What About... The Story

We don't. But we say 'fuck it', and write the damn thing anyway.
Writing is one of those things that sounds easy to anyone who's not a writer. The creative part is fun sure, but the re-writing, editing and vacant staring at blank pages that go along with it certainly aren't. It's a passion that induces self doubt and we need to recognise and overcome it.

I still think you should write a memoir. I might just keep banging on at you until you start one

Writing is simply another form of story-telling, with its own set of principles that make it work or not work. Oral story-telling also has its principles, and the good oralists work as hard at their craft as writers do. I agree that there is an immediacy to oral stories, but simply getting feedback doesn't always mean one knows what to do with it. Surely you've heard someone drag out a story interminably (or end it with, "you had to be there"), or maybe you've become aware you might be boring someone but don't know what to do with it.

On the other hand I know of oral storytellers who move me with their work, just as I know of writers that do the same.

In every case, merely having an idea for a story is only the first stage.

Things like this writing forum offer opportunities to get almost immediate feedback long before you send anything out to be published (if you don't use a good one, like this one, you should). I imagine that oral storytellers also get feedback as they go along, long before they go on stage.

I honestly don't understand the issue here. How does developing and implementing the craft of effective writing interfere with or undermine any story? I understand a few grammatical rules may seem, and may be, anachronistic and frustrating, but those are few, and can usually be safely ignored or easily fixed (I been known to a preposition ending a sentence with). The rest really are time-tested principles that make for better, easier, more effective writing. No matter how "good" a story is (and the truth is we all have great stories in theory and in our heads), it can't be told effectively in, say, clunky sentences, weak grammar, and unclear or randomly changing points of view. It just can't.

And yes, I know there are works out there that flaunt various principles. But (and yes I'm beginning a sentence with "but" because I think it's effective) those works that are known were done by master writers who have shown they know the basic principles and for deliberate reasons have chosen to ignore or contradict some of them. Few if any of us have the ability or track record to make that sort of thing work. And in fact, I hate most of those works, not because of the rules/principles issue, but because I hate trying to read them.
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Almost every principle of effective writing is there because it makes writing better. And the better the writing, the better the story is told, and the more likely an agent, and then the readers, will be likely to read it.

That's just the way it seems to me. And it makes sense to me.

Okay, I think I get it. You're saying that people see or read or hear what they are concerned with, not necessarily what the other is trying to communicate.

Like in a Wooster story, Bertie Wooster is getting off a boat onto a small island. Jeeves mentions that he's heard that there is a swan couple nesting nearby. Bertie says it's no time for a wildlife discussion and Jeeves says, "very well, sir." Bertie gets onto the island and the male swan bursts out of the shrubbery and attacks him. Bertie had totally missed the context of the Jeeves comment, which was meant to be a warning.

Of course even there the burden was on Jeeves to make it clear. He could have simply started with, "By way of warning, sir . . . ." Of course then the story would have suffered.

As well as being a write, I am also a reader.
I read the stories as I write them (and also re-read them) - by the time I've third drafted a story it has been read many many times.
so even if I am the only person to read something, it is still art - it still evokes a reaction (in fact I am often the perfect reader)

#word