In this article we will explain 5 great tips to enhance your storytelling skills, keep in mind, information is everything, with it you can generate suspense, intrigue, admiration, etc. You just have to know how, when, and where to handle it. That’s what this article is for, improve your storytelling skills with these great tips, read on!
Improve your narrative skills with these tips
Many times, the pages we draw turn out as flat as the pages that contain them. The page composition is correct, the anatomy is fine, and the inking is clear.
Why is it that nothing seems to happen in the story? Have you become a boring person? Maybe, you neglect something very important, what you tell is worth as much as the way you do it.
Pay close attention to how you use the information.
Many people will tell you that information is the opposite of emotion. After all, you feel emotions in your chest, whereas, information surrounds us on computers, phones, books and the Internet, and enters our brain.
What would these people say if you communicated to them the “information” that they had won the lottery or that a loved one had betrayed them? Of course, you would think, it is easy to get excited with soap opera events. The reality is, no, emotion comes with CONTROL of HOW much information to give and at what TIME to give it.
Read on if you want to make sure you never draw a boring page ever again!
Important! Reveal information to generate surprise
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Suppose you have an easy job ahead of you, you must tell, that the hero of your story, comes out of the firehouse, grief-stricken, and crosses the street to enter a store.
The woman who attends the store is the only person who lifts his spirits. How would you tell it? If you start with a great establishing shot of the fire station, followed by the poor man crossing the street, then opening the door to the store. The reader will already be asleep by the time you show the girl smiling at the arrival of her favorite customer.
Tell the truth, suddenly and without warning. Start the page in the store. The girl is attending as every day, suddenly, her face lights up.
Our hero enters, she smiles, but when he sees her sorrowful face, he gets worried. Then he explains to her, “I’ve just come from the firehouse.” Isn’t that more interesting?
Withhold information to generate intrigue
We all know what it’s like not to be able to stop turning the pages of what we read, or wait for the next episode. How do they do it? Very easily, by making it clear to us that they know more than what they are telling us. Do you think this is only true for mystery stories?
Read on and you’ll see that you’re wrong.
Doesn’t it work? Your heroine climbs the stairs to talk to her stern aunt, who is waiting for her.
They both know that she will ask for permission to take horseback riding lessons, which, to her aunt, doesn’t seem like a lady’s activity. When she was young, she had an accident on horseback because the instructor focused his attention on her sister’s beauty.
You think you are very clever for not telling the reader any of this, you save it for a surprise, but the result is a boring conversation, where the aunt forbids the niece to ride a horse, and the reader wonders why I am reading this story, to see arguments? Like the ones she has every day, with the people at home. Pay attention to how we fix it!
Not telling everything is not the same as not telling anything. Confused? Try telling just a little! Before the niece finishes climbing the stairs, it shows the aunt, waiting for her in her room, holding a portrait of her sister, and sighing.
The reader will accompany you for many more pages just to find out what the hell one thing has to do with the other.
Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, explained it better than anyone, suspense doesn’t come from a lack of information, but rather, it happens when the reader, knows something that the characters don’t.
The worst thing you can do, to tell the story of the students at school cutting the brakes on the bike of the teacher’s favorite, is to tell it as he experienced it.
He leaves the school, gets on his bike, and wonders why his classmates are laughing under their breath, starts to ride through the streets and parks with speed. He will be very worried when a truck appears out of nowhere and he can’t stop.
You’d want the reader to worry too, but he never got to that vignette, because the ride tired him out, and he left your story to check Twitter.
You should do it the other way around, the first thing you have to tell, is that his brakes are cut and he doesn’t know it. That’s what I did to get you to read this, get it?
Disguise information to generate admiration
This applies mainly to police stories. How do you keep the reader guessing who the culprit is until the last page? You can’t make something up out of thin air, because he’ll say you’ve cheated.
Don’t hold back information, rather, confuse the reader by giving him more information than he needs to know.
Look at this passage from a detective story by Jorge Luis Borges. The detective, Lonnröt, is investigating a strange ritual murder.
“From this erudition he was distracted, a few days later, by the appearance of the editor of the Yidische Zaitung. The latter wanted to talk about the murder; Lönnrot preferred to talk about the various names of God; the journalist declared in three columns that the investigator Erik Lönnrot had devoted himself to studying the names of God in order to find the name of the murderer. Lönnrot, accustomed to the simplifications of journalism, was not outraged.”
At the end of the story, the murderer will say that, when he read that interview, it occurred to him how to carry out new crimes. If you disguise important information in this way, at the end of the story the reader will admire you, thinking, I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out. How did he do it?
Spill information to generate wonder
This one is especially appropriate for fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction. Remember the fireman in our first example? That boring jaywalking would generate impact if it took place on an alien planet.
Perhaps a prairie that hides magical creatures, even a street in a random town, but in the American South during the Depression.
They say less is more, but when it comes to showing how long you’ve been imagining a place, more is more. So, now that you know these five secrets, your pages will be buzzing with excitement, and it will be impossible to put them down. Go put these tips into practice!
Conclusion
With these 5 secrets to improve your narrative skills, you will be able to generate feelings through the information you show to the reader, or hide. It all depends on the approach you want to give to your storytelling. Read these 5 tips again to memorize them well and use them whenever you want to tell a story.
