the least important components of a story?

[cacian]

according to you?


Mine are as follow:

sexuality/race/death/stereotypes.

I write without these components because I consider them to be unhelpdul and quite cumbersome at time when writing a story.
So I avoid them all together.

[kelby_lake]

That seems a little hard.

[cacian]

That seems a little hard.
I have changed the components a little.

[kasie]

If you avoid writing about them because you feel you have no personal experience of these subjects upon which to draw, then fair enough, that's up to you as an author.

If you avoid them because you feel introducing them would be gratuitous and have little or no relevance to your story (and I believe violence was originally on your list), then again, fair enough, it is quite possible to tell a good story without padding it out with irrelevant detail.

But if you are leaving them out because you feel your stories will be 'nicer' for their omission, then are you being true to life or even at times, true to the story? These are Facts of Life and can hardly be avoided. Relying on stereotypes is lazy and I can't blame you for treating them with caution but race or sexuality may matter greatly to one of your characters and the death of one of your characters or their reaction to it may be pivotal to the story and it would be less than honest of you as an author to sweep these issues to one side because you are unwilling to deal with them.

I suppose the easiest rule of thumb would be - If it's not germane to the story, if it doesn't move the plot along or enlarge the character, don't bother to include it, (whether it's Gay Rights or Gardening :smile5:).