First off, I think It's safe to say that every story is a narrative. That is, it's an account by someone, even if it's an invisible, omniscient narrator. That hardly distinguishes it from a newspaper article about cub scouts bringing cards to an old folks home at Christmas, so clearly the next distinction is that it is fictional.
A clever critic at his point will ask, What if I write a fictional newspaper article? Is that a story? The answer: no. Not to me, anyway. Sounds more literary, and that's not my bag.
What then, are the root parts of a story? At the bottom level, what does a tale need to be a story?
There are many opinions. One I quote a lot is Robert Silverberg, and his Generic Plot of all Stories:
- A sympathetic and engaging character (or an unsympathetic one who is engaging nevertheless), faced with some immensely difficult problem that it is necessary for him to solve, makes a series of attempts to overcome that problem, frequently encountering challenging sub-problems and undergoing considerable hardship and anguish, and eventually, at the darkest moment of all, calls on some insight that was not accessible to him at the beginning of the story and either succeeds in his efforts or fails in a dramatically interesting and revelatory way, thereby arriving at new knowledge of some significant kind.
Asimov’s SF Magazine, 2004.
- A LIKABLE CHARACTER overcomes ALMOST INSUPERABLE ODDS and BY HIS OR HER OWN EFFORTS achieves a WORTHWHILE GOAL.
These are few big names, but how does this relate to Aphelion, and what we write here? I have a perfect example, one which picks on me for breaking this set of rules. In August 2004, I had a novella, a short, and a poem all in the same issue, and I felt pretty smug about it. That was, until pro Elizabeth Bear made an appearance and said one of them, a Mare story entitled "Just Another Day at the Office", wasn't a story at all:
- When I say it's not a story, however, what I mean is that it doesn't establish and resolve a conflict. Based on the first line (where the conflict in a short story should begin to be established) the conflict should have had something to do with Jack, his job, and potentially some sort of moral qualms regarding it. The story needs to engage the reader, lead him into a conflict, and offer him a resolution for that conflict. Ideally, there should be paired conflicts, internal and external, which resonate with each other. For example, in Casablanca, Rick's internal conflict is that he wants Ilsa, but his honor and the injuries she's done him make it difficult to trust her, and furthermore, she's looking for his help despite having betrayed him. But the *external* conflict is all about will Rick, Ilsa, and Victor manage to survive their run-ins with the Nazis and get safely out of Casablanca.
(There are other ways to structure a story, but this is the simplest one.)
-Her complete review, posted with her permission, is in the lettercol for that month.
There are 3 examples above, and, as I see it, they have definite common elements: 1) Your fictional character has to be likeable or engaging in some way. 2) The character must be faced with a challenge, a really tough one. You may be able to write a story about your character needing to make a sandwich, but don't grumble if no one wants to read it. 3) The challenge has to be taken on by the main character and not someone else. That is, surviving an initial encounter to tell the king that the Huns are coming and then watching the amy depart isn't necessarily that great a tale. Fighting against the invaders after the kingdom has been warned is better. Face the foe. Finally, 4) The conflict must be resolved in a climax. This is the big danger moment where it's all on the line, and whatever you write has got to solve the big problem that started it all. The characters may die trying, but even then their deaths must help relieve the relevant conundrum. Avoid deus ex machina and have your characters do it by themselves.
There will be other opinions, but I think if you ever want to sell a genre story to a magazine, you'd be a lot safer to follow these rules.
Nate
