How to Develop a Good Story 01

THE STORY ENDING ELEMENTS

The Conclusion or Resolution Stage of Writing

Breathe deeply and run the story through your mind again up to this point. Ask yourself:

1. "Did I 'hook them' with an exciting or intriguing opening in the setting stage? Did the characters come to life and capture the hearts of someone who would read this story early on rather than toward the end?

2. Was there a point of conflict or mental struggle she/he overcame or failed to overcome as an appropriate action that drew the reader into the story?

3. Did I leave any loose ends hanging that didn't get resolved? Is there a tie to the beginning scene that brings closure to the mind of the reader?"

4. When I put in that last punctuation mark, do I believe the storyline slaked the reader's mental and emotional fulfillment -- their pleasure at finishing the resolution portion of the story?

5. Did I make the adjustments I believe personally, as a writer now, that I should have said or added that would possibly make this a better ending?

6. Ask the girl or guy in the mirror, "Is this your personal best effort? Don't look down! Look at me when you answer, baby." The chief editor is going to ask you!

If the answers to those questions are yes. Then look at your outline and notes making sure the conclusion ties those elements together in a logical manner for the reader. The reader should have made this journey with you at this point and at your ending -- they should feel resolved just as the characters do as you put this story to bed -- as they say in the newspaper business.

So simple ... so far!

Rather than giving away the ending from the current story I am using to illustrate this missive ... You will have to go read the ending yourself! [It is the only satire story in my bucket list.]

However, I will use another story for an ending illustration on leaving the readers pleased at the resolution as well as the two characters involved. The storyline from 'Tutoring Miss Picket' began as an infatuated 9th grade girl expresses her platonic love for her algebra teacher and years later, when as an eighteen-year-old, after graduation, chances upon him at his mailbox. This ending ties all those elements together, summarizes the events, and brings closure to the readers and the characters. The story was submitted on May 28th 2021, has at this point 17.6K views, rated at 4.62 by 261 votes; and is another red Hot stamped story. The closing occurs after a long afternoon of sensual tutoring and examination by the teacher of Miss Picket's deficiencies in sex education.

Fresh out of the shower, she stood before me at the foot of the bed, naked, while I kissed each nipple, each cheek, tops, and bottoms, and gave her peach a gentle, respectful thank-you kiss. Then regretfully, I helped her spoon herself into the Daisy Duke getup that she wore and tied the halter behind her back again. Miss Holley Picket, displayed as she was, was at least street legal to return home once more.

As we faced one another, I felt twenty years younger, my grin must have telegraphed how I felt to her. Because her well-tanned face beamed a broad smile back at me in return. Rising on tiptoe, she kissed me -- on the lips!

As I walked her to the front door, she asked, "So, Doctor Johann Wolfgang von Goethe how do you think my oral exam went, today?" the melodious words cooed from her lips.

"Miss Holley Picket," I mused, giving the question some due thought, "I think I have enough exam data to figure out a tutoring program for you. So, I'll expect to see you here promptly after your studies on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. How does that sound to you?"

"Count on it, Johann. I knew you would be an excellent tutor!" she giggled as she slipped past me while I held the screen door open for her. Again, her breasts, just grazed my chest, the same as they did when she entered.

It had been right at noon when I spotted her at the mailbox and it was after four o'clock now as she strolled out my door. I headed to the kitchen looking for something to restore my strength. 'God, she nearly killed me,' I thought as I creaked and gingerly limped across the living room. It had been years since Emma and I had done anything like that together. Looking up at the mantle, I thought I saw Emma's portrait wink an eye at me before returning to that wonderful smile she always had in our evening conversations.

"Sugar," I sighed, "if I did wrong, then come for me tonight before I get too far into tutoring Miss Picket and can't stop."

From this excerpt, you can see Professor Von Goethe reflects on his former student's need for tutoring [not algebra this time], points to his earlier chance encounter at the mailbox, and the duration of the encounter. We detect his emotions as more jubilant, feeling twenty years younger. Even in the ending, we get to feel his love for his deceased wife still as he converses in the evenings with her portrait.

That latter point wraps back to the original setting that opens with his soliloquy on his wife's passing at the start of the story. It tied up all the loose ends and brought the story full circle. This comes from my series, "Tutoring Miss Picket." I wrote a follow on story, "Tutoring Miss Picket -- Her POV' when readers commented they wanted more descriptive details.

That's a nice thing about Literotica, you can get some good feedback right away from readers and respond, if you do so choose.

Did this conclusion tug at the emotional heartstrings of readers? Judging from one reader, I believe the power of good internal dialogue and the right context indicates it does. Anonymous commented, "Loved the story between he and the sexy student, but there is just something in the last sentence that grabs this old 83 year old heart. I still have my sweet thing with me. Married now 60 years. I hugged her tighter last night after this story."

Now, I don't know about you, -- but that comment brought warmth and joy to my heart--I felt misty-eyed as I read his short praise. Isn't that worth taking the risk to publish?

TIME FOR EDITING

I've synthesized some cogent points from Emily Wilson's article posted on Scribendi's website about editing, hopefully without damaging the intent of her excellent article 'Writing Habits for Less Stress and Better Writing.' These quotes, I feel, are well in line with my own observations, but better said by an expert writer.

"Embrace the fact that first drafts are for mistakes. ... give yourself permission to write an imperfect first draft ... it is a multi-step process that requires lots and lots of revision."

"Your first draft isn't the end. It's the beginning. It's where you'll be able to see what works, what doesn't, and what's clear or muddled within the context of your entire work...."

"After spending so much time revising your writing, it can be very difficult to finally let go. ..."

"Revision is a necessary part of the writing process ... Learn to trust that your work is enough. Editing is important, but don't use it as an excuse to never share your work."

Her words neatly summarize the concept of writing as an iterative process ... stew over the ideas, write them, edit them, revise, and repeat until you feel you have achieved your personal best in the writing of the missive. Then publish it on Literotica.com. Let the world know your master work.

FIRST DRAFT STAGE

Spend your time writing -- writing -- writing and writing -- while your ideas are fresh and your creative juices are flowing -- don't worry about typos and grammar. The time wasted on that trivia, stunts your writing development. Deal with all the minutia, after you have written your conclusion! Never mind the red flags in your typing program! Never mind those homophones, homonyms, and mistyped its, it's, and all the other apostrophe placements. Put aside trying to correct and stopping to re-read what you just typed. That just halts the feeling of 'being in the zone' and keeps your characters sitting on the couch tapping their impatient toes -- waiting for you to get back to making them interact with one another.

Just wright, right, write, damn it -- and don't look backward until you are done!

Okay, so just keep focusing on where you want the story to go -- there will be time to handle the minutia later. Keep thinking this is just a draft ... just a draft .... just a first draft until you reach the resolution of the FIRST draft.

At the end of the first draft, then, take a break and do some clean up: run a spelling checker and/or grammar if you absolutely are feeling OCD about it and let them work for you.

SECOND DRAFT STAGE

This requires your mental awareness to be sharp. You should have put your story away for a day and then return to read it anew. You are going to be looking for the flow of your story as you reread the storyline in its entirety. Here you are looking for things that jar you. Sentence constructs that cause you to stumble as you read the storyline ALOUD. Yes, that's right -- read it aloud as though you are reading the story for someone else to listen to -- story telling mode. [Not via subvocalization] You will be surprised at how many mistakes you find in the structural flow when read in this manner. It's going to be that way for your readers -- as most are verbalizing what they read even though they are reading it silently. Subvocalization is the linguistic term for hearing non-verbal speech as you read silently. Proofreading via subvocalization is not as effective as reading text orally aloud. [You still read too fast when using subvocalization.] I ask that you trust me on this one!

Note and change those as your progress through your story. Then repeat the spell checker and grammar tools again.

THIRD DRAFT STAGE

Search for those pesky apostrophes, the homophones, homographs, and subject verb agreements. Also review the use of quotation marks that you missed particularly in dialogue interactions among your characters. Check your paragraph structures for opening and closing sentence 'connections.'

Are your paragraphs in the correct order?

Should you move them to another part of your storyline?

Does it 'logically flow' from one paragraph to another?

This is also a good time to look at white spacing. That breaking down paragraphs into computer screen chunks that help ease the visual readability of a story. Large paragraphs are difficult to read on small screen devices. Help your readers' eyes by separating long ones for screen readability!

Review the dialogue scenes. Keeping in mind that dialog for each speaker is in a new paragraph.

This, sample dialogue below comes from Episode 5 of my 'Rescuing a Snow Angel' stories. Note how the dialogue of each speaker is in separate paragraphs and the descriptive, non-dialogue parts are also isolated from the spoken text quotes. Sometime, as in this case, an internal dialogue voice does better justice to the theme better than active dialogue lines could do alone. As mentioned earlier, the story incorporates known businesses and locations to add realism to the story's structure and continues to build upon bringing closure with references to earlier parts of the story. This is Jimmy speaking; a Vietnam POW hero's perspective:

The following day the mystery woman and stroller reappeared in the park. Today, her gaze seemed focused on the Worthington Building. It wasn't long before she stood up and pushed the stroller around the building and out of sight. Something didn't seem right about the way she kept surveilling the building, but I couldn't put a finger on it and went back to work. Pulling out of the parking lot after work, I drove around the block to the nearly finished restoration of the old Radisson Hotel into a modern condominium complex.

"Jimmy."

Came a soft voice from behind me. I knew the voice. A year ago, it spoke to me, filled with vile anger; wanting to know if I'd fucked her when she was asleep. I turned to see the vagrant that I had saved from freezing in the icy storm on Christmas eve; the same woman standing in the park with the stroller, was now standing three feet away.

"Hello, snow angel." My reply came out a little like a frog caught up in my throat.

"I've been thinking about you, Rachel," I added.

"Are you mad at me?" Her soft, hesitant words were spoken hardly above a whisper.

"Did you do something wrong to make me mad at you?" I asked, brushing aside her question.

"Yes, I broke your trust in me. I'm sorry Jimmy."

Her eyes were brimming with tears; that broke my resolve. No one should be standing in an empty parking lot crying - that just isn't right.

"You have a child, now?"

Sniffling, she replied, "She's in the car - with my boyfriend, Eric. Her name is Kathrine Anne; named after my mom."

"Are you happy?"

"I think so, Jimmy. That's the best answer I can give you now. I'm in the twelve-step process, Jimmy. You are on my list of people to make amends to. Jimmy, I'm really, really sorry that I took advantage of your kindness. I was an asshole for treating you the way I did after you saved my life. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, please."

I'd lost so many comrades and that weight of lost lives hung around my neck like an albatross for so many years. Finally, I managed to rescue a snow angel, nearly frozen to death in the hotel's empty parking lot on Christmas Eve. I got one miracle right; I saved a life. And even that was stripped from me the following morning as she left without saying good-bye. It's no damned wonder I fight demons nearly every night.

I raised my arms and Rachel flowed into them. The sobs racked her body and she cried her heart out. It was a good thing I was a head taller than she, the tears that crested from my own eyes couldn't be seen as I clutched her to my heart. After what seemed like hours, her cry subsided and I released her from my grasp.

"Thank you, Jimmy, thank you," she whispered as she turned and started to walk away - then turned back one more time.

"Jimmy, Kathrine Anne is Eric's - just so you know, Eric's, understand?"

The emotional tones of this story certainly pulled at the heartstrings of a number of individuals who dealt with that war. One anonymous commenter left 800 words about those turbulent times. His comment could be a story in its own right. At one point he wrote, "... It's nice that she cleans up purdy, that they made love, and that she followed his advice about returning home. It's not so nice that to get there she chose to rob the man who'd saved her life, [It would have been nice] asking for the money as a gift or loan. She is going to have to give up her street rat's virtue in exchange for the more mainstream "don't rob the people who help you," or even the classic "Thou shalt not steal," at least if she ever hopes to regain a normal life..."

Now, readers, that story really invoked empathy with that commenter! He wrote as though the characters were sitting next to him as he read the story!

[I have a reference note at the end of this missive about dialog writing from another Literotican's article. It does a good job of explaining why periods instead of commas come with the quotes as end punctuations.]

THIRD DRAFT - Second Set of Eyes

This is a coin toss item. By that I mean it would be a good time to have a second pair of eyes to review your story for continuity, and storyline flow. A second reader can also help spot grammar and spelling errors. Those eyes are new to the story and are somewhat disinterested in the content, if they have been given the chore of wading through grammar and spelling as their primary purpose for reading.

Even though you have read your work multiple times, you will find mistakes later. Your mind knows what you intended to write; it has worked the plot so many times that it is a memorized and replays the events as you perceive them. The mind gets engrossed in what it knows should be there. However, it can skate over an error having already 'read ahead of that action section' because it knows what should be on the page -- not what remains as an unspotted error on the page.

Another reviewer doesn't have that skating factor, she or he doesn't know your story fifty-ways-to-Sunday and every wart of every character you crafted. From that perspective a fresh set of eyes will catch those few remaining details for purging.

If another reviewer is not available or acceptable, then 'pass your eyes' over it for another vocalized reading, looking for those same jarring structures and to see if your perceptions of the actions are fluid. That the timelines are the way they should be according to your outline.

As Ms. Wilson remarked earlier in my citing, "Editing is important, but don't use it as an excuse to never share your work." You are posting on a free website that recognizes you and I are not professional writers. Thankfully, they allow us some leeway. Certainly, the readers, most of them, also appreciate that we did our best to entertain them and are not too 'groused' about a few hiccups in our missives.

Literotica has a list of perspective volunteer editors -- offering to read and advise you -- for free. Several guru level writers on Literotica have mentioned they use and encourage the use of such editors. I have a list at the end of this missive about editors and other site resources.

Kenjsato, a Literotica editor, graciously reviewed this post, acting as a 'second set of eyes' for me. He caught many mistakes -- ones that I fell prey to as I had already proofed it to the point that I was 'skating over' those obvious ones. Others, he caught that appeared due to my colloquial writing terms as well as finer points of grammar. That 'at-an-arms distance editor' really helped!

CODING FOR LITEROTICA PUBLISHING

Whew!

Just when you thought you were through! Now you must make your story pretty! Attractive for your readers and easy on their eyes; especially for those small reader devices.

I knew nothing about formatting stories on Literotica's site when I submitted my first story. I uploaded it as a Microsoft Word document. It sure 'looked pretty on my computer!' The kind folks at the upload source reviewed the document and 'published it.'

It sure didn't look the way I wrote it! What happened to my centered text? My italic use for 'mental dialogue' to distinguish it from regular speech? My bold? My color?

Alas, I found that any formatting in MS Word does not transfer: e.g., italic, centering, bold, and many others. However, Literotica does use a coding that is mentioned in a couple of obscure locations.

Now, before I submit my new articles to be published, I format the story in MS Word as I normally would do.

When I want a title centered on Literotica I add these <> codes as additional typing steps in my MS Word story. Then copy the entire story, and paste it into the Literotica submission box. It appears in a draft view mode [While you are in draft mode -- it doesn't have any formatting applied!] Once you select preview and publish mode - you will see it the way it appears to your readers. Carefully -- read the entire thing again! Sometimes you miss enter a code and everything looks cockeyed! Just have your word processor document open and look at the same spot as in the Literotica window. Keep correct the missing ingredients in the word document. When you have spotted and corrected them, then copy/paste it again into the Lit window. -- Yes, one more editing thing!

CODE EXAMPLE

< center> "How to Develop a Good Story" < /center>