From Science Fiction Writer's Workshop-I

Ever since our fur-clad ancestors gathered around a campfire or huddled in a cave to listen to a story, a "good" story had to contain certain things. What is it that can take a practical, no nonsense, day-to-day type of person (such as our ancestral hunters and farmers were) and have him sitting on the edge of his stump listening to tales of ghosts, impossible heroics, and outrageous superstitions? It is a mystery, except to the storyteller. The storyteller knows that the audience has pains, frustrations, disappointments, crushing doubts, and fears. And the teller of tales knows that the audience is more than willing to trade their lives of mundane, petty evasions for dream worlds of challenge, mystery, and adventure as seen through the mind's eye of the storyteller.

Stories are lies; and the storyteller is a liar. But few think in such terms. Honest, hardworking people sit enraptured, willingly absorbing the lies, finding within them reflections of themselves and their views of the world; right defeating evil, the worth of an individual will, the triumph of justice, the spirits of both man and woman raised above the mean existence of everyday survival. In the storyteller's lies, they find a kind of truth. Perhaps not the kind of truth that is; but the kind that should be. During the story, the truths are lived; afterwards feelings of those truths remain, to be remembered and touched during reality's unceasing efforts to drive men and women into the futile mire of sameness.

There is more that the storyteller knows to make the use of his skill profitable. There must be in the story a being of some sort that the listener can see, can understand, can become. And this being must be tested. Many spend their lives fearing and avoiding tests, confrontations, demands. This is why the creation of the storyteller must be tested, and must rise to meet that test. The courage, the loyalty, the love, the vengeance, and the pain we possess but pale images of, we see resplendent through the special truths of the storyteller. We feel that in some universe-the storyteller's universe-we could be not what we are, but what we should be. The storyteller's universe reflects our pain and tells us that we are not alone; it grapples with our doubts and questions and tells us who we are, or who we might become. And this is why, when the storyteller talks, everyone else stops their chatter and listens.

A basic, elementary story follows:

"A STORY"

Once upon a time in a certain place there lived a being who had both strengths and a flaw. This being wanted to achieve a goal. However, there was an obstacle between the being and its goal of such a nature that it attacked the being at its weakest point-its flaw. The being realized that, to achieve its goal, it must overcome the obstacle.

The being struggled to remove the obstacle, trying first one thing, then the next; each time failing-the goal remaining just out of reach. The being at last designed a plan that would make its weakness invulnerable to the obstacle and would, at the same time, achieve its goal.

The plan failed; the being realized its weakness could not be made invulnerable.

The being put on one last, desperate effort to overcome its weakness, and by so doing, the being overcame the obstacle and achieved its goal.

The End

Simply by substitution, thousands of different stories can be told by using the structure above. "A Story" is not the formula for all stories; there are many other story structures. However, the tale above does contain all of the parts of a story....