Definition of story
The definition of a story is something I’m always thinking about. It’s always rolling around in my marbles. It’s like my white whale, so to speak, because I can’t seem to get a finite definition. There’s always something to add or take away or change. It’s an impossible problem that I like to keep in mind. I’m looking into writing some short stories, so I picked back up one of my favorite writing books, Mystery and Manners, and flipped to O’Connor’s section on writing short stories. She was saying,
“Everybody thinks he knows what a story is. But if you ask a beginning student to write a story, you’re liable to get almost anything — a reminiscence, an episode, an opinion, an anecdote, anything under the sun but a story.” (O’Connor)
She’s making a great point that, and one that I thought about for a long time, is that understanding is key. Writing is great, and hard and frustrating but understanding the concepts of writing will get you far in the long run.
I like to think of it as if you’re chasing an animal through a crowded street, and if you know the name of the animal, then the people around can help stop the animal from getting lost in the crowd, if you can yell the name of it. And the name of it is ‘Story’, and the people around it are the people that have come before, the great writers of old and present.
