A Little Story

An embarrassingly quick exit from my last competition. A shame really, because I quite liked the story. It seems that the ones I really like don’t do as well as the stories I have reservations about. 

For your reading pleasure:

Cold Comfort

Erin locked the basement, muting the wailing and smashing crockery.

“Síona?”

The door rattled on it’s hinges. Erin climbed downstairs.

“Síona, please.”

Tomorrow, Mam would do something ‘nice’, papering over the cracks in their family. Why didn’t she leave? Instead, she was up there, placating him.

“He’s looking at me the way he looked at Dearbhla before he...”

Erin almost said ‘touched’; too forgiving a euphemism. The word sickened her. She wanted comfort. None came.

“I’m leaving tonight. Dearbhla will take me in.”

Deep cold embraced her, exuding pride and sadness.

“I’ll miss you too.” Erin wept in the darkness.

Tracing a Story

Have you ever started a story and realised that you were rewriting something else? I'm sure you've heard that euphemism that there are only 7 stories. If that's the case, how are there so many books?

I'm here to say that there's nothing wrong with writing a story that has already been written. Most of the story is window dressing. There are so many Hero's Journeys out there bedecked with wands and dragons and light sabers, but they are essentially the same story.

If I have an idea for a story that is, at its core, a rewrite of Hamlet, am I stealing Shakespeare's story or am I writing a story that has a similar outline?

And that's what I mean by 'tracing'. The basic outline of two stories can be the same while producing two very different and equally valid stories.

For a tongue-in-cheek example, click here!

I'll be posting my latest "story that didn't make it" tomorrow. I came 11th in my group but only the top 10 go through to the next round.

Outgoing - Litany - NYC Midnight 250 Word Microfiction Challenge 2022

Sad to say, I'm out of the 250 Word Microfiction Challenge. I was disappointed, because I was very proud of Litany (see below). I honestly thought it could do the business. It was not to be.

Having said that, one of the main reasons I enter this competition is because everything submitted gets feedback and mine told me one important thing: the standard of thes stories in my group must have been exceptional, because the most damning criticism was that some of the facts in my story were vague to outsiders. By clarifying these facts, my story would have done much better. 

I consider that to be exceptionally positive feedback. I can't wait to find and read the other stories from the group.

Anyway, I'm still waiting to hear back on the Short Story comp and I have another one lined up for this month. I just need to turn this idea into words. It's not often I get to put the words armillary sphere into a story.

Tis Done

I couldn't really hold off anymore, so the story is submitted. I hope it does ok, but I won't hold my breath. In truth, I'm not happy with the title I chose, but it will work out or it won't.

If I even got to the final I'd be amazed. But, hey, let the judges judge me, because I've never been very good at measuring my good and bad writing. 

Title Indeed

A bad pun of a title, but it leads directly into what I want to talk about.

Normally when I start writing a story I get a title and an outline idea straight away. This isn't a boast: these can sometimes become a straight jacket for the story and I can find it hard to break away from my original, bright, shining idea that spurned me into writing in the first place. The advantage, though, is that I have something to work with and can build on that.

Queue my February writing challenge. I decided (as I've mentioned before) to enter one competition a month this year. January is behind me and February is running out of time on me. But, there's the thing: I have the story written. It has changed significantly from the unusual ghost story it started with to the story of a young boy's breakdown in the face of his family's grief at the loss of an infant. Not a pleasant story, but I found my brain wandering to the theme of grief and it's effects on people and that's where my story went.

But I never got a title.

This is very strange for me. Titles are usually not a problem for me at all. I now find myself with three days to go and I have a story with no title. I don't even have a working title. I don't know what to do with this situation.

Any advice will be gratefully received in the comments. 

February - Not Like That

This...

... is ...

... sooo ...

... embarassing. 

I wrote my story and submitted it and the next morning I realised that I had uploaded the wrong file?

And it was too late to resubmit.

My spanish isn't very good and there were two sentences to be spoken by a spanish speaker. I had marked them in the manuscript with <translation: the phrase I wanted to translate> and later that day I came home and hit Google Translate and translated the two sentences. 

Then I uploaded the file with the placeholders in it by accident. 

I'm not sure I could be more embarassed than I am right now. 

They say you live and learn. I am learning the hard way.

February? Not Like This - Writing Magazine

My only New Year's Resolution this year was to enter one writing competition every month. I have some money to spare each month, so it's worth doing it; for the challenge, feedback and the possibility of payback.

February's challenge will be from Writing Magazine. The subscirber's competition is to start a story with the line "Not like this" and keep it to between 1,500 and 1,700 words. That's a pretty small window, but a solid, challenging target. 

That's it. Those are the only instructions. Everything else is up to the writer and I like it.

It doesn't surprise me that the competition page on the website says "You will have to work hard to stand out", because the first impulse is to go with obvious themes: a parent scolding a child; a child with poor language; the death of Switch in The Matrix. So yes, standing out is going to be a struggle.

Step 1: Find a solid opening.

How do you make that line in itself stand out? Do you start with something surprisingly soft, or do you go for something strong but perhaps predictable? Either way, it has to be an opener that introduces us to the protagonist and their character.

Step 2: Build the character to be "different".

There are only a few ways to build up a character in 1,700 words or less and make them memorable, reasonable and "likeable", not necessarily as a personality, but as a character that people will say "I like how you..."

Aim for this. Even if the character must ultimately be unpleasant, put something into their personality that the reader can hold on to.

Step 3: Break the character.

This character will have to have a flaw, something that becomes quickly obvious and is easily exploitable in the tight word count. Even better if the flaw can be exposed with the "Not like this" opener.

Step 4: Make it matter.

Exploiting the character's flaw and either saving or damning them for it must matter. Readers should feel that this character deserved what happened to them, good or bad, but maybe didn't "deserve" it.

There! That's the skeleton of this one. Time to build a character.

[EDIT] I made a big change to the story. I have found a character I like, and I'm trying to work in a twist at the end. I hope it works, but I know I'm still only developing my skill and my voice work.