The purple Bengal Tigers eat yellow marshmlllows and should they be Rasberry flavour

[gavintonks]

I am not sure if people understand what a story is sometimes

The basic story like Romeo and Juliet - is a love story as well as Desdemona and Midsummer nights dream.
They have characters that dye tragically, but you follow their story and emotions, their thoughts and feeling to a conclusion.

If the head Bengal Tiger put raspberry juice in the yellow marshmallows to hide the almond flavored poison, we have a story because we want to know why?well I hope so.

She put the almond based poison in the raspberry and made the marshmallows and gave them to him to eat
is she did this and did that

"Oh,Dearest" the queen Bengal tiger sidled up to her husband with something hidden behind her back.She looked coyly into his eyes, and placed the platter on the table next to his chair,"close your eyes." she teased.

One has to really ask yourself how much importance the decor has on the story, as I am sure most people will already be fantasizing about the set, and conjuring up images in their own minds as they resonate with the story.

I see people are trying to create worlds and places, but that is a travelogue to your imagination and not a story.

One needs to be aware that the novel is not a novel [sorry could not resist]
True or False?

[gavintonks]

lets see how many people see the difference in the colouring of characters as apposed to their deaths

[Hans]

Seriously, I do not know what you want to say. Maybe my English is more lacking than I thought, but I can not make much out of your text.
Do you want us to stop detailing the background of our stories? Risk them to become inconsistent?
I like worldbuilding, so I will do that, story or not, but that is not the question here. My world has lots of details I will never use in my stories. But if they are needed they are there. Creating details is much different from showing them off. And I know people that sometimes want to read a travelogue. Surely you will not forbid me to write for them. Knowing that these texts will never hit mainstream.

As for unnecessary details in stories. Might I give "Les Miserables" as an example? This book starts with sixty pages about a person whose only story purpose it is to shake the hands of the main character. Once. The book has a roundup of the battle of Waterloo because an antagonist accidently saves the live of the father of one of the heroes. The battle is not necessary for the story, but it is there. It has whole chapters about streets in Paris with no story purpose whatsoever. So does that make this a bad book?

[Mindfire]

Um... I'm sorry but I can't quite make out what your point is. Could you explain a bit?

[Krieger]

Detail has it's place, but not at the risk of interrupting the rhythm of the story. The way I see it, if the narrative is flowing at a good pace, details will slip by the POV character unnoticed; they're too tied up with their struggle to notice anything that isn't actually important to what's going on. I know if someone was swinging a sword at my face, I wouldn't take the time to stop and admire the craftsmanship.

[The Dark One]

You haven't been eating the yellow mushrooms have you Gavin?

[T.Allen.Smith]

I think Gavin is just trying to say "Story first". I agree with that.

All other details make it different from the stories before (and the writers voice). But it's easy to get bogged down in the details when they should be an enhancement to the story and not the story itself.

[Caged Maiden]

I think it's a question of experience that's been brought up here. When young people write, we begin with concepts, and make out a world that is very detailed. And then it's almost a compulsion to find places to enter all the clever details it took so long to invent. I am guilty of it too, and when I look back on my first few novels, they aren't nearly as clever as I had imagined, but long and boring. I mean, who cares whether my dwarves have a very clever state-of-the art plumbing system with flush toilets underground? It's boring to write a scene in which they are used...

While I agree that a certain amount of world-building is necessary, an author needs to keep in mind whether every detail needs to make it to second draft.

[Devor]

I am not sure if people understand what a story is sometimes

. . . .

One has to really ask yourself how much importance the decor has on the story, as I am sure most people will already be fantasizing about the set, and conjuring up images in their own minds as they resonate with the story.

I see people are trying to create worlds and places, but that is a travelogue to your imagination and not a story.

One needs to be aware that the novel is not a novel [sorry could not resist]
True or False?

I just want to say something.

If somebody posts, asking if the marshmallows fed to the purple Bengal tigers should be a raspberry flavor, it does not mean they do not have a story. It only means they have a question.

It is tiresome to see threads like this, not because you're wrong gavintonks - you're not, and you're not the first - but because they seem to imply that there's something wrong with the posts people are making and the questions people ask. There's not.

If you want people to talk more about story, how about you make a post asking and sharing about your own story and start a trend.

I know that when I ask about my story, I get a lot of crickets. I also get annoying comments like these telling me I'm asking the wrong question. And I get a few timid answers, and then a neverending slew of irrelevant questions because people don't know how to answer story-based questions easily.

Figure out how to address that problem, and find me a technique that's conducive to storyboarding in these forums, and then I might agree that people are asking the wrong questions.

In the meantime, it's just being passive-aggressive.

[Caged Maiden]

did I misunderstand the original question?