How to Write

My personal opinion about the way to write stories and poems.

In today's world, everyone is a writer. Be it a ten year old kid or a person aged ninety, everybody goes around writing stories, poems or quotes.
Let me begin with poems. Yesterday, I read a piece of poetry which had received very commending reviews. I must confess that, for my part, I found nothing in it except that the story was heart - touching. There was absolutely no sense of grammar and very poor spellings. The ''writer'' spelt writing as ''writting'' which was totally shocking. Running after rhyming words, people forget to check whether the verses revolve around the theme or not. Mostly, poets deviate from the actual topic only to fit in some rhyming words in the verses. I personally believe that the most commonly made mistake while writing poetry is that people think that poems neccessarily need to have rhyming words in the verses. A strange concept to be sure, but it is something I've noticed with everybody (including myself). This particular fault was pointed out to me by my father who himself writes great poetry. I didn't consider it seriously back then but I acknowledge his being right on this point today. Another thing is that people need to take care of the rhythm which they mostly never do. There should be a consistent rhythm so that readers can easily recite a poem. Apart from this, people tend to shift words from their proper places in order to bring rhyming words to the end of the verse. This sometimes changes the sense of the whole sentence while sometimes the sentence, if considered from grammatical point of view, makes absolutely no sense. These are the mistakes that I have noticed and I'd recommend the people reading my piece to check whether they might not be making such mistakes and to correct them if they think I'm right. :)
Moving on to stories, a story (by my definition) is basically a narrative about somebody or something which appeals to your heart or imagination and sets you thinking (or feeling). Stories require proper sentences and proper punctuation like inverted commas for direct speech. Stories differ from essays because stories, unlike essays do not have a pattern. Essays have to be divided into paragraphs taking care of the introductory part, the middle and the conclusion. Stories can have an end where the story is actually being left off in mid air e.g. ''And they never found out where she went.'' Essays cannot end like that. To be more precise stories are informal whereas essays are not. Therefore, the two should not be confused with each other. An essay written on the life of a person will differ because essays cannot have direct speeches and personally, essays about people are boring but stories are not. While writing stories people generally do not use correct punctuation which every writer ought to work on. Also, while writing a story one should be very particular about the beginning and make it as attractive as possible because the beginning is going to determine the no. of readers a writer will have. Apart from this, the middle should be exciting so as to keep the reader glued to the story while the end should be satisfying so that the reader starts liking the writer and reads more of his/her works. This is how I believe a story should be written.
P.S.: Well, I just shared my opinions and observations. No hard feelings or aything. You might consider me right or wrong according to your own p.o.v's.

Author's Note

Reviews are welcome since the writeup is entirely based on my opinion and I'd really love to know from other writers where I'm wrong.

Reviews

[Suelou]

I think you are probably right, Bushra. I do attempt to write poetry, but have really hestitated writing short stories (which I would love to do) or a novel. My grammer I'm sure isn't very good, as well as my spelling. It's been too long since I have been in school. LOL!

[Bushra Naqshbandi]

Thank you for reviewing my piece, Suelou. :) the honesty in your comment is admirable. I wish I was as good as you when it comes to admitting my mistakes but still....:)

[Suelou]

You are very welcome Bushra. I love to write. I'm just not that good. I would love to be able to write short stories.

[Bushra Naqshbandi]

Practise makes perfect. Keep giving it a go whenever you feel like it. God willing, you'll exceed your own expectations. Wish you all the best! :)