“A cloudless plain blue sky is like a flowerless garden.” (Terri Guillemets)
Ah, the beautiful sky. And what can make the sky even more beautiful? Clouds, of course. And their shadows floating over the mountains.
Just as a sky needs clouds, so do stories. Beautiful blue sky and fluffy cloud scenes are good in a story. But wait. A story needs more than that. If my characters have only blue skies and happy, happy days with nothing to work for and no troubles to face, then the story will lack conflict.
Story people need to face challenges and find a way to overcome when dark clouds threaten them. All of us have some dark cloud times that storm into our lives. For fictional people to become real, they have to face those same kinds of dark clouds that will rain down problems on them. As readers, we want to see the characters we care about come through those storms.
Without problems, there is no story. Characters must overcome whatever obstacles are in the way of their happily ever after. Sometimes that’s a bad character like a witch or evil wizard in a fairytales–an easily identified bad guy. Does this cloud make you think of a story monster? It did me.
In many stories, the bad guy is not so easily identified. Sometimes the conflict comes from people the character loves. Sometimes characters are their own worst enemy as some sort of emotional inner conflicts can cause them to careen off on the wrong road. Nature can put up roadblocks for them with storms or mountain ranges or vast seas. Wars can threaten their very lives and/or everything they hold dear.
But one sure thing in every story that holds a reader’s interest, some dark clouds will come along to darken their bright blue sky of their happiness. They will have to fight through those clouds or embrace those clouds or float over those clouds or maybe duck under them. Some characters will face whatever that conflict is without flinching while others will try to avoid their problems by hiding behind a fluffy cloud of denial but end up falling squarely into whatever problem they must overcome.
The best stories, in my mind, have the characters you are cheering for find a way back into a happy blue sky with new experience and courage to face whatever new storms they might face in the future.
But I’m wishing you all fluffy white clouds like the ones in the photo above.
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be? – it is the same the angels breathe. ~Mark Twain, “Roughing It”
What makes a great story for you when you’re reading?
The Winner is:
Susan F of NC was the winner of her choice of a Shaker book, a Rosey Corner book, or Words Spoken True. In my post about Words Spoken True, she said Blake, the main male character, didn’t sound like her kind of hero. But she still chose that book, partly to see if the story could change her mind. I think it will. Maybe she’ll report back to us after she reads the story.
I also picked a 2nd winner just for fun. Christie M, I sent you an email. If I don’t hear from her, maybe I’ll pick someone else.