The+confession-story+formula

= The confession-story formula  = **Rule 1.** Star with your main character, the narrator who is going to tell her own story. It is not absolutely essential that she should be a woman, but a great number of these stories are written from the female viewpoint. Make your narrator a person whose life will be similar in many ways, to the lives of your readers such as a housewife, a clerk of a shop assistant. **Rule 2**. Give your narrator a character weakness, flaw or attitude. Make her lazy, bad-tempered, bitter, jealous, over-ambitious, slovenly, mean or dissatisfied with her life. She could unfaithful, untrustworthy, a spendthrift or a bad cook. **Rule 3.** Place your narrator in a dramatic situation or crisis, which has been brought about primarily by her character flaw. For example, if you decide to have a character whose character flaw is that she’s is lazy and neglects her home, caring nothing for the comfort and well-being of her husband and children, then the crisis she brings upon herself may be that eventually her long-suffering husband decides he can stand her slovenly ways no longer and he leaves home, taking the children with him. **Rule 4.** Explain to your reader the cause of the narrator’s character flaw. This done in flashback once your narrator has reached the point of crisis in her life. The reason for this explanation is that your reader wants to like the narrator and feel sympathy for her, and we always feel more sympathetic towards someone if we know what triggered off her ill-temper, jealously, etc. another way to give your reader this information is to let your narrator tell the story herself in dialogue, to another character who is with her when she reaches the point of crisis in her life. **Rule 5.**The narrator’s decision to act and the results she hopes to attain from such action. This is the point where you start to resolve the problem and therefore bring your narrator through her crisis. So, the woman whose husband has left her because of her lazy ways has to decide how to het her husband and children back home again. She may not at first realise that she has driven him away. She may feel hurt or furious, guilty or aggrieved and her actions at this time will reflect these feelings. **Rule 6.** Unexpected result of narrator’s action, which makes her aware of her own character weakness. The narrator’s plans go awry. Things don’t work out as she expects, and instead, she is made to realise the part she herself has played in bringing about the crisis in her life. **Rule 7.** Narrator endeavours to make amends. She begins to think of others not simply of her own troubles. Her actions now reflect this new thoughtfulness. **Rule 8.** Narrator finds happiness or hope for better things in the future through her sincere attempts to atone for past mistakes. This is where you reach you satisfactory ending. Your narrator now sees where she went wrong and that it isn’t too late to change things by her own efforts. Some sacrifice on her part will be required so that your reader is satisfied that the narrator is now a better person, having learned her lesson the hard way. = Then Angela came back  = Here we see how the formula works in a confessional story that sold. **Rule 1.**Start with the main character, the narrator who is going to tell her own story. In our story, Joanna is the narrator and this is her story. We know her problem and her thoughts on it and these must be explained in detail to the reader as the story progresses. Remember that if your reader is given a clear-cut picture of the way your narrator’s mind is working you achieve reader-identification from the start. Joanna is a hairdresser, young and unhappy and these points are made clear at the beginning. **Rule 2.** Give your narrator a character weakness, flaw or attitude. Joanna’s weakness is that she cannot forgive Barry and Angela, thinking they have destroyed her chances of happiness. She believes she’ll never trust another man and therefore sends Paul away who obviously loves her. **Rule 3.** Place your narrator in a dramatic situation or crisis, which has been brought about primarily by her charater flaw. The dramatic moment comes when Joanna confronts Angela at the salon. For years Joanna had hated this girl who stole Barry away from her. Having to do her hair and treat her politely as a customer is almost more than she can endure. **Rule 4.** Explain to your reader the cause of the narrator’s character flaw. This can be done in dialogue or in flashback. Now the reader must be told the whole background story leading up to the moment when Joanna finds Angela sitting in the chair in her cubicle. It is told through Joanna’s thoughts as she begins to wash Angela’s hair. In a series of little flashback scenes it is shown how Barry jilted Joanna a week before they were to marry. The reader hears how the arrangements had to be cancelled, the presents returned and how Joanna had to take up the torn threats of her life, and face a very different future from the one she had planned. In another flashback scene the reader is told how she finally met Paul but wouldn’t let herself fall in love with him because of her unhappy experience with Barry. At this stage in your story, your reader, while realising that Joanna is doing the wrong thing in sending Paul away, must also understand her motives and feel sympathy for the girl. **Rule 5.** The narrator’s decision to act and the results she hopes to attain from such action. Having refused to become involved with Paul, Joanna is convinced her only hope of satisfaction in future must come from making a success of her career. That at least she can accomplish on her own without depending on anyone else. And so she works overtime in order to earn enough money to buy her own salon. **Rule 6.** Unexpected result of narrator’s action, which makes her aware of her own character weakness. One night when she is working late and alone at the salon, Joanna is shocked and unnerved at having to deal with Angel, the girl she hates. But while having to listen to Angela’s story, she learns of Barry’s desertion and slowly realises she’s been needlessly envying Angela. Instead of feeling bitter, Joanna realises what an escape she has had, how foolishly she has wasted the past 2 years. When Angela mentions her date with the man she hopes to marry, Joanna sees how brave the girl is in making a new start for herself and the baby. She wonders if her own failure to forget the past has irretrievably ruined her chance of happiness with Paul. **Rule 7.** Narrator endeavours to make amends. This is the point where Joanna forgives Angela for her part in the past tragedy. Her bitterness dissolves as she works on Angela’s hair, making the girl look as attractive as possible for her evening’s date. **Rule 8.** Narrator finds happiness of hope and telephones Paul, she is taking the first step towards a new an brighter future. Paul, we feel sure, will understand her change of heart. And the reader is left with a feeling of satisfaction because Joanna has stopped regretting the past and is ready to begin a new life. I must mention here that although the majority of published confession stories adhere to a specific set of rules as given in the confession formulas, there are others to be found which do not follow this pattern. However, as these require considerable skill, and know-how, I would suggest that the wise beginner will concentrate on producing the standard story and not be concerned with the exceptional story. Try the confession story formula out on other published stories, and then use it to create your own, remembering that the way to achieve success is to write simply and sympathically about people and their problems. Write about your own life, your fears, hopes and frustrations, transfer your thoughts to your characters-make them laugh and love, fear and fail- and your stories will sell, for editors are human too.