Story and Red Sky in the Morning

I believe that out of all of the chapters that we had to read, Story is certainly the top three in "most important elements of writing" . I found this chapter to be extremely helpful and also learned aspects of "story" that I had never heard before. I already knew that the "art of storytelling" is not as easy as some may think it is. The difference between successful and poor storytelling, would be either capturing the attention and imagination of readers, or having a plain, forgettable and possibly confusing concept. One of the main reasons people read, is to escape reality for a few hours and have their mind filled with something that interests them. If the story isn't good or the least bit interesting, you can forget about the reader's attention. Also there is a quote on page 169 that was slightly amusing-"In literature, only trouble is interesting". I thought about it and I would completely agree with this idea. People are attracted to tragedy, only when it doesn't happen to them. This is found not only in writing, but also in every day life. Why do people stare at accidents on the road causing miles of traffic? Why do people gossip and spread rumors about other people instead of minding their own business. The answer to both of these questions is almost everyone loves drama. Whether it is in a book or real life, the thoughts "What is going to happen now?" and "Is this going to escalate into something bigger and cause an emotional, physical, or social catastrophe?", is always on the mind. Somehow it makes our lives just a little bit more exciting, even just for a while.

As far as short stories go, Red Sky in the Morning by Patricia Hampl had both entertaining as well as confusing writing techniques when it came to story telling. In Red Sky in the Morning, the story caught my attention right away. The intertwining stories of the couple and the author was amusing. I could achieve a nice mental visualization through the detail given in the story. All of a sudden, she was talking about writing and being a memoirist and I started to lose interest and also became confused. If this is what the whole story was about, then why not hint at it in the beginning, instead of surprising me in the middle? I found out, a few paragraphs later that the story did continue on. This example could just be her style of writing, but I wasn't too crazy about it.