Found some simple advice about short story structure. Lets try this with the 'house' story:
- Dramatic start (scene)
- Decisive sequel
- Surprising middle (scene)
- Satisfying end (scene)
Note - sequels are less than half the length of scenes
Hmm - only 1 sequel in a short story? And does the opening need to be 'dramatic' - maybe it needs to be compelling (raises questions, intrigues you) without necessarily being jaw dropping dramatic.
Must check out some short fiction and see how many times I can tick the 4 boxes.
The house story -
For inspiration I'll construct the opening around the prologue from a military sci-fi novel. I see a powerful alien bad guy confronting a human engineer.
And I'll write out some cool moments based on the true story. Focus on conflict and writing dialogue to try and find the characters. Then shuffle stuff around to find connections - see which part of the story a scene or moment belongs to.
Sudden inspiration this morning about using the symbol of the tattoo. In the ending the engineer reveals his own tattoo - shows he's switched sides. And I can see how to raise the stakes - the defeat of the Bad Alien means the future will be different for other races : )
Coupla days ago I read that Raymond Chandler taught himself about novel structure by copying out existing novels. He made changes as he went along to better understand how the author had structured the novel.
I remember checking out C. J. Cherryh's site and seeing one of her suggestions for getting started. You take an existing piece of fiction and keep making changes. And keep going and keep going. You can end up with a whole new story by piggy backing on top of an original work this way.
Since I haven't made any start to my story about a hit woman, thought I'd start copying Ms Smilla's Feeling for Snow - and see if I can use it as a prompt into something else. I also want to do some deconstruction and really understand why this is my favourite novel.
Yesterday wrote up just over 1,000 words in the diary. I'm so relaxed in that blog. The words flow out in smaller sentences. And I use simpler words. I do less tweaking and revision before I finish a post.
But when I try to squeeze out fiction I still get bogged down in long sentences and 'big' words.
So ... the experiment for today. I'm going to pretend to be one of the 2 main characters from the nail house story. Pretend that character is making quick diary entries - See if I can uncover the conflicts, and work out how they need to be resolved.
