For me, the process of writing a short story didn’t come as easily to me this time as it used to. The entirety of my eighth grade year English class was spent composing short stories, and I remember it as being the most free-flowing, enjoyable writing I had done up until that point. Short stories allowed for so much more freedom of style, topic, and setting that I had been denied in previous years of English, and I relished every second I spent writing them. However, it’s been two years, and writing a short story now was not nearly as simple.
Not to say that
writing this short story was an arduous, burdensome task, but the writing
didn’t come to me as easily as I remember it used to. I spent a lot more time
planning this story out; a lot more time shooting down ideas rather than acting
on them. I attribute this to all the research that I had to do before
writing this story, as well as everything I learned about what makes a good short story. There were so many more
things to consider this time; it wasn’t just as easy as writing down the first
idea that came to my head. The struggle was frustrating to me at first, and
overcoming it wasn’t easy.
I shot down quite
a few possibilities, until I finally arrived at something I thought was at
least worth exploring. I picked a character, named Jim, and a setting, urban
Chicago, and started off with a story fragment. It wasn’t perfect at this
point, but I thought that later phases of writing would give me more time to
deepen the story.
Next I expanded
on this fragment. Then I did it again. Each time I discovered a little more
about my character and my story, like how my character didn’t like living in
the city at all, why he was forced to move there, and if he had any loved
ones. For a while, I was content to let the pieces unfold themselves as I
just kept writing, hoping that the story would pull itself together.
Unfortunately,
after a while, I realized that I was being fooled. What I had thought was a
strong story idea was really leading me on and not going anywhere significant.
Maybe if I had time to write a novel I would have discovered the importance on
this story, but it just wasn’t going to be my best short story.
Thankfully, if
there’s anything my English class has taught me, it’s how to start from the
beginning again without beating myself over the head for doing it. I know how
to go back to the drawing board in order to do things the right way. This is
something that I find incredibly valuable now, and I’m so glad I learned how to
do it. However, I again had trouble thinking of a premise for my story.
What I had to realize was that going back to the drawing board doesn’t mean
starting over; there were things in my old story that I liked, so I carried
them over to my new story.
I kept my main
character (we had bonded over the last few weeks and it seemed rude to let him
go), but I ditched my setting. Some creative part of my came up with the idea
of using a call center to stage my story, which turned out to be a very
interesting thing to write about.
In the end, I
found a way to start over without losing the parts of my work that I liked. I
got to develop my character more, and actually put him in a setting that turned
out to be far more suited to his personality. Going back through my eighth
grade short stories, I couldn’t help but notice how amateurish they were. I
found them to be lacking way too many of the things I had learned should be
included in a short story. This just shows that my writing is improving
because I am keeping my mind open; something I would like to continue. Writing
this story may not have been as easy as eighth grade, but it was certainly more
interesting, and I ended up with a much greater story in the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment