One Great Way to Write Short Stories

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful place to start if you have a story to tell
Review: As a former student of Nyberg, maybe I'm a little biased when I talk about his incredible talent for story-crafting and narrative divination. In this book, however, he's hit upon the main obstacles that stop beginning story writers. Unlike so many writing books, this is not based on conjecture, or even the technique of *one* successful writer. It's based on a lifetime of writing and teaching experience. Nyberg has been writing and teaching people to write for so many years, he might be embarrassed if I put how many. His method was developed by seeing what worked for his students. I've watched him take a classroom full of people who've never written a decent story in their lives, and using the method in his book, help all of them create stories worth reading. If you've always felt you had a story to tell, or many stories to tell, but never knew where to start, this book is for you. If you've gotten started and just don't know where to go from there, this book is for you.

It's such a shame that the book is no longer in print, but it's well worth a search to get a copy.

Rating:
Summary: A practical and inspiring compass, even as you outgrow it.
Review: I've been using "One Great Way. . . ." for about ten years now and I can't believe I'm the first one here to write a review on it, and it shouldn't be out of print. It's so good because it makes such good sense. Believe me, if you're reading this and haven't got a copy--get one. It a an essay on how to read a story as well as a method for writing one. It is clear, and usable right from the first chapter. Even as I go about writing my own way now Mr. Nyberg's lessons guide me. Thank-you Mr. Nyberg

Rating:
Summary: One great Way to Write Short Stories
Review: One great Way to Write Short Stories (a step by step approach) by Ben Nyberg

(What follows is my abbreviated summary of his technique. Mostly what follows are direct quotes from the book - sorry I forget the quote marks.)

Where Exactly is Square One?

Imagine an individual life represented by a line graph passing through a series of daily segments. A typical day for most of us would get expressed by a flat line, because on most days nothing much happens, nothing terribly crucial. But, fiction concerns itself with those days when something does happen, when the line graph isn't flat because a "turning point" experience occurs to change things. This "deflection" can be expressed graphically by a crooked line.

Our imaginary hero starts out his day at point A, possibly thinking to end it at point B (an ordinary day). But something happens at point C to change all that. So he end his day at point D rather than point B. Whatever it was at point C, it had quite an impact and made a strong deflection in our hero's life line...

If we say that the primary principle of a short story is deflection, we can work out some of the main features of its procedure as well. First of all, readers ought to witness the actual turning-point crisis in full. Only if they share that experience with the main character, blow by blow, will they be able to appreciate how he or she feels about it. But they must know more than just the facts of the crisis itself. To understand events, we have to understand the context they occur in. This means, in a story, showing what led up to the crisis and what happened afterward as a result. The cause and the effect. The before and the after. In terms of our line graph it means taking at least three readings - at A, at C, and at D.

Step 1. Recollection.

Choose an experience which meets the following criteria:

1. Turning Point or Deflection

2. Choice of Options

3. No Operatic Melodrama

4. Single Short Scene

5. Specific Issue

6. Shared Experience

Write "Narrative A" - summarise in 300-400 words details of the experience in the first person (e.g. "I did ...") an overall account of what occurred and how you felt about it.

Step 2. Speculation.

Check personal-characteristic checklist (in the book) for 'Person B' (the person with whom you shared the experience). Write "Narrative B" for person B's point of view (while reading Narrative A). Sceptically challenge each statement in Narrative A then tell it from B's standpoint.

Step 3. Transposition.

Rewrite "Narrative B" into "Narrative B2". Change first person into author's point of view. Make pronoun substitutions and minor rewordings to make sense clear. Small changes in wording to make a big change in the way readers "hear" the account. In Narrative B2 an anonymous narrator is in charge, making cooler, more objective presentation that puts space between us and the action.

Step 4. Magnification.

Pick out the few details that will best show readers what it was like - or more precisely, what you want them to feel it was like.

Define your attitude toward the character's views. Do NOT direct sell.

topics include:

* Choosing and Managing Interior Data

* Choosing and Managing Exterior Data

Step 5: Extrapolation.

What you are about to do is take a leap into total fabrication, and write Narrative D. Out of all the developments that could conceivably follow from the crisis of Narrative C, you will try to pick the one that, more than any other, ought to occur.

Basically, B's actions following the Core Incident must stay consistent with his previous with his previous behaviour, yet in some new way also remarkable, reflecting a slight but significant change in his outlook. there is a A List of "Thou Shalt Not"s

Step 6: Demonstration.

A short story, remember, is a piece of persuasive writing. Just as a essay, the conclusion of a fiction must answer the questions it raises, bring its argument to a convincing close.

This means choosing details that will help clarify relevant qualities of the exterior environment and point up significant movement in your character's attitude to his/her crisis situation. As with "magnification" of step 4, you will be fleshing out a summary skeleton with bits of specific data, increasing the dots per square inch in your picture. But besides densifying, you will also have to make sure your "proof" is fully supported. This will introduce a brand-new factor into your choice of exterior detail: symbolism.

What makes it a challenge is that Fictional Protocol forbids your spelling any of these developments out explicitly. The "message" of a story must come through loud and clear, but never directly, so that ways and means must be found to show all these changes in B's character while never stating them outright (including in dialogue).

Step 7: Exposition.

Narrative E : the opening. The secret of writing a good beginning is to treat it with the very greatest respect. Always remember, it's not something that happens before the story starts; it is the start of the story, when readers are forming their impressions and making up their minds about reading on.

The main business of the exposition is to show B's outlook before the Core, so that readers can compare it with B's outlook after the Core (Narrative D). This means Narrative E must depict that same set of personal characteristics you focused on in Narratives C and D. Just as D gives the extent of the bend in B's attitude, E draws the straight and narrow path B would have travelled along had the crisis not occurred. Thus Narrative E completes the structural triangle which gives your story much of its stability.

Step 8: Integration

Ignore your story as completely as you can for as long as you can: two days, two weeks, two months if you can.

Story = Narrative E + Narrative C + Narrative D

It's a shame this book's out of print. Get it if you can.

--- End of Review