I used to find myself revising until my initial story had morphed - usually into a completely different story and one that wasn't coherent or well.. good. Frustrated and disappointed I would toss it in a pile and hide it away. I felt like I hadn't remained true to my initial idea for what I was trying to say and I had lost the threads that held the story together in the first place.
Many writers love revising - they think of it as the phase of writing in which the story really comes alive and manifests itself; where the story begins to breathe and interact with the reader. I'm learning to love revision as well although, it's a tempestuous relationship and I don't like her mother (she whines about my punctuation).
I've gotten a lot better at revising - practice creates improvement. I often wonder if I am killing good darlings in revision and I'm still figuring out when and why to axe things that aren't working towards making a strong story.
One of the exercises that I've been working on is one in which I revise a layer of craft at a time. If you consider each aspect of craft as a branch, as you revise and rework each one, you are creating a tree that is your story. Your branches will intertwine supporting each other. This builds a strong tree comprised of the different elements of craft growing together. All elements of craft should work together to make your story. Voice, characterization, setting, etc. are tools that work in service of the story and if one of them is not working you need to cut it off and revise that branch.
Many writers that I respect use this revision method so that they a) don't get confused and b) finish that aspect of craft to their satisfaction. I've done at least 20 drafts of one of the stories I'm working on trying this method out to see if it improves my writing. I did revision passes for voice, dialogue, plot, pacing, setting, characterization, and show vs tell. I feel like I'm forgetting some revisions in that list but hopefully you get what I mean.
I'd say overall this has been a very successful experiment. It allowed me to create a level of consistency that I hadn't experienced before in my stories. While it's been hard trying to control my desire for instant gratification (I want the story done NOW!), I've been really pleased and plan on doing this for every story going forward.
I'd love to hear about other writer's processes. Care to share some tips?
Friday, August 26, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Brand New Windows
My kid will grow up on the other side of double pane glass.
Two layers of see through protection between her and the world.
Can two panes of glass keep out those who will dismiss her for being a girl?
Can two panes of glass of glass keep out hate?
Aren't two panes of glass harder to break than one?
Because one pane of glass breaks so easily and they tell me I can't afford triple pane glass.
Two layers of see through protection between her and the world.
Can two panes of glass keep out those who will dismiss her for being a girl?
Can two panes of glass of glass keep out hate?
Aren't two panes of glass harder to break than one?
Because one pane of glass breaks so easily and they tell me I can't afford triple pane glass.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Short story structure - plot edition
As a beginning writer I feel a little sketchy about writing rules. Trying to figure them out and applying them to the stories I write is confusing. I'm often left with a feeling of.. 'uh did I do that right?'.
Here's an example. I wrote a short story that reaches it's crisis point and then doesn't immediately end (a more typical short story structure). Supposedly according to 'them' (those who shall not be named) readers will feel bored by the story going on too long if it reaches the climax and there is too much time for the denouement (final resolution or clarification of a dramatic or narrative plot). I'm kind of unclear on how much time that is. So here's a revision of a flash fiction piece I wrote awhile back and I'm still not sure about the ending. Feedback welcomed.
Also, I found this helpful to read about story arcs:
http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/Structure&Plot.htm
That Which Lies Inside
By snott
I stared as the boys’ eyes twitched in perpetual motion, side to side, as he lay unresponsive. Beads of sweat rolled down his small heart-shaped face to the soft, thick black curls lying on his pillow. The seven year old had been climbing in trees, playing and laughing with friends at his birthday party when he fell, hitting his head. That was how the demon entered his body. Blood still slowly dripped from his ears.
His mothers’ tears fell on his sweat-covered chest as she mumbled desperate prayers.
I felt the doctor as he hovered over the boy. I heard the sound of air rushing into his lungs. I smelled the acidic tang of sweat and deodorant as it oozed out of his body. I could hear his fear in the stumbling pauses between words - the doctor could not challenge me. He was a confused, powerless servant. He could not stop me from feeding.
Unseen, I delicately ran my pointed, sulphuric tongue over the boys’ soul licking his life essence off of him. It was a gourmet rapture. Invisible to the humans, vaporous wisps of his life curled off the burn mark etched into his soul where I my tongue had touched him. I rolled his essence around my mouth, savoring the taste. The boys’ life energy was a delight – sweet, like the memories he had of fresh baked chocolate cookies.
Without warning the boys’ body began flailing in the bed - violently uncontrolled. The soft beeping of the monitors turned to shrill alarms. Splatters of blood smeared around his mouth as he bit on his tongue. The boys’ eyes rolled back in their sockets showing only white as I leaned over to put my weight on top of him, trying to hold him in place. After a desperate forever his body slumped vacantly. His eyes slid down and resumed their pendulum swing - side to side. The soft cadence of the monitors returned between one heartbeat and the next. His mothers’ prayers turned to sobs.
I looked at his chest over her shoulders. It moved up and down, a familiar counterpoint to the metronomic hideousness of his eyes.
There was nothing left to do but what needed to be done. I would make a hole into his skull to release pressure on his brain otherwise the pressure of the demon inside him would kill the boy. The evil spirits had to be let out - so said the Church scriptures. In a vaulted place in my heart I was unsure of the truth of the scriptures and I doubted what I had been taught.
I had been young, still in medical school when I had first found the Church. I had feared that I would not make it through medical school. Becoming a doctor had been the only thing that I had ever wanted in life but in medical school I was so frustrated and horrified by the stupid bureaucracy of medicine that ruled all while people. I was giving up hope that I could do anything, with my hands spending more time doing paperwork than touching patients. The Church had saved me, had taught me not to be afraid even in the face of horror – that there was evil in the world, ready to attack us. They had taught me of demons and the atrocities that they committed against humans, how they created pain and suffering in our bodies as they inhabited us. They had revealed the gods that could help us and taught me the how to give of sacrifices and prayers. I had stopped feeling weak and alone. I was given the strength and knowledge to help people for the Church, in the Church’s hospitals.
I looked at the boy; he had a faded stamp of a cartoon tiger on the back of a hand. My stomach ached, as I feared that my help would not be enough.
My eyes darted to the boys’ mother as she continued her prayers and I felt a wave of sadness for her break and tumble me. Her low voice was rough from crying. Her torso jerked back and forth as if she were unconsciously trying to push the demon out of her child. I watched her believe in the gods – entreat them, either out of anguish or true faith, I had no idea. I had no belief now after years of beliefs that had returned nothing. I had said my prayers, begged and pleaded with gods and yet some of my patients still died. Now I tried to have trust in my knowledge, the machines and pills I prescribed – the tools that I could control. The gods were a disappointing mystery.
I starred at the boys’ small, soft face and tried to see some way to help him. His heart rate was slowly increasing; a manifestation of the building evil in his skull or the swelling caused by the injury to his brain? Or were they were one and the same?
I unclenched my jaw and thought, “Get it over with.”
I yelled for aides to hold him as I prepared my tools – an iron blade to remove his hair, a stone borer to create the hole, water to bless the demon out and wash away the blood.
United, my helpers and I tied the boys’ arms and legs with leather straps to help keep him still. I motioned to them to hold him. His mother moaned and sobbed uncontrollably as she laid herself over his small body. Covered in bruises and splatters of blood he was a broken wish. Her grief and the beeping of the heart monitor provided the music of our ceremony.
Looking around the bed, reassured by my aides readiness, I started chanting my benedictions. The room became hot around us as I initiated the rite and I felt sweat merge with the ritual paint I had smeared on my forehead and cheeks. I began with the knife cutting away the soft, shiny black ringlets of his hair, then came the fall of blessed water running down his skull to be soaked up by the starched white sheets, last came the borer - sharpened bone that I twisted into his skull as I dripped oily black paint into the growing pool of bright red blood that formed around his head.
The doctors’ prayers rained on me, made invincible by the boys’ mother. Her belief in the gods was powerful, incontrovertible and I could not fight their power. The prayers ate into my being like water washing away dust. I screamed an empty screech of pain. I was disintegrating, impotent against the words. My hands clenched in the boys’ soul were eaten away by the contagion of blessings. I felt my power to hold onto the boy fade away and I drifted off of him, defeated. I drifted away as I hoped to find another human to latch onto, so that I could taste the flavor of life again.
I made the hole as big as my small finger would fit into. Blood sluggishly leaked out as I finished. During the whole procedure the only part of him that had moved were his eyes. I saw no sign of a demon.
‘Will he live?’ his terrified mother cried at me after we finished. In her eyes I saw a fire fueled by frantic belief, its’ judgment reached out to scorch me in my secret faithless heart.
‘I.. I don’t know. We have to wait.’ I motioned to the aides to clean up and clutched the boys’ chart to my robe-covered chest as I hurried out of the hospital room. His mothers’ eyes followed me as the beeps of the monitor echoed down the hall.
I had nothing to give his mother to assuage her fear. My belief in our medicine was too weak to tell her promises and too strong not to secretly hope.
Here's an example. I wrote a short story that reaches it's crisis point and then doesn't immediately end (a more typical short story structure). Supposedly according to 'them' (those who shall not be named) readers will feel bored by the story going on too long if it reaches the climax and there is too much time for the denouement (final resolution or clarification of a dramatic or narrative plot). I'm kind of unclear on how much time that is. So here's a revision of a flash fiction piece I wrote awhile back and I'm still not sure about the ending. Feedback welcomed.
Also, I found this helpful to read about story arcs:
http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/Structure&Plot.htm
That Which Lies Inside
By snott
I stared as the boys’ eyes twitched in perpetual motion, side to side, as he lay unresponsive. Beads of sweat rolled down his small heart-shaped face to the soft, thick black curls lying on his pillow. The seven year old had been climbing in trees, playing and laughing with friends at his birthday party when he fell, hitting his head. That was how the demon entered his body. Blood still slowly dripped from his ears.
His mothers’ tears fell on his sweat-covered chest as she mumbled desperate prayers.
I felt the doctor as he hovered over the boy. I heard the sound of air rushing into his lungs. I smelled the acidic tang of sweat and deodorant as it oozed out of his body. I could hear his fear in the stumbling pauses between words - the doctor could not challenge me. He was a confused, powerless servant. He could not stop me from feeding.
Unseen, I delicately ran my pointed, sulphuric tongue over the boys’ soul licking his life essence off of him. It was a gourmet rapture. Invisible to the humans, vaporous wisps of his life curled off the burn mark etched into his soul where I my tongue had touched him. I rolled his essence around my mouth, savoring the taste. The boys’ life energy was a delight – sweet, like the memories he had of fresh baked chocolate cookies.
Without warning the boys’ body began flailing in the bed - violently uncontrolled. The soft beeping of the monitors turned to shrill alarms. Splatters of blood smeared around his mouth as he bit on his tongue. The boys’ eyes rolled back in their sockets showing only white as I leaned over to put my weight on top of him, trying to hold him in place. After a desperate forever his body slumped vacantly. His eyes slid down and resumed their pendulum swing - side to side. The soft cadence of the monitors returned between one heartbeat and the next. His mothers’ prayers turned to sobs.
I looked at his chest over her shoulders. It moved up and down, a familiar counterpoint to the metronomic hideousness of his eyes.
There was nothing left to do but what needed to be done. I would make a hole into his skull to release pressure on his brain otherwise the pressure of the demon inside him would kill the boy. The evil spirits had to be let out - so said the Church scriptures. In a vaulted place in my heart I was unsure of the truth of the scriptures and I doubted what I had been taught.
I had been young, still in medical school when I had first found the Church. I had feared that I would not make it through medical school. Becoming a doctor had been the only thing that I had ever wanted in life but in medical school I was so frustrated and horrified by the stupid bureaucracy of medicine that ruled all while people. I was giving up hope that I could do anything, with my hands spending more time doing paperwork than touching patients. The Church had saved me, had taught me not to be afraid even in the face of horror – that there was evil in the world, ready to attack us. They had taught me of demons and the atrocities that they committed against humans, how they created pain and suffering in our bodies as they inhabited us. They had revealed the gods that could help us and taught me the how to give of sacrifices and prayers. I had stopped feeling weak and alone. I was given the strength and knowledge to help people for the Church, in the Church’s hospitals.
I looked at the boy; he had a faded stamp of a cartoon tiger on the back of a hand. My stomach ached, as I feared that my help would not be enough.
My eyes darted to the boys’ mother as she continued her prayers and I felt a wave of sadness for her break and tumble me. Her low voice was rough from crying. Her torso jerked back and forth as if she were unconsciously trying to push the demon out of her child. I watched her believe in the gods – entreat them, either out of anguish or true faith, I had no idea. I had no belief now after years of beliefs that had returned nothing. I had said my prayers, begged and pleaded with gods and yet some of my patients still died. Now I tried to have trust in my knowledge, the machines and pills I prescribed – the tools that I could control. The gods were a disappointing mystery.
I starred at the boys’ small, soft face and tried to see some way to help him. His heart rate was slowly increasing; a manifestation of the building evil in his skull or the swelling caused by the injury to his brain? Or were they were one and the same?
I unclenched my jaw and thought, “Get it over with.”
I yelled for aides to hold him as I prepared my tools – an iron blade to remove his hair, a stone borer to create the hole, water to bless the demon out and wash away the blood.
United, my helpers and I tied the boys’ arms and legs with leather straps to help keep him still. I motioned to them to hold him. His mother moaned and sobbed uncontrollably as she laid herself over his small body. Covered in bruises and splatters of blood he was a broken wish. Her grief and the beeping of the heart monitor provided the music of our ceremony.
Looking around the bed, reassured by my aides readiness, I started chanting my benedictions. The room became hot around us as I initiated the rite and I felt sweat merge with the ritual paint I had smeared on my forehead and cheeks. I began with the knife cutting away the soft, shiny black ringlets of his hair, then came the fall of blessed water running down his skull to be soaked up by the starched white sheets, last came the borer - sharpened bone that I twisted into his skull as I dripped oily black paint into the growing pool of bright red blood that formed around his head.
The doctors’ prayers rained on me, made invincible by the boys’ mother. Her belief in the gods was powerful, incontrovertible and I could not fight their power. The prayers ate into my being like water washing away dust. I screamed an empty screech of pain. I was disintegrating, impotent against the words. My hands clenched in the boys’ soul were eaten away by the contagion of blessings. I felt my power to hold onto the boy fade away and I drifted off of him, defeated. I drifted away as I hoped to find another human to latch onto, so that I could taste the flavor of life again.
I made the hole as big as my small finger would fit into. Blood sluggishly leaked out as I finished. During the whole procedure the only part of him that had moved were his eyes. I saw no sign of a demon.
‘Will he live?’ his terrified mother cried at me after we finished. In her eyes I saw a fire fueled by frantic belief, its’ judgment reached out to scorch me in my secret faithless heart.
‘I.. I don’t know. We have to wait.’ I motioned to the aides to clean up and clutched the boys’ chart to my robe-covered chest as I hurried out of the hospital room. His mothers’ eyes followed me as the beeps of the monitor echoed down the hall.
I had nothing to give his mother to assuage her fear. My belief in our medicine was too weak to tell her promises and too strong not to secretly hope.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Wasn't the sex hot?
We didn't pass each other like ships in the night.
We collided, fucking our hulls against each other.
We spoke the same language but had different definitions.
I realized that as you cried in a restaurant. Oh.
I broke up with you surrounded by the disapproving murmurs of people the age of your mother, enraptured in righteousness like a conservative Christian. All words, no sympathy.
We had no idea who each other was. I wasn't going to let you learn.
You were my palliative to feeling out of control. How could I let you touch me?
I saw you the other day but of course, we didn't see each other.
We collided, fucking our hulls against each other.
We spoke the same language but had different definitions.
I realized that as you cried in a restaurant. Oh.
I broke up with you surrounded by the disapproving murmurs of people the age of your mother, enraptured in righteousness like a conservative Christian. All words, no sympathy.
We had no idea who each other was. I wasn't going to let you learn.
You were my palliative to feeling out of control. How could I let you touch me?
I saw you the other day but of course, we didn't see each other.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Words
In my dreams I swell with them to the point that they smash my bridges and flood my roads. I am a hazard of chop and cross currents; hidden whirlpools and eddies ready to suck you under.
When I wake they flow out of my mouth - ungraspable. They become morning breath, putrid from non use; eradicated with minty fresh gel.
A few escape. I wrap myself around them and struggle to hold on while they collide with today to be banged into something new.
They have moved past me, past us all to become pieces of a constellation that someone, someday will point to when they tell their children the stories of our people.
When I wake they flow out of my mouth - ungraspable. They become morning breath, putrid from non use; eradicated with minty fresh gel.
A few escape. I wrap myself around them and struggle to hold on while they collide with today to be banged into something new.
They have moved past me, past us all to become pieces of a constellation that someone, someday will point to when they tell their children the stories of our people.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Why I appreciate Joanna Russ
Joanna Russ passed away on April 29, 2011. She was a teacher, writer and feminist. She wrote children's stories, critiques, fiction, essays, poetry, and plays but was primarily known for her work in science fiction. She was nominated for multiple awards but won a Nebula award for "When it Changed", a Hugo for "Souls", and an O.Henry for "The Autobiography of My Mother".
I first learned of her when I came across a beat up and therefor cheap, copy of 'The Female Man' one afternoon while cutting class and hanging out at my favorite bookstore while a freshman in high school. 'The Female Man' is set in the future and follows the lives of four women who live in parallel worlds who then cross over into each others' worlds. I really don't want to give away the whole story but if you need a full synopsis here is a link to it on Wikipedia.
Joanna Russ was my first introduction to feminism in science fiction. Up til then I had read male authors, most of whom used women in their books as the sexual interest for their hero and nothing else. I had already started to migrate from science fiction because I wanted more in the stories that I read, although I wasn't aware of that at the time. At the time I thought that I was getting bored with science fiction. The science fiction that I had read, for example Robert Heinlein, had marginalized me unknowingly and I was over it. When you are in high school you want a protagonist to admire; a role model. I needed to read about thinking, emotional, committed women who were more than blow up dolls for guys to rescue. Actually, I need that as a reader now as well. Back then, I had moved on to fantasy where there were books that did have female protagonists or more frequently, male protagonists with female supporting characters that weren't limited to singular plot devices.
Because of this, I highly recommend 'The Female Man'. It's an entertaining story but more than that it is a statement and question for women on how we perceive our power and roles as women. Obviously, this is one of the basic concepts in feminism of which I was basically familiar at the time, however 'The Female Man' gave me a whole new context - that of science fiction.
There are a lot of ways to learn. Some people learn from lectures, some people find that they learn when they listen to music. For me, putting feminism in the context of science fiction helped me start questioning in ways that I hadn't before. I started questioning what I was reading and what I as a women, deserved, expected, needed and wanted. So I credit Joanna Russ with helping me to learn to read critically, to realize part of who and what I am as a woman and as a person, and to realize that science fiction could be a lot more than an exciting space battle followed by a scene in which the hero gets the girl.
One of Joanna Russ's books on women and writing ("How to suppress women's writing") is available for free on Google books. Check it out and let me know what you think.
I first learned of her when I came across a beat up and therefor cheap, copy of 'The Female Man' one afternoon while cutting class and hanging out at my favorite bookstore while a freshman in high school. 'The Female Man' is set in the future and follows the lives of four women who live in parallel worlds who then cross over into each others' worlds. I really don't want to give away the whole story but if you need a full synopsis here is a link to it on Wikipedia.
Joanna Russ was my first introduction to feminism in science fiction. Up til then I had read male authors, most of whom used women in their books as the sexual interest for their hero and nothing else. I had already started to migrate from science fiction because I wanted more in the stories that I read, although I wasn't aware of that at the time. At the time I thought that I was getting bored with science fiction. The science fiction that I had read, for example Robert Heinlein, had marginalized me unknowingly and I was over it. When you are in high school you want a protagonist to admire; a role model. I needed to read about thinking, emotional, committed women who were more than blow up dolls for guys to rescue. Actually, I need that as a reader now as well. Back then, I had moved on to fantasy where there were books that did have female protagonists or more frequently, male protagonists with female supporting characters that weren't limited to singular plot devices.
Because of this, I highly recommend 'The Female Man'. It's an entertaining story but more than that it is a statement and question for women on how we perceive our power and roles as women. Obviously, this is one of the basic concepts in feminism of which I was basically familiar at the time, however 'The Female Man' gave me a whole new context - that of science fiction.
There are a lot of ways to learn. Some people learn from lectures, some people find that they learn when they listen to music. For me, putting feminism in the context of science fiction helped me start questioning in ways that I hadn't before. I started questioning what I was reading and what I as a women, deserved, expected, needed and wanted. So I credit Joanna Russ with helping me to learn to read critically, to realize part of who and what I am as a woman and as a person, and to realize that science fiction could be a lot more than an exciting space battle followed by a scene in which the hero gets the girl.
One of Joanna Russ's books on women and writing ("How to suppress women's writing") is available for free on Google books. Check it out and let me know what you think.
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