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I'm supposing you write creatively? Your notes are quite well put together, and I notice you have some OCs under the 'stars' page. I write creatively myself. Currently I'm writing a short story based off of DH Lawrence's 'The Prussian Officer'. I think short stories and TV episodes are a good place to analyse story-writing (Movies as well). Due to their briefness, they concentrate storytelling to a very fine point. One thing I've noticed about successful stories is that they are essentially all about desire and tension and stakes. Desire is what your character wants. Stakes are what they might lose by not getting it. From there they essentially spend the whole story balanced on a knife-point of ever increasing tension. I think tension is the most important, and the one I'm personally having most difficulty with. If you open any random book; a good one, or at least a bestseller, you will notice a certain tension right from the first sentence-- a feeling that things are not quite right, that things are just a bit uncomfortable, that things aren't quite what they used to be--that something is about to 'happen', essentially. That something *has* to happen. 'Father Azetti was tempted.'- The first line of 'The Genesis Code' by John Case. 'Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.' -the first line of Ernest Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises' 'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen'- the first line of George Orwell's 1984 Sometimes this tension can be generated by a bold claim, or a strange worldview that seeks justification. 'I have seen God creating the cosmos, watching its growth, and finally destroying it.'- the first line of 'Nebula Maker' by Olaf Stapledon. or, more famously; 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.'- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen. Every writer who's heard some basic advice knows that conflict is the heart of story. Your character desires something. He has a certain stake in getting it, but an opponent, or opponents, also have a stake in preventing him from getting it, or beating him to it. This leads to generalized tension throughout the story. For example in Die Hard, a bunch of terrorists take over the building Bruce WIllis was visiting to meet his estranged wife. The stakes for Bruce Willis are high. He must save his wife, thus he must stop the terrorists. At the same time the stakes for the terrorists are high. If their plans are foiled, it means death or life imprisonment. They must save themselves, which means stopping Bruce Willis. However it seems that what keeps readers reading or watchers watching is not exactly the central conflict, though of course they are invested in that as well. Conflict must be present in smaller ways throughout. I think the steady use of tension helps in this case. This is not necessarily a function of the larger conflict or the stakes of the story. It is not exactly keeping the reader in suspense over what will happen over the length of the story, but over the next few seconds of screen-time or the next few paragraphs of the page. I believe this comes from the use of emotions-- and not just emotions but emotions in conflict. For example when characters are put on the spot in some small way, or when a point of contention opens between two or more characters; we want to see whether the character will get out of it; or the debatees will reconcile. Conflict must be teased out artfully. 'Are you calling me a liar?' attracts more attention than ' Good morning, dude.'. 'You know we shouldn't do this.' draws more attention than 'Fine weather we're having, isn't it?' The DH Lawrence story I'm analysing is full of this sort of 'micro-tension'. There are two principal characters in this story. The eponymous 'Prussian Officer', and his army orderly, his man servant basically. From the get go there is a certain tension established. The Prussian Officer, an older man in his 40s finds himself perturbed by his orderly's youthful vivacity. He finds himself obsessively compelled to humiliate the orderly. The orderly meanwhile, simply wants to survive his tenure with the officer without going mad. So for the orderly, the stakes are keeping his sanity; for the prussian officer things are less clear; you are unsure if he is just keeping his pride or if there is a certain homoerotic tension at play here, which he can't properly express. Anyway the story crackles with tension. Little points of conflict and conflicting emotions. 'They had marched more than thirty kilometres since dawn, along the white, hot road where occasional thickets of trees threw a moment of shade, then out into the glare again.' 'He could now walk almost without pain.' 'The Captain's hand had trembled at taking his coffee at dawn: his orderly saw it again.' 'The orderly felt he was connected with that figure moving so suddenly on horseback:he followed it like a shadow, mute and inevitable and damned by it. And the officer was always aware of the tramp of the company behind, the march of his orderly among the men.' 'For the rest, the orderly scarcely noticed the officer any more than he noticed himself.' 'To his orderly he was at first cold and just and indifferent: he did not fuss over trifles. So that his servant knew practically nothing about him, except just what orders he would give, and how he wanted them obeyed. That was quite simple. Then the change gradually came.' .... And so on. All of this is relatively easy to explain, but putting it on paper myself is like sweating blood. Anyway, sorry about all this rambling. I can put together a hell of an essay when I'm trying to avoid writing. ~~Anonymous 2023-04-23(Sun)06:50:28 No.141

I never expected such an effortpost here. Life truly is all about surprises. >I'm supposing you write creatively? Your notes are quite well put together, and I notice you have some OCs under the 'stars' page. Hmm. I'm not sure. Writing, in general, is not something I do very often. I was focusing on character design until very recently, but I have written a few stories here and there (that I never published anywhere, of course). I make characters to use them in stories, and I do have a writing project in the works featuring one of them that I'll publish here, time permitting. As for your comment about my notes, thank you very much. >One thing I've noticed about successful stories is that they are essentially all about desire and tension and stakes. I loved this mini-essay of yours. As the most amateurish of amateurs, I had never noticed this consciously, but in hindsight the importance of conflict is quite clear (and dare I say "obvious"?). I went through the books in my bookshelf and, indeed, tension is felt right from the first sentence, as you said. This all reminded me of a hilarious book I read a few years ago titled "How NOT to write a novel"; one of the first mistakes it mentions is writing a story without conflict and that, therefore, goes nowhere. Marvelous! Your thoughts on emotions and "micro-tensions" are interesting and make sense. You say the story you're analyzing "crackles with tension" and has "little points of conflict and conflicting emotions". Are all successful stories like this? It sure seems like it when I think about it, as I can't put my finger on any stories that lack this. I'm not sure if you're gonna see this, but what are some examples of stories that fail at this? Or are they hard to find precisely because they aren't engaging enough to remember? Good luck with your story and thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. ~~cidoku ## Admin 2023-04-23(Sun)13:49:17 No.142

>I'm not sure if you're gonna see this, but what are some examples of stories that fail at this? Or are they hard to find precisely because they aren't engaging enough to remember? It's definitely hard to put your finger on specific stories which fail at this. When I struggled to think of published work, my mind wandered to fanfiction, where examples are rife, but still, I couldn't name any one particular story. The problems themselves are easier to remember than the works which feature them. Various 'low tension traps'; like leaving your characters with nothing at stake (nothing to lose), or leaving them with no desire (nothing to gain), or having nothing that opposes them... Poorer works often begin with things that are naturally anathemic to reader enjoyment; Exposition dumps, descriptions of how great life is for the protagonist before the story gets rolling, descriptions of the weather... The biggest sin would be that there is nothing to lose. In real life, when you see a car accident, you find yourself transfixed. The fact that you are witnessing a real event with your own eyes brings a sort of intimacy to it. You'd think 'There but for the grace of God go I...' Essentially it makes you think about hoe you too could lose your life. In fiction no such tension exists, since you know from the outset that none of it is real. You know you will not lose your life or your sanity or whatever. You have nothing to lose. So an author must introduce you to a character, make you bond with them, and then give *them* something to lose, so that you, who cares about them, will start to worry, and keep those pages turning. However, poor writers dont give their audience anything to worry about. Their characters are physically invulnerable, socially on top, emotionally stable-- whenever an unpleasant situation seems to rear its head the writer quashes it before the audience had any time to fret. A writer should be like a torturer; putting the thumbtacks to their victims until it becomes almost too much to take. Only then can they pull back and provide some relief. For example, a tense dialogue exchange would start with something like 'So let me get this straight...' From then on the dialogue is a conflict; one character struggling to convice the other of something. It could also start with 'It's not right to...' after which it would probably be an argument about morals; two worldviews in conflict, always interesting. A poor writer would probably start an exchange of dialogue with something dull and neutral 'Good Morning...' or 'Did you catch the game last night?' (Although, in certain contexts, these can be modified to produce some tension. '"Did you catch the game last night?" he said, with a mocking smile.') ~~Anonymous 2023-04-23(Sun)14:52:44 No.143