The Writer's Arena
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
A while back, I volunteered to take part in something fun. A guy on Reddit was shilling his new site, where two writers were supposed to create a story based on the same prompt and the best story would win. This sounded like fun, and sort of like a grown up version of the old e-wrestling stuff I used to do, so I put my name forward.
There was silence, which didn't surprise me. Something like that was bound to be popular.
Then a week ago, Tony Southcotte contacted me and asked if I'd be a last minute sub for a writer who had dropped out. Of course I said yes. I have been training myself to recognize an opportunity when it presents itself and it's finally started to sink in. A day later, Tony sent me the prompt and some restrictions.
4500 words or less. Set no later than the 1960s. And it must feature someone selling their soul to the Devil.
The prompt could have been made for me, and Tony also said some nice things about my writing style, so I started out on a bit of a high. Working on Reddit writing prompts is definitely toning up my creative muscles, because within a few minutes of getting the prompt, an idea arrived more or less fully formed and about half an hour after that I had a very basic outline of what I wanted to write. Which was just as well since I had until Friday 6th June to get it written, edited, re-written and out to the organiser.
I love a deadline for writing. I'm not always the best at keeping to them - my mammoth failure to produce anything useful during NatNoWriMo two years ago demonstrates that - but they do at least give me targets and goals. Armed with my basic idea, I started up Scrivener and created a new project.
One of the many useful features of Scrivener is the ability to create index cards so you can organise scenes, characters and locations. My first evening was spent sorting those things out with the intention of writing out the scenes on each index card at the rate of one a day, leaving me a day or so for editing and re-writes.
That actually worked out, too. Scrivener has already demonstrated it's useful and able to keep me to a deadline. I'm considering whether or not to round up my unfinished projects and give them all the Scrivener treatment so that I can complete them and start the re-write process on all of them. But back to the battle.
Editing turned out to be a breeze; I could very quickly tell what needed to stay and what needed to go, but even so I handed Draft 1 over to a Beta reader (the always awesome Becca) for a fresh pair of eyes and she convinced me to cut more, change lots and generally improve the story no end.
Even though I struggled a bit, because there were sections that I wanted to keep because I loved them just a little, the old adage "kill your darlings" proved true and useful, curse it. Having butchered my darlings and sacrificed a few other odds and ends the story came in under the word count and is something I'm proud of. If you want to read it, go to The Writer's Arena and have a look. While you're there, vote. And read some of the other fiction posted there, because based on first impressions it's going to be a tough fight.
There was silence, which didn't surprise me. Something like that was bound to be popular.
Then a week ago, Tony Southcotte contacted me and asked if I'd be a last minute sub for a writer who had dropped out. Of course I said yes. I have been training myself to recognize an opportunity when it presents itself and it's finally started to sink in. A day later, Tony sent me the prompt and some restrictions.
4500 words or less. Set no later than the 1960s. And it must feature someone selling their soul to the Devil.
The prompt could have been made for me, and Tony also said some nice things about my writing style, so I started out on a bit of a high. Working on Reddit writing prompts is definitely toning up my creative muscles, because within a few minutes of getting the prompt, an idea arrived more or less fully formed and about half an hour after that I had a very basic outline of what I wanted to write. Which was just as well since I had until Friday 6th June to get it written, edited, re-written and out to the organiser.
I love a deadline for writing. I'm not always the best at keeping to them - my mammoth failure to produce anything useful during NatNoWriMo two years ago demonstrates that - but they do at least give me targets and goals. Armed with my basic idea, I started up Scrivener and created a new project.
One of the many useful features of Scrivener is the ability to create index cards so you can organise scenes, characters and locations. My first evening was spent sorting those things out with the intention of writing out the scenes on each index card at the rate of one a day, leaving me a day or so for editing and re-writes.
That actually worked out, too. Scrivener has already demonstrated it's useful and able to keep me to a deadline. I'm considering whether or not to round up my unfinished projects and give them all the Scrivener treatment so that I can complete them and start the re-write process on all of them. But back to the battle.
Editing turned out to be a breeze; I could very quickly tell what needed to stay and what needed to go, but even so I handed Draft 1 over to a Beta reader (the always awesome Becca) for a fresh pair of eyes and she convinced me to cut more, change lots and generally improve the story no end.
Even though I struggled a bit, because there were sections that I wanted to keep because I loved them just a little, the old adage "kill your darlings" proved true and useful, curse it. Having butchered my darlings and sacrificed a few other odds and ends the story came in under the word count and is something I'm proud of. If you want to read it, go to The Writer's Arena and have a look. While you're there, vote. And read some of the other fiction posted there, because based on first impressions it's going to be a tough fight.
0 comments:
Post a Comment