Second Helping of the Short Story Contest
I received a second package from San Diego Writers, Ink last week and spent time over the weekend reading the fourteen new stories. In general, this second batch on the whole was better than the first set of stories I'd reviewed. However, none of these stories outshone the two stories from the first batch that had warranted a second look. Whether by design or the luck of the draw, most of the new stories were what I would call "family drama" stories ranging from "slice of life vignettes" to dark dramas of broken families, strife, and death.
Trying hard to give the second readers something to work with, I culled two stories out of the pack as the best of the set of stories I had to work with. One was the "slice of life" vignette, which I enjoyed reading. There was nothing specifically wrong with the story, other than there were already too many stories just like it. It just didn't stand out compared to innumerable similar stories already written and published. The second story I took another look at hooked me at the start and maintained my interest right until the end - and then the author took the ending right off a cliff, totally destroying it. The surprise ending is a common tool that can be very effective. For it to work, though, the writer has to embed clues that support the surprise at the end. Good surprise endings jolt the writer into a "Wow, I wasn't expecting that! But now I can see how that came about." The bad surprise ending is one where the reader goes "What!? That's stupid. You just ruined the whole story."
On the home front I haven't been able to write myself out of the mess I made of the first third of "The Majik of Spark." I enjoy the editing process even more than I enjoy writing, so I thought that editing my own work, even such a large chunk, would be quick and fun. I also thought that, as often happens with my shorter stories, the editing process would reveal even better ideas. I was wrong. Sometimes I wish I had started the trilogy with "The Song of Chord," for which I have a lot of background and which I actually began writing before "Spark." That's all water under the bridge now. I like the ideas I have to turn the story down a darker path, and I like the snippets I've already written to pave that path. I just haven't been able to see the whole picture, yet, which was the problem that ultimately sank my first effort.
I still have hope that I will be able to corral at least the first third of the novel into something good enough to pitch to publishers/agents at the conference. If it isn't solid, though, I won't risk a rejection simply because I wasn't ready. I have less than three weeks to be ready.
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