Questions

Sports provide a great backdrop for stories.  It seems that today almost everyone follows a sport team, whether it be football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer or others.  We all have our favorite teams and players.  But other sports can make great setting for short stories.  Sports short stories that center on horse racing and the race track are exciting and exhilarating.

A collection of stories by D.S. Williamson entitled “and they’re off!:  Stories From The Racetrack”, centers on the lives of three different sets of characters with the racetrack as backdrop.  The format works well, giving the reader the opportunity to read a few different stories with a common theme.

The collection is about the struggles of life and overcoming adversity.  It deals with what we all have had to deal with in one way of another.  With great dialogue and well developed characters, each story delves into the mind of the reader.  The beauty of the short stories is that you can complete it in a very short period of time.  There are no chapters to keep up with or get lost in.  The stories hook you at the beginning, climax in the middle and conclude, sometimes with a shocking ending.

Sports short stories are popular in that they take the excitement of a sport and add a human element to it.  In any setting, there is life going on around it.  The game must still be played, the race must still go on.  Whatever trials and tribulations are being played out there is another force going on at the same time.

These short stories tie in man and beast and how the two may be different but are so much the same.  How animals can help us deal with our lives is amazing and interesting.  Horse racing is a sport of courage, perseverance and consistency.  It contains a lot of the elements that we deal with in every day life.

D.S. Williamson ties it all together in a fine collection of stories that are easy to read and interesting.  The stories take us on a journey and teach us that anything is possible, that nothing is that bad and even if it is, we have the strength and courage to deal with it.

Seven short stories that show how little control we really have over our own fate.  Readers embrace the stories and relate it to their own lives and struggles they may face.  Each story has its own meaning and ending, that is not always a happy ending, just as in life.


- Peter Lackey

When writing fiction, it is important to be able to have an interesting plot and several well developed characters that your readers (should you get published) will begin to care about. Characters after all, can make or break a story or novel because if you do not manage to make them become believable entities, why should anyone wish to continue to read? Writing fiction is about providing pure escapism and helping the reader to be able to submerge themselves into your story so that they can forget the trials and tribulations of their own existence. If you are a new writer and are considering writing fiction, you need to really think about where your story is going and how you yourself can start to believe in your characters as this is a required element.

When writing fiction and developing characters, you can make life easier for yourself by paying attention to the following steps:

-          Know what type of story you are going to write. Make sure that you know exactly what is going to happen from start to finish.   You may find that this changes the general direction you have originally envisaged, however as your characters grow within the story, when it happens, it means that the characters are starting to come to life.

-          Think about the type of characters who would be required to support the plot. Your characters also need to be multi-faceted. Let them have some faults or annoying habits, but also give them some positive traits-even the villain of the piece is unlikely to be all bad. Writing fiction is a little like playing god, you will know when you have really started to connect with them because you will have reservations about endangering them or writing them out of your story.

-          Provide a detailed history of their lives before you start writing your story. You do not need to list every aspect of this list to your readers but it does help you as the author to know your character inside out. This way, you can have some element within their past which affects how they react to specific situations. This makes them human….and believable.

-          Throw some conflicting situations at your characters. How they cope with these difficult situations will help them to develop and it will also help your readers to connect with them. When writing fiction, you will find new and improved ideas which will keep both your interest and those of your reader becoming stronger and more influential.

Whether writing a short story or novel, some basic planning is essential as this not only helps the writer to continue the plot through to the end sentence but helps the writer to create believable characters that are alive and kicking and this is an important part when writing fiction.


- annette young