Moments in Stories by Allison Symes

Image Credits: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.

 Are there stand out moments in stories for you? Yes, Allison, you cry, loads. Same here.

 

Favourite moment from The Lord of the Rings was the relationship between ancient enemies, the elf, Legolas, and dwarf, Gimli, when they face almost certain death.

Gimli: I never thought I’d die fighting side by side with an elf.
Legolas:  How about dying side by side with a friend?
Gimli:  Aye, I can manage that.

Deeply moving. 

Moments in stories can be laugh out loud (Wodehouse and Pratchett are sublime here). What about our tales? Are we creating stand out moments?

Not consciously for the first draft is my response. I get that draft down. I rest it. I look to improve it and then I can see whether something stands out to grab the reader’s attention. 

Sometimes it is the closing line. I often end my flash pieces on a twist ending or punchline. Sometimes it is the opening line where I have tried to set up something memorable immediately (and in these cases it is often the character voice which stands out).

I can’t see how you can judge the memorable moments until you have gone through the editing process at least once. What I know is there should be something about each story which will grab the reader’s attention and not let them go until they’ve finished reading. 

Or in the case of the novel they get to a convenient point where they can stop. I recall my first reading of Tolkien’s wonderful trilogy. I had to make myself stop. Needed sleep. But I couldn’t wait until I could get back to reading again and that is the challenge all writers face. We need to capture something of that must keep on reading moment for our readers.

I must care about the characters to read on so I rely on them to create stand out moments. If I am asked to recall a favourite story, it will be the characters I recall and from there why.

Why do you care about your characters enough to write their stories up? There must be something special about them to get you to do this. Is that special quality coming through to a reader? 

Rooting for a character to succeed is a wonderful way to create stand out moments. I often root for a character to fail, such as the Sheriff of Nottingham as played by the late, great Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. 

He played the role so well I was almost sorry when he failed. That is unusual. Normally I am cheering when the villain gets their overdue justice. But his scenes were memorable ('…and call off Christmas!'); they were stand out moments.

When I am editing, I am checking if my characters deliver on stand out moments. I don’t want anything falling flat. I must be gripped by what my character is going through for there to be any chance readers will feel the same way.