When I got up this morning, I knew the topic for this season’s Writers Weekly 24-hour short story contest would be waiting in my email inbox. In previous contests I’ve been excited to get to it straight away, but somehow today my enthusiasm had waned. I read all my other email first and checked Bloglines too before finally reading the topic – in summary, it included a strange object in an old toy shop, and a word limit of 900 words, nice and short.
My strategy from here was to let this topic sit in my subconscious while I did some other blogging and took a shower. Unfortunately, my mind kept coming back to an old episode of Inspector Rex where a murderer uses his doll shop as a front for getting in the lovely women he wants to rape and kill! So getting to another angle on the topic wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped.
But hopping in the shower, as always, got the inspiration flowing. I decided that for this contest, the plot – and especially a good ending – is the most important factor. So this time I wanted to plan out a good plot before I wrote anything. I think that by focusing completely on getting the plot right before doing any actual writing was good in this case – because (especially being time-limited) if I write real parts of a story I tend to feel wedded to it and reluctant to throw anything away. So I brainstormed a few ideas then turned that into a bit of a plot summary and left it to sit for a bit – I had a lunch and an afternoon tea to get to.
When I returned in the evening, writing the story turned out to be relatively easy. Whether it’s good or not is another question, of course, but I kind of like it, and having a completely structured plot (and a short word count) made it flow easily. Obviously it’s still, really, just a draft, but that’s all you can do in a 24-hour contest (especially since the time difference to the United States makes mine effectively a 12-hour contest instead). So, mission accomplished, short story complete. Each time this contest experience is a little bit different, but at least I’m always learning something.
. In fact, these aren’t really the short stories I want to write: I mean, I want them to sell, but her book focuses on really formulaic fiction that I find all too predictable and boring (so call me a snob). But I have to admit that I did need a few of the lessons I got from this book, as simple and obvious as they sound when I type them now. To summarise: in general, stories need a main character with a problem. Other characters or situations arise that both help and hinder the main character from solving the problem. The end comes either when the character solves the problem (a happy ending) or not (a not-so-happy ending). Full stop.
by Carmel Bird. Lots of things appeal to me about this book (and not just because the author’s Australian) – it’s written as a series of letters to a would-be writer living in a remote town, and gives advice with such perfect examples that the lesson is abundantly clear yet without being beaten around the head with it. And the most important thing I’ve learnt (or re-learnt) here is the importance of writing “what you know” – or at least of using your past experiences as inspirations for your fiction writing, to make sure it comes to life and seems real.