This came to my head right now and it's one of those things that make me wish it was socially acceptable to quote myself because I've never been so eloquent about how I write before.
Like, generally? I am a very plot-driven writer. I never sit down to start writing one of my big chapter-book projects without a pretty detailed plot in mind. This is sometimes to my detriment, since the micro-managed development of the plot means that my characters often start out pretty underdeveloped by comparison. (I find this funny about me, since this is pretty much exactly the opposite of how I like the stories that I actually consume - I would much rather explore strong characters than weird situations. My brain is inexplicable and strange). Never mind the fact that, more often than not, I won't even end up following the plot-line I drew out for myself. The point is, when it comes to my big projects, I'm pretty reliant on having a story already drawn out - and even then, it'll usually take me about seven chapters to get to the good stuff. Sigh.
But this is only with the big projects. Because you see, when I need a break from the big projects, I start on a short story or two.
And I almost never draw out a plot for those things.
With my short stories, I tend to start with concepts - I'm not going to give away all my fascinating concepts here, because of reasons, but I'm going to take you through a step by step manual of how my short stories usually go down.
First, I'll get an idea. A small one, maybe just an idea for a really dramatic scene or something but with nothing to fit around it. Or maybe I got this really interesting idea for a dystopian future (to use the apparently unwavering trend in recent pop culture), but can't think of a plot to go with it. Or maybe a character popped in my head, fully developed, flaws and fears and passions and strengths already in place, but I don't have a story to put them in. What do I do?
Generally, I just run with it.
I'll just start writing. I'll start with the inspiration and see where it takes me. Sometimes it doesn't take me anywhere and the piece just dries up and I'll never look at it again (although that usually only happens because something off happened at an important part of the story, and there's a lot of work involved in tracking that down and fixing it, believe me).
But usually it does take me somewhere. I feel like it's a lot like improvising. Because usually, I have no idea where I'm going, but the characters talk and ideas come out and you have to follow those ideas or the whole thing goes dead. Yeah, improv is a good analogy for it. Because, of course, rule number one of improv, the one rule that you always hear no matter who you're talking to, the magical GOLDEN RULE OF IMPROV is SAY YES. Always say yes. No matter how weird it may be, you have to. If possible, then YES AND is even better. (Accepting an idea and adding to it). Because of course, if someone says something and you don't accept the idea - what's known as "blocking" in improv - then, if you don't suggest an alternative, the scene will inevitably die. Welp, there goes that idea. So, uh, what now?
It's the same with me when I write short stories. I just go with the first inspiration and run. And then maybe a character will say something else, and I'll follow that path. I can't say no to a possible path - it's not like I've got anywhere else to go, you know? So if I want to keep the inspiration alive until I manage to come to some kind of closure (believe it or not, that does happen sometimes), I have to explore every first idea. And then you keep running and running with all these ideas and before you know it your "short" story is thirty pages long and you still don't know if you're anywhere near the finish line. (I recently finished one at thirty four pages. Typed. I have a problem).
I mean, we all know it's (almost) physically impossible for me to write something under a thousand words - I mean, like, I could write a thousand words in my sleep - but thirty pages typed out is still a bit over the top. For sure, my short stories, when finished, take a lot of hammering into shape, because when I don't have a drawn out plot-line, I tend to get kind of really self-indulgent. (Like, in one of my "short" stories, I gave a character this really long, really fabulous monologue, but we all know that no one talks like that. Humans are not human without that sort of quiet uncertainty that long pretentious monologues don't tend to lend themselves to. Especially not scared humans, which is where the character was coming from.) So, yes, they need fixing. And editing. And probably - be still my hammering heart, for I must strike for the good of all! - a lot of cutting.
Honestly, cutting things from my stories feels like surgery. It's nerve-wracking and scary and but-what-if-I-decide-that-I-actually-like-this-bit-then-what-do-I-do-now-that-it's-not-there-anymore-ahhhhhhhhhh! (The anxiety, of course, comes from the fact that if you write a scene really well, you just know that it won't be quite as good the second time around).
But the fun of it is that you get to just explore and most of the time, you eventually even come to a place of closure. How long that takes, well, yeah, that could be an issue, I suppose, but with patience, it does happen. And the thing is, you can't edit something or chop something that isn't written down. No matter how long it is, you need to keep with it until it's done or it'll never become anything, right?
Writing is always fun. Writing with a plot is fun because at least when you get writer's block, it's not so much a matter of "where do I go next?" as much as it is "how do I tell the story of the thing that happens next?". My short stories without plots are fun for the opposite reason. "Where do I go next?" is a really fun question to ask yourself, because if you're just writing on idea over top of idea, well, the possibilities are endless.
It's nice to just give yourself time to get to know your characters. Like, even if you end up cutting the scene that gave you all that character development but not much else, you'll still have that. You'll still know that about the character. Writing these short stories gives me the freedom to write whatever the heck I want and if, for presentation purposes, most of it gets cut, the development still will have happened, you know?
This is one of the things about my novel that I had trouble with. I had this entire redemption arc in mind for a character. In my mind it happened. In the scenes that are actually described in the book, yeah, not so much. Because the plot I drew out for myself - and my determination to stick with it as much as possible - didn't really give me the freedom to develop the character and what they're all about, like, off-screen. (Ahah, if that's the right word to use for books...)
Basically what I'm trying to say is that, when it comes to short stories, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.
So I pretty much do the equivalent of prancing around like this:
until I come to some kind of ending.
Maybe it's just too late for me to be awake right now, but I'm just sitting here giggling at that picture.
But the freedom of doing it like that is really cool, and I usually end up pretty proud of the stories that come out of it. It just takes a LOT of patience.
So, yeah! That's how you write short stories, kids!
If you're terrible at it.
Or have no life.
Or both.
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