When developing a short story, I have realized it is not necessarily the details of the situation or the scenery but rather how the character can be built up by not necessarily revealing his identity. After writing my short story, I realized it is important to leave room for the reader to imagine the character. If we are writing a short story such as “He had brown hair and green eyes. He dressed fairly well. He had anger problems that he had to see a doctor for,” it gives away the story and loses interest of the reader. However, I have also realized that details from the scenery and situation and such can contribute to the character development in some ways too. It leaves room for the reader to explore how they contribute to the development of the character.
In our small groups, we discussed each others short stories. They were all very different but all the same in some ways. We were all trying to develop our characters and some way. And all though are stories were not similar in plot they were similar in that we described our character without giving away their true identities. It is obvious that characters are somewhat limited to what we encounter on a daily basis: how we engage with others, individuals that we passionate about and have relationships with. However, that makes character development that much better.
In one of my previous posts I highlighted that we often engage with characters the same way we engage with people. This idea kept coming back to my head when trying to develop my short story. And even though I am not completely sure I accomplished this, I believe it becomes easier to write a character based story when you focus on this concept. Ask yourself “is this how I could interact with my character?” “If I was reading this story, would I be convinced that this would happen to me?”
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