half a story

So yesterday I finished the first draft of my latest story. I was proud of the format. I’d broken the story into four beats, each one precipitated by and built around a difficult phone call. I was happy with the way it came out. I cut the 4675 words down to around 3925, printed it out and handed it to Dan to read.

His comment? Start with the last beat. The first three read like set-up. Plot, not emotion. The meat of the story is that last long section.

He’s right, damnit. I hate him.

I think I had to write it that way even though it doesn’t work for the reader. I’m writing about a difficult night, a night I remember all too well. Some people think it’s easier to write from real life; you don’t have to make things up. It’s actually much harder. You have to give yourself the freedom to reform the narrative, pulling away from the “But it really happened that way!” trap and creating something that’s an involving, evocative read even to people who have never met you.

This piece in particular has a lot of back story. Things that happened leading into the events of the night. I’ve tried writing this before, but ended up bogged down in details. But getting the exposition out of the way early (those previous three phone calls) helped me avoid all that in this iteration. It made the main action cleaner, I think. I didn’t have to wonder, “Do they know enough?”, I knew they did so I could just write.

Today I deleted all that lovely what-came-before action. And I don't miss it. Funny thing, I think it’s going to be easy now to set up everything you actually need to know within the single sequence. Just a few sentences here and there and you’ve got the whole picture. I just couldn’t see how until I’d written it the other way first. Ten pages gone, ten – or maybe two – sentences to add and my work is done.

Well, that part of it is done. There’s still a matter of building the character more so she’s distinctly not me and so you the reader can see and feel like you know her, if only just a bite-sized taste of personality. And subtly underlining the themes I unearthed through the writing process. Now I can make them resonate, if I do it right. A word here, a fragment of a thought there, and the story becomes that much stronger. That’s the tricky part with short stories. You don’t have a novel’s luxury of words and tangents. You have to be succinct but let your reader inside the story’s walls, give them enough to invest in. It’s like writing a haiku instead of a ballad. A flavor, not a meal.

Something else interesting I noticed today. When I deleted the first half of the story, the cuts I made yesterday no longer worked. I had to restore the passages I’d thought of as writerly flourishes. Now they’re necessary. Now they set the mood and allow us inside the narrator’s head. When the story shrank, the flourishes took on meaning. I see that as a good sign.

I’m done hating Dan. Now I’m happy to have him. My own personal editor, insightful and analytical. And I’m excited to get back to the story, whip that puppy into shape.

Posted by Tamar at January 8, 2004 08:49 PM