I’m taking a short break from Codename: Fairyland to work on a short story, which I’m calling Codename: Candy for now. I have a for real title, but I think it’s a really good title, so I’m keeping it to myself for right now. So here we go, a story about a story.
Just a head’s up, there’s some gross medical stuff in this story, so I’ll give you a warning when we get there and you can skip it if you’re squeamish. I mean, I’m a horror writer which means you’re probably a horror reader, but we all have our limits. Anyway…
I thought of the title and an opening scene to the story several years ago. This is before I wrote Codename: Memories, so I was in the middle of my slump of not writing “The End” on anything for about 8 years. I was stoked about the story and wrote the opening scene that had been part of the idea storm. I continued to write the story, which veered wildly into a different direction, which made the cool title I had no longer make sense. I changed the title, but then the story sputtered and lost momentum. I grew frustrated with just another unfinished story. I trunked it.
Recently, I was brainstorming ideas for an anthology call which I wanted to write a story for. The story that had a title but no story called to me, and I started turning it over in my mind, seeing if I could get anything out of it. I got a couple new ideas, but then I also remembered a story I’d written years ago that I thought would make a good submission to this anthology. So I got that out, reread it to make sure it wasn’t embarrassing, and submitted it. Then, I trunked Codename: Candy again.
Okay, this is the paragraph to skip if you, like me, have a phobia about needles. We’re going to align right to help your eyes skip over it if you want.
I am dealing with a medical issue with my eyes. After a very long appointment with a specialist, they suggested, as step one of a treatment plan, we do some steroid injections into my eyelids. A very traumatic experience as it triggers some PTSD I have because of similar procedures I’ve had in the past. And also steroids. So, needless to say, I couldn’t sleep that night.
Welcome back, if you skipped the previous paragraph.
So, I’m lying awake, unable to fall asleep, and I do what I often do when I can’t sleep: I think about a story. But this time, it was Codename: Candy that I thought of. While I was tossing and turning, I plotted out the main character, the foil character, the plot, and the story arc. I wrote lines in my head for various parts of the story. I complicated the story arc and twisted the ending. It was quite satisfying. And eventually, I fell asleep.
Then, the miracle: it was still there the next morning.
I have also been doing some studying about story structure. Heretofore, even though I’ve embraced the fact that I am a plotter, I still write by instinct, ie I’ve never written a story to hit certain beats. So this means, I think of a story, I write a story in the way that it occurs to me, and the story may or may not be good. If it’s good, I have no idea why. If it’s not, I also have no idea why and am unable to fix it. I mean, I don’t “have no idea,” but again, I navigate more by feeling than by understanding.
So, when I sat down with my notebook the next morning, I broke up the idea according to beats in a story structure. This is the first time I’ve done something like this. Doing this showed me where my idea was already strong, and where it needed further development. Maybe not necessarily in the first draft, but maybe during the second and third drafts, once I get the bones down.
Far from making the process dry and clinical, this was pretty cool for me. It was kind of like understanding the science and reasons why behind cooking, rather than throwing stuff together and hoping that it tastes good. There’s a reason why pink lemonade concentrate is not a reasonable substitution for lemon juice. But that’s a story for another day.
So I sat down Thursday night to just break a page and I ended up writing four a half pages. I’d estimate that I’m about a third done with the story as I have it plotted out, depending how things pace themselves out. Probably going to finish it this week, let it rest for a couple days and then let my betas read it and see what they think.
Speaking of which, it’s calling to me…
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What do you usually think about as you fall asleep?
The Chimerical Dark 