How To Write an Enjoyable Story

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Recommended: Setting and background in literature

There are a couple of key elements that contribute to an enjoyable story. To establish enjoyment the events, descriptions, and characters within a story should successfully mesh to immerse readers into the story detaching them from reality.

The use of vivid descriptions for setting, mood and feelings of characters is one of the effective tools, which writers use in a good story. Giving readers a true sense of the atmosphere or settings, enhances the chance that they may become submerged into what they are reading. `Believability of the situation' is another main factor, which I find, contributes to the enjoyableness of a story. If the reader can believe that, the characters and the events these characters partake in may occur in real life, they may associate with the story more freely. The last characteristic, which helps me to enjoy a story, is the presence of rhetorical questions, which further help to involve the reader by promoting critical thinking, thus increasing the enjoyment experienced by the reader.

The reader's ability to `see' the site, `smell' the smell, `taste' the taste is a crucial contributing aspect to the enjoyableness of a story. Baldwin, in "Sonny's Blues" puts a vivid image in the mind of the reader upon describing a scene on the street: "The woman... whose face was bright with joy...a cigarette between her heavy, chapped lips, her hair a cuckoo's nest, her face scarred and swollen...her black eyes glittering like coal." The reader can `see' this scene unfold as the narrator progresses with his description. Putting readers in the shoes of the narrator, Baldwin successfully `throws' them into the setting allowing them to `participate' within the story. With use of such vivid imagery, the reader goes beyond reading. Similarly, in "Royal Beatings", Munro describes the pain of a tumor as a "boiled egg" in the chest; Readers `feel' the pain, they do not merely read it on a page. This allows them to enjoy the story.

The situations presented throughout the plot within a story must not only be vivid but must also be believable. Illogical, farfetched, ideas that unfold within a story prevent the readers from indulging themselves in their reading, directly decreasing satisfaction. "Sonny's Blues" represents `real' problems faced by real people and is therefore very powerful and moving. Inner city family struggles, youth pressures, and blatant racism are some of these problems. Readers feel, learn, and grow with the narrator as the plot progresses within this story.

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