Craft Series | What Makes a Good Story?
What’s the difference between a good story and a bad one? Let me show you.
I have at least six scars on my face, some are more apparent than others, but all came from a rough childhood in the streets of Sanaa, Yemen. I want to tell you how I got two of them.
Scar One:
I got it when I was a kid after falling off a bike. I was cruising down a steep downhill, and instead of using the back tire brakes to stop, I mistakenly pulled the left handle to the front one. So I jumped, faced forward, and hit the pavement clean. I was taken to the hospital for some stitches. The scar is now hidden under my shy goatee.
Scar Two:
During the summer I turned eight, I decided I wanted to become a professional soccer player. So I spent a lot of time practicing on the newly tiled roof of our apartment building. One day my cousin, Ahmed, came over and we played together. We set up two goals using towels we found hanging on the clothesline. It was midday and the sun was scorching hot, creating a heat haze on the cement tiled floor. We played anyway, scoring on each other until we lost count. During one of my attacks, I decided instead of shooting the ball from far, to run around my cousins, and score in a more dramatic fashion. I successfully went through Ahmed by kicking the ball against the wall and receiving it from behind him. I ran towards his goal, and he ran behind me, screaming my name. When I was an arm's length away from the two towels, I tried to kick with all my power, to send a statement of dominance, instead, I stepped on the ball and fell forward landing with my face on the brick window sill. While sitting down, dizzy from the throbbing in my head, my cousin screamed, BLOOD! I put my hand where the pain was coming from, and my index finger went through my cheek, touching my tongue. Blood was all over.
Both are badly written snippets, but hopefully they get the point across— actually two: the ending, and specificity.
The first story starts with the end. Once we find out that I got the scar by falling from a bike, all the details thereafter seem less interesting. I could have made that story longer, as long as the second one by adding details about the hospital, the way the needle felt on my chin, and so on. But nothing will save it from its lack of interest. Some stories and movies start with the end and then work themselves backward. But those that are masterfully done keep an element of surprise withheld, like the movie Into the Wild or Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things.
Also, the story lacks specificity. ‘I got it when I was a kid,’ but is that at five or ten years old? Then when the damage happened, “I…hit the pavement clean.” Where exactly is the cut or how did it feel? To make this specific I could have said:
So I jumped, face forward, and hit the pavement, splitting open the skin on my chin bone.
Or something like that.
In the second story, we get a lot of specific details: the age, the cousin’s name, the ceramic tiled roof, and the heat creating a haze. But I think what makes this little story work is the anticipation or build-up. Technically we know the end, some sort of accident will occur. We get the image of my face landing on the brick window sill. We don’t know the shape of the damage, but Ahmed, the cousin, let us know there is BLOOD! The damage is severe we conclude, subconsciously, but how severe? This is the revelation that I think takes the reader by surprise:
I put my hand where the pain was coming from, and my index finger went through my cheek, touching my tongue.
My finger going through my cheek is an image I no longer remember, but that’s how I have always told the story. So I say it's true. But who cares, it works. When the story takes its time to create anticipation before surprising us with some sort of revelation we feel something: happy, sad, angry, or disgusted. It's satisfying.
A bad way to start the second story is:
One summer, I fell on the window sill on the roof of my house and cut my cheek….
Unless this is just a hook, and there is an element of surprise buried for later.