Today for my homework from my creative writing class, I had to read some analyses on story-writing, and one of the topics brought up was that one cannot tell a story that is not believable, and if the story isn’t believable, it’s your own fault. This made me think of three things: one, it made me think of several examples of stories I’ve read where the stories have not made any sense to me because some aspect of the story was utter nonsense. Another was my favorite line of advice about creating fantastic worlds: “You can’t go and say, ‘I’m going to write a story where everybody has guns but nobody uses them.’ Under what circumstances could such a world exist?”
And most importantly, it made me think of a story that I’ve struggled with over the past couple of years, a story about a school shooting. I’ve had plenty of problems with creating a story under five-thousand words involving a bunch of bullied teens lashing out against their oppressors but later regretting it. The latest incarnation of the story, titled “Frye Day”, I thought I might have actually fixed that problem. But did I? Nope; a friend of mine looked it over and said the ending just didn’t mesh with him. Funny, the ending is always the part where the meshing has the most trouble meshing right.
I’ll probably return again to this story, and end up rewriting the entire thing to work, though I won’t do it for a while. However, as much as I like the idea behind the story–that violence doesn’t solve problems, especially violent problems such as intense bullying–I keep thinking to myself that while although I know it’s making me a better writer if I create a story every now and then that just doesn’t seem believable, I always think to myself that I’ve failed somehow, like my textbook says I did, in writing this story that couldn’t possibly happen. I’m sorry, I seem to be rambling in that last sentence, did I lose anyone there?
Anyway, I strive to make a story people think is believable, and it would make me feel better if you’ve struggled with this problem too. Let me know.
Rami Ungar The Writer 
Hmmmm. Maybe if you tried writing about something from your own experiences it would be more believable… OK, who are we kidding? No one would buy that!
Good luck with the assignment.
thanks abba. oh, they also had something in the book about writing what you know. you know how i replied:
“of course, because stephen king actually fought a demon clown and anne rice dated a vampire or two.”
I wouldn’t let one person’s criticism make you re-evaluate your writing. Sure, you should take all criticism and determine if there’s a problem, but if one person doesn’t “mesh” well with the ending, then I’d seek more opinions.
And for the record, I’m not sure “meshing” is even valid criticism. What didn’t he like about the ending? What would he wanted to happen? Where in the story did he lose connection to the characters?
Just my two cents.
thanks for the two cents. it’s just that the characters acted a little strangely near the end, i guess. when i look at the story again, i think i’ll go with a different approach.
Well I’d love to read it eventually.
hopefully someday you will.