It says something for how busy I’ve been that I found this ten day old piece in my queue, unedited and unposted. And that I have no recollection of having written it.
So I’m on the road yet again, and I have a workshop story due in Monday. It’s going to be a hurried affair. If were to do it properly, these are the steps I currently have compiled in my story writing process document. As it is, this time round I’ll probably have to cut to item 9 real soon now.
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Write first half of story. All is lovely and fun, and kittens and stuff.
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Get bogged down in plot. Realize that I’m trying to write a novel-type plot in a short story’s space. Push much of the action outside of the story, and focus on a single hinge moment. Things go a bit better.
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Read initial story. Feel bad. Hate myself and my obvious lack of talent.
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Annotate a printout. Only focus on structure. How can this story work? What must go? What needs to be added? Don’t worry about the sucky prose. Just get the shape right. Keep a cut-bucket file for all the lovely bits that get snipped. I can consider resurrecting some of it later maybe. For now, if in doubt, cut it out.
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Edit/rewrite based on annotations. Resist temptation to do anything more than obey the notes on the printout.
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The story still sucks. Repeat steps 4 and 5, but thinking exclusively about character. How do the characters relate to each other? To the story? Only address the points laid down in the annotation when reworking the prose.
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Repeat 4 and 5 for dialogue, objects and symbols, setting. And take another pass to untell the story. That is, remove sentences like ‘he felt sad’ and instead let the world communicate emotion.
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A language pass. Read the story out loud. When I get tangled or out of breath, edit. Be wary of anything I’m pleased with. It’s probably shit. Martin Millar wrote about a stage in his editing he called ‘bigging and nicing’-in which he takes out all the clever words. I’ll have to look out that quote one of these days.
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(This item usually happens out of order, and prevents the other stages from being reached. Such is life). Run out of time. Do a combination of the other points all in one go, and very fast. Don’t skip the reading out loud stage though. I always regret not doing that one.
And what happened to the story? As predicted I ran out of time somewhere between points 5 and 8, and I skipped to 9. My workshop group will be let loose on it tomorrow.
