VEJ June 2013

actions, and adventures that lead us to the pinnacle of a crisis in their life that creates a story.

There is simply you and your environment. Everything else becomes filler and imagery. So, how do we tell this story that will become engaging and memorable? How about this?

A person is at a computer – or better yet, let’s be trendier. A person is at a tablet, reading information on the Internet.

That’s a complete sentence but compared to our hall of fame heroes from before, it’s hardly worth remembering, no offense. I am sure you are a fascinating person so let’s take a look at that. What do you do, that is well… interesting?

Hmm, well you could be a teacher. Something a little less underappreciated… Or you skydive? That’s cool. Well, you may have done it once before but you chickened out the last minute because your friend was late and you wouldn’t do it without them. Well, you almost skydived. But let’s stretch the truth a bit. Exaggerating a bit is all about character creation for a story.

Our new sentence reads: A person, who is skydiving, is at her tablet reading information on the Internet. A little more exciting, but we can do better. Let’s see, what else can we do?

Now would be a good time to establish your environment or your setting. Well, it’s probably the middle of the day and you are at your office during your lunch break reading through all the new posts, emails, and feeds.

You can’t skydive indoors, so outside you are in a relatively suburban environment with lots of tall buildings and some spots of nature with trees and birds and stuff… How, umm – what’s the word I am looking for? Oh yes, mundane and monotonous!!! Readers are looking to escape from the normal and the every day.

Let’s exaggerate again and let’s decide on a genre for our story while we are at it. We can work with a cityscape. How about post-apocalyptic? Yes, a story about hope and rebirth is always an interesting tale. Post-apocalyptic settings or surreal utopian society genres have a great appeal to those 169