I have never been a good storyteller, instead of explaining what happened from start to finish I go on tangents, turning imaginary corners, leading the listener far from my original goal. I focus on the flower that I saw laying on the dresser instead of the man sitting beside it. A truly good short story is nothing like me.
A short story is like a snowglobe, trapping a whole world behind glass pages, each snowflake placed there for a reason, each shake showing a different perspective of that same scene.
Anyone can write a story. Putting a few words on the page, telling a series of events, it's not hard. Writing a good story on the other hand is something that very few authors have been able to perfect. Every story has its own way of portraying
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Whether it be through a specific motif, general idea or phrase. In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, each character had a specific item that they are listed as carrying with them while they “hump”. After O’brien gives an extensive backstory detailing who First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross's letter first came from, he describes it as only being “10 ounces”, an oddly specific number for something so seemingly insignificant. He goes on to list off the impersonal objects they all must carry, “steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds” and “jungle boots—2.1 pounds”. These weights represent not only the physical weights they undertook by fighting in a war, but also the mental and emotional weights they had to carry with them. Each of them undergoes the same overall burden while the Lieutenant has to deal with the extra ten ounces of heartbreak, or Ted Lavender with his “6 or 7 ounces of premium dope”. This revelation couldn't have come about without the specific motif, the weight they carried. Although seemingly meaningless, this motif adds another layer to the story. All the numbers listed afterwards begin to disorient the reader, and although they could be read as simply trying to add descriptions to the story, there is something deeper behind