Last night I edited two short stories whose editing phases were long overdue because I was busy finishing up Snake. Today I turned to the problem of finishing “Vile”, the short story that I began over the semester but got stuck on. Earlier while hanging out at the library, I was looking over the first page and I thought to myself, How did I write this? It’s terrible. When I considered why it was so bad, I realized it had a lot to do with what I had been trying to accomplish with this story.
When I first came up with the story, about a man who comes back to life through the wonders of cryogenics, I’d set out to write a science-fiction story that was deep and philosophical and reflective, like Star Trek fans often claim the original series was and like a lot of science fiction can be. Despite my best efforts, I’ve never been much of a trekkie, and I apparently can’t write a deeply philosophical story with a sci-fi background, no matter how much I try. And believe me, I’ve tried.
Take a look at Reborn City, for example. It’s a science fiction novel, but it has moral-filled and philosophical themes. Those came later though. I never intended all the morality and philosophy to get in there in the beginning. It just got in there during the planning-and-writing process. The moral of this: I can get deep…but I need a great adventure or horror story to get deep in.
Which is why when I read “Vile”, I wondered to myself, how can I make this a good story without getting stuck again? I went back to the basic idea behind the story: a guy is brought back to life through the power of science, but things don’t go well afterwards. So how can I proceed? I thought about it…and then an idea came to me. I’d been struggling with another story about a demonic possession gone wrong. Could I combine the two? Indeed, I found a way to do so.
So now I’ve got a story I’m pretty sure I won’t get stuck on and be able to finish it. I just need to write it. In fact, I’m going to go do that right now. I’ll see what comes up. Hopefully it’ll be a terrifying sci-fi story with the deep themes I wanted, but the themes don’t clog the writing process.
Rami Ungar The Writer 
A lot of the time our subconscious is an evil genius. I swear, it can see the future and knows when things will work together, it just toys with us until the realisation…
Yeah, it is an evil genius. Thankfully, it usually uses its genius to help us. Thanks for commenting.
Nothing wrong with combining ideas. That’s what Whiskey Delta was born for me. Only reason it was set in New Mexico was because I was doing research for a story about a militarized border. But I thought it would be so much cooler if it involved zombies. It’s how good ideas come to fruition!
I didn’t know Whiskey Delta came about that way. And now it’s over 1000 copies sold. Sounds like a great merger with a huge profit gain, if you get my meaning.
Well yes, yes I do. Now publish it and watch the sales soar! Oh yeah, and charge money… (whistles)
I’m just hoping that RC does just as well.
Then market it well. Make sure that you classify it as superhero lit or something equally popular and tantalizing. If you label it right, they will come!
Like dystopic lit? I hear there’s a huge market for that these days.
That there is, but the more YA friendly and commercial, the better! It’s okay to mislabel a product just a little, so long as you don’t mislabel fiction as non-fiction 😉
True dat.
You know, I’m looking forward to publishing RC, and I’m itching on starting the sequel, which I’ll call “Video Rage”. It’s going to be sick!