Story Lab Week 6: Style

(Creating and Styling your writing; Source: Pexels)

Like many people, I like to think I'm creative, but when it comes to actually writing the story, I have some trouble. I have always had trouble creating a fictional world for my work, especially in this class so far. The video, How to build a fictional world by Kate Messner, helps explain the realms of fiction. Authors of fictional stories create worlds that are not possible in real life yet readers understand them to be logical in that book's world. She says that your imagination and a willingness to figuratively live in your own world it what makes fiction. Messner's video was helpful to me as she poses some questions to help start building a fictional world. You need to start with where you are and when it is. Then she creates a timeline about the world and the rules placed in the world. After establishing the big pictures of the world, she then focuses on the day to day.
Another struggle I have in writing is writing descriptively. In Nalo Hopkinson's How to write descriptively video she points out some ways to help me improve. Fiction engages our senses and helps us picture the characters vividly. Fiction plays with senses and the ability to create that in a reader is the goal for any and all authors. Each word that an author chooses to describe a character or object or setting is not just the simple meaning, but instead uses engaging words. The writer and the reader may be looking at the same words, but their personal meaning and visualizations can be different.
Although all the videos in the style lab are excellent tools to use when I am writing my own stories, I think the 2 videos above are the starting points to creating something that will draw readers in and keep them engaged in your stories.