Completed story (w00t!)
Jan. 1st, 2009 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepenny"After the Dragon"
first draft, 2600 words
After the dragon, she lay in the white on white hospital room and wanted to die.
Actual finished story--and with an actual story in it! Even if the story is not very good, this is a great improvement over the floundering and flailing and failing to finish things of the past year and change.
And I think I've figured out at least part of where I went off the rails. It's John Gardner's thing which I cannot remember well enough to quote about a short story needing a single action. What I think my stories need is a central action, an act or a choice or a conversation that is what the story is about. The short stories I'm stuck on right now, and there's quite an array of them, all lack that central action, that axis to spin around. And I think that where everything started going wrong was when I started trying to replace a central ACTION with a central THEME. For me, that does not work so well because I am no good at translating theme into action or character or any of the other things a story needs. But if I have a central action, my odds improve dramatically that the rest of the story will come trailing along behind.
So, to celebrate, here's the first line meme:
NOVELS
Cormorant Child: With a shriek of protesting metal, the hatch opened, and Mule fell out of the palace-ship into the long grass of the Edrin Valley. He was trying to run before he made it to his feet.
Dark Sister: currently has no first line
The Emperor of the Elflands: Maiah woke abruptly from a dream of the Great Lock of the Istandaärtha to find his cousin standing over him. [N.b., this is the proposal currently sitting on my editor's desk.]
The House at the End of the World: When Sebastian Marlin became a man, there was no one to celebrate with.
Schrödinger's Parable of the Cat: Denise Blumenthal died on a beautiful spring morning in the polity of Greater Manhattan.
The Sidhetown Tigers: Jefferson Finch was a lousy pitcher, but he was the best we had.
The White Devil: Since I was a little girl, I've always told my father my dreams. Except for one.
Winter's Tale: I was not born, but made--programmed, manufactured, assembled--and my earliest memories aren't memories at all, but data stored to ROM: who holds my patents, who wrote my code; who initiated my activation sequence; a warning that I was valuable government property; if found, please return to.
NOVELLAS
Blue Lace Agate: They hadn't caught the shoggoth larva smugglers yet, but the head of the BPI's southeast hub had other things on his mind: "And, ah, how are you and Sharpton doing, Keller?"
The Kitsune's Tragedy: My mother was kitsune. When I was born kitsune, too, she cursed the fates and slew the midwife and raised me as a daughter.
The Marriage of True Minds: Sanspiro Base is a company town all the way.
The Second Son: On the twenty-fourth of April, Medraut dreamed of Loheris again.
NOVELETTES
"White Charles": The crate arrived at the Parrington on a Wednesday, but it was Friday before anyone mentioned it to me.
"Thirdhop Scarp": The current owner of Thirdhop Scarp claims that the name is a contraction of "third hope," but this is etymologically dubious in the extreme; still improbable but far more likely is the local explanation: that if you fall off the escarpment, you reach the bottom in three hops.
SHORT STORIES
"Crossing Styx": "Think of it as a vacation," Jamie suggested. Mick's reply was physically impossible, but very creative.
"Hollywood After Dark: A Still Life with Wolves": Wolves prowl the Sunset Strip. You can tell them by the way their eyes reflect the street lights.
"The Queen in Winter": There were five queens in the creche. Beulah, Pauline, Camille, Thelma, and Katrina. Beulah was the favorite, and one night after the nurses had gone to bed, the others ganged up on her. There were only four queens after that.
"The Queen of Liverpool": The Mistral Freighter D35-692N-C, Queen of Liverpool, had been grounded for thirty years, since the successful implementation of Chen and Tiedemann's q-curve drive had made her and all her sisters obsolete.
The Tale of Two Dead Mice": Once upon a time, there were two dead mice, white and small and sleek.
"Under Babylon": Mick Sharpton's howl of outrage--"oh fuck no!"--was clearly audible in the junior agents' office.
"(Un)fallen": The pain is intense, sharp, and localizes itself gradually, as Vij comes closer to consciousness, into a throbbing knot on the back of ser skull, just behind ser left ear. Se reaches to touch it, groans as that wakes a whole new set of pains through ser left shoulder and arm, and only then wonders why se is corporeal at all.
[untitled]: The crime-scene tape was gone from the basketball court.
[untitled]: The woman in my office had been dead for five days when I found her. The smell was unbearable, but the ghost was worse.
[untitled]: "What are you doing, sister-wife?"
[untitled]: Queen Titania was dead.
first draft, 2600 words
After the dragon, she lay in the white on white hospital room and wanted to die.
Actual finished story--and with an actual story in it! Even if the story is not very good, this is a great improvement over the floundering and flailing and failing to finish things of the past year and change.
And I think I've figured out at least part of where I went off the rails. It's John Gardner's thing which I cannot remember well enough to quote about a short story needing a single action. What I think my stories need is a central action, an act or a choice or a conversation that is what the story is about. The short stories I'm stuck on right now, and there's quite an array of them, all lack that central action, that axis to spin around. And I think that where everything started going wrong was when I started trying to replace a central ACTION with a central THEME. For me, that does not work so well because I am no good at translating theme into action or character or any of the other things a story needs. But if I have a central action, my odds improve dramatically that the rest of the story will come trailing along behind.
So, to celebrate, here's the first line meme:
NOVELS
Cormorant Child: With a shriek of protesting metal, the hatch opened, and Mule fell out of the palace-ship into the long grass of the Edrin Valley. He was trying to run before he made it to his feet.
Dark Sister: currently has no first line
The Emperor of the Elflands: Maiah woke abruptly from a dream of the Great Lock of the Istandaärtha to find his cousin standing over him. [N.b., this is the proposal currently sitting on my editor's desk.]
The House at the End of the World: When Sebastian Marlin became a man, there was no one to celebrate with.
Schrödinger's Parable of the Cat: Denise Blumenthal died on a beautiful spring morning in the polity of Greater Manhattan.
The Sidhetown Tigers: Jefferson Finch was a lousy pitcher, but he was the best we had.
The White Devil: Since I was a little girl, I've always told my father my dreams. Except for one.
Winter's Tale: I was not born, but made--programmed, manufactured, assembled--and my earliest memories aren't memories at all, but data stored to ROM: who holds my patents, who wrote my code; who initiated my activation sequence; a warning that I was valuable government property; if found, please return to.
NOVELLAS
Blue Lace Agate: They hadn't caught the shoggoth larva smugglers yet, but the head of the BPI's southeast hub had other things on his mind: "And, ah, how are you and Sharpton doing, Keller?"
The Kitsune's Tragedy: My mother was kitsune. When I was born kitsune, too, she cursed the fates and slew the midwife and raised me as a daughter.
The Marriage of True Minds: Sanspiro Base is a company town all the way.
The Second Son: On the twenty-fourth of April, Medraut dreamed of Loheris again.
NOVELETTES
"White Charles": The crate arrived at the Parrington on a Wednesday, but it was Friday before anyone mentioned it to me.
"Thirdhop Scarp": The current owner of Thirdhop Scarp claims that the name is a contraction of "third hope," but this is etymologically dubious in the extreme; still improbable but far more likely is the local explanation: that if you fall off the escarpment, you reach the bottom in three hops.
SHORT STORIES
"Crossing Styx": "Think of it as a vacation," Jamie suggested. Mick's reply was physically impossible, but very creative.
"Hollywood After Dark: A Still Life with Wolves": Wolves prowl the Sunset Strip. You can tell them by the way their eyes reflect the street lights.
"The Queen in Winter": There were five queens in the creche. Beulah, Pauline, Camille, Thelma, and Katrina. Beulah was the favorite, and one night after the nurses had gone to bed, the others ganged up on her. There were only four queens after that.
"The Queen of Liverpool": The Mistral Freighter D35-692N-C, Queen of Liverpool, had been grounded for thirty years, since the successful implementation of Chen and Tiedemann's q-curve drive had made her and all her sisters obsolete.
The Tale of Two Dead Mice": Once upon a time, there were two dead mice, white and small and sleek.
"Under Babylon": Mick Sharpton's howl of outrage--"oh fuck no!"--was clearly audible in the junior agents' office.
"(Un)fallen": The pain is intense, sharp, and localizes itself gradually, as Vij comes closer to consciousness, into a throbbing knot on the back of ser skull, just behind ser left ear. Se reaches to touch it, groans as that wakes a whole new set of pains through ser left shoulder and arm, and only then wonders why se is corporeal at all.
[untitled]: The crime-scene tape was gone from the basketball court.
[untitled]: The woman in my office had been dead for five days when I found her. The smell was unbearable, but the ghost was worse.
[untitled]: "What are you doing, sister-wife?"
[untitled]: Queen Titania was dead.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 09:57 pm (UTC)Way to go!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 10:07 pm (UTC)Sigh. Fannish to the nth, but true. Fortunately, it's reasonable to hope that I'll get to read at least a fair number of them sooner or later.
(Has there been any talk/plans about making audiobooks out of any of your stuff? It would rock my world, if they found the right readers.)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 11:03 pm (UTC)I've already told audible.com I want your books, along with many others, but that probably doesn't carry a lot of weight.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 03:43 am (UTC)Oh my god, you're doing a King Arthur story? Are you? Or is the name a coincidence? *hyperventilates*
no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 03:46 am (UTC)It's also looking like it may never be finished, so don't hold your breath.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 03:48 am (UTC)But I understand. Really, if any of them are finished, I'd read them. The (Un)Fallen one looks especially interesting.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 03:53 am (UTC)writing short stories
Date: 2009-01-02 04:04 am (UTC)Kitty
no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 05:15 am (UTC)