So I’ve gotten some responses about the last short story which, for the moment, is called Nobility by Night. Short stories are a challenge to me. I had to keep in mind the important point from the Boskone Short Story Panel, it’s “the most important event of a character’s life.” Whenever I started to go off on a tangent, I stopped and asked myself, “Is this important?” I stopped myself a few times from wandering off and managed to keep the story down at 3k words.
A lot of the feedback is saying “There’s more to this, make it larger.” I could do that for a while, the story is obviously not over. I never envisioned a whole novel’s worth of story arc though. Originally I came up with this idea back when I was still looking at doing movies and actually using my film degree. I had this guy set to be the lead and it was going to be a series of shorts. That’s why I pulled the idea as a short since that’s what it started as. For the time being I think I am going to keep it like that even though I have a lot of “…and then?” questions.
There is a knife edge of disbelief between the two characters. I want to make sure that it doesn’t go too far in either direction. I have gotten across some of the specific unsaid moments that I wanted so I’m happy over that. A much as I want to keep moving forward, I think I need to let it sit for a week or so before poking it with a stick.
On a different note, I’ve got some cool world building ideas I think I’m going to play around with and get on paper. Right now I’ve got a lot of Act One set up kind of stuff, but I haven’t found a compelling story in that world yet. I have outlined my next short and am going to take a stab at it shortly and I’d like to channel some of this momentum into my novel. Whatever I end up doing I need to get off the computer. Throwing darts when I haven’t in a while tightens up the tendons in my arm and I can’t lift my pinkie finger. Sucks for typing.
Mike Douton's Stuff and/or Junk 