Story Day!

It’s story day again! Yippee! No, seriously. This week wasn’t so bad. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do and then, crazy as it sounds, I actually did it. I decided to play with the microfiction format this week (stories with a word count of 300-500 words). I spent a good portion of the week thinking about story ideas, trying to figure out how to squeeze any of the ideas that bubbled to the top into that kind of word count. I mean, I am pretty good at writing down my thoughts in a concise manner, but I have no idea how to put a leash on a character. So, again, I focused on a very specific situation and decided to focus that down ever farther by really concentrating on trying to get the reader to feel something very specific. So the whole point of the story was more to make the reader feel with the character than to define the character or even really tell a story.

I know, I know. But the project is all about writing stories you say. And I agree with you. But I am discovering there are a lot of components to story writing. I have been trying to figure out how to work on all of those elements so that I can get stronger. The thought being that if I can strengthen my abilities with the separate elements, then my story as a whole will also get stronger and my abilities as a writer will continue to grow. At least that is the theory. But you’ll have to read this week’s story and tell me if you think I’ve succeeded (hint! hint!). Of course you could also read it and it could only serve to cement your thought that I’ve no business writing and should go back to my day job.

Yeah. Well, the jury is still out. So I’ll just keep plugging along, trying to push my own boundaries.

And I’m almost ready to move on to reading James Patterson or Tom Clancy although I’ll be sad to leave Pern, but I’m excited to see where my imagination takes me from here.