Writing Advise: Throwing Stones
By Desertbird
@Desertbird (323)
United States
January 4, 2007 9:08pm CST
When I was younger and first starting out with writing, I often had trouble figuring out how to keep the story interesting. When I was so frustrated that I was about to give up, a friend of the family who had made it her career to write gave me some valuable advise: "After you chase your characters up a tree, throw stones at them."
What this means is, put as many challenges as you can think up against your characters. This not only helps the story move along, but also makes the story more interesting. Always keep your character on their toes, keeping them on constant alert, avoiding throws and recovering from hits.
Hope this helps all you prospective writers out there.
1 person likes this
13 responses
@craftwave (1338)
• United States
6 Jan 07
Yeah my writing teacher sort of said the same thing. He said ask the question what if. What if such and such happens and as a result what if such nd such happens. Good idea.
@Desertbird (323)
• United States
8 Jan 07
Yea, it is basically the same concept, but the way my friend worded it just made it stick more.
@samvedana (59)
• United States
15 Jan 07
unh! unh! I tried doing that, You know what, It didn't work as I thought it would. My charecters were introduced as real..their personalities are built more practically, now just to get a twist to my story, I added some complications and crucial events wherein the charecter would grow up and come out with solution, at that point, my charecters turned self contradicting :)
My advise is think of charecter first, what do you want to convey through that charecter and time the change you want to bring into your charecters.
@Desertbird (323)
• United States
16 Jan 07
Yes, knowing the basic foundations of your characters helps in building conflict and developing their personalities.
@creativedreamweaver (7297)
• United States
8 Jan 07
That is a good technique. I have a certain writing situation that I am going to try it out on later on today, when I get back to my story. I hope it works. Thanks for the tip.
@savvywriter (27)
• United States
10 Jan 07
This was very cute, yet helpful advice. Nothing makes a story better then having your characters deal with hard stuff.
@opinder (420)
• India
17 Jan 07
thanks mate!! there was a time when i contemplated taking up creative writing as a career. i dropped the idea though. but this sure is a handy tip even for short stories and stuff. i basically writ non-fiction, but with this tip i might as well turn to fiction!!
@KrauseHome (36448)
• United States
5 Jan 07
Great advice, and I think it even applies to stories and such you might want to Write for sites online that pay, or when you Start New discussions, etc. such as this. Writing can be an awesome profession, and does pay pretty well if you allow yourself to pursue it. I am going to try and make 2007 a Good yr for me with my Writing etc. to where I make what I want to be making, and Happy with my accomplishments with such.
@danishcanadian (28953)
• Canada
5 Jan 07
Great idea!!!
I tend to write non-fiction, so it's all there infront of me, but this is still a good idea.
@mcrowl (1050)
• New Zealand
5 Jan 07
Good peice of advice, though I find I have to go through my summary of a story (particularly a novel) so many times before I'm feeling good about it, that I spend an awful lot of times throwing stones, and then have to apologise to the characters for doing so...LOL
@Anayden (62)
• Arlington, Texas
8 Jan 07
I totally agree. You are very insightful, never thought about the tree analogy before.
