The point or moral of a true story is important. The writer, because they are dealing with real life, cannot construct action and episodes to bring out a moral, as the fiction writer can. The true story writer does the same thing by writing a story to carry out their impression of its meaning. Before they begin to write, they have decided what the story means and how it illustrates real life.
The writer unconsciously builds the story to help the reader interpret its meaning. They do not comment or preach, but instead, simply emphasize parts of the story that create the meaning they see in it. They not only write a story of meaning, but also impress upon the reader the single action that ties everything together.
In telling a true story, interest depends on many things.
1. It might depend on the amount of action
Some writers tell a story in such a flat, lifeless way that it sounds like a thesis; another tells the story in a way that thrills and moves. The difference seems to depend on the amount of action, life, and vividness that the writer puts into each sentence, clause, and phrase. Since writers use verbs to emphasize action, the real source of vividness is usually in the verbs. If the writer uses vivid verbs, the story is vivid; if the writer chooses lifeless verbs, the story is flat.
2. Coherency
The way in which the writer ties facts together has much to do with the interest. If the writer simply strings various stages together in a series, one after the other, the reader does not get their relation. If, however, the writer connects the stages with cause and effect, each will become essential and interesting. This does not mean simply connecting the start of each scene. It means creating a logical coherence throughout every sentence and clause.
The main fault in narrations written by young writers is that they use too many connectives which tie sentences together, such as: “then,” “after that,” “thereupon,” etc. These words indicate only a sequence of time. The skilled writer ties the thought together with relations of cause and effect. He does not use “so” and “because,” “necessarily,” but he realizes the cause-and-effect before he begins to write and ties action together by sheer logic of his thought.
3. Spurring interest
The amount of full-length action, readable description, and concrete details worked into a narrative is more important than anything else for its interest. To spur interest in a story, we must know how to visualize it, to see the action just as if it were on stage before us.
For us to do this, the writer must give the setting and detail the movements and words of his characters so that we can see and hear them. That is why a story with much dialogue looks interesting; the reader, just by seeing the quotation marks, knows that the characters are going to do some talking, anyway, even if they do not move.
