Making Your Stories Truthful

Have you ever taken a writing class or met someone who tells you to try to make your stories truthful? Do you even know what that means? I'm of the belief that one who learns something recently is better able to explain it to others, because those who have known something for a long time will assume that others know things that they take for granted, and it makes their teaching suffer. (hopefully that made sense)

Anyway, for the lesson: I believe that making stories truthful means making them as true to reality as they can be. Now this doesn't mean make them boring, it means let what should happen happen, and dont try to control where the story goes. Do you know JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series? I believe in the sixth book, one of her favorite characters dies (I won't name the character because I don't want to ruin the story). She didn't want the character to die, but knew she had to do it for the sake of the story being truthful.

That is the difference... Making a story truthful means that you take a story somewhere that you may not like, just because somewhere in your gut you feel it is more "right" in the story sense. Don't take the easy way out by making a story decision that helps advance the plot in the direction you want it to go. Make a decision based on where the story should go, even if it's different than what you originally had in mind.

It's writing for crying out loud! If you don't like it you can always go back. But if you don't explore new possibilities and take risks in your storytelling, you'll never become a better writer.

I believe that the more often you take these risks and try new things, the faster you'll become better at what you do.