How on Earth Do You Tell a Good Story?

I stumble about in my writing and find myself writing trite stories without enough plot to sustain them (and I refer to novels or short stories, either one). Or I find myself telling a story that's been told too often before without anything really original about it.

I do think that reading widely helps. Not just in your favorite type of story or book, but in others, too. You might be able to use ideas from mysteries to create more suspense and conflict in your science fiction story, or even in your non-fiction writing. You also become acquainted with what makes a story interesting or dull. It helps to go back and study the story you've just read and look for what made it good or bad.

Reading about writing helps you know what to look for when you're analyzing a story, such as how the author handled setting, characters, plot, and so forth. As you read about writing, you will occasionally come across a piece by an editor who tells what sorts of stories have been done to death--like having the whole thing turn out to have been a dream. It isn't necessarily that you can't use that device. It's just that if you do so, you'll need to make it very interesting and give it some original twists and turns.

Another thing that helps a lot to is practice writing. You'll start to notice things like making your characters too perfect (or too evil if they're the bad guys). You'll notice if your plot is too thin to sustain the story or if you have a tendency to explain everything as you go along, thus killing any suspense.

I have been pondering the problems of writing stories about faith and religion. How can you make them interesting and intriguing? How can you write about faith without preaching or resolving problems too easily? I still haven't come to terms with this one, but I think the potential is there for some really interesting stories that many people could relate to.

I think about how to handle evil, too. I personally do not want to read a story that's full of sex and violence, for example, or that is depressing in the extreme. I don't think it is necessary to put in that sort of content to portray conflict, but I would still want the conflict to be serious enough to warrant a story about it.

Then there are the endings. I want a satisfying ending, and I think most readers do, as well. To reach the end of an interesting story only to find that nothing is resolved is very disappointing. A writer can leave some things unresolved or partially resolved, but the main thing the story was about should have a satisfying finish.

I'm still floundering around a bit on how to write a good story, but the more I read and the more I write, the more I see things that I can improve and the closer I move (albeit slowly) toward telling a good story.