How to capture an idea to write a story or else

Getting an idea to write story is like deciding to run in a marathon race where you haven’t trained. You must have the ability to finish but your progress should be slow, painful and exhausting. While writing, an empty page will turn into miles of empty roadway that you have to take several hours to cross it.

Brilliant ideas seem to be alive, carrying a story forward with their own energy, filling pages with little effort from the writer. But finding such an idea is a challenge, especially if you look it in a wrong place. You cannot expect to simply get an idea from empty space. Ideas exist in the physical world and in creative works.

You can take a look at other people’s writing to get the ideas. Good writers are always good readers. Build an array of short story collections; make sure you include a variety of styles, tones and eras. The above collections will give you with the hundreds of plots, characters etc.

Another place to find an idea is from real-life stories. One place to find strange, inspiring ideas is Wikipedia. The online encyclopedia has a wealth of unusual people, animals, and historical events just waiting to be turned into a brilliant story.

Picture galleries are another great source for story ideas. Take a picture and ask yourself, "What is the relationship between these people in the picture? What are they thinking about? What happened just before this picture was taken? What happened afterwards?"

Once you get started looking for ideas, you will probably find more than you will ever be able to use. Instead of spending hours struggling with writer's block, you'll spend days just deciding which stories to write.

Know the concept of fiction writing

Fiction writing is any kind of writing that is not factual. Fictional writing most often takes the form of a story meant to convey an author's point of view or simply to entertain. The result of this may be a short story, novel, novella, screenplay, or drama, which are all types of fictional writing styles.

Elements of Fiction
The elements of fiction are given below:

1. Character
2. Plot
3. Setting
4. Theme
5. Style

A character is any person, identity, or entity whose existence originates from a fictional work or performance.

A plot, or storyline, is the rendering and ordering of the events and actions of a story, particularly towards the achievement of some particular artistic or emotional effect.

Setting is the time and location in which a story takes place.

Theme is the broad idea, message, or lesson of a story.

Style includes the huge number of choices fiction writers make, consciously or subconsciously, as they create a story. They include the big-picture, strategic choices such as point of view and narrator, but they also include the basic essentials, tactical choices of grammar, punctuation, word usage, sentence and paragraph length and structure, tone, the use of images, chapter selection, titles, etc.,.

The author should create a unique style of writing. The components of style are many, mainly includes the following: point of view, choice of narrator, fiction-writing mode, person and tense, grammar, punctuation, word usage, sentence length and structure, paragraph length and structure, tone, imagery, chapter usage and title selection.

The Wanderer Conducts Halloween Short Story Contest 2010

The Wanderer (Serving the communities of Marion, Mattapoisett and Rochester in Southeastern Massachusetts), is proud to present its annual story contest for the celebration of Halloween 2010. They have received too many stories from Tri-town authors of all ages. The winner of the contest and the list of all authors will be published in their October 28, 2010 edition.

Please find the summary of the few stories submitted to The Wanderer for the Short Story Contest - Halloween 2010.

Story 1: The Tale of Laurel McReeve

A cold, steady rain had been falling since noon, each raindrop a nail in the coffin of Laurel McReeve’s happiness. Trick-or-treating was out of the question, her mother insisted. “Maybe we can go to the movies instead?”

Laurel was devastated. Mrs. Geddes had spent all month teaching her fourth-grade class about the origins of Halloween: about the Festival of Samhain and All Hallows Eve, when the souls of the dead came back to mingle with the living for one night. Now Laurel could only sit helplessly by the window – in full ghost costume – and hope for the weather to break.

Story 2: Nameless

Five kids sat cross-legged around a crackling campfire, taking advantage of the cool fall weather. The smell of burning wood filled the air. A small boy got up, declaring loudly that he had a scary Halloween story to tell. Everyone begged him to tell it.

“Every Halloween exactly at midnight” the boy began, “a man kills someone who hears this story.”

Story 3: Untitled

Hi, I’m Veronica. I’m a small town girl. Well small town to me, maybe not to you. Our small town of Bloodville is filled with monsters. Literally. Yeah, you guessed it, I’m a monster. To be more exact, I’m a vampire.

My dad, Jerry, owns the store “Fangs ‘n’ Thangs.” My mom, well, is just a stay-at-home-mom. It’s probably the best thing ever. My brother Joey is just an annoying little five-year old, that looks up to me. My best friend, Aubrie, is the best friend in the whole world on earth! I couldn’t live without her!

To read the entire story, please visit the following page Halloween Story Contest