Posts Tagged ‘short story’

Some Thoughts on “Dodi Li”

Posted: October 18, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Reflections, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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For those of you who have no idea what that title means, Dodi Li is a short story that I started this summer and that I’m rewriting before National Novel Writing Month starts in two weeks. It means “my darling” or “my beloved” in Hebrew and should not be confused with a popular Jewish song that is sung sometimes on Friday nights by Jews everywhere.

Dodi Li features a succubus, a demoness who visits men at night as a beautiful woman and steals their sperm in order to create demonic children or steal pieces of their soul through fornication, depending on what myths you believe. However my succubus, who I’ve named Umuruk (sounds like a name a succubus would have, right?) is not the antagonist of the story. Instead, she struggles to protect the other protagonist, a male she’s fallen in love with. Succubi have fallen in love with humans before, according to the folklore and stories I found by people who say they’ve had experiences with succubi (it’s on the Internet, so I can’t be sure if the writers are crazy or not, but I try to keep an open mind), and I decided to tap into that for this story.

The first draft was very plot-oriented, and sucked immensely. I decided to leave it alone until I could think of a way to make it better, and if I couldn’t, then it’d make a great learning experience. But yesterday in creative writing class, my teacher gave me an idea on how I could improve the story. So I went back and started to completely rewrite it, going until half-past ten last night, and then resuming for a little while this morning before class.

As I was heading to class, I realized something about my story: the main character, whose nine years old, and the antagonist, a 40-something with some mental issues, are the only male characters. All the rest are female: the doctor, the head nurse, the head of neurology, a possible detective character, and of course the succubus Umuruk, are all women, and all are women in positions of power that they use to help people.

I started to wonder if that might mean something, if my psyche was trying to tell me something through my writing. If it’s that I respect women in positions of power and that I think there should be more of them, that doesn’t surprise me at all; I grew up in a house full of women, my mom’s a rabbi, my boss is a woman, her boss is a woman, and I took a Women’s Studies course my first year at Ohio State, which I did very well in. So no surprise that powerful women show up in my story.

However, if it has something to do with the fact that Umuruk is able to help the main character more than these women, then I wonder what that might be saying. Perhaps even if women are educated and in positions of power, if they don’t occasionally open their minds to the impossible, then a mentally unbalanced man will hurt an innocent nine-year-old? That’s also a possibility.

In any case, once I finish the story I might understand more, and if I manage to get it published, you might be able to read it and give me some suggestions on what my Muse is trying to tell me.

Anyway, I’ve got some homework to do before I go to work, so I better get that taken care of right now. Have a nice day.

Oh, before I forget, something funny I have to tell you: I was talking to my history teacher after class today, and we had a really great discussion on the way out the building. You see, at the beginning of the semester, my teacher, whose focus is African History, told us that if any of us intentionally failed his class, he’d used magic he learned from tribal priests to enter our dreams and scare the heck out of us. Ever since then I’ve been trying on and off to get him to agree to teach me how to enter people’s dreams (can you blame me?).

At some point during our conversation, my teacher revealed he’d been joking, but I thought he’d been serious because he said it in such a serious way. This led to a discussion on witchcraft in different cultures, which led to a discussion on using magic and summoning stuff. That led to a discussion on spirits and possessions, and in the end, I ended up recommending my teacher to go see The Possession, which I reviewed back in September. Turns out, he agreed to see it. How about that?

Anyway, I think it’s funny, I have no idea what you think.

Edits and Construction

Posted: October 17, 2012 in ideas, Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Well yestereday I edited two short stories. One was Doll’s Game, the short story I’m writing for class, though I might decide to edit it again if I can get this idea I got today for the story to work somehow. I also edited Hunt in the Slaughterhouse, a short story I wrote back in April based on a dream I had. I’ve been trying to get around to editing it for a while, but I’ve had some trouble doing that. But yesterday I had the chance and I have to say, it loooks much better. I’ll have to figure out whether or not I want to send it to a magazine right now or if I want to wait and show it to someone else beforehand.

I also had an idea for Dodi Li, the succubus story I wrote over the summer. Although the plot for that story was really bad and I ended up deciding this story was best left as a learning experience, I decided to rewrite it after my teacher in my creative writing class gave me an idea. You see, she had been discussing the story we were critiquing today, and how the author was able to make it difficult to tell what was reality and what was delusion in his story. Listening to that, I just had a burst of inspiration for Dodi Li, which I plan to get to work on as soon as possible. Got to say, those workshop critiques can do wonders for you.

On, and before I forget, remember how I rewrote the outline for my serial killer novel Snake and that I mentioned I’d set a scene in a construction site? Well today I finally reached the man who could help me get onto the site. We’re going to try and find a time that works for both of us so that I can tour a site and ask some questions. This is a big oppurtunity for me because I want my readers not to have to suspend their disbelief too much and what’s better than actual experience?

Well, hope to have more good news for you later. In the meantime, I’ve editing to do.

The Edits Are Done! Yahoo!

Posted: October 15, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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To get why I posted this picture, read below.

Ladies and gentlemen, get out of your chairs, and start dancing in front of your computer or while holding whatever portable electronic device you are reading this post on! I’ve finished the edits on Reborn City! I thought the editing would take a couple of months, but instead it took a couple of weeks. I wonder if my idols in the world of writing literature have it this easy with their novels when they do the final edits.

So, RC‘s at 24 chapters, with each chapter averaging about four edits total. The longest chapter is the first one, with thirty-four pages, and well over 10,000 w0rds. The epilogue is definitely the shortest, with less than a page and barely two-hundred words, if even that. All told, the entire novel, in 8 1/2″ x 11″ pages, with a 12-point font and double-spaced, is 313 pages (whistle-whistle!). The word count, which requires no calculating of page sizes or anything, is 90,850. To which I say, holy crap.

Well, now I plan to go take a nap, because it’s close to midnight right now. Tomorrow I’ll send this baby off to a friend (his email address is conveniently in the emails I got when he commented on previous posts; expect an email saying “rami ungar reborn city” in the subject line), then go to class. At some point I’ll work on editing and writing some short stories, and when November rolls around get to work on Snake for National Novel Writing Month, or as we writers like to call it, NaNoWriMo.

And what happens after I get Reborn City back from my friend? Well, I’ll do the edits he suggests, and then I’ll get to work on doing everything else that needs to be done so that you all can read Reborn City.

You know, I’ve seen this process of self-publishing Reborn City sort of like a train, and every time I get to a new milestone in the process, I’ve reached a new station. When do I get to the final stop? I’m not sure; I’m certainly ahead of schedule, but who knows how long that’ll last?

Anyway, I hope for some more good news soon. That way I can share it with you as soon as possible.

To all, a good night (or if you just turned on your computer and you’re reading this with your morning coffee, good morning. Some weather today, huh?). Sweet dreams, and happy blogging to you.

Critiquing In My Creative Writing Class

Posted: October 10, 2012 in Living and Life, short story, Writing
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“God, I love what you’ve written. I do have some thoughts though…first off, can we maybe have less commandments? Twenty-seven’s a little much to remember and recite!”

For the first half of my creative writing class this semester, we’ve been going over some of the fundamentals of writing fiction, including plot, dialogue, and characters, among other things. We’ve also been told to each write a shorty story between 8 and 20 pages, or 2,000 and 5,000 words, and while I certainly had trouble writing my story, mostly because it’s literary, I’ve been enjoying reading and critiquing the stories of my classmates.

We’ve actually only read 4 stories so far, but they’ve all been interesting in their own way. There was a story about the rivalry between two princes, a vignette about a day in the life of a soldier, a crime story, and even one involving a virtual reality game. And later today we’re recieving a new story, so I’m wondering what that’s going to be about.

After we read the story, we have to type up a critique in the form of a letter and hand it in to both our teacher and the writer of the story in question. We also give our impressions orally to the writer during class, allowing them to absorb some more feedback before they start editing their story. Although I like getting critiqued myself (because I want to know what problems my stories have and what I can do to fix them), it’s another story entirely to critique someone else’s work (pun intended). I like the feeling of helping someone improve a story they wrote, especially if the story is good. And it’s different from when I look over my own work, because I’m not looking at my classmates’ work with a biased eye.

I’ll be turning in my own story for critiquing in early November, a few days before my science-fiction short story “Ripple” is set to hit the web. Between now and then, I’ll go over my story and do a few edits before I turn it in, because I like to give my short stories an edit or two before I turn them in for critiquing by anyone. But for now, I’ll just sit back, get my homework done, and critique other people’s work.

What about you? Have you ever been critiqued or critiqued someone else’s work? How does it feel when you do?

Publishable Shorts vs. Learning Shorts

Posted: October 8, 2012 in Reflections, Uncategorized, Writing
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Last night I was thinking of some of the short stories I’ve written over the years that I never got around to giving a second edit. I wondered why I’d never gotten to editing them. And then it hit me: those stories, good or bad, were meant to be teaching stories. To be more exact, they were stories that were meant to teach me something new about writing. I was writing these short stories as learning experiences and hadn’t realized it up until this point, but now that I do, it makes sense why I wrote them in the first place.

I remember this one story I wrote late in my senior year of high school, that was meant to be like a probing psychological examination of two men traveling through space. Of course I failed miserably, but I learned a couple of things writing it, including that you need a lot more than two dudes talking about their feelings in a space ship to make a good story. Back in late winter-early spring, I wrote a short story about a guy who found a letter and then started eating fiction books (not sure if that one can’t be published, but it’s still very weird). I think that one was a lesson on magical realism and showing versus telling and how to draw out a story.

And remember the succubus and doll stories from this summer? Yeah, those were on why you shouldn’t go overboard on the plots of stories and forget the character development, because let’s face it, those stories were so focused on the plot the stories worked against themselves.

So now what am I going to do when it comes to writing short stories? Well, I think I won’t expect every story I write has to be published. Instead, I’ll see where a story can take me and if it can be published, that’s great. I’ll also try new methods of coming up with short stories, some of which I picked up from other people who’ve used these methods to come up with short stories. I’ll let you know if they come of anything, but before I do any of that, I need to finish editing Reborn City.

Until next time (which might be sooner than we both think).

The Latest Idea: Dybbuks

Posted: September 26, 2012 in ideas, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Leah’le, a character from the 1937 film “The Dybbuk”, who was possessed by the titular spirit. Based on the play of the same name by S. Ansky

Well, it seems I have a lot of creepy stuff on the mind lately: evil dolls; succubi; and now dybbuks. Anyone want to put down bets on what will be the subject for the next short story?

Anywho, I saw The Possession a while back (wrote a positive review of it) and just now I finished watching The Unborn (one of those movies that I enjoy but the critics just seem to hate). Both have to do with dybbuks, which if you are unfamiliar with, are spirits that were once the souls of humans but, according to Jewish mysticism, were barred from Heaven or turned away from God and became monsters that possess human beings, looking for a second chance at life.

Both these films got me thinking about dybbuks, and now I want to write my own story about a dybbuk (or maybe more than one; who knows?). Of course, it won’t be like The Possession or The Unborn, which follow the typical possession-exorcism story. Instead, I’ll probably try to make the dybbuk seem like a hero instead of a villain, and maybe I’ll mix in some British folklore while I’m at it (I’m not saying what or how, but I will say it involves dogs).

i’m not sure what sort of story I want to tell yet, but I’ll see what I can come up with. I just hope that I don’t accidentally summon something by thinking about it too hard like I did when I was researching succubi!

The First Draft Is Done, Thank God!!!

Posted: September 23, 2012 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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First draft of what, you may ask? Well, I’ll tell you: remember that short story I had to write for my fiction-writing class that was taking forever and a half to get done? Well, I just finished the first draft for it and let me tell you, that piece of work was a piece of work! Sixteen pages, nearly fifty-four hundred words, and more literary-style writing than I’m used to.

Anyway, the working title of this story is Doll’s Game (no, this is not the short story about the creepy doll) and I’ll probably get around to editing it in a few weeks, before it’s due. In the meantime, I’d like to get back into Snake, make some adjustments to some of the work already done and go over the outline to see if there is anything I can improve upon for the latter half of the story. I’d also like to read some books I’ve been meaning to get to, but with the amount of classes and homework I do, do you think it’s possible? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Speaking of homework, I’ve got to get some done, so I’ll talk to all of you later. Bye!

Do Stories Evolve? Apparently They Do

Posted: September 18, 2012 in Progress Report, Reflections, short story, Writing
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I said a while back that while partying at a club near campus, I came up with an idea for a story that I could write for my creative writing class. Well, it’s been several weeks since then, and I’m still working on that short story. But let me tell you, it’s changed since the original idea popped into my head. It started out as a story about a girl who thinks she might be from the nineteenth century growing up in the twentieth century and being confused about her identity; then it lost the part where she actually was from the nineteenth century; and now the story, which was originally in first person, is now…well, it’s still first-person, but it’s the main character addressing someone else in the room with her.

There have also been minor changes along the way, things that do not really affect the story as much as these other changes have, but even as I’m trying to finish up the first draft, I’m finding myself amazed that a story still in the writing stages is changing so much. It started out as literary with a touch of supernatural strangeness, but the supernatural strangeness has been cut out and there’s just a literary story that’s unlike anything I’ve ever written before, mostly because I do not really care for literary with notable exceptions.

This makes me wonder about other stories I admire, and if they underwent huge changes in the midst of being written. I know Japanese manga and anime may have many plot changes as the story progresses, but that’s mostly because manga and anime for the most part are influenced by reader and viewer popularity, so a story arc might be added, changed, or cut out altogether in order to bring up the popularity of the story.

But did J.K. Rowling, who made me want to be a writer in the first place, make certain characters more or less prominent than she originally intended, or did Stephen King want to make Randall Flagg the leader of a whole cadre of demonic villains in The Stand? Did Thomas Harris originally intend for the Red Dragon to be a singer with a dark past instead of a sufferer of a cleft palate with a history of abuse and violence? And did George Lucas originally intend something more steampunk than regular science fiction when he first concieved Star Wars?

In actuality, other stories I’ve written in the past underwent huge changes (Ripple had a different ending in the first draft and Zahara Bakur of Reborn City was one of several main characters before she became the main character in my mind). But the scale of the short story I’m working on now (it’s title, for now, is Doll’s Game) is something I’ve never encountered before, so I’m wondering what this will lead to later. Is more change in store for me? Will I ever get a finished first draft? And what else do I have to discover about this story, what hidden tricks will I uncover next while writing it?

Tell me about your experiences. Did a story you wrote change a lot during the writing process? And how so? And did you like this change? Please tell me, I love to hear from others, especially those with more experience than me.

Aspects of Plot Can Make A Difference

Posted: September 11, 2012 in ideas, Reflections, short story, Writing
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I have an assignment for my creative-writing class: to write a short story and then turn it in at the end of the semester. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been writing about an orphan girl who finds out she’s not who she thought she was (and for those of you who think it’s a short story I started writing in May that I thought of during meditation, this is a different story, the one I thought of while out at a club one night). For a while now, it’s been slow-going, mostly because it’s less horror/sci-fi/fantasy and more along the lines of literary writing, which I’m not too fond of.

However, today I had an idea of where the plot would go, and what the actions taken by this girl and the places she would go could symbolically mean. Like that, I felt my writer’s block dissolve, the story forming for me in my head. So throughout the day, I’ve been working on this story, passing the minimum number of words required and getting well beyond.

Other stories I am working on that have been plot problems, I’ve been thinking of ways to improve them, and today I thought of ways to fix those too. One story, one involving a psychic girl who’s life is very unlike Carrie’s, I got an idea from an acquaintance on how to make the plot better, involving the girl leaving her home for the first time in her entire life. It should be an interesting story.

And another story, involving a school shooting, I’ve been working with on and off throughout the years. However, the story never gets any better. Today, I saw how it could be fixed. It’ll be a radical change for the story, but it might just work for the better.

Even after publishing a few short stories, I’m still learning about the importance of plot, among other things. Hopefully someday, I’ll be able to teach others the things I have learned. But for now, I’ve got a girl in a short story who is not psychic in the least who needs to realize her life needs a radical change. Talk to you later.

“Aasif” In My Class?

Posted: September 11, 2012 in Living and Life, short story
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Today in my history class we had a guest speaker, whose focus was African history, particularly in her native country of Liberia. While discussing the civil war in Liberia, she also broached the topic of child soldiers and Kony 2012 and how they related to her research. After class, I went up to her and told her that I’d recently published a short story titled Aasif (here’s the link for those new followers who haven’t read it yet: http://mobiusmagazine.com/) and that I thought it was interesting that she’d mentioned child soldiers and Kony 2012, which were the inspirations for Aasif. Not only did our guest speaker ask for the web address, she also gave it to my teacher, who also happens to be her advisor in the graduate school.

As we were all leaving the classroom, both my teacher and the guest speaker said they’d take a look at it…and possibly discuss it in class. Discuss my short story in class? Now that’s some exposure! And in history class too! What’s next?

Has anything like this ever happened to you?

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