As many of you wonderful followers know, for the last week I’ve been tirelessly working on my short story “Antidote for the Soul” for Burial Day’s Gothic Blue Book submission. I came up with the idea over a dinner and had an outline within an hour. I could see the big scenes, feel for the characters. I executed more research than I’d done for my last paper and educated myself to match style and substance. It was fully planned out and ready to write.
And write it I did. But every work has its complications and so did this one. The issue for this piece was the requirements. To give you some background, “Gothic Blue Books were abridgements of full-length Gothic novels. The subjects of the books fell into one of two categories; the first being set in a monastery or convent and the second being set in a castle.” For the publisher, the whole short story had to be 3,500 words. My students looked at that and went, “How can you write that much?” I looked at it and said, “How can I tell this entire tale in 3500 words?”
It’s been a task, but fun in its way. We get used to writing styles: novels, novellas, long format fiction, papers. When asked to step into new shoes, we have to start all over again. This piece came out to be a full piece short story, now it was time to abridge. So came out the red pen and scenes and characters got cut. It was like surgery. Merry Bond gave me great advice last week, “you really shouldn’t put in hardly any details, you just want the story, the gruesome, frightening, creepy, wonderful story with just merest touch of ambiance.” Thank you, Merry!
Let's see what the publisher thinks of our little convent.
Now reading the finished product, I like it. The story and most of the mood is still there, even if it was planned to be four times this length.
Beyond it being done, it’s off to the publisher. It’s in their hands now in more ways than one. It would be an honor to be included in their work. Just have to wait and let them read and decide.
Now time to leave planet again and deal with my vampires and werewolves in the deep of space, but I enjoyed my venture Earth side in the darkness of our horrific past.
Image by: Salvatore Vuono
September 13th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
As an apocryphal quote from Mark Twain states: “I would like to have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.”
Long format fiction and short stories are very different beasts, aren’t they? Especially when boiled down to a meager 3500 words! I don’t know if I could have done it!
September 13th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Well, I couldn’t go all the way to 3500. Hopefully they’ll be okay with 3900. Oh well, I tried.
Hugely different beasts, but all tameable.