The Sunday News
Charles Dube
THIS definition of a story should have been the end of last week’s episode but it could not fit hence we bring it in today. Learners need to understand what a story is if they are to write better stories. There are a number of story definitions but all work together for good. A story is something that always entertains. Readers enjoy reading stories. A story is always fiction — that is, it describes imaginary events.
The events on stories at times verge on untruths, fantasy and fabrication. A story can also be gossip, which is idle talk or rumour, especially about personal or private affairs of others. A story can be told in a newspaper report. A story is something that we can learn from. For example, children are always advised by their parents to behave in certain ways, but, children being children, some fall short of that and find themselves in trouble or worse situations.
There are many stories written or verbally told to warn them of the dangers of disobeying advice from the elders. Above all, a story is always told in words. We can move on and specify the type of stories. For example, there is science fiction, a story about life in the future. It may involve outer space.
There are detective stories, stories in which a mystery about a crime is resolved. We have comedies and tragedies.
A comedy is a story in which the characters and events make the reader laugh. A tragedy by simple definition is a story in which the outcome is sad. A story about characters and events set in the past is historical. Romance is a story about love, usually between two main characters, which has a happy ending. Finally, we have fantasy — a story that includes magic and the supernatural and is often in an unknown past.
Learners can choose to write on any of these specified stories and come out with good stories if enough practice has been carried out on them. Correct punctuation is key in story writing. Punctuation marks help readers of your story make sense of it. Use question marks to make the reader think. Use full stops at the end of a sentence and exclamation marks to show something is exciting, surprising and funny.
Commas can be used in a description of character or setting. Learners need to remember rules for writing speech. These include: Start a new line for each new speaker. Put speech marks around the words the speaker says; use commas to show the end of the speech in speech marks, unless there is a question or an exclamation. Use of other words instead of the usual tired expressions in dialogue said or asked is strongly recommended.
For example, asked, called, moaned could be used depending on the context or situation. Shouted — yelled, whined. Whispered — muttered, complained, replied, exclaimed, and responded. The word you used instead of said shows how the character is feeling. You can either add an adverb to the word said: “I never wanted to swim,” Jane said sadly. Sadly is an adverb. “It’s a snake!” Joana said suddenly. Choose a better verb which shows us how the character is feeling: “I never wanted to swim,” Jane muttered. “It’s a snake!” Joana yelled.
There are parts of speech which are taken for granted as easy, yet, we tend to ignore certain characteristics about them. Often we generalise when talking about nouns yet, nouns are in various forms. For example, we have common nouns which name general things. As a general rule a common noun does not begin with a capital letter unless it comes at the beginning of a sentence. Examples: bus, school, road, girl and ruler.
Proper nouns: a proper noun names specific things. A proper noun always begins with a capital letter. For example: Zimbabwe, James, Bulawayo, and Limpopo. Collective nouns: a collective or group noun defines a group of objects that can be pupil, animals, plants or other inanimate things such as concepts, emotions. Examples, we talk of — a fleet of cars, a throng of people, a nation, horticulture.
We also have concrete nouns. A concrete or count noun refers to an object that can form a plural or occur in a phrase with the indefinite article “a/an” or with numerals. Examples: a pen, a flute, four days, two minutes an old fashioned woman. Abstract nouns: an abstract, or non-count or mass noun names things that cannot be counted and is always used in the same singular. Examples: beauty, air, wind, wisdom, kindness. Whereas abstract nouns are uncountable, not all uncountable nouns are abstract, for example, milk, water, oil.
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