blog.david-oneal.com

Humans read everything they can find around them, and for most people, fiction is the more pleasing of those many choices. Clearly, they like what they read because humanity’s great literary works and their ideas have guided our lives for centuries.

I began writing stories when I was eight. Back then, I was barely able to make complete sentences, and the spelling was just as dislocated; still even then, I knew researching and writing would become my life passion.

Think about what you read for a moment.

It’s quite likely that some of the fiction you are reading today will eventually be classified among the greatest literary work of our time. I admit that I have no idea how those particular works will be treated as time moves forward around us all.

As a published novelist, I’ve contemplated the necessary literary elements for creating just such an impactful and hopefully lasting story. As I worked to identify those concepts, I was more than a little surprised at how they were so interconnected with story creation.

By sharing these ideas with you today, I’m betting I can make your fiction reading experience a lot more enjoyable.

There seems to be seven qualities that exist or should have existed in all the WOW stories I’ve read or seen on the big screen. As I worked with this, I changed the concept name of a WOW story into the term dynamite fiction, which I still use.

We all know that when reading fiction, you enjoy some stories much more than others. That was my starting point for figuring out this puzzle. As a writer, I wanted to know why that happened.

What were those qualities that left you with such wonderful feelings about a satisfying story?

Readers often use terms like powerful or gripping to describe a story that leaves them with a nice yet elusive feeling—that quality of a story that makes you simply want to shout WOW. Those stories fill us up in some sort of hard to describe way and make us wish we could live inside it for a little while longer.

Every story is filled with actors who do their level best to tell you their part of a particular story. To do that, they use conflict and confrontation—at times small, simple, and funny, at other times enormous, complicated, and deadly. When being entertained, we usually enjoy them both, yet few realize these actors also present us with various life altering metaphors.

Dynamite fiction is about deeply stimulating your imagination. Its characters are a primary vehicle for doing that. When you just finish reading a stinker of a story, what’s the first thought you have about it? Those characters just had no energy or life, right? They were flat and awkward and confusing, and that didn’t make you like them, did it?

Besides characters, another aspect of story must also engage your imagination at the highest possible level. The plot and subplots of a story are the biggest single reason it’s being created. If a writer doesn’t absolutely love the story that’s being written, then there’s little chance you will either, and it will probably not WOW you.

You know the feelings you get when a story satisfies you in all those little ways. You’re enjoying what’s happening because it’s keeping a smile on your face or has you hanging onto the edge of your seat. Your satisfaction is obvious, yet when you’re fully engaged like this, a much deeper part of you is often being satisfied as well by what’s being implied and left unspoken.

The literary arts demand both craft and art from those who seek to practice its calling. A writer’s craft builds story. A writer’s art captures and teases the imagination of readers like you. Stories failing to engage your imagination will leave you feeling like you just wasted the time you spent with that story.

The final quality of a dynamite fiction story pushes one of our prior qualities to an even higher level of excellence. Of course, characters have to be rich and details in their overall development, and with all that, they also need something else. A personal attraction that is so strong, a reader slips easily into then and lives comfortably inside the story with them. This is perhaps where readers find their most pleasure in reading.

Not every quality needs to be present in a story for you to enjoy it. If they are, then it will be even more enjoyable.

Here’s a summary of those seven qualities of dynamite fiction:

1. The story involves something that pleases you.
2. The actors present metaphors about living their life.
3. A story’s characters need to appear lifelike and real.
4. The nature of the story plot and subplots matters a lot.
5. The story speaks to you on more than one level.
6. Your imagination will be fully engaged.
7. Characters easily pull you into the story with them.

These qualities of dynamite fiction are all about the creation of visual images using words. Readers see words and instantly translate them into images. Stories with an abundance of images that please us are the stories that also WOW us.

David O’Neal, ebook author, novelist, and storyteller, began writing at eight and for publication in 1994. Since then, four of his literary works have been published. When completed as seven works, they recount the very personal tale of Doug Carlson as he faces many of the life challenges found in today’s seemingly out of control world. David’s first novel is available in a fantastic 3D page turning ebook format.

http://www.dynamite-fiction.com