MOTIVATIONS TO WRITE SHORT STORY

A.   Finding the object

In our daily life, we will find the people who like talking, especially in communication process among them. The speakers sometime make their story over, so that they are called “si pembual”. “si pembual can be said as “the oral man of letters” because they can entertain the listeners by their stories. 

By reading more, someone can have a wealthy of spiritual more than others. Person who has a wealthy spiritual also has a higher consideration with their environment. From the experiences of reading, realize or not, their language skills will be developed. They have more vocabularies more than average.

The spiritual experience, the consideration of environment, and the wealthy of language are the assets that can be used while the impuls of writing comes. There are many short story that take a theme of imbalance social status that comes from the the critical thinking of the authors. In their story, they will take a position as the third person as the observer. But they also can be as the first person as the actor. 

In writing a novel or short story, it is better if we have had the experience before, so that our works will be more life. But it is not always like that. We also can search from the internet to find out the things that are related to our story. Emile Zola is an author who takes that experience. He lived with the ferryman to write his novel, Germinal.

As many experts said that literature comes from sources of the authors’ experiences. It can be from physical or spiritual (Semi, 1984: 14). The spiritual experience is also the priceless wealthy. It can be found from other media, such as audio or audiovisual, or from the books. Actually when we want to find the object of our writing, we do not need to go faraway. We just need to observe the exiting object.

B.    Inducement

It seems like the guns that full of bullets, it will be soon shoot. This statement is populared by an author named Budi Darma. Someone will be started to write if they find the inducement. Inducement is actually the inspiration that make someone start to write caused by something. How little the inducement is, it can be sharpen someone’s imagination to write.

C.   Imagination Changes

Most of the authors did not make the concept before they start to write. They will be directly write it down. After finished the writing, they just make correction about spelling or something that must be repaired. For the author, making concept of their works is strange, because they have had their own concepts or imaginations in their mind. Imagination is not come without experience, wheter is it physical or spiritual. The expert of literature said that literary works do not come from the empty mind. It means that literary work is the expression of the real life.

3rd CHAPTER

THE TRICKS TO WRITE SHORT STORY

“The essence in writing short story is not about the short or long the opus, but it is about how the authors describe the simple story with a touched plot”. (YB. Mangunwijaya, 1995: 7 in choosen short story by KOMPAS 1995). 

Writing the short story can be said as writing the legend. The legend that close to the daily life and fantacy of the readers. It also needs to have its enchantment, so that the readers will have a high desire to read the short story. It can be reached with the writing tricks.

One of the tricks while writing the short story is engineer the story, so that the story more attractive, and up to date. There are many things with the same theme that have written by some authors. But we can make the new one based on the same theme. Same, but not seem. From the same object, we must have the different point of view. It depends on the authors critical thinking to make something different from others.

The tricks in writing are:

A.   The Opening Paragraph

Beside the title of the story, the opening paragraph is one of the important thing that needs to pay attention. When the first paragraph starts to read, it will be the factor that will decide wheter the reader will continue to read or not. The opening paragraph is like the opening key. The opening paragraph must be entered to the point of the story. In the opening paragraph, the readers need to find the new information and something that is pleasure to be read.

We have known the three kinds of paragraph. They are opening paragraph, content paragraph, and closing paragraph. Those three theories are not occur as in short story. In the paragraph of short story, we need the description, not the argumentation. In the other word, short story is different with scientific work. In short story, something is explained by an action. But in scientific works, something is explained by arguments and causality based on the sources. Meanwhile the sources of short story is imagination.

B.    Considering the Readers

The readers are the consumers, meanwhile the readers are the producers. Producers must consider the quality of their product to be sold. More over, the rivalry of the products have been increased. For example, love is something that have been taken as the theme of the story. How to make it different from others? We just need to study the tricks to make the story surprised the readers.

C.   Digging the Nuance

The nuance of the story is playing an important parts in the short story, because the readers need something different in describing something. For example, how someone describes the crowded of Jakarta with the different point of view.

A writer of short story is demanded an essentialist, which means the writer must be able to catch the essence of the reality. To make the essence of the event in the story, we must be able to choose the right words to be used. Wheter from dialogue, description, or narration. 

D.   Effective Sentence

The sentences in short story must be an effective sentence. Effective sentence is the sentence that can make the good impression to the readers. Long sentence or complex sentence will become a burden for the readers. But it does not means that we can not use it, but we must know when should we use it. The experts said that an effective sentence has more power that impacted to the psychological readers.

The sentences are devided into three kinds based on the structure. They are: (1) simple sentence, (2) wide sentence, and (3) mixing sentence. Simple sentence is the sentence that stand alone. That only consists of subject and predicate. For the example: she is a writer. In developing the paragraph, sometimes the writer continue the simple sentence become mixing sentence and wide sentence.

Beside using the effective sentence, the writer is also demanded to have a wealthy of vocabulary and language metaphore to make the short story running well and not make the reader feels bored. The repeating words will make the readers feel bored. But it does not mean that we can not using the repeating words, but we must using it in the right place.

The conclution is, the effective sentence for short story is the energetic sentences, rich of vocabulary, and plastic. It is prominent than using the scientific words.

E.    Seasoning

The figure of seasoning is needed in short story. It can be sex or humor, but we do not need to make the exploitation in them. They play as the maker of living nuace. The humor in short story is not a joke, but it is the nuance of humor that caused from the story itself.

F.    Moving the Character

Short story is not an objective reality, or something that really happen. If it is the real accident that can be proven , so it can not be said as short story. Short story is not telling the true event, but it just showing the things that related to the real event. Directly, or not.

The characters in short story must be moving in physical, because human is a dinamic creature. The character will be stronger if they are alive. It means they are not like the chess that only be in line.

G.   Focusing Story

In short story, conflict must be there.  At least, there is a problem in that story that need to be solved. The most important is how to make the problem become attractive. Basically, there is only one main problem in short story that named as focus. The other problems –beside the main problem- are as the supporting.

The conclution is, short story also needs focus like the result of a good photo. If the focus is unclear, or the object is unseen by other object, that photo is not a good photo. A good photo is the photo with a sharp focus, meanwhile the other objects are as the supporting factors. 

H.   The Last Touching

Short story must be ended while the problem has finished. Sometimes the ending of short story seems not clear, that make the readers think the story did not finish yet. Actually, while the main problem has been solved, the story must be ended without continuing the sentence. The ending must make the reader surprised. 

I.     Editing

Editing means repaired the result of work, is there any mistake or not. The main mistake is spelling. The first step in doing editing is reread the whole of the story carefully. The second step, after you finish reading the story, maybe there is any sentence that is not appropriate, or there is a sentence that oppress the readers . It also needs a repairment.

Editing also means recorrect carefully the parts that must be given the bigger space between flash back with the main plot by giving the architecture sign. Editing process is a must if someone want to be a good writer. After finish writing the story, you do not need to make the editing directly. Wait until tomorrow after you finished it in the night.

J.     Giving the Title

Title has its own way to attrack the readers. Reminding that title is the reflection of the story, it is better to give the title in the end. But there is no rule if the writer want to make the title in the beginning.

The attractive development from the titles is by choosing the ambiguous title. For example, the title of short story “Ngarai” that published in Kompas 1992 that has the ambiguous meaning.

                                              

Waiting For Godot

Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot is a classic script that is written by Samuel Beckett, an author from Irlandia. This story is telling about a friendship between two persons, namely Vladimir and Estragon. Both of them were waiting something that was not clear. Wheter they were human, lord, or maybe animal. They didn’t know what exactly they were waiting for. 

Day by day the time passed, but Godot didn’t come yet. They still waiting without doing anything. They just debating and chatting something that’s not important. The ending of this story is tragedy. Until they hair getting white and their face getting older, Godot still didn’t come yet. The term of ‘waiting for Godot is come from this story. 

That story seems like the condition of the people in this country who are hoping the goodness and the justice under this system. Every five years, this country celebrates the “democration party” with a new good hope with the new leader. But what is the fact? Is there any good changing from the changing leader? We just waiting the leader to fulfill their beautiful promises. We just waiting democration prove their three principals ‘dari rakyat, oleh rakyat dan untuk rakyat’. But is there any prove of them? 

We will never find the goodness and the justice if we still in this system, because this system is using the law that is made by human that full of weakness. How can the human make the rule to human too? I just want to give the example, if you buy a phone, you will get the manual instruction, right? What will happen with your phone if you using the manual instruction of refrigerator to your phone? It must be broken, right? It also same like our condition. We will never get the goodness because we do not use the manual instruction from our creature. So, what is our manual instruction? Yes, Al-qur’an. 

The thing that must we do is using back our manual instruction, not the other manual instruction. Because only our creature, Allah SWT who knows our needed.

Solusi yang Gagal

Saat ini umat sedang sakit, yang menuntut segeranya pertolongan datang. Seperti yang telah dijelaskan pada judul post sebelumnya, Kita dan Perubahan, bahwasanya realita saat ini memang benar-benar sangat rusak yang menyebabkan umat menjadi sakit. Dalam mengatasi penyakit umat, para intelektual mencoba untuk memberikan solusi untuk mengatasi penyakit umat. Mereka telah mencoba beberapa solusi namun tetap saja kegagalanlah yang mereka tuai. Mengapa solusi yang ditawarkan oleh para intelektual yang berpijak pada pemikiran itu bisa gagal?

Penyebab kegagalan akan solusi yang telah ditawarkan memiliki dua kemungkina. Kemungkinan yang pertama adalah, tidak adanya pemahaman akan penyakit umat, sehingga para intelektual yang dikatakan berperan sebagai dokter umat tadi tidak mampu memberi obat yang tepat kepada pasiennya. Bagaimana tidak, penyakitnya saja tidak diketahui, konon lagi obatnya.

Kemungkinan yang kedua adalah, sang dokter mampu mediagnosis penyakit apa yang sebenarnya dialami oleh umat, namun mereka tidak memberikan obat sesuai dengan takaran. Yang seharusnya diberikan sehari tiga kali, malah diberikan sekali tiga hari. Sementara umat sudah tidak tahan lagi dijadikan bahan mal praktik oleh para intelektual yang katanya berperan sebagai dokter umat. Oleh sebab itu, dibutuhkan obat yang ampuh dan mujarab untuk menyembuhkan penyakit umat saat ini.

Ada beberapa teknik yang pernah dilakukan guna menyembuhkan umat, namun lagi-lagi hasilnya adalah kata GAGAL. Namun walaupun demikian, teknik-teknik ini masih saja tetap didengungkan oleh para intelek.

1.    Kebangkitan melalui Ekonomi

Mereka mengatakan bahwasanya kemunduran yang dialami oleh umat saat ini disebabkan oleh kurangnya harta kekayaan dan sumber ekonomi. Namun pada faktanya, semua itu hanya omong kosong. Buktinya, Amerika yang menjadi negara adidaya saat ini bukan bangkit karena ekonomi. Justru setelah mereka lepas dari penjajahan Inggris-lah tampak adanya kebangkitan dari segi ekonomi, militer dan industri. 

Kekaisaran Rusia yang juga bangkit dari segi ekonomi. Kondisi mereka berubah saat mereka memutuskan untuk mengganti sistem yang mereka gunakan saat ini. ya, sistem baru. Bukti yang lain adalah, kalau saja kebangkitan disebabkan karena faktor ekonomi, pastilah Arab Saudi dan Persia telah bangkit. Karena kedua negara ini memiliki ladang minyak yang melimpah.

Contoh-contoh diatas dapat dijadikan sebagai bukti bahwasanya ekonomi tidak mampu dijadikan sebagai asas kebangkitan. Karena kebangkitan ekonomi adalah salah satu dampak dari bangkitnya suatu negara dengan asas yang kokoh.

2.    Kebangkitan melalui Pendidikan

Katanya, kemunduran disebabkan karena tingginya angka buta huruf, sedikitnya jumlah sarjana dan tidak meratanya penyebaran sarjana. Slogan seperti “ilmu itu menjadi asas kebangkitan” menjadi landasan yang mereka dengungkan sebagai asas kebangkitan. Namun faktanya, teknik itu juga tidak dapat dijadikan sebagai asas kebangkitan. Lihat saja, bukankah jumlah kaum terpelajar di negeri-negeri muslim –jika digabungkan- lebih banyak daripada jumlah di Barat? Lihat saja banyaknya perguruan-perguruan tinggi di Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Kairo, dll, dibandingkan dengan jumlah perguruan tinggi di Barat. Namun apa yang terjadi? Kaum Barat lebih bangkit daripada negara-negara yang memiliki jumlah kaum terpelajar yang tinggi.

Saat Islam berjaya, kemajuan dalam ilmu pengetahuan malah melejit pesat. Hal ini muncul setelah islam bangkit, bukan karena pendidikan yang dijadikan sebagai asas kebangkitan. Hal ini secara otomatis menunjukkan tingginya kaum terpelajar tidak mampu membangkitkan umat. 

3.    Kebangkitan melalui Akhlak

Ini adalah sebuah kalimat yang sangat familiar. Setiap ada kerusakan, pasti yang disalahkan akhlak. Mereka mengatakan bahwa tingginya akhlak akan membawa pada kebangkitan. Pun begitu juga sebaliknya. Hal itu diperkuat dengan syair-syair ungkapan Syauqi, “Jika akhlak mereka hilang, maka mereka akan punah” atau “sia-sia-lah upaya pemimpin yang membangun kaumnya jika akhlak kaum itu penghancurnya.” Memang, bukanlah hal yang salah untuk mengatakan bahwasanya akhlak adalah salah satu faktor kebangkitan. Namun itu hanya berlaku untuk individu saja. Padahal kebangkitan yang dimaksud disini adalah kebangkitan masyarakat, bukan individu. Sebagian mengatakan bahwa masyarakat adalah kumpulan individu. Jadi, jika akhlak individu diperbaiki, maka masyarakat juga akan demikian. Padahal nyatanya, masyarakat itu bukan hanya terbentuk dari kumpulan individu, melainkan adanya ikatan antar-individu dan sistem yang mengikat ikatan itu.

Akhlak individu memang penting, namun faktor pendukung akhlak juga tak kalah penting. Contohnya, seorang anak yang tidak mau mencuri. Ia tidak serta-merta memiliki akhlak seperti itu. Ada beberapa faktor dibaliknya. Misalnya, ayah yang mengajarkan untuk tidak mencuri, pandangan masyarakat terhadap mencuri, bahkan larangan agama untuk mencuri. Jadi, hal yang harus diserukan adalah faktor-faktor yang mampu meningkatkan akhlak tadi.

Contoh lainnya adalah, jika akhlak dikatakan sebagai asas kebangkitan, apakah Barat memiliki akhlak yang lebih baik daripada Indonesia?

4.    Kebangkitan melalui Militer

Timbunan senjata di Arab melebihi timbunan senjata yang dimiliki oleh negara yang bangkit. Mengapa demikian? Karena senjata yang berada pada negara yang tidak bangkit akan seperti senjata yang dipegang oleh bayi atau orang gila yang menembak ke segala arah, tanpa tahu mana teman dan mana lawan. Atau bahkan mungkin mereka akan menembak saudara mereka sendiri.

Ke-empat metode atau teknik diatas, yang dikatakan mampu untuk membangkitkan umat, nyatanya tidak berfungsi karena metodenya adalah metode yang salah. Apa penyebab gagalnya metode yang empat tadi?

1.    Para pemikir atau intelek tidak memahami apa sebab-sebab yang membawa umat pada kemundurannya. Karena mereka menggunakan teori yang dangkal yang menghasilkan solusi yang dangkal pula, tidak sampai ke inti.

2.    Mereka tidak menyadarkan pembahasan pada perkara-perkara kebangkitan. Mereka hanya fokus pada bagaimana cara untuk meningkatkan ekonomi, militer dan industri. Padahal seharusnya mereka memikirkan bagaiman cara untuk membangkitkan umat. Sebab kebangkitan dari segi ekonomi, militer dan industri adalah efek samping dari kebangkitan yang sesungguhnya.