind it, maybe have a couple who's fighting over something. Maybe they're fighting over what to do this weekend, and the dialogue should tap into the underlying subtext. Why this fight? Why, at this moment in the story, maybe one character has realized that the other does not make them happy on some fundamental level. So the small fight about this similar small issue can reveal something larger, and in the story, it should reveal something larger that just makes it more interesting and more purposeful. Think about your dialogue on multiple levels. Think about what's going on immediately on the scene right now, right, but also think about where its roots lie in prior actions and scenes and prior interactions . And think about how the words that your character is saying at this specific moment can show us some glimpses to deeper problems or to these roots of the interaction throughout each conversation in each little dialogue. All right. In a few minutes you'll have a chance to try out these rules with a little dialogue exercise and then with your own story in your fifth writing assignment. So that's a little exciting. But before we get all the exciting stuff, let's briefly go over dialogue, punctuation, and we'll do that in the next lecture 35. Lecture Thirty-Five: Lecture. 35. How to punctuate dialogue. Punctuation is important, and maybe you think it's not important to you, but it is important to your readers. Without proper punctuation is special. In dialogue, the readers will get confused. They will not know who is talking, and they will not be able to appreciate this wonderful story that you're telling them in. This lecture will look at basic punctuation rules that you can use when you do your fifth writing assignment. And, of course, when you write any other stories and will keep it comin, will keep it basic. I'm not going to go into too many details, just the basic things you know to get started. And you can find this information in the document that's called how to punctuate dialogue. And this is in the additional resources section for this lecture. All right, so let's take a look at a few of these common situations. The 1st 1 is actions in dialogue. Maybe your character does something and then says something or vice versa, says something, then does something so they could look. And I highlighted the action in green, right, pointed, and it's the same sentence just the in the reverse order. We have two separate actions here, treated as two separate sent sentences, so you punctuate them like you would any separate sentences. The only difference is that the speech, the words that Anya's saying are placed in quotation marks. All right, disappointed is an action, and that's an important distinction. So I mentioned distinction. Distinction. From what? Let's say you want to indicate that it's Anya who's saying something right, and you want to use the dialogue tag you're going to use, said or whisper. There's something like that. In this case, the punctuation is different. We don't have to separate sentences because the dialogue tad becomes part of the same sentence. So instead of putting a period after it's starting to snow in the first example, you're going to put a comma because both the the words themselves and the dialogue tag are 11 sentence and the same on the second example. The order is diverse, but it's still the same idea. You have the dialogue tech first than the words and because said is not an action. It's the way off speaking and so is whispered. The rule is to put a comma all right, What if you want to show that on is really excited about the snow? In that case, you can use an exclamation mark instead of a comma. I'll also change said and whispered to shout at the show that excitement, right so they could look. Does it make sense? Someone is asking the question. Then you're going to put a question mark at the end of the spoken sentence, and again it's inside quotation marks, and I'm going to emphasize it again. You've noticed, right? That punctuation goes inside quotation marks. So take a look at my example here. So that's one important rule in that look punctuation. The other one is to start a new paragraph when change in speakers in dialogue. And a lot of my students have trouble with that. They feel like a paragraph has to be long. No, it does not. You're not writing an academic paper. You're writing a short story, so short paragraphs are fine, and actually, short paragraphs are required when you're changing speakers in dialogue. So let's take a look at an example. This is, uh, I took it from one of my novels and I messed it up a little bit by removing paragraph breaks. This is hard to read. Write just looking at that, if you like. Oh my gosh, I don't want to deal with that. Who is speaking? What's going on? Too difficult. So let's. And that's not what you readers expect. Let's take a look at what they do. Expect something like that, right? It's, ah, the same excerpt. But it's much easier to read, and you can see even without reading it, you can see who is speaking at who is talking. So the paragraph breaks do make a difference. All right, so this is the correct way to write your story and your dialogue. All right, now that you know all those different rules off dialogue, punctuation, I think you're ready for a dialogue exercise. Let's go ahead and go to the next lecture and talk about what this exercise will involve. All right, I'll see in the next lecture 36. Lecture Thirty-Six: lecture. 36. Improve sample dialogue before you start writing your own dialogue. Taken a few minutes to do this dialogue exercise it is posted in the additional resource is section for this lecture. To remind you of your goals, I posted five Tyler guidelines we have discussed in the previous lecture. Take a look at these rules again and then revise the dialogue segment posted in this lecture. Using these guidelines rights, you're gonna keep your dialogue tax the minimum you're going to cut out filler words. You're going to show the setting, and you won't always make characters say exactly what they feel right. Sometimes putting their awards at odds with their body language creates more interest, and he will use dialogue for a specific purpose. And that's more of a reminder. You just have a short excerpts. You don't know what that purpose is, so don't worry about it in the exercise by. Do keep it in mind when you write your story or it course, there's more than one way to revise dialogue, so your revision will be different from the one that I included in that sample, but could and try this exercise writing your own dialogue will be much easier once you've tried everything inexistent dialogue, especially if you knew the short story writing. It's good to kind of get in the thick of things with dialogue and look of punctuation. Look at that structure, and then when you're ready, come back and we'll work on your own dialogue. And that will be your fifth writing assignment. All right, go into your exercise and then come back and we will continue. 37. Lecture Thirty-Seven: Lecture 37. Your fifth writing assignment. The goal of this assignment is to bring some life to your story and include more than one voice. By adding some dialogue, you don't have to add long stretches of dialogue if it's not needed. But even if you a brief but strategically placed exchanges can really enhance your story as you revised, please keep these guidelines in mind, and we have talked about them enough. I think so. All of these should be familiar to you, so I'm not going to repeat them. But their hero give you minute to look at them, and probably the most important one at this point is the last one. Have fun, right? Experiment. Don't worry about getting everything right. This is your story, and you can always change it. And you can decide how, why and when your characters talk right, So have fun. Go right and then come back and we will talk about our next steps 38. Lecture Thirty-Eight: Lecture. 38. Wrap up. Welcome back and congratulations on finishing your dialogue. So far, so good. You have just completed the first version draft off a fully developed turning point incident. The turning point is at the heart of your story. To use a metaphor. That 30 point is like the core of an apple. It's important, but the core is no more of a story than the core of an apple is an apple. To develop the score into the whole story, we need to show what led to the crisis or to the turning point, and also what happened after. As a result, you can think of these elements as the cause and effect. War is the before and after. In the next section, we will work on one of these elements. The concluding incident. Are you ready? Let's continue them 39. Lecture Thirty-Nine: Lecture 39 Overview off section eight Right Your concluding incident. So far you have created a well developed sexual of your story that presents the middle point In this section, we will work on describing the events that happened your character after and as a result of the turning point. This will be an exercise where you have to use your imagination more than you have used that in previous exercises. Off course you have. You used your imagination before and you had to invent throughout this whole class because you have to think about the inner workings off somebody else's mind, but was started with two events, right? So you didn't have to make them up. You just have to relive the experience. What you're about to do is completely leap into the world of imagination. And here's what's so exciting when you're done. This next section will feel and seem every bit Israel as the previous ones, even though the previous section was based on true events and this one is coming completely from your imagination. The concluding seen can be hard to write because sometimes we don't know what ending would be best off course. We can never know what's what is the absolute best. But I will give you some guidelines to help you come up with the best possible ending for your story. Are you ready to do your concluding scene? Let's do it. 40. Lecture Forty: lecture. Foresee, you're six writing assignment. You're six writing assignment is to ride a concluding scene for your story. I would suggest that you aim for about 400 words to begin with, and you can always add details later. For now, your main goal is to figure out what happens at the end. And as you think about your options, remember that humane characters actions after the turning point should be consistent with their previous behavior. But at the same time, you should show some change in their outlook or refusal to change right that could work as well. Before you start writing, let's take a look at my list of what not to do in your ending. And of course, there are always exceptions, and one of these endings might work for your story. But generally, these endings don't work. And please remember that these air not laws you have to obey. These are just guidelines and best practices. So please take them a such and don't take them as laws that will stifle you and create writer's block. Right with that, let's take a look at things that generally do not work too well in the final scenes, right? The first guideline is not to use an accident to solve your characters problem. So think about it this way. A story is a study of someone meeting a challenge. So if you saw the characters problem by some external means, like somebody's poor and they want to get out of poverty in the win the lottery, what do your readers learn from it? Nothing. Write. Fiction isn't about luck. It's about the way characters respond to life's events. That's why these accidents don't work as solutions to your problems. Don't let your character die again as a general rule, because as a general rule, death is not much of a learning experience. And in a story, the death of a character can seem like an easy fix for a heart problem. Or maybe just like an appeal to pity. Think about other ways to end your story. This is what my students do a lot. Don't make it all a dream, and this is were frustrating for reader. You're reading a story, you're really involved in it, and you're wondering, Well, how are they going to get out of it? And suddenly, just like that, your character wakes up. Don't do that because your readers will feel cheated. Don't introduce new problems at the under new complications. At the end, the ending needs to conclude things and resolve the issues that started at the turning point. It should not present new ones unless you're reading writing a sequel and this is going to be your cliffhanger. But even then, there's some issues with that, So don't do that. Don't spell out the lesson we talked about this earlier. Your story is not a sermon. It's not propaganda. It's a study off real people in real human interactions. So don't do that. Readers don't like those overt lessons. Are you ready to write your final scene? I'm sure you are. It's always don't worry about these guidelines too much. They're here to help, not to prevent you from writing. And again. Remember, it's your story. You can write it any way you want. Your assignment with the overview of the guidelines which is discussed is located in the additional Resource is section of this lecture, and when you're done writing, come back and we'll talk about the next step 41. Lecture Forty-One: lecture. 41 trap up. Welcome back. Congratulations. You have completed one more, Simon, and you're now one more step closer to finishing your story. I know you may feel that your concluding scene is no do build enough or needs some work, and that's fine. We'll discuss divisions and everything in a later lecture. But next we'll talk about an exciting way to enhance your ending and your whole story. What is it? You ask its symbols. And please don't start thinking back to your little school English class and all the symbols they had. Five. Several textbook symbols are a great way to make a story shine. Hey, Stephen King uses them and he can't be wrong, right? Let's do it. 42. Lecture Forty-Two: Lecture 42. Overview off Section nine Find your symbols. What does the word symbol and symbolist make you? Think off? Does it bring back memories of a high school English class? If you didn't like talking about symbols in high school, please said those bad memories aside, this will be different. But first, let's define what the symbol is and how to use it in a story. Simple czar, anything country and exterior that stand for something abstract and interior. For example, this cell set can still for hope. That stuff can stand for peace, and the fly trapped in the Spider's Web can stand for oppression of a bureaucratic machine . In this section, we will look for physical objects or recurring events that service symbols in your story, and we'll discuss specific and practical ways to shape individual symbols to enhance your writing and improve your theme. This approach doesn't ask you to impulse symbols on your story. It's simply asking you to discover what's always in it. Think of symbols like artifact that others can find and enjoy, and these symbols will add extra meaning to your story. So how do you find these symbols and how do you develop them? You'll find out in the next lecture. Let's do it 43. Lecture Forty-Three: Lecture. 43. How to develop Symbols You may be wondering why we need to bring symbols into your story now. We haven't talked about them before, so why drag them? And now you may ask. The short answer is, we're not dragging symbols in. They have been in your story all along, and this is the right time to discuss their use in fiction. The long answer is that usually don't have a choice about whether to include symbols or not . The choice is, Are you going to use them consciously with a purpose? Or are you going to use them unconsciously? And who knows how they're going to influence the readers and their influence is going to be scattered around your story. So again addressing the question that we need symbols. Yes, we do. And you already have a lot of symbols in your story, and you might be wondering, How could you be putting symbols in and not even know it? Well, here's the answer. The simple is in your story, come from all those sensory images and specific details that you've been including in your story as you developed your descriptions. So the only goal right now is to make sure that the your use of symbols is purposeful. Let's take a look at the example. Remember that fly in the spider Web example, right? Wouldn't you say that this symbol that they fly in the spider Web is a symbol? It's a symbol of the character who was sitting in that cold bureaucratic office right? And we said, We're not gonna describe the cheer or the cushion, but we will describe the fly well. Why is that? Because that's important. That represents his state of mind. So already, when you're choosing details that enhance your story, you are choosing images, and you are choosing those symbols right? The once a symbol. Let's define it as a tangible expression, often intangible concept. So, for example, we cannot draw a picture off piece. But we can run all the French or a dove and say it represents peace and other sensory phenomena, like blue skies or the smell of diesel fumes or the softness of baby skin. All of them can stand for nonsense three ones, such as what? Like a clear conscience or industrialization or innocence. So it's better to control your symbols and used them purposefully, then just scattered them without thinking and end up with accidents. Great. And the final note about symbols is that they're supposed to be used to highlight the theme of your story. So as you're revising it as you're evaluating it, take a look at each individual symbol or an image that has the potential to become a symbol and see what what the effect is off each individual symbol, and then see how all these symbols work together to build a theme like different musical instruments in the orchestra. To create a unified theme. They all have to work together. All right, let's go into the next lecture and talk more about it. 44. Lecture Forty-Four: Lecture 44. Your seventh writing assignment. Your assignment in the section will be to revise your story by adding symbolism. This is an organized approach that you can use to create this symbols, and I'll show you what this approach is. In a couple of minutes, the approach to develop symbols in your story will be similar to the one that Stephen King uses in his books. And here's a quote for you to see how he described his approach to develop in symbols. When you read your manuscript over, you'll see if symbolism or the potential for it exists if it doesn't leave it well enough alone. If it does, however, if it's clearly a part of the fossil you're working toe unearth, then go for it, right, so So nice quote. But let's talk about how do you do it exactly What is this? The best? The process, And that's going to be in the seventh writing assignment, which is attached in the Additional resource is section for this lecture. So your first step will be to list all the little bits off a sensor data already written in your story. You can go through the pages of your text and identify every instance off all those different examples off sensory details. And at this point, don't worry about whether each of these details is a symbol or has the potential to become a symbol. Right now, we keep things simple, just mark up all those specific of sensor details. So in other words, every time one of the five senses is used going and highlight it. And don't worry about is it significant or not significant? And that as your do this, you might notice that you have some lengthy passages where there no sensor details at all. I think about them. Maybe you need some more descriptions there. Or maybe not, but it's up to you. But generally these details can make a story more specific or it's that's the first step. The second step is to sort all those sensor details into logical groups or related sets related to what you may ask. Do you remember that a short list of personal characteristics that you compiled for your character we'll take a look and see if any of the sensor details in your story could be related to these characteristics and, if so, good and highlight them. Make sure that you're paying special attention to recurring images. If something is ah, getting repeated, then that repetition is usually an indication off significance in. Therefore, it's an indication that this could be a symbol. Then you will start thinking about what, exactly which of these images can work. A symbols. So after you mark all of them up now, it's time to start thinking about which one are significant or could could become significant and which one seemed to be less significant. ERM may be irrelevant. Then develop and strengthen the most relevant. The most significant ones and the meat want to delete the irrelevant ones to avoid confusing your readers? All right, as you're doing that, remember, that symbolism comes straight from the known facts of your story, right? That's important. Symbols are supposed to enhance your story to make it stronger, but they shouldn't change or contradict the message of the story, right, So make sure that your symbols are aligned as you're working on this exercise. Going back to Stephen King when he first throat Carrie, he wasn't trying to put any symbols in intentionally, but then, as he was re leading his manuscript. He noticed there was a lot of blood in the story. And, ah, yes, he was working on his second draft. He decided to play around with that idea with the image and the emotional meaning of blood . And if you read care, you know that blood played a role in his story, and it is a symbol. And, uh, I think we mentioned three points earlier blood. It played a role in all three critical points in his book, and Stephen can use the symbolic meaning of blood to enhance your story. But is everything else? Be careful. Don't overuse it. Don't be too direct. So think about it. If you're digging for a fossil, that's good and and uncover it. But if you keep digging and digging and you start creating your own fossils, maybe that's not such a good idea, right? So don't overdo it. But I do have funded it, and this is probably a good time to pause the class right here and work on symbols in your story. This is your seventh writing assignment, and you can find it in the additional resource is section for this lecture. Have fun, and then we'll come back and talk about how this process went for you. Good luck and have fun 45. Lecture Forty-Five: Lecture. 45. Wrap up. How have your symbolism exercise go? I hope you found this fun and useful. But if you aren't quite satisfied with the results, don't you bet? Symbolism isn't that easy to do, and I think some practice. But you'll get better with practice and you'll get better sooner than you think. All right, let's move on. We're getting close to finishing the course, but have you know this something? We don't have an opening yet, and we definitely need one. So let's go on to the next section of the course and write your opening scene, but then the story will be complete. 46. Lecture Forty-Six: Lecture. 46. Overview off section 10 right, you're opening scene. Welcome back. This section is one of the most exciting in the whole course, because this is where we finally finish. Your story in this section will discuss what an opening scenes should do any opening scene , and then we look at specific things you can do to make your opening. Engaging for the readers Think about your first scene is the first glimpse that your readers have into your story and that first glimpse that her scene must be interesting, insignificant. It should give you readers some idea of the plot, but it should not review too much. The first, seamless must a lot of things to get the attention of your readers and make them interested and make them want to read the rest of the story. So you might be thinking, What should an opening scene do? Well, it should introduce your protagonist right and then should provide a little bit of a glance into his or her life in the struggles that will unravel the block. The first scene should also establish at the steak and rich setting with enough sensor detail to be engaging but not too much, so it doesn't overwhelm your readers. You also need to set up a feeling off the dramatic tension that will hinder complications and conflicts that will come next. The best opening scenes begin with an air of mystery with a question or a situation that needs an answer. They can also begin with a crisis that the protagonist needs to resolve. The reader should be able to keep treating without getting confused throughout the rest of the narrative, so the first scene should be compelling enough and provide a little bit of plot information so that the reader doesn't need any back story or exposition. All right, are you ready to write your opening scene? Let's take a look at your story and figure out what needs to be done. 47. Lecture Forty-Seven: lecture. 47. What you're opening scene should accomplish in this lecture will talk about specific steps you need to take to make your opening scene interesting, exciting and engaging for your readers or it. So your first step will be to get inside the character's head shortly after the concluding Seen. Yes, I did say after the concluding scene. The scene that you just completed now thinking is that character cast your mind back over the past few days and think about how your outlook on life has changed as a result of the crisis you have just experienced. So think about the specific date and time an hour before our metaphorical storm hit. Think about the time when lives seem to be different from what it is now at the conclusion . Usually it's the time that you felt you didn't know what was coming. But at the same time, in many cases, when we experience this crisis, what kind of know that it's coming? We feel it. It's about some things about the change. It's like no this thing. Storm clouds gathering just before a storm and then right or present the characters attitude as it was just before the storm hit. The main goal of the opening scene is to show the outlook of your character before the turning point so that the readers can compare it with that same characters. I would look after the turning point, and that's why I'm asking you to start by thinking about the outlook after the turning point and then go back and think about what what was going on at the beginning. The next goal, or the next step in your opening scene is to establish a distinct rich setting. You don't you think with enough sensor detail to be engaging, but not to be overwhelming for the readers? The readers need to feel immersed in the world of your story, and those descriptions will definitely help after you're done with those to think about how you can create more dramatic tension that will hint at complications and conflict that's about to happen in your story, you can do through descriptions you could do through bits of dialogue, maybe some thoughts that the character has some on the answered questions. It doesn't have to be a lot. Just a little bit will be enough to get your readers interested then make sure that you're establishing the right tone and voice. Your story can be cheerful. Could be gloomy, whimsical or something else. But your readers need to get the feeling. Is this going to be a zombie story? Is it going to be realistic fiction, romance, Gothic story? What is it? And that you're opening scene? Should the clearly indicate of the tone and voice of your story? Then, Um, and this is really important. You need to pose your main characters. Central problem. That dramatic question. Who discussed earlier? You can think about it. Central problem is the target off the plot to aim at right. So you're asking, will the scare to be able to accomplish it? What will happen next? How will they react? Right? What will they learn? So those kinds of questions not asked directly, of course, but asked The in your opening scene will help set up the rest of the plot. And you do need to raise the theme of your story, but in a way that doesn't call attention to itself. So usually the theme emerges gradually, and mostly it's of three characters, thoughts and feelings. So the anticipation of the change might be enough to set up the theme. Don't develop it too much because you don't want your story to turn into again. Propaganda. Foreshadowing is your next step, and this is a really cool thing to do. And it's a great technique, and it's really easy to do when you're writing it in this order. There's a quote from Check Off a Russian playwright who was saying that if there's a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it needs to fire by the third act, right? So, in other words, if you include certain details in your story than these details need to play into the resolution and because we're writing the story in this reverse order, you already know what happened. And Act three to use that same metaphor. You already know what guns have fired, right? So now you can go back and include those guns in your first scene, right? Or put us, Henson, put the foreshadowing in in the opening scene of your story. All right, I think you're ready to write your opening scene. This specific assignment is attached. The in the additional resource is section of this lecture, So go ahead and write it, and then we'll talk about our next steps 48. Lecture Forty-Eight: Lecture 48 your eighth writing assignment, and we have talked about the opening scene in the previous lecture. So here, just a brief reminder you're writing assignment in this lecture is to write your opening scene. And here's a list of things that you're supposed to dio. You need to introduce your protagonist and show us a little bit of a glance into your protagonist struggles to give you readers a reason to keep reading. You're gonna establish at the strength rich setting so your readers can picture themselves in the world that you're creating. You're going to set up dramatic tension, established the tone, voice and mood of the story, and you're also going to pose your main characters central problem, the problem or the goal or the quest that your character is going to go on in your story. And that will also help you bring up a little bit off the seam in this story. And don't forget the ad foreshadowing. That's always fun to do, and it's easier to do when you write the opening scene last like we're doing here. All right, I think you ready to write Your eighth writing assignment is included in the additional resource is section off this lecture, so go ahead and write and then come back and we'll discuss what you did. 49. Lecture Forty-Nine: lecture. 49 Wrap up. How did you do? I hope this exercise was useful to you, and I hope that you managed to ride your opening scene. Openings can be a challenge because there's so many different things and someone different moments you could start with. But don't worry about it. Just pick one and don't worry about plot details or about the perfect opening sentence. Instead, focus on the setting the atmosphere and the changes between the final seemed in the opening scene, especially the changes in your character. If you still can't decide exactly how to begin, take a little bit of physical detail from your conclusion that has a bit of a symbolic H dead and use it in your opening scene. This approach may seem a little bit arbitrary, but you don't want to get stuck on some mystical search with the perfect opening sentence Right? The success of your story doesn't depend on that one sentence. Instead, I think we should focus on the overall story plot and how you show the crisis that developing crisis in your character's life you can think of sentences like bricks, but if you're building a wall each brick is important, right? But each specific brig does not create the overall impression of the wall, right? So speaking of individual bricks, that's what will work on. Next will look at ways to polish your story, to revise and edit it, to look at a little sentence level details to make it the best it can be. Are you ready? Let's get the dough. 50. Lecture Fifty: Lecture. 50 Overview off section 11. Revise and edit. Congratulations. You have a complete draft of your story. It has the beginning, the middle In the end, it also has details, descriptions and dialogue. That's great business, and that's a big accomplishment. Many people want to write stories, but there, if you do, you are one of the few. Now it's time to polish it and make it the best it can be In this section will discuss the approach. A purposeful division in multiple readings. Purposeful division means that to make the revision process easier and more efficient will be focusing on one specific all on one specific purpose. Each time you read and revise your story, we will devise for blood consistency four units of perspective for conciseness, relevance in consistency. And if these words don't quite make sense yet, that's where I bought it will discuss them in the next section. We'll also check for mechanical problems, and and this is the most exciting part of this section will discuss ways to come up with a great title devising and everything. Your story will be your ninth writing assignment, and it's the final writing assignment over the course. Are you ready? Let's make a story the best that can be 51. Lecture Fifty-One: lecture 51 Revising with a purpose. The first step, the other than your story is actually to not edit it. You need to take a break. You need to get a fresh perspective, and to do that, it's nice to get away from your story for a few days, a couple of weeks a month. All of the time that you're not going to be looking at this story will help you forget the details of it. And when you come back to it, you'll be able to look at it as if someone else had written it. And you'll be amazed how many things you're going to see that needs correcting and also how much easier it will be to correct them. So that's your first step. And then once you've taken your break, what I'm suggesting here is ah, to do four different readings off your story, and I'm calling it purposeful division because you're going to have one specific goal for each reading of your story. And it sounds like, Oh, it's a lot of or give to read it four times, but actually you'll spend less time in it because the time you spend reading your story will be spent more effectively more efficiently. All right, so let's take a look at what each of these readings should accomplish. The 1st 1 but you're going to do is is you're going to pretend you are a reader. You're not going to focus a little things in the story. What you're going to do is read it just for the action action, meaning the sequence of events and see if you can follow that sequence of events and that if there any gaps in that action Ah, good. And note those gaps so you can fix them later. Don't worry about motivations reasons behind the action. Just see if one event follows logically into the other. All right, so that's your first treating. Then the second reading, you're going to be doing something different Now. You're gonna think about it more in visual terms, and you're going to pretend you're the director planning to fill the story. And what you're gonna do is the side on camera angles, especially when you want to switch from one perspective to another. And how are you going to do that? We'll talk about it next, So one way to show. The change in perspective is simply to start a new paragraph. And when do you do that? Well, first of all, in dialogue every time you change speakers. We talked about this earlier, right? So that's that's kind of one of those things that that's a rule. Every time you change, speakers start a new paragraph, but there are other reasons. More cinematic reasons to start a new paragraph. You know how you when you're watching the movie and if they're showing the same thing for a long time, you feel like you want the break the same time, the same thing in your story. If you feel that you're you're focusing on the same character the same event the same. I don't know the same object for a long time. Maybe you need an Especially readers need relief from that single sustained angle or distance. So then take a break starting new paragraph. You can also do it for dramatic effect. Don't overdo it, but it works quite well. If you have a long paragraph and then just a short one sentence paragraph or even one word paragraph and you know they could look at them. Your favorite stories by your favorite authors. You're going to see what they do and how they use it, and the last on this for coherence. And it may sound counterintuitive, but it actually works. Not always, but in many cases it does. If you have. Ah, if you feel like you need that transition sentence or a bridge from one action to the next , then sometimes it's enough just to take a break. Let's say your character is leaving the office and the next scene you want to show the character at home and you wonder, Well, what do I do? They have to show how the I left the office, walked downstairs, walked across the street, took the bus. Your readers don't want to read all that stuff, right, and they cannot imagine that. That's how people get from one place to another. So instead of explaining that, just start a new paragraph. So if readers can make that logical leap from one moment to the next, you don't need to explain it. You can just start a new paragraph. All right, then you're going to do the third reading of your story, and you're going to focus mostly on dialogue and to specific things. We're gonna work on aural validity in psychological validity. What are they? Let's take a look. Orel. Validity means that your lines sound like human speech, right? People are using contractions. People are speaking in a natural way in the way to test it. Just that. Read it out loud and see if you can pronounce it if it's really difficult if it's really complex. And, uh, I'm not saying your characters have to be primitive, but if it's really hard to say, then maybe you won't hear the real speech. Then don't use it right? So just correct it. The 2nd 1 is psychological validity, and that means that each of your characters talks in character. So if you have, I don't know grandmother who's using old fashioned expressions. She shouldn't just suddenly start using Slaying. I'm not saying she can't, but if she does, your readers are going to wonder why. So if you have a grandmother who's using old fashioned expressions and then should the site , she's going to be hip and she learned slaying and starts using it. That's perfectly fine, right? There is a reason for it, but it shouldn't be just out of the blue. The same rule applies to everything in your story. If there's a change, there should be a reason for it, right? I hope that makes sense. Then you're going to do your fourth reading. And in your fourth reading, you're going to be analyzing your story for conciseness, relevance and consistency. Let's take a look at each one of these elements. Conciseness means you say what you have to say as efficiently as you can. So avoid rambling aloe. Avoid the repetition. Unnecessary phrases. Ah, cloth rewards things like that, right? So that's conciseness. Event relevance. Every detail must contribute to the story's central purpose. Your characters should not just be having tea and talking about their days, things like that. Whatever details you include in your story have to have meaning. Remember that gun on the wall? Example. If you have a gun in the first act by the third act, it should've fired. If it didn't then take it out of the first act, right? So those details have to be relevant and consistency and their two things to look at. One is behavioral consistency. They could look remember that list of personal characteristics. And remember that the Marcel Proust character question there. So take a look at that and make sure that your character is not just talking in character but also acting in character again. If the change happens, there must be a reason for the change, and their leaders need to be able to understand that change. You know how in real life somebody says, Oh, you're acting out of character while there's a reason for it, right, So make sure that reason is clear in the 2nd 1 Is unity off perspective? Whose story is this? And whose point of view are you using? Are you maintaining yourself in the mind of your character? Or are you showing your perspective so make sure that you're maintaining the perspective of your character. One more thing. I kind of snuck it in here. You can do it as your fourth reading or is a separate one. We talked about symbols. Symbols are important, and they can create a nicer story. So look for symbols and I'm emphasizing, especially, check your turning point, because remember when we did the symbols exercise, this was after you wrote your turning point. So I'm symbols might be missing from your turning point. So go ahead and check on your story for symbols and last but not least, them. You got to check for grammar and mechanics. The best ideas expressed in a non grammatical way, with lots of typos and spelling Mistakes are not going to get the cross, so make sure you do that or have somebody else who is really good with grammar proof. Read in it at your story. Are you ready for your finish line? If so, let's go ahead and go into the next lecture and complete one more writing assignment, the last one off the course. 52. Lecture Fifty-Two: Lecture 52 your ninth writing assignment. As we have discussed in the previous lecture, you're going to be doing multiple readings, and each of these readings will focus on specific aspects of the story, and this will make the process easier, more efficient, and he will like the results better. So in the first, treating you're looking mostly action and that the logic logical flow of the story, right? A second reading your focus is on paragraph breaks, and this is, ah really a fun way to end it. The putting in the paragraph break is very easier. I just hit the enter key, but it can have amazing positive effects on your story. The third reading your focuses on dialogue you're looking at oil validity and psychological validity. The 4th 1 its conciseness, relevance and consistency so forth. Reading you're not revising. You're not changing things around as much as you're editing more on sentence level, right in the world level and final reading. I snuck symbols in there. I'm sorry, but symbols are important, so you do have to look at them at some point and do some proof reading off your story to avoid any grammatical mistakes, right? And he probably have guessed that this discussion off multiple readings in purposeful division brings us to the ninth writing assignment. The Simon itself is attached. It's in. The additional resource is section for this lecture. So go ahead and do it and then come back and we'll discuss a few more exciting things that we're going to do with your story. All right, I'll see you in the next lecture. 53. Lecture Fifty-Three: lecture. 53. Finding a good title Art That is important. Ah, that's what my students always ask me when they write the story. A lot of times they say in class, does it need a title? Well, what do you think? Have you ever read the story without the title? I don't think so. So titles are important, but they can be pretty difficult to come up with. So let's talk about how to come up with a really good title. And here's some more proof. Real titles are important. Sales person versus marketing representative. Does that sound like a different person clerk or a service specialist, repairman or technician? So all these different titles that people come up with, they represent who they are, and they create a different impression for their customers in this case and for the readers in our case, right? Think about this one. Bond. James Bond. Pretty dramatic. What if his name was Dinkins? Arnold Dinkins. Do you think this story would be a little bit different? Probably so. Titles, names, all those things are quite important. Battles represent your work to the world. Titles and the cover are the first things that the reader. See? So you do need to put some thought into creating a good title. Ah, wonderful model One guideline is title should not be dull. I'm not saying that historic called house or the tree cannot be interesting. Of course it can. And as with the other so called rules we're discussing here, they're mostly guidelines. Right. So you have to decide what works for you. But as a general guideline more interesting titles than to get your readers attention. More gone with the wind, The Silence of the Lambs, the color Purple Atlas drug. So all of those are more interesting titles. Fahrenheit 4 51 You know, I read this book when I lived in Russia. Were you Celsius? So I was really interesting. What? Interested? What? This fear in height. And what is this Temperature? What is it like? I had no idea what the book was about at first. So the title alone got my attention and the fact that it was banned in the Soviet Union. But that's a different story. All right. So titles should not be dull. Battle should be easy to remember. The Tele hatchback wrote Honky tonk You Boogie How is that not very catchy murder on the was Beckett stand express? A little bit difficult. How about the murder on the Orient Express? A little bit more specific. Easier to remember, Right. Then people can ask for your book. They can look for it. They know how to spell it. So those things seem minor. But they are important, especially as you start publishing Title should be appropriate. What I mean by that let's say you have ah, story. And, ah, it's about the space travel. And your spaceship is called Dodge City. Why not? Right? And you're going to call your book trouble at Dodge City? Well, I think the readers are going to think it's a Western, and that's a problem, right? It's doesn't represent what readers expect, so make sure they're appropriate for your genre and going with that same idea. The secret lovers do. We mean people who love secrets. Maybe they're spies or the we mean people who are secretly in love, right? So don't make titles ambiguous unless you're doing it for a purpose. So maybe then, yes, do make them ambiguous in that case, All right, so now we're gonna talk about 10 ways to find your title. And of course, there are more than 10 ways. But these are just some things maybe haven't thought about, and I hope they're going to be helpful to you. So let's start with the 1st 1 which you can do is use a popular expression, and they have a few examples here for titles gone for good. Something's got to give. They could look at them. These are expressions that people recognize, so they're going to be easy to remember. And hopefully they have something to do with with the story in your book, right and that you can. You can do that. You could use a play on words, and they have some examples here. Burglars can be choosers, which is interesting. Ah, live and let die. It's an unexpected twist, right in all of them, a hearse of a different color. So all of these again, they stick in your leaders memory because they surprise them there. They're familiar. Yet they're different. So those could be interesting ways to create a title, a hidden meaning like they could look at these ones. Rain man. What does that mean? It gets your attention. There's a question. Is the rains there, man? But it's neither one right, But there's ah, if you watch the movie, if you read the book, you're going to know what that means. The shipping news dances with wolves. So all of these are titles that I can make the readers think make them puzzle over as they reading your book, right? So hidden meaning could work a famous quote and a lot of times these air quotes from the Bible or from Shakespeare, and then they become titles. So definitely that can work as well. A person's name. Very simple, but it's memorable, and presumably that person is important, So people will remember that story We talked about Kerry, Right by Stephen King. That's definitely an example of a person's name used as a title, going with the same idea name of a place if that place is important. Jurassic Park that's definitely in memorable title and ah refers their place, and it does have a lot of meaning right for the story and the others as well. Possessive. I wasn't sure how else to explain it, but think about the possibility of using this possessive. Charlotte's Web was probably one of the most famous ones. Angela's Ashes. That was a interesting book as well. So see if this will work for your story. If that possessive form could function is a title double meaning the eye of the needle, the dead zone silver bullet. So all of those, Ah ah, have we talked about hidden meanings? This is double meaning similar, a little bit different. Maybe that can help trigger some ideas in your mind as well. Action or events or something. Ending with this I angelic Finding Nemo or raising Helen. So it's both. It's a gerund, right? Dramatically. So it's both an action and an event that can be an interesting way to write your title as well. A memorable line from the story, Um, sleepless in Seattle. That was the way that he signed his letters right to the radio. Tell no one to kill a Mockingbird. So all of these are little quotes from the story itself. Earlier, we talked about quotes from Shakespeare or the Bible, and this is a quote from the story itself, so that can work, too. So what's your title? What do you think? What kind of title do you want to come up with? What are your ideas so far? If you get a chance, please, and shut down some ideas for your title in the Q and A section off the scores. It would be fun to see what you come up with, all right, and after that, think about your title and then come back and will talk some more about your story and see what we can do that next. 54. Lecture Fifty-Four: lecture 54 wrap up. Congratulations. You have completed one more sexual of the scores. Now you know how to revise and edit your stories and steps with multiple greetings for specific purposes. I have found this approach to be very efficient and effective, and I hope you have to. Now that your story is edited and completed, we can move on to the final section of the scores and a few final thoughts. 55. Lecture Fifty-Five: congratulations. You've made it to the end of the course. You have accomplished a lot. Do you remember where was started? We just start with the idea in memory. And then we developed that idea in the full length story with realistic characters with a definite bloodline that he showed through. The three acts with sensor details engage in dialogue and symbolism. But of course, writing a great story requires more than simply taken. Of course, it's a choir stand in practice. And if you're willing to spend some time on driving stories and if you enjoy your the great I love what Ray Bradbury said. What advice he gave writers, he said. The write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row, right? So I think we can take it right for a year and you'll see a huge improvement. Thank you for thinking this course. I hope you found it useful. And I hope you keep writing and reading. Best of luck to you. I hope to see you in one of my other courses soon. Thanks again. Bye.