Year 2008 is here and to all writers out there, I wish you all a wonderful and prosperous new year!
Keep the writing going.
My last entry in my blog was about rewriting your first draft. I had to totally rewrite the last five chapters of my novel. And now I put the novel out of sight and will re-read it later.
Since the writing bug has bitten me, I wrote a short story while waiting for my novel to ‘ferment’. I completed the first draft and found it too long for a short story. My mind is still in the novel writing stage and I have difficulties in condensing it. But it is a short story – it needs trimming – real bad.
So if you have written short stories, you know the elements are similar to a novel – you just need to have one big and important plot. There is no space for a subplot to expand. The writing must be very tight and yet have enough flesh to make the story move forward.
Back to my writing – I was so excited to complete my very first short story – in the English language. I can’t contain my excitement as I broke the first rule in editing your fiction – I showed it to my husband.
Here is the conversation between me and DH (Dear Husband):
Me: Honey, would you like to read my short story I just completed?
DH: Cool – I’ve been waiting for it, since all your writing before has been in the Malay language.
He reads it and I can tell the grimace on his face that the story is awful and I feel like I want to hide under the rock. I am familiar with critics and I have no problem receiving them so I can improve my writing. But to receive it from someone who is so close to you is something new to me.
DH: He touches her? Take that out. He’s not supposed to touch her!
Me: No! He didn’t! He patted her hand. See, read it – He patted her hand.
DH: He’s not supposed to do that.
At this stage I knew he is bringing himself inside the story.
Me: It’s just a story for god’s sake! And it’s not like I’m the protagonist in this story. I used a third person point of view. I used ‘she’ not ‘I’, see.
I am not sure if he understands.
I learned a lesson. If you ask your better half to read your fiction – and if it’s contemporary fiction (Suspense, Romance, Adventure, etc.) – you have to explain it to them early on. Otherwise, they will start to edit with their emotions. After all, what they know about characters, plot, dialogue, etc. – right?
So instead of revising the short story, I taught my husband the elements in a short story and tell him that the story needs memorable characters and the characters need to do what they’re supposed to do in order to move the story forward.
And as if the jealously is not strong enough, he tries to edit the dialogues too.
Me: Honey, the dialogues are not conversations like what we have in everyday life. Its conversations in fiction – characters talk different than us – their dialogue is extremely ‘slanted’.
He gives me the look – like I am from different planet or something.
So, there is another explanation instead of editing my short story. I told him the characters in fiction will never answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’ when they were asked. Imagine if we read an everyday conversation – it is so boring. Usually characters will answer with different words or say totally different things to each other yet it is related in order to move the story forward. Characters never answer the question “how are you?” with “fine, thank you”. Instead he or she will answer “You’re not supposed to be here!” or something else that helps to carry the dialogue further along and peek the reader’s curiosity. Imagine if the character answered, “Fine, thank you!”, – there is nothing else to look forward to, right?
More and more explanations when I am ready to give-up – then he finally gets it. I told him to read it as a reader – not as a husband trying to read his wife’s writing. While teaching him the elements of fiction I also learned something new – don’t expect your reader to know what is underneath the story. Show, don’t tell, is definitely an important technique in writing scenes.
But my husband had enough lessons about fiction. After all, he is trained as an architect.
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