At this stage, we master storytelling skills: we come up with short, sometimes tiny stories of five, three, or even one sentence. The stories are written down in a notebook or spoken into a tape recorder. What kind of stories they can be: firstly, big novels, the idea of which is nurtured by all authors; secondly, a description of scenes from life, seen during the day; thirdly, the arrangement of famous stories in their own way. At this stage, the task of the beginning author is to learn to articulate their thoughts to formulate ideas so that the reader understands what it is about.
At the start, it makes sense to come up with very short stories with and without an ending, just for the sake of learning how to express thoughts and create finished sketches. That is, to practice composing.
An example of a short story. Three ambulances came to a house call, the crews of which could not decide who to call: everyone wanted to go home for dinner.
A lyrical story, a little longer. A sad, middle-aged man was waiting out the rain, standing under the visor at the entrance to the subway. He didn’t have an umbrella, but he had a suit he didn’t want to get wet and a business meeting he couldn’t be late for. The rain didn’t stop. The man was nervous, almost in pain. A horde of children accompanied by their mother walked by, all wearing raincoats. Suddenly the man’s face lit up. No, he hadn’t figured out a way to make a raincoat out of a plastic bag, because he didn’t have a bag. But he remembered his childhood walks in the rain, the splashing, the jumping, the forbidden happiness. He suffered no more.
Books for writers is the name given to a large segment of non-fiction literature that helps you gain useful professional knowledge in the comfort of your home. There are many books published on this topic – these are serious academic studies of world literature, and memoirs of famous writers, and fun tutorials on creating nurturing texts, and motivational books written in the spirit of maintaining optimism in the aspiring author. It is clear that reading everything written on this topic is an ambitious task, to put it mildly.