Literally Reruns – Everything Happens For a Reason by Adam West

Ah, the brave year of ‘15. No matter the century, I’m certain that someone will claim that she/he walked ten miles uphill through snow both ways to and from school, upon recalling 2015. Time distorts perception and makes exaggerant raconteurs of us all.

Even the written word is affected by the slow passage of time. Sometimes a piece loses esteem, other times a story will do better in the future than it had due to shifting perspective. I believe that the first ever January Literally Stories tale, Everything Happens For a Reason by one of our original Editors, Adam West, falls on the good side of that conception.

Q: The story is told almost exclusively through dialogue between several characters. Although it has been eight years, do you recall having difficulty keeping the personalities and agendas of each character straight?

Q: I leave this open as an opportunity for you to tell us what it was like behind the scenes during the site’s early days. This one appeared when there were fewer than ten weeks recorded, and now reappears well past week 400!

Leila

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Everything Happens For a Reason

Adam’s response:

Thank you for choosing Everything Happens For A Reason for the Re-Run

In answer to your first question:

Q: The story is told almost exclusively through dialogue between several characters. Although it has been eight years, do you recall having difficulty keeping the personalities and agendas of each character straight?

The difficulty when trying to ensure each character is sufficiently distinct from all the others is I believe, in doing so, not replicating stereotypes. Arguably, the best way to form recognisable characters in short fiction is through dialogue. Not only speech patterns, colloquialisms etc. but character opinion/views. The latter should help the reader to form an immediate image of the character albeit one that might indeed be a stereotype! Quite a conundrum.

Second question:

Q: I leave this open as an opportunity for you to tell us what it was like behind the scenes during the site’s early days. This one appeared when there were fewer than ten weeks recorded, and now reappears well past week 400!

The early days of Literally Stories were very exciting. Especially so because we were, dare I say it, an eclectic mix; age, gender, background, geographical location, writing styles, likes and dislikes in the literary world. The best part of it was undoubtedly receiving and reading the stories. Not all of them, of course. Whilst I did not have the staying power of some of the original editors who have continued to run a very successful site long after I departed, I trust my contribution to Literally Stories at the outset has helped some of the hundreds of writers who have found a home for their writing there, and perhaps given them the encouragement to continue.