Add Sheen to Your Story

Milton's Satan as imagined by Gustave Doré

Bernard Shaw said with his characteristically acerbic wit, “Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach.” Though I have written a few dozen short stories, I don’t consider myself a good story writer. And I think that others don’t think any better either. So I am one of the right persons to teach how to write stories. No, don’t take all that too seriously. I just thought of responding to the week’s Bloghop prompt: “3 ways you can add diversity to your stories.”

After all, I’ve been a teacher all my life. So, here we go. How to add diversity to your stories?

1. Bring in some evil.

I’m sure you know that Satan is the most interesting personality in Milton’s classical Paradise Lost. The all-too-good characters like God and the angels are utterly boring in that poem. Satan towers over all of them as a grand and majestic figure with his eloquence and glamour. Even Adam and Eve are most interesting when they are marked by flaws.

Evil is far more charming than good, especially in stories. Get a few characters in your story to beat each other black and blue or at least hurl the choicest abuses and your reader is going to stay with you for sure. Why do you think our popular films all have dishoom-dishoom scenes?

In case your characters are no good at that sort of a thing, bring in another, new, character. One good thing about human life is that it’s never hard to get a villain at any time. Throw Mr Villain (Ms or Mrs will do better) among the most saintly characters in your story and see how the entire feel of the story undergoes miraculous transformation.

2. Excavate some history or myth

Rewriting history and mythology is the trend now. It can bring in all sorts of diversity to your story. Things that you never imagined can happen once you start giving twists to history and mythology. Saints can become sinners and vice versa. So many of our contemporary popular writers have reimagined historical and mythological characters and sold millions of copies of their books. You can bring in a different version of Sita or Arjuna into your story. You can erase a few centuries from the history of your characters’ ancestors. Make the British vanish from India’s history by making the Marathas defeat them in one of the battles of Panipat.

Once you start meddling with the past of your characters, your options are infinite and even Shakespeare’s Cleopatra will flee seeing the diversity in your story.

An example: Suppose Damodar is in love with Zainab and the whole country is aghast. Make a twist in the history of Zainab’s family and give her a Brahminical ancestry which was sacrificed for saving a thousand families of the mohalla. Now the heat of the plot shifts from the patriotic citizens of the country to Damodar, a Jat. As I said, the options are infinite. This is just an example.

3. Alien wisdom

When everything fails, try an alien from some faraway galaxy. There’s a lot of space out there. Our planet earth is not even a pinprick in the map of the cosmos. Billions of galaxies each with billions of stars each of which again has planets and satellites are waiting for you out there with a whole cosmos of wisdom that can inspire your reader. Bring in a Little Prince from Asteroid B-612 and teach your villain that a little propaganda can achieve what a dozen AK-47s cannot.  

Aliens are fabulous where diversity is concerned. They can assume so many shapes and colours. They can speak any language, eat any food, and, most importantly, say or do whatever you want them to. They are the pinnacle of diversity.

PS. For more techniques, join my correspondence class 😊