Drafts

Oct 24, 2008 22:27

I used to think that you could sit down, write a story, and have that be the final product. No more ( Read more... )

short stories, novel, writing

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pink_siamese October 25 2008, 15:18:11 UTC
I write drafts for papers because I have to; in a lot of my classes "peer review" is a required part of the class and it's part of my grade. When I'm in a situation where having a draft is not required, I'll write the paper and wait a couple of days, then go back to it and give it the once-over.

Short stories, though, are a completely different animal. There's no formal structure, no thesis statement. This is a good thing for us creative types, but it's a bad thing, too---without the structure, some of us tend to go way off on the woolly thickets redundancy. This is an okay thing for a opening draft, because in the opening drafts it's still about finding the story. You're just flailing along, grabbing anything that sounds nice out of your mind and throwing it onto the computer screen. Outlining an academic paper before writing it can help lots, but outlining a short story doesn't seem to offer the same kind of support (though I suppose it could for some people; to me the end result feels artificial and labored). I think because the short story has a fluidity that academic papers don't and trying to over-structure a short story in its beginning phases is just too constricting. The finished draft should hold together, but it isn't the same.

At some point you have to quit with the editing and take a deep breath and step back and say okay, this is the best that it can be right now, and right now is all there is. For me, this tends to happen after posting something on the internet (in the case of fanfic) or showing a story to family/friends. Once the thing's lost it's virginity I'll go over it maybe once or twice for little dinky things, like missing words or misplaced commas. After that it's out in the world. I try not to change things that have been out in the world.

For professional stories, they get a long period of time marinating in a folder (at least a month, preferably the length of a season) before I come back to them for another serious edit. Sometimes they need a serious edit, sometimes they don't need anything at all. Then those stories go into the "ready for submission" folder. These are the stories I know I've polished up as much as I can without screwing their integrity.

Then, of course, there are the stories that fail. The idea just doesn't pan out, or you can't get it to click just right in your mind and the prose is totally stillborn. Just keep these in a compost folder and refer back to them while working on other stuff. There might be a great line or two you can gank from your trash and work into a new story.

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raven_estrella October 25 2008, 16:54:54 UTC
I think you're right about why short stories are different. When I'm first writing a story, I let myself write whatever comes into my head. That allows for the richness of detail that makes stories convincing. If I try to limit myself on the first draft, I simply don't end up with enough material. When I first started my novel, I did an outline. But I'm trying not to freak out that the novel is straying from the outline. That would be a big mistake. For my next novel, I don't think I'll be doing an outline at all.

I also agree with your idea of not editing a story too much once it's lost its "virginity" to people outside a workshop environment. I've done minor tweaking to stories in that case, but nothing too drastic.

Do you write professional stories for magazines and stuff? Man, that's sweet. What do you enjoy doing better, short stories or longer ones (like novels)?

Ah, the "stories that fail." I'm still learning to cope with that. I just spend so much time on any given story that I hate to see it bite the dust. Perhaps having a compost pile would help me feel like my work isn't totally going to waste. Usually I find that the idea stays with me. Each failed iteration of the idea is just a step closer to a better expression of it.

Oh, I forgot to send you a copy of that one story! I'll do that now.

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