The Seven Tricks That Make Any Story Tellable

Some stories can't be told. There are dozens of reasons why they can't be written and published. They are stories that people might find intriguing, entertaining, horrifying, intense, touching, or sad. When you look at the story you know you have something that would be of interest to people.

The more colorful a life you have lived, the more stories you might have to share. Your imagination is on fire with ideas. You sit down at your computer and you picture this idea and that idea, chipping away at the ones that aren't ready. They've been percolating in your mind for years. Somehow, you haven't figured out a way to tell the tale without putting yourself or the ones you love in a bullseye.

Maybe, you consider telling them because it would be cathartic. Writing can be like self-therapy. They have rattled around in your mind for so long that you wonder if they aren't haunting your current-day life. You need to get them out but are too insecure and self-conscious about the details becoming public.

Once, a story popped into my mind that I decided against. It was called the Secret, the Stripper, and the Secretary. I decided against the story for tactical reasons. In short, it wasn't time yet. I still don't know that it is, but maybe.

There is a way to tell any story that you need to rid yourself of, any tale that has been rattling around in that twisted corner of your imagination, and share any misguided adventures from the pallet of your life. You just have to tread carefully, walk the tightrope, and learn when to color with different brushes than were used when the story happened to you.

Names Of People Involved Have Been Changed To Save From Embarrassment.

It requires some thought, but some stories can be written by simply changing a few names. Look at the fictionalized series, Law And Order. The stories we're seeing played out by our heroes, Benson and Stabler, are based on true events. Otherwise, the show might find itself liable if it gets anything wrong. Then, you have to consider the victims. You wouldn't want to bring up bad memories or expose their trauma to the world without their permission.

Changing a few names does the trick. If your name was Beth, and you're writing a story about attending your first orgy, you might want to change your name to Heather if you're interested in protecting your pillar of the community, Catholic soccer mom, persona. If you were involved in an event that turned a community upside down, then you should go with something as far away from your name as possible. Rick becomes Gargamel. Get the picture.

Events Can Be Modified For Fiction And Mockumentary Stories

How colorful was your life? On a scale of 1-10, what would you give yourself as a score? Many people are answering 3 or 4. That's fine unless you're lying to yourself.

For those that are more colorful, considering you answered the question by saying 12.5, you've got a lot you can tell the world...just remember there is no statute of limitations on stupidity, or higher-level felonies. Perhaps you heard a story around your local town that you want to tell, how someone was suspected of doing something so terrible that it was like saying the name of he who shall not be mentioned.

Changes in events can help you to tell a story that sounds too tough to share. Instead of participating in the naked run, tripping and stumbling, and getting road rash on your balls, make yourself into a spectator. Spectate the event and share how your college girlfriend wiped out during the naked mile. Make things as outlandishly funny as possible, change the names of the current supreme court justice who wound up with road rash on her butt, and hit publish.

Location, Location, Location

Location is key unless it's going to embarrass you or me. Then it becomes negotiable. One trick to remember is to keep up with the best writing advice ever given by anyone on the planet. Write what you know.

If you're changing the location of a story, use places that you know and are similar in size and demographics to the original. Don't move a completely small-town story to Los Angeles, unless you know a neighborhood you can fit it into.

If you're emulating your hometown, keep it as consistent as possible. Use some other area within four to six hours of home, and then begin transplanting the details.

If it's a completely insane, embarrassing tale about a wild party, and you're going to share events, you might want a complete change. Champaign Illinois becomes the fictional, vampire haven of Forks Washington. Get the idea?

When Is Fun To Play With

Time periods are negotiable in writing fiction. You can drop yourself into any time frame you desire. You have to do the research but imagine something you did in the 80s or 90s that wasn't as socially acceptable as it is today. Whether it was a naked hike through a forest or streaking the quad, something as simple as social nudity is much more widely accepted.

Did anybody see the pair of boobs walking behind that topless girl during the heatwave in July? Not a sentence that you'd have expected as much in the 80s, but in many jurisdictions in the year 2023, it's completely legal for girls to run around topless and guys can still be idiots about boobs.

Consider the time of an event, the visit to a place, or even the sinister thoughts in your evil mind as a needle that can easily be moved when you're trying to decide on telling a story or not because of the sensitive, risque, or embarrassing details.

Why'd That Happen

If your story is about you, and all the details are changed, then it shouldn't matter if the world hears the story. If it still seems hard to write, and makes you anxious, ask this question.

"What was my why?"

Did you have a motivation for something, or did someone else have a motivation, that perhaps doesn't make sense now but did at the time?

Example: "After everything my sister did, I want to do you just teach her a lesson."

Yes, I heard that phrase thrown out once because of a particularly vile human and someone's thirst to exact some measure of revenge. At the time that was a heck of a temptation to throw into an already mixed up and confusing time in someone's life. I'm sure that both people look back at that today and would question their motivations, even though at the time they might have found comfort and easier justifications for their actions.

Understanding the motivation in stories, particularly ones that are troublesome or based on questionable subject matter, is important to the characters. The more you understand how the motivation reads, the more you can decide if it's something the readers will understand or not. Thus, you can turn your readers sympathetic to the tale of the main person in your story.

How Is Multi-Faceted

The most multi-faceted aspect of a story, and one of the most important questions to answer before the conclusion, is how.

How did that happen?

• How did he/she get involved?
• How did a situation get so complex?
• How did they catch the bad guy?
• How did the hero save the day?
• How do we stop this from happening again?

The how of things needs exploring in any tale, whether it's humorous, dramatic, thrilling, adventurous, romantic, or horror. How do people get themselves into such positions? How in the hell did that happen? How have we never seen such a thing before? How did we elect back-to-back, the worst choices for presidents? Someday, that last one's likely to be the title of a political science book.

Don't Overthink Your Story

Every story can be told. However, anyone that's been practicing the craft of writing will tell you, the writer is the hardest person to please when it comes to their own stories. Writers are thinkers and thinkers tend to overthink, whether they're at the level of Hemingway or just starting to work on their first book report.

Yes, some stories are harder to tell than others. We live in an interesting world filled with intriguing, goofy, crazed lunatics. And those are the ones that wrote the laws and control the outcome. The rest of us are just trying to get by, have a little, or a lot of fun as the case may be, and experience the world. Don't let the complexities of human behavior, political behavior, acceptance, social norms, or morally questionable decisions influence your writing enough it stops your story.

It's the crazy stuff that people really seem to flock to, in case you haven't noticed.