Hi Elizabeth,
One of the best ways to make sure a story doesn’t peter out is to show your story in action rather than to tell what your story is about. For example, in my novel Hope’s War
http://www.calla.com/hope.html
I begin with a very simple scene, about a grade 10 student on her first day in a school for the arts. I could have written something like this:
In grade nine, Kat almost got expelled from St. Paul’s high school, but then the principal had her tested and it turned out she was gifted. When she went to her new school the first day, she was nervous. Her friends from St. Paul’s seemed mad at her and the kids at the new school didn’t know her. There was only one student who would even talk to her.
The above gets the message across, but it’s telling about the story rather than showing the story.
how to make a story does not peter out
Here’s what I wrote instead:
Kat Baliuk felt like a traitor.
She hugged her books to her chest and stepped onto the sidewalk as the bus stopped in front of Cawthra School for the Arts, then she turned and waved faintly to her friends. They were staying on until the next stop: St. Paul’s Catholic High school. No one waved back. They were already involved in animated conversations without her. Kat’s older sister Genya was also staying on the bus with a group of her friends until the St. Paul’s stop, but Genya did turn and wink reassuringly at her little sister just as the bus pulled away.
Kat ran her fingers nervously through her dark blonde hair, hoping that it didn’t look as flyaway as it felt. Classes didn’t start for another twenty minutes. She looked through her wire-rimmed glasses towards the concrete steps leading into the school and searched the faces of the students loitering there. Not one she could call a friend.
She felt so odd coming to school without a uniform. Last year in grade 9 at St. Paul’s, it was a no-brainer getting ready for school, but she must have spent forty-five minutes this morning deciding what to wear. The low-slung cargo pants and midriff-baring tops that the cluster of girls on the bottom step wore were a far cry from grey uniform pants and white blouse. She didn’t feel too out of place with the choice that she made for this day: baggy hip-hugging jeans and a T-shirt.
As she walked past the girls, she noticed from the corner of her glasses that they appraised her, discounted her, then continued with their chatter. Probably dance students, she calculated, noticing their tight bodies and hair pulled back into little buns.
There was a group of guys just in front of the school’s front doors discussing something with great seriousness. They too looked up for a moment, assessed her, then ignored her. Drama, she figured.
Kat opened her binder, found her timetable and pretended to look up the room number of her first class. Room 113, Visual Arts was already imbedded in her brain. She must have taken that timetable out a hundred times over the summer! But at least she looked occupied.
“Hey there!”
Kat turned, thankful that someone had actually wanted to speak with her. She did her best not to gasp at what stood before her: a Goth in full regalia. Right down to the black lipstick and eyeliner and leather coat held together with hundreds of safety pins. The hair was bright turquoise gelled to bed-head perfection, and the plain silver nose-ring was downright painful to look at.
“Name’s Ian, what’s yours?” he asked, extending a hand covered with tarnished silver rings.
Kat clasped his outstretched hand limply and introduced herself. She noticed that the girls on the step were watching her and smirking.
“You’re from St. Paul’s, right?” he asked. “I was there for grade nine last year too.”
Kat tried to hold back her surprise. She tried to imagine Ian’s head pasted onto a body wearing the white shirt and grey pants, but the image was too absurd.
“I didn’t last long,” he explained. “They kicked me out one minute into day two when I showed up in a kilt.”
“A kilt?” exclaimed Kat. “And you’re wondering why you got kicked out?” Even the girls at St. Paul’s didn’t wear the kilts. She would have loved to see the havoc Ian created when he walked through the door. How was it that she had been there the whole year and hadn’t even heard of this incident? The mind police must’ve been working overtime on that one.
“You’re hardly one to talk,” said Ian, smiling.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re here for pretty much the same reason that I am.”
Kat hadn’t thought of it that way, but there was some truth in the statement.
how to make sure a story does not peter out
Hi Elizabeth,
You’ll notice that when you tell about your story, it doesn’t take all that many words. It also is hard to see the story in your head. When you show it, it takes a whole heck of alot of words. Sometimes writing like this feels way too long! But what happens is that when you read it, it reads faster. Also, reading a scene that is shown rather than told lets you step into the shoes of the character. It’s like watching a movie from the inside.
Writing this way requires that you keep on asking yourself, “and THEN what happened? and just write that. Also, you want to concentrate on all the senses. Make sense?