Ten Rules for a Good Story
Ah. Grad school. If you have seen a discussion board on d2l (or Canvas, or Blackboard, etc.) in the last few years, you will know how miserable the whole thing can be. It’s not the writing I mind, it’s the forced interaction through artificial structures and constructs- and the cold, cold pseudo-friendliness.
Imagine my utter JOY when my 9100 Qualitative Research Methods professor asked us to write a discussion board post giving a “decalogue of what makes a good story”. So. Much. Yes. The following is what I wrote in about 30 minutes while in a heady haze of former English-major mania. Man, I love stories!
1. A good story must be more than a good story. That is, it must also introduce the reader to a deeper idea or realization. For example, Kelly Yang’s Front Desk series is not just a story about an immigrant Chinese family making their way in 1990s California. It’s a story about the journey of self-determination and self-acceptance that both entertains its audience, and educates them about the ways that they may, themselves, be perpetuating stereotypes or existing in privilege.
2. A good story must be interesting. Whether it follows the hallowed shape of Freytag’s pyramid or borrows from one Vonnegut’s shapes of stories, there has to be a problem, rising tension and complexity, and some kind of resolution. Humans… they like to be on the edge of their seat.
3. A good story should be imaginative. The audience should not read it and think, “Well. I could have written this!” Even masters of literary realism show imagination in structure, style, etc.
4. A good story should linger in the recesses of your memory. It floats around and eventually meshes itself to your core memories. You find yourself thinking, “Did I have a chasidic friend who was a born artist, and thus was exiled from his religious community? Or did I read that in a book?” (I read it in a book! And if you haven’t read My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, you should rectify that immediately.)
5. A good story spurs the reader to action. We read Deborah Ellis’ The Breadwinner and through the depiction of a 12 year old girl living under the thumb of the Taliban, we see the need to fight for equal rights for women, and for the right all people should have to an education.
6. A good story varies its pace. As my student Tony said this week, “Of course they skipped the part where they walked home. Who wants to read the boring stuff?” We slow down when we want to linger in a moment of revelation, and we speed up (or time warp) when we need to “get to the good part”.
7. A good story borrows from and build on other good stories. HELLO, Rick Riordan! We see you! But seriously, all of literature calls back in time to what has been written before, and issues an invitation to texts that are yet to come. (Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is another must-read, especially for Jane Eyre lovers. Another more modern example of this is The Barren Grounds, David Robertson’s re-imagining of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but indigenous mythology and the frozen tundra of what is modern day Canada.)
8. A good story makes you want to read other good stories. (If Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is not a gateway drug to the fantasy Genre…. what is it??)
9. A good story is satisfying. (I am so not a cliffhanger person!)
10. A good story has internal and external conflict. It explores forces, groups, and people in conflict with one another, and also delves into the ways that we are in conflict with ourselves. As Harry fights with Voldemort, for example, he is also at war with his own identity. He hates the part of himself that he knows makes him eerily similar to his enemy. He desires a stark contrast between good and evil, but struggles with the grey reality he finds himself in. The story is not over until both battles have been waged and won.
