Julie Duffy's Blog, page 158
March 10, 2015
[Reading Room] Thea’s First Husband by B. K. Stevens
“Thea’s First Husband” was first published in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and went on to be nominated for Macavity and Agatha Awards
The story is narrated by a woman who seemed to have won the lottery: plucked from behind a bar to marry an older, wealthy man who showers her with gifts and insists she not work any more. Of course, things start to go wrong as the bloom goes off their romance and Edward begins to invite younger men home…for Thea. Eventually she discovers Edward has hired a private detective to follow her around. What will Thea do next?
I was a little impatient with the amount of backstory and exposition the narrator dumped on us at the start of the story and again as the climax was being set up. It wasn’t badly done, it just seemed like the kind of thing all the writing advice columns in the world tell you not to do at all. I did, however, find myself kind of warming to Thea as she went through her dead-eyed days as a trophy wife.
I particularly liked the explanation of her motivation for staying in this loveless marriage. It was nothing dramatic: simply that she was tired of struggling and it was nice to be rich. It was a good reminder that ‘conflict’ in a story—even in crime fiction, which this is—doesn’t have to be dramatic or high-adventure. It can be ordinary and everyday and not remotely noble, as long as it is treated honestly.
I’ve read this story on two different occasions now and didn’t remember the ending, or much about it. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.
I was a little surprised this was nominated for awards. It was solid. It didn’t wow me. But apparently it’s good enough to be nominated, so I definitely recommend taking a look.
March 4, 2015
[Write On Wednesday] Time Yourself
Sometimes life gets in the way of writing. We must find ways to work in a time-crunch.
Today’s exercise is designed to help you see that you CAN write, even when you think you don’t have time.
The Prompt
Write A Story In 30 Minutes
Tips
Turn your phone off, mute your email, hang a sign on the door, put on huge silly headphones. Do whatever you need to do, carve out 30 minutes today to Just Write.
Use only 30 minutes, start to finish, brainstorming to ‘the end’.
Set a stopwatch. Take seven minutes to brainstorm. Think of a character. Give him/her a problem/desire. Pick a reason why solving this problem/achieving this desire causes them extreme heartache/peril (examples: Wesley loves Buttercup but is too poor to woo her. Becoming good for her means risking being murdered by pirates, a prince and a rodent of unusual size. A bookworm’s heart’s desire is simply to read, but his wife thinks its a waste of time so he can’t read at home; and his boss threatens to fire him if he catches him reading at work.)
Pick a good opening line that sums up the character and the problem. (“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” – J.D Salinger: The Catcher In The Rye)
You should be at about 10 minutes into your time now. Spend the next 15 minutes getting to the meat of the problem, throwing complications at your character, and having him start to try to resolve them. Fail at least once. (If it’s an interior kind of story, you can let that failure be ‘temptation to give up’)
Five minutes to go! At some point in the past 15 minutes your character should have started to tell you how the story should end. Tie up the last challenge you gave them and move immediately to the ending. Two sentences. Don’t worry about connecting the middle to the ending just yet. That’s what rewrites are for. Just write “[connecting stuff]” and move on to the end.
There. Didn’t that feel good?
What you have in front of you is likely not a complete short story. It’s a sketchy first draft. But it’s a sketchy first draft that moves. It has an interesting character. It has action. It has a sense that it’s going somewhere, and it has and ending.
Now you have a draft you can rework. Add a few lines to help clarify setting and description for the reader, if it’s that kind of story. Change some of your ‘info dump’ paragraphs to dialogue and move them to earlier/later in the story. Expand or delete details. Figure out your theme and how you can (subtly) strengthen it.
Do this, and I think you’ll have a pretty good story. All from taking 30 minutes to squeeze a little short story writing into your day.
February 28, 2015
SWAGr March Check In 2015
What did you write last month? What will you do next month? It’s time for the Serious Writer’s Accountability Group!
Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the first of each month, to see how everyone’s doing.
(It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)
Don’t remember what you promised to do? Check out the comments from last month.
And don’t forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!
****
Examples of Goals Set By SWAGr-ers in previous months
Finish novella – Maureen
Write two short stories. – Jami
Write 10,000 (fiction) words this month. – Julie
Work on a series – Brick
Track my time and see what’s getting in the way of my writing – Alex
Research the market – Jami
Writing the synopsis for my novel – Misa
Finish one story draft each month – Carol
So, what will you accomplish this month? Leave your comment below:
(Next check-in, 1st of the month. Tell your friends. )
Don’t forget, if you need inspiration for a story you can still get ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2014 and support the running of the StoryADay challenge at the same time. Give a little, get a little 
Click here.
February 16, 2015
[Reading Room] The Stars Are Falling by Joe R. Lansdale
Found in Stories: All-New Tales – Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrntonio
Before Deel Arrowsmith came back from the dead, he was crossing a field by late moonlight in search of his home.
I wasn’t sure where this story was going at first. I was a little surprised when it turned out to be a man returning to east Texas after fighting in The Great War.
The story moved at a laid-back pace, until it broke loose at the climax. It had great descriptive writing with character depth and complexity that I envied, without ever being boring or too slow.
We, the readers, experience everything from the point of view of the taciturn, changed older man, Deel, who has come home to his family, physically and is now trying to remake his home and family.
It was engrossing and a great example of how to create the internal landscape of a down-to-earth man traumatized by the impossible experiences war.
Want to find more great stories from last year? Here’s a round-up of the best of 2014 in Short Fiction
February 14, 2015
It’s A Story, Not Just A List of Stuff That Happens
[South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone] revealed that although they brainstorm and develop individual funny scenes, the key to turning those scenes into an actual story is in making sure that each scene causes the next scene to occur.
…[they] developed a very simple litmus test for determining whether they had achieved the desired causation between scenes, by seeing whether one of two words could be inserted between each scene:
“Therefore” or “but”
via Writer Unboxed » Story Lessons from South Park.
This seems like a wonderful lesson for short story writers.
We don’t tend to think in scenes (especially in a first draft), but applying this test to your story revisions, will make the difference between it being ‘a bunch of stuff that happens’ and ‘an actual story that pulls readers from the first word to the last and leaves them daydreaming about your characters later’.
Key point: as you revise (or draft) your short story, think about everything that happens and whether each is linked by a ‘therefore’ or a ‘but’.
Read the source article for four more lessons on storytelling from South Park.
February 13, 2015
Write What You Love
All this to say, You Be You. You Write You. It is said in Ye Olde Hallowed Annals of Writerly Bull that Thou Shalt Write The Book of Thy Heart. Truly. Do. Because life as a professional artist is HARD. You have to delight in what you’re writing and slaving away over because there are moments when that’s all you have. Take your craft deadly seriously, but not yourself, and not necessarily your genre. Wink at it, have a total blast, revel and wallow, and be only as indulgent as your editor allows. Try to be objective, and don’t be hurt if people think your cup of tea tastes like poo. With any luck, passion, love and creativity will shine through. For my part, I can only hope the wild expanse of whatever foggy moor I’m frolicking in will bring loyal readers, who don’t mind the eerie abandon, back time and again to my dark and stormy night.
Leanna has a very good point.
Are you writing what you love?
First, some questions:
What do you love?
What keeps you coming back to the desk every day?
Have you found your voice yet?
Obligatory StoryADay promo: writing a story every day for a month drives you to try new things, desperate measures, genres and voices you’ve never allowed to fly free before. Try it.
You might find your true voice and your true love lurking underneath all those stylized and ‘commercial’ things you think you ought to be writing.
That way lies fulfillment and riches (well, I can’t guarantee the riches, but I’m fairly certain they won’t come if you hate what you’re writing!)
February 11, 2015
[Write on Wednesday] Inventor’s Day
Did you know Feb 11 is Inventor’s Day in the USA?
Well, it is. The terrific OxfordWords blog has an entry about 10
The Prompt
Write about an inventor or his/her invention
Tips
You can use a real invention or make one up.
You could write a faux scholarly article/history of the person/invention.
Your story could be set at a middle school inventors’ faire, where kids have to dress up as famous inventors.
Perhaps your story follows an incident in the life of your inventor years before, during or years after the work on the invention. What brought them here? Where did their life go after the invention? What’s it like to invent something that took on your name? (If you want a tragic example, look at Richard Jordan Gatling, who was convinced he was inventing a weapon that would lead to smaller armies and less suffering).
You could go whimsical, with an invention of the type that ends up in an As Seen on TV box.
You could throw a little magical realism into this story as the invention produces unexpected results.
Go!
February 9, 2015
[Reading Room] Bertie’s New Year by L. M. Montgomery
This is a charming story about good little rich girls being nice to a poor little (good) poverty-stricken boy. The message of the piece is hopelessly outdated (the privileged should be charitable to the deserving poor, who will appreciate it, no strings), but it’s a nice story.
(N.B. I’m by no means opposed to the well-off helping those who’re struggling. I’m just not sure it ever goes as smoothly as it does in this story, and I think…no, never mind. The point is, the way this story unfolds feels very dated. And it is. So, not a crippling criticism).
Anyhoo, the thing that really struck me while reading this, was
how often LM Montgomery did things that my critique group would NEVER let her away with, if she ran the story by them before submitting it to her publisher. And none of them killed the story for me. I still enjoyed it.
So: lesson learned. Write your own story. Listen to critique partners, but don’t worry too much> Opinions are like…well, you know how that goes, right?
Story found via: Short Story Thursdays. You should subscribe, if you don’t already.
February 3, 2015
[Write On Wednesday] (re)Committed
After scaring you all with my writing prompt headline last week, I’m going much more positive this week.
The Prompt
(Re)Committed
Write a story about a character who is determined to achieve something difficult.
Tips
Tell us why that something matters to your character
Think about what obstacles you can put in her way. Go beyond the obvious.
Show us one way in which she is better, more determined, more heroic than we ourselves would be.
Let her triumph — or flop gloriously.
Go!
On Reading for Writing – Junot Diaz
I’m old enough and experienced enough to know when I’m reading to avoid. And then you gotta get back to work. And I also know — you get old enough, you know when you’re forcing the writing, so you need to go hit the books.
via Junot Díaz Hates Writing Short Stories – NYTimes.com.
A couple of years ago I discovered Ray Bradbury’s prescription for creativity and vowed to read more short stories. Soon I was drowning in ideas. This is the second half of what Junot Diaz is talking out here.
But Diaz makes an really interesting point in the first half of the quote.
Sometimes we ‘read to avoid’.
We read to avoid doing the work.
We read to avoid starting.
We read to feel like we’re being productive when really we should be writing.
How do you balance the reading and writing parts of your life? What is the most productive reading you do? The least productive? Share your thoughts in the comments, below. Let’s talk about this!
