Who am I?
As a distraction from the endless fantasy that is Benfro, I've been working on an SF shorty in the few lucid moments I have between mindless bouts of real work. It's a interesting idea that came to me whilst out walking the dogs a while back, and which has been staring at me from a scribbly piece of paper pinned to the noticeboard for weeks. Mocking me. As is the way of these things, I've not done much planning - it's only a shorty, after all. In fact, beyond thinking through the basic sequence of events, I've done no plotting at all. I just sat down and started to write.*
And it came out as a first person narrative.
This isn't the way I normally write short stories, and certainly not the way I write SF. I've written one unpublished novel in the first person, and this rather unusual vignette, but mainly I'm a third person kind of guy. I like to stand at the edge and watch. That way I can peer into each character's head in turn and work out why it is they do the things they do. OK, so that means I then have to wade through pages of purple prose, purging them of exposition,** but at least I know what's going on.
This time it's a little different. I know what this character is going to do. I know where he was at the beginning and I know where he's going to be at the end. But when he does those things, and how he gets there are a complete mystery to me.
So why did I choose this form for this story? To be honest, I've absolutely no idea. I may well yet abandon it and try again another way. Or more likely I'll finish this treatment of the idea and then attack it in a different way. It would make a good Tharg's Future Shock, if I could be bothered plunging myself back into the comics world.
Either way, at the moment I'm struggling. I don't know whether it's the form, the idea or the fact that my head is full of too many other things right now, but the words are having to be squeezed out like a prize plook, and I keep going back and redoing whole scenes in a completely different way. I'm swithering and dithering and getting very little done.
The moral of this story? Have a plan.
Or don't bother.
*actually I was already sitting down, but I put aside what I was doing and opened a blank page in Word.
**and alliteration too.
And it came out as a first person narrative.
This isn't the way I normally write short stories, and certainly not the way I write SF. I've written one unpublished novel in the first person, and this rather unusual vignette, but mainly I'm a third person kind of guy. I like to stand at the edge and watch. That way I can peer into each character's head in turn and work out why it is they do the things they do. OK, so that means I then have to wade through pages of purple prose, purging them of exposition,** but at least I know what's going on.
This time it's a little different. I know what this character is going to do. I know where he was at the beginning and I know where he's going to be at the end. But when he does those things, and how he gets there are a complete mystery to me.
So why did I choose this form for this story? To be honest, I've absolutely no idea. I may well yet abandon it and try again another way. Or more likely I'll finish this treatment of the idea and then attack it in a different way. It would make a good Tharg's Future Shock, if I could be bothered plunging myself back into the comics world.
Either way, at the moment I'm struggling. I don't know whether it's the form, the idea or the fact that my head is full of too many other things right now, but the words are having to be squeezed out like a prize plook, and I keep going back and redoing whole scenes in a completely different way. I'm swithering and dithering and getting very little done.
The moral of this story? Have a plan.
Or don't bother.
*actually I was already sitting down, but I put aside what I was doing and opened a blank page in Word.
**and alliteration too.
Comments
And you're a fantastic writer - you can move genre to genre and take people with you because your writing is so wonderful.
Sometimes the words just work better first person. I usually find that a bottle of wine lubricates first person narratives, but hampers the poop out of third person. So, I give you permission to grab a bottle of nice Shiraz and first person the bahoo out of your story.
And if it doesn't work, at least you'll have had fun trying.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Oh, vodka and orange juice. Right. Forgot the "co"
Duh...
Really James, I'm so disappointed you haven't sent me more stuff to read.
Now I wonder if I was too harsh in my critique of that really, truly great short story that just oozes with magnificence.
And I'm sober today, FYI! Still can't spell worth shit, thoug.