Growing a Story
November 13, 2000
7:19 a.m.
"Searching for Ghandi" has grown--and appears to want to continue to grow. First it was 8,000 words, then 9,000, then 10,250, and now it's crested 11,000 and heading for 12 or 13, 000 before it's finished. The "problem"--assuming this is a problem--is that I'm at the tail end of learning stuff about the secondary character. Every time I learn more about her, it affects the main character. And the story grows. I would have been mortified by this a couple years ago. That was when I felt I had to make sure my stories were 4-5,000 words long or else suffer at the hands of fate. I worked like mad to truncate things. I streamlined and pared stuff down. I whittled and sliced, looking for every spare line I could manage (or I padded and prodded, trying to make the limit). I see now how wrong I was. Actually, I knew I was wrong then, too. It's just that I didn't have as much confidence as I do now. Or maybe I didn't have enough respect for the work. Is there a difference? I'm not advocating lazy writing or lazy storytelling. I think stories should be lean. But you can go overboard trying to do too much. It's like taking three overstuffed garment bags onto an airplane--they don't fit into the overhead bins, and if you slice them up to force them in, you lose a lot of important stuff. Back a few months ago, I wrote about a lady who was trying to cram a 5,000 word story into a 1,000 word box. This is no good. A story should be as long as it needs to be--no more. And no less.   Have a great day.  But, Ron, it's my right to carry on every possession I own! Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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Let's just do a total election do over, eh? |
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