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Does anyone else find it difficult to evalute the potential worth of their short stories?
When I critique other people's stories I immediately know whether it is marketable or not, I can spot grammar, POV, characterisation mistakes. When I look at my own, it is much more difficult.
Generally I know when my stories stink, but I can rarely put my finger on why. I am currently rewriting one of my shorts after two hellish critiques. The thing is being currently reworked. As soon as I read the critiques I knew what they were saying and it was obvious what the story lacked. I am so sorry for putting those two people through the pain, but for me it was needed. I am now rewriting and feel much happier about the way that story is going.
Is there a good way to find the problems with your own stories? Please don't refer me to any books because I am not in a position to buy those books.
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Well, this might not be what you are after, but, set it aside for several months and then reread it?
Yeah, I know. Not a good answer. But it does address the point that you must find a way to become a dispassionate observer of your own work. The passage of time tends to change your perspective of your own work towards the dispassionate.
Do you have another means to reach that mental state? Meditation, perhaps? If so, that might work for you.
mm
[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited January 06, 2005).]
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I don't know of any better way than to have a single trusted reader who will be frank with you and say simply, "This sucks, yanos," or "This has potential, yanos." Then you can take the ones that suck and file them away, and take the ones with potential and offer them for critique.
Other than that, I think it definitely is a problem judging your own work, because you are emotionally involved in a way others are not. It's surely that way for me. How can I find fault in characters or situations or scenes I have torn from my soul and put onto paper? To judge a world that I have created? Gives you kind of a new perspective on being God, maybe?
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Well the last part is difficult ,and maybe underlines part of my problem. I am unable to read magazines to view other people's stories. But I am learning, and in time the improvements will come.
I said to Survivor, after making him suffer through a reading, that I HAD to write the story. It isn't that I liked the story, but I HAD to write it. Now I have come back to it and changed it I do like it, but the original... well it didn't sit well... This has caused me lack of sleep for many nights, because I knew there was worth there somewhere. I just didn't know where.
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The first thing you have to ask is this: Is the story meaningful to you? If the answer is no, then I don't know how you can judge the quality of your story. But if the answer is yes, and you know that what you have on paper isn't at the level where it should be, then you already have your answer, don't you?
How do you figure out what's wrong with your story? Well, there are a lot of ways, really. You've already done one: get someone else to read it. You can also put it away for a month, work on other stuff, get your mind off it, and then look at it with fresh eyes. Or you can write about it in your notebook, asking yourself key questions about the plot, about character motivation, about the back story, about the ending--whatever, just to get you thinking about it on a new level. Or try rewriting it from scratch in a different POV, just to have a different take on it. Or you can just wait until the answer comes while your reading a novel or a short story, or a philosophy book, or taking a walk, or playing a video game, or watching a baseball game.
Too often beginning writers don't let a story grow on its own. I'm guilty of it as well. I suppose we feel we have to complete A before moving on to B. Why can't we have seven or eight projects in the works, allowing each project to cross-pollinate with the others? I'm not saying you should be writing eight stories at once. But why not put a story aside for a few weeks, or months, or years--taking it out and looking at it when you feel like it, and putting it back when you're sick of it--until it's finished. You learn to write by writing, and perhaps while working on story-D something will click and you'll have the answer to story-A. This has happened to me.
But then, I'm the kind of writer who keeps his stories very private until I think they're good enough to be shown to others. This doesn't mean that I think they're perfect when I do show them; but it does mean that I can't do anything else with it. I've never shown a story to someone to ask them what is wrong with it. If I don't know what's wrong with a story, I put it away and do some of the things I suggested above.
[This message has been edited by Jeff Vehige (edited January 06, 2005).]
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Speaking of critiques and rejections, I was tooling around Strange Horizons, glancing at their submissions guidelines, and I got to looking at their list of plots they see all the time. Laughed my tail off. Some of those are just plain sad, considering that people are actually writiing those stories and sending them out. Go take a look, if you need a laugh. The science fiction page:
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--------------------------------- A party of D&D characters (usually including a fighter, a magic-user, and a thief) enters a dungeon and fights monsters (usually including orcs). A group of real-world humans who like roleplaying find themselves transported to D&D world. --------------------------------- Warriors of the Flame was based on this, and it was a pretty good series.
Posts: 1275 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
just glanced at that badger page. That's hilarious. Makes me think, though, in all the world, there's bound to be some idiot that has his/her badger ready and is looking around for a copy of Vudu...
Yeah it was, Chris, but I think it was the first, so it's exempt. It's like cliches in Shakespeare; they weren't cliches when he wrote them.
[This message has been edited by Netstorm2k (edited January 07, 2005).]
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I have read Strange Horizon's page several times and most of it is ludicours although I did write a story staring a writer who can't write once that I politely refrained from submitting to that market even though I thought it had merit.
Back to the actual question here...
We lost perspective with our own work. That is why critiquing is so useful, but be cautious. Some of the best critiquing can be done of our own work by ourselves if we set a story aside for a length of time and reread it later. For a short story I often find a month to be ample. Read it again and think about it as if it were someone else's story and mark what you'd do differently.
As for sending them out to others to critique, I do this. I have a critique group right now that has been working out very well. Each member has a different perspective and I'm beginning to learn their styles and pet peeves. But any one of them will tell me if they think it sucks.
Here's where you need to really be cautious, though. After you do those two things: reread it yourself after a time and send it out to a critique group (not necessarily in that order, I often send it out first and then set it aside and read it myself). After you do that you may not want to send it out for a second round of critiquing. Too much of that and a story loses freshness and perspective. You'll begin to hate it.
There is something to be gained by taking a short story through many drafts when you are learning how to write. You can pinpoint errors of story before you put those errors into a longer and far more time-consuming novel format. In fact, I once read an article with a recommendation that new writers write a short story every week as opposed to writing a novel in their first year of serious writing. It's not bad advice on two counts: You get practice writing a complete story over and over again and you may even get one published. I didn't do 52, but last year I wrote something like 26 short stories, many of which are still making their way through the publication food chain.
Here's the thing about short stories in particular. When it's a wash and you know it it can be just as well to write a completely new short story. You didn't invest a lot of time or emotion into it anyway, at least not until you had it critiqued half a billion times.
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I think the problem is if that is the whole point of a story. If it is a facet of a character it is simplyp realistic.
Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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I think Balthazar and Catherine hit the nail on the head. I am too close to my stories. I do try to put them aside for a time, but lose sleep over them if what I have done is not satisfactory.
I think there is a second problem in the way I was rewriting my second drafts. all I really end up doing there is tightening the writing and not the story. So, I am going to try something that has worked for me before and try the scond draft without the original in front of me. It is hard, but it may e more beneficial.
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I was looking at Elizabeth Bear's site last night, and she kept going on about how she knew her stories were done, as good as she could make them, because she couldn't stand to look at them anymore. I don't quite get that. I have had stories and poems and plays that I get frustrated with, because it feels like something is missing, and I can't see what it is right away, and I'm a very impatient person. But I have found that giving them a day or two of rest, working on something completely different, and then coming back, helps a ton. Also, I've had success reading the story aloud, sometimes with an accent. That doesn't always work, but it certainly annoys my wife, which helps to distract me from the frustration as well. ; )
But a piece that I know is clicking, just click click clicking along, I don't have a problem looking at from a distance. And I'm certainly don't hate them when I'm done. Those I want to print out and run my hands over, because it always kind of surprises me that the story came from inside me. Gotta love her. That muse can drive you nuts sometimes, but she sure knows how to make you happy when you listen to her.
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I think that a story is done when I don't feel I can "fix" anything without breaking something valuable. If I can't bear to look at it, then I can't imagine anyone else wanting to look at it either, and see it as done in a fundamentally different sense.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Yanos, I send my stories through two complete drafts. The first draft I focus on getting the story on paper. Knowing the story in some detial, from beginning to end, I'm in a better place to think about it. I make tons of notes on the draft. I don't worry so much about the writing itself (if a sentence or paragraph strikes me as particularly good, I'll highlight it to remember to use it.) I just read and reread my story, trying to see connections I didn't make, connections my subconcious wants me to make (by describing two different things with the same words, a man and then a mountain, for example), and so forth. Then I completely rewrite the story--with my draft and all my notes and corrections sitting next to me. I've never tried to do it from memory before. The second draft becomes what I call my "working draft"--it's the draft that I shape and reshape, adding and removing scenes, rewriting sentences and paragraphs, until I get it to the point where I'm happy with it. Sometimes that takes a long, long time.
So I guess in a certain sense, you could say that my first draft is a long outline (though I often make notes and even write a short treatment before writing a first draft), and that my second draft is really my frist complete draft.
I hope this helps.
[This message has been edited by Jeff Vehige (edited January 08, 2005).]
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You have helped. At the very least I have clarified my own thoughts on the matter. I'm still inclined to call you Balthazar... it seems strange to call you Jeff after so long.
I know how easily I can lose track of a story. What I mean by that is it becomes something I never intended, and the original driving force is lost. So instead of a good sotry I end up with something very mundane. This probably happens because I often have to write when I am tired or distracted.
I think by changing the way I rewrite I can overcome this. I am still learning the craft of short stories, so everyone's advice is valuable. I find that even when I am happy writing a short story for say fantasy, there is still a lot to learn when switching to another genre.
Thanks again to everyone. I am a little happier with myself and my writing. I get frustrated when things don't work as I feel they should and you are the only people I know who might understand my frustrations. To say I am driven is an understatement.
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