One of the suggested ways to get your name out as a writer (published or self-published) is to write short stories so people can get a taste for your writing, so I thought over possible short stories I could write this week, and came up with two new novels to add to my list of things I would really like to be writing at the moment.
I'm just a novel writer; it's my natural length.
When I'm seriously distracted by new story ideas, I usually write the first page or two, which gets it enough out of my head that I can go back to whatever I'm trying to _finish_, and gives me enough to pick up the threads if and when I come back to it.
You can see from this opening scene that I was pondering popular sub-genres and wondering what would make them interesting to me. ;)
The windows of the vampire's house were a sneer, a proclamation. "Come, Sun!" they mocked. "Find me. Make me ash."
The sun was not slow to take up the invitation, flooding through countless squares of glass to burnish mellow wood and caress rows of leather-bound books. But the vampire was in the basement discussing weather control with the Prime Minister, and the sun did not even reach the young man resting his head on one arm at the near end of the library's central table. The broad sweep of light stopped just short of his other hand as he held it, thumb canted to form a partial frame, toward the window and the scene of controlled near-chaos outside.
That story, if I ever get around to writing more than an opening for it, will be called Wednesday. But Voice first. So many projects, so little time.A rope had snapped. The Prime Minister's airship was canted to one side, and then bounced, the black and red ballonet threatening to smash the gondala against Sheerside Manor's sweeping back lawn. The very problem Lady Buckmeer had come to discuss was likely to strand her in Heliotropus' bedeviled south.
Do I detect faint traces of steampunkium? I believe that I do. I look forward to seeing what you can do in the field of dirigibles and mad pseudoscience.
ReplyDeleteI can readily accept the notion that some writers have a particular structure or length that suits them. I have a terrible notions that mine may be the "novella which just slightly overstays its welcome" though of course I won't know for sure until I have a much less incomplete body of work. Not that I am much of an authority, but I guess that one of the secrets of short story writing is to focus tightly on a single idea.
Allowing your tight concept room to breathe and expand opens the door to new ideas and situations, which is kind of ideal for the explorer-novel model to which you ascribe, but it's not conducive to the production of a sharp and tasty morsel.
(I wrote a comment along these lines yesterday but the damned comment screening ate it. Grr.)
At least with ebooks novellas are now a viable thing to write!
ReplyDeleteAnd, yeah, the comment screening thing on this version of blogger sucks. I always copy to the clipboard first because it keeps killing me off.