Posts Tagged ‘short story’

The Final Revision of Doll’s Game/Animal Child?

Posted: November 28, 2012 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Well, we went over my revision exercise in class, and overall everyone loved how I tweaked my short story. Or perhaps “tweak” is too light a term for what I did. Anyway, they gave me some final suggestions for how to improve the story, so all I have to do is edit the story one more time and then turn it in with a few other documents for a grade by December 6th. After that, I’ll probably wait until I have the actual grade, but I’ll try submitting Animal Child somewhere for publication. I can already think of a few places it could go.

Let’s hope that I can write an awesome story that is also literary and not horror and get it published. Fingers crossed.

Snake & Black Dogs

Posted: November 27, 2012 in ideas, Novel, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Well, it’s been an interesting day for me, and I’m going to end it by watching NCIS and writing during the commercial breaks. I’ll start with the first chapter of Part IV of Snake (wasn’t that a small break?). This part is where the Snake is offered help from a powerful sponsor in his goal to bring down the mafia family he hates so much (why does he hate it? You’ll have to read the novel once it comes out).  This section is much smaller than Part III, with only sixteen chapters, but what sixteen chapters they are! The Snake doesn’t just meet allies: the family he’s fighting calls on its biggest and baddest hitman; someone comes dangerously close to the Snake’s true identity; the Snake has an episode; and there’s a sex scene. Yes, you read that right. A sex scene. It’ll be awkward to write.

WOOF!

As for the “Black Dogs” part of that title up there, I got another idea for a short story. Or perhaps the beginning of an idea for a short story. Black dogs are more than just cute; in folklore, particularly Celtic and English folklore, the black dog is a portent of death and a messenger of the underowrld. Occasionally they also double as benevolent spirits that watch over children and traverlers, but more often they are not something you want to run into on a dark, lonely night. So I’m going to write a short story based on the idea of a black dog spirit. First I’ve got to think of a context for it that’ll be exciting and not relatively used. Nothing’s come to mind yet, but I’ll come up with something; I did with the dybbuk idea.

You know, now that I think about it, this’ll make 13 short story ideas on my tackboard. What do you think? Should I create a collection of short stories and put it on the Internet as an e-book? I could write several of them over winter break. Let me know what you think.

Write And Don’t Be Ashamed

Posted: November 17, 2012 in Living and Life, short story, Writing
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A classmate of mine in my creative writing class sent me (and the rest of the class) an email today. In the email, she said her mother and her aunt had wanted to see the short story she’d written, but the problem was her story dealt with subjects like drinking and random hook-ups. Guess what? Her mom and aunt don’t approve of those sorts of activities.

So my classmate–whom I’ll refer to as “Freya”, because that’s as far from her real name as you can get–whipped up a little short story that doesn’t involve any of that, and asks all her classmates to take a look and edit it if we can spare the time.

Naturally, my instinct as a writer is not to encourage this, so I write back to Freya and tell her that her mom and aunt should be proud that she’s grown into a strong, independent woman with her own thoughts and feelings, and they should be proud that she wrote a story with her own original ideas in them. If she has to be ashamed of her own work–which for romantic fiction set against the background of a wild college party, is actually a quality story–what’s the point of even writing the story in the first place? If Freya’s family doesn’t like the topics voiced in the story, then she should just tell them so, and leave it at that. If they still want to see it, then show it to them. These women might actually like it, and might also be fans of Fifty Shades of Grey, but are too proud to admit it.

I hope Freya get’s my message and doesn’t feel she needs to hide, because honestly, if a writer can’t be proud of their work, or at least admit they wrote such subjects, what’s there for the future of writing and fiction? Be proud of your work writers; it’s your brainchild, after all. You shouldn’t be ashamed of it, no matter what objectionable material within. Instead, shout it to the world, “I wrote a story and it has stuff people don’t like in it but I don’t care.”

If I didn’t do that, why would I bother writing a novel with a serial killer in it?

The First Time I Was Paid For My Writing

Posted: November 15, 2012 in Reflections, Writing
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There comes a time when a writer achieves something that says, “My writing is really worth something.” And that’s the first time we’re paid for something we wrote.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, was first paid for his work when his novel, A Princess of Mars, was published in the serial magazine All-Story. For the serialization rights, Burroughs was paid four-hundred dollars, quite a bit of money back in 1911, and an even bigger sum for a struggling husband with two kids to feed. Years later, with several successful science fiction, fantasy, romance, and western stories under his belt, Burroughs would claim it all paled to the feeling of accomplishment he felt when he recieved that check for $400.

Similarly, I was first paid for something I wrote in my senior year of high school, when I wrote a short story for a magazine called TEA, A Magazine. The short story I wrote, which I had geared towards this very magazine, was called Summers with Grandmother Fumika, and was about a young girl in Japan who hosts a tea ceremony for a fox spirit with her grandmother. The magazine paid me $100 for the story, and published it in their Winter 2011 edition, with a little illustration in one corner of the fox spirit to boot.

That $100 felt like a gold brick to me. And even though I haven’t gotten any paid pieces since, I think that no matter how successful my short stories or my novels may possibly become, I’ll be like Edgar Rice Burroughs, feeling the most pride for a small sum of money.

What about you? Have you ever been paid for your work?

What did it feel like?

Doll’s Game: Done For Now

Posted: November 14, 2012 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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I just finished with the first draft of the rewrite of Doll’s Game. And yes, I said I was renaming it “Animal Child”, but you all are more familiar with the title Doll’s Game, so for now I’ll continue calling it that. The new version of the story is four pages shorter, and doesn’t cover as much ground as the earlier version. And unlike the original version, I like this one much better. In fact, I think this draft kicks the old draft’s butt, and actually stands the chance of being published somewhere, which I certainly don’t mind.

Well, now it’s time for the next step in the process for short stories I’m trying to publish: I save the story and put it away for later, when I can edit it with fresh eyes. I’m pretty sure that when I do the edits, I’ll be doing a lot of work on the middle and ending sections of the stories more than the beginning section, just because those sections involve important character important, so I have to make sure those sections are good sections.

In the meantime, I have some projects and papers to write for class, and then I have work to do on my novel-that-is-in-its-final-stages Reborn City and my novel-in-progress Snake. Of course, the former requires more work than either of the latter, which may mean I’ll have less time to devote to NaNoWriMo. Ah, the troubles of a college student.

I have to go now, so I’ll write more later. Happy Wednesday.

Rewriting “Doll’s Game”

Posted: November 13, 2012 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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As I’ve said in previous posts, I’m working on editing the short story I’m writing for my creative writing class, Doll’s Game. One of the biggest criticisms I got on that short story when we workshopped it was that for a little girl who’s been held captive and abused for most of her life, she adapts to the outside world rather quickly.

So now I’m writing a version of the story showing the events of the main character’s first few days on the outside through her perspective, and since she hasn’t had much human contact, she has a rather unique point of view that’s been challenging to write. Then again, I like the challenge, so what’s the problem?

I’m also trying to rename the story, seeing as in the act of a total rewrite, a title that worked under one circumstance doesn’t work under another. Since kids growing up in the sort of environment my main character is growing up in tend to be feral, I’m going with “Animal Child’ for now, but it’s subject to change. Hopefully a better title that fits the direction of the story will come along.

Anyway, I better get back to work; I’m two-thirds of the way with this rewrite, and I need to do a little more if I want to get to three-fourths. Wish me luck.

“Doll’s Game”–Beginning the Revision Process

Posted: November 10, 2012 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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In my creative writing class, I have to do a revision exercise due two days after my workshop date. Yes, that means I have to turn in a new draft on Sunday. By noon, too. Jeez, what if I want to sleep past one in the afternoon?

Well, I can’t sleep in that late apparently, not without getting a lowered grade. So I did my revision exercise and I plan to send it in after I finish writing this post. What I had to do was take a certain section of the story and, taking into account all the suggestions I got on the day of my workshop, rewrite it. And that’s what I did, editing one of the early sections of Doll’s Game. And now, I think I’ll work on the rest of the short story, doing an entirely new version of the story based on all the feedback and critiques I got on Friday.

What does that mean, though? Basically I’ll be writing an entirely new story with the same main motif at the center. What was that motif? A girl raised in captivity by her kidnapper gets free and gets a real shock when she escapes. The original story focused on her entire life after she escaped, but now I’ll be focusing on her time in captivity, and what happened immediately after the escape.

And yes, I do write that sort of creepy subject material. Why? I blame a childhood trauma I wrote about several posts back.

But back to the main theme of this post: I’m basically doing an entire rewrite. At the center will be the main character and her experience, but it’s less about her lfie growing up after her trauma and more about what happened immediately afterwards, which is just as terrifying, if not more so, than her time in captivity. Imagine how terrifying an unfamiliar world might be after escaping one that was familiar but filled with pain and fear. It’s horrible.

Which works to my strengths, since I’m writing disturbing material whenever I’m not writing a term paper or something along those lines. But still, it’s going to be quite a lot of work.

Oh well, that’s the challenge I’ve taken up, isn’t it? And besides, I’ve got about a month. If I work now, I should have plenty of time to do any necessary revision. And if I get a good grade, who knows? I may seek to get it published somewhere. I’m not sure where, though; even hardcore horror magazines might pass on a story involving this sort of story if they feel it’s a little too disturbing for their tastes.

Well, wish me luck. I’ve got some work to do.

“Doll’s Game” Post-Workshop

Posted: November 9, 2012 in ideas, short story, Writing
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Alright, so I just got back from lunch, and now I’m writing about what happened at the workshop, where Doll’s Game was discussed and we talked about ways to improve it. Surprisingly, people didn’t hate it. Some actually liked it, and one person said that compared to the other stories we’ve read this semester, mine was “a breath of fresh air” (I’m going to chalk up that last part to the fact that I’m probably the only person besides the teacher in the class who’s ever been published, so I might have a little more experience than my classmates).

However, there were plenty of things to be improved upon. One was that my story spans about twenty years, summarizing unimportant bits while going into detail about life-changing bits. The gist was that all this information would make a great book as well as a novel (not that I’d write such a novel; in addition to the projects already in progress, I don’t want to write something that has nothing to do with horror). However, my classmates and my teacher recommended that instead of making a novel, I should focus on when my character Renee is eight years old and her life is changed forever, which sounds challenging and interesting to write.

There were some other parts that were pointed out as implausible, and now that I think about it, I can see the logic in this. So I’ll have to fix those areas up as well.

So I’ve got to do some rewriting to do, starting with a short revision exercise that I’ll do over the weekend. Finally I’ll turn in a rewrite in early December, and aftar I get the grade…well who knows? Maybe I’ll have something publishable. Fingers crossed and hope for the best, right?

Workshopping “Doll’s Game”

Posted: November 9, 2012 in Living and Life, short story, Writing
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Some of you know that I wrote a short story for my creative-writing course, Doll’s Game, and that I turned it in last week. You may also remember that I thought it was the worst piece of fiction I’d ever written in my college career, and I made a point of telling my classmates that it would be the worst story they read this semester.

Well, I stood corrected on that last point: mine’s the second-worst. The grand prize goes to the guy who’s story, although interesting in terms of plot, had so many point-of-view switches that it left me dizzy. Not too mention the guy couldn’t properly signify dialogue to save his life. It just took down the quality of the story so much.

But today I’m getting my story reviewed. And I am not looking forward to it one bit. I mean come on, my strength is in scary stories, not literary ones, and my plot goes all over the place. I sent everyone the link to my recently-published alien invasion short story Ripple just to make up for the quality of Doll’s Game.

Well, maybe they’ll give me an idea to improve the story. Who knows? I’ll let you guys know how it goes after class and we’ll see. Wish me luck.

A Plethora of Short Stories

Posted: November 7, 2012 in ideas, short story
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Or to be more specific, short story ideas.

You see, over the past couple of weeks I’ve had several bursts of inspiration, each leading to an idea for a short story. Today, I’ve reached ten ideas I could run with. The bad news? It’s National Novel Writing Month, and while there’s no rule excluding short story writing during NaNoWriMo, I want to focus on my two novels, one being looked over and edited by a friend, the other at forty-one chapters with the forty-second on its way.

But you know, there’s a silver lining in all this. If I can get through Part III of Snake by the end of the month, I might sit down and punch out one or two of those short stories. And who knows? That might lead to me working on several more. I could end up having a whole collection of short stories…which I could put out as a collective e-book. Oh, that’s a great idea. One sci-fi novel, one thriller, a collection of short stories. Sounds like the beginning of a great bibliography, if you ask me.

So I’ll keep collecting ideas. If I come up with thirteen, I’ll know it’s meant to be for me to do a short story collection. I even have a title in mind (but I’m not sharing it here; it’ll be a surprise).

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