Planning to write a story? Think about Christmas!

Jessica Morrell at BooksGoSocialWriters Conference

Planning to write a story? Think about Christmas! I had this revelation today at the first edition of BooksGoSocial Writers Conference in Dublin. The mastermind behind this event is the best selling author Laurence O’Bryan whom I met on Twitter. People from Australia, the United States, Ireland and one Eastern European (yes, this is me, the East European writer travelling around the world), made their way to Dublin to find out how can they polish their craft and increase sales through digital marketing.

Sitting in Jessica Morrell‘s seminar this morning, I realised that a good story resembles Christmas time and the way we lived it when we were kids. With anticipation – Santa is coming, I can’t wait. With unpredictability – cause, despite writing the letter, you never knew what he going was to get you. Emotions, not only presents, made this time of the year so special. In the same way, suspense and tension are key elements to the sizzle of a story.

Fiction isn’t written to make readers happy. Its purpose is to jangle their nerves, make their hearts race, give them goose bumps, and disturb their sleep. Unlike real life where people usually avoid conflict and misery, in fiction, the best parts of the story are where the characters are in the worst trouble, explained Jessica Morrell.

Jessica Morrell believes that conflict is the engine of a story. Say no to your protagonist, use moral dilemmas. Add moments of calmness to allow both the character and the reader to breath only to increase the tension afterwards. Like a rollercoaster hitting a plateau before getting to its highest point. Create suspense by adding delay and complication. Make sure to use the right words to express your brilliant ideas. The brain responds to sounds so use powerful verbs, create visual, cinematic scenes. Bear in mind that dialogue in a story is nothing like the conversation you had at your dinner table but a power exchange, a struggle, a means to create tension (of course, it still has to sound real and credible under the circumstances). An example quoted by Jessica Morrell today is the dialogue between Grace Kelly and James Stewart at the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock’s  ‘Rear Window’ (1954).

Make the reader see and hear your story, just like watching a movie. On top of this, ad smell and touch and taste.Words are so powerful. Make them turn the pages with the same anticipation they were looking for Christmas when they were kids. Surprise them with a wonderful crafted ending, they never would have guessed.

One last word about the English language. I started studying it in elementary school and continued through college. I fell in love with its richness and infinite nuances, with the possibility of expressing an action or an emotion with only one word. With having so many synonyms for certain words but each of them with a twist. Jessica Morrell’s website is a great resource for crafting your language. Give it a try. Jessica Morrell understands both sides of the editorial desk–as an editor and author.  She has been creating columns about the writing life since 1998, and is a popular speaker at writers’ conferences throughout North America.