Oops. Heh.

Here's how a short story is born.

Say you listen to folk ballads. A lot of folk ballads. You absorb these stories where everyone dies, gets pregnant, or both.

Folk ballads are great for one reason. They are totally condensed stories. Even the ones with (as Simon Nicol once said of Matty Groves, right before F.C. did a kick-ass rendition) "17 verses and TWO chords!" are a very great deal of action in a very narrow time-space. You can cross from sex to murder in the space of a verse -- but in spite of this, there are times you can still say nobody's wrong, or at lest feel sorry for the villains (Bold Poachers comes to mind, where you end up murdering the time period's equivalent of a cop killer.)

The price of this condensed story stuff and this rapid pace is that there's a lot left implied or unsaid around the edges of the story. Some stories leave you entirely puzzled as to motive, others leave character out in the cold, some have key events pass by between verses. Tam Lin tends to have the love interest tell the heroine what to do in complete detail, then, in the usual slightly abbreviated versions, mentions she does it, and... done. (In the full length version we just get almost the same verses twice over. Only Steeleye span, which cheated by putting it to three new tunes, switched the action to present tense).

So. Lots left in the interstices. This is one of the reasons a lot of ballads, from Reynardine to Scarborough Fair (The full version), which sound straightforward stories between a man and a woman have some scholars and avid listeners suggesting that one of the characters is actually a vampire, or an elf-knight. (I can't quite believe this about "Scarborough Fair", personally, but I think "Willy O' Winsbury" ONLY makes sense -- particularly the last two verses -- if Willy is a glamoured Elf.) But as well as leaving room for the supernatural in potentially mundane tales, there's also often a lot left hinted at regarding what happens next (which is usually not "and they all lived happily e'er after." Several of the ballads, especially the humourous ones, tend to cut off right before the huge fight between husband and wife is going to really kick off, as just one example.)

Say one day you're listening to an old favourite. And it suddenly occurs to you that there's a whole other way the ballad could go from the ending besides the one most strongly implied. It's a reading supported by the text, by the implied personalities.

So, being a writer, you recognize a kernel of story-stuff (which I tend to envision as kind of like a dried unpopped corn seed, except slightly iridescent, or weirdly hot or cold, or looking like the black night sky covered in stars in the middle of the day) when it foists itself on you.

You start to work over how the encounter you imagine would go. You can imagine the characters well enough to picture her shawl, heavy wool, and grey, surprisingly soft to the touch when stroked, but itchy wrapped about the neck for hours on end. His feet, bare and scratched and callussed. The question she talks around for the whole conversation and he won't ever answer.

But the story kernel sits between them and won't pop. There's no conflict. Just two people meeting, looking back over an event that happened a long time ago.

So. Leave it to sit like that for months. a year. Periodically, you look back at these two people, to make sure you still know them, to see if they're interested in any of the other story kernels you've collected meantime (Unlike popcorn, story kernels can be popped many ways. A popular one is putting two seemingly unrelated oens side by side and seeing what happens.) But they never even look aside. Not for an attempt to sneak them into the setting from one novel series. Not from a similar attempt with another country across the world. Nor this other idea from nowhere that has no characters attached. This story kernel isn't lonely for more of its own kind. Something's missing. Something without which the scene doesn't happen.

Then one day, you're reading along on something entirely unrelated. An lj entry mostly on point of view, on omniscient, and how third person limited is really third person limited omniscient (which is a heck of a thing to wrap your head around, since it's contradictory where the original isn't, but it's no worse than the trinity in Christianity, which most people swallow without blinking). Anyhow, you're reading, and pass over this bit without so much as blinking...

Future tense! Future perfect tense, which I once wrote a story in, on a dare. (It begins "It will have been raining in Harvard Square for half an hour when you give up hope.") Those, again? Stunt writing. Use them for a reason.

That? Oh, nothing much. The rest of the article was too interesting to note silly remarks like that.

Then, foolish innocent, you're reading along through the comments, some astute, some bemused, some merely happy, and pass by one so minor (all of two lines),
like so and think idly that you agree with the comment, you'd never do anything that crazy. I mean the worst point of view and tense you played with was first person present...right?

*******BANG!*********

The kernel pops. You're suddenly staring at a bottle green, rushing, echoing twirl of a story. All of it. This whole thing. (As here) Although if you have your tenses right, it's only future, not future perfect.

So you sing the ballad through on your way to class, since you'd miss it if you started writing this second, but it keeps the idea in mind. while pausing in the washroom, you figure out how the first couple of paragraphs (or what you think will be the first couple of paragraphs) go. Then you go to class and write notes on soemthing else riveting, to let it gestate just a little.

And then, on the bus home from Univeristy, you start writing (Beginning with that paragraph you already decided on) until the pen almost runs out and it's your stop anyhow. Just far enough to know that the first start you thought of was in fact in slightly the wrong place -- but that's okay, you ahven't even got a full draft -- and to know, if not the closing sentence, the concept in the closing paragraph.

And that is how you end up with a short story.

I almost ended up with second-person future ("You will..."), but the problems of how the reader would cast him/herself if given the chance break the whole story the way future tense makes sense of it. But if you think tense isn't that important, the change in tense sudden;y gave me theme, and a whole reason the story is being told in the first place.


____________________________

And in other news, Colin's run off for the weekend without me. There's an SCA event out of town I couldn't and wouldn't take time off school for, but he could. I hope he's going to get to shoot much archery. Me, I got a story and some reviews to write.

Oops. Heh.

Here's how a short story is born.

Say you listen to folk ballads. A lot of folk ballads. You absorb these stories where everyone dies, gets pregnant, or both.

Folk ballads are great for one reason. They are totally condensed stories. Even the ones with (as Simon Nicol once said of Matty Groves, right before F.C. did a kick-ass rendition) "17 verses and TWO chords!" are a very great deal of action in a very narrow time-space. You can cross from sex to murder in the space of a verse -- but in spite of this, there are times you can still say nobody's wrong, or at lest feel sorry for the villains (Bold Poachers comes to mind, where you end up murdering the time period's equivalent of a cop killer.)

The price of this condensed story stuff and this rapid pace is that there's a lot left implied or unsaid around the edges of the story. Some stories leave you entirely puzzled as to motive, others leave character out in the cold, some have key events pass by between verses. Tam Lin tends to have the love interest tell the heroine what to do in complete detail, then, in the usual slightly abbreviated versions, mentions she does it, and... done. (In the full length version we just get almost the same verses twice over. Only Steeleye span, which cheated by putting it to three new tunes, switched the action to present tense).

So. Lots left in the interstices. This is one of the reasons a lot of ballads, from Reynardine to Scarborough Fair (The full version), which sound straightforward stories between a man and a woman have some scholars and avid listeners suggesting that one of the characters is actually a vampire, or an elf-knight. (I can't quite believe this about "Scarborough Fair", personally, but I think "Willy O' Winsbury" ONLY makes sense -- particularly the last two verses -- if Willy is a glamoured Elf.) But as well as leaving room for the supernatural in potentially mundane tales, there's also often a lot left hinted at regarding what happens next (which is usually not "and they all lived happily e'er after." Several of the ballads, especially the humourous ones, tend to cut off right before the huge fight between husband and wife is going to really kick off, as just one example.)

Say one day you're listening to an old favourite. And it suddenly occurs to you that there's a whole other way the ballad could go from the ending besides the one most strongly implied. It's a reading supported by the text, by the implied personalities.

So, being a writer, you recognize a kernel of story-stuff (which I tend to envision as kind of like a dried unpopped corn seed, except slightly iridescent, or weirdly hot or cold, or looking like the black night sky covered in stars in the middle of the day) when it foists itself on you.

You start to work over how the encounter you imagine would go. You can imagine the characters well enough to picture her shawl, heavy wool, and grey, surprisingly soft to the touch when stroked, but itchy wrapped about the neck for hours on end. His feet, bare and scratched and callussed. The question she talks around for the whole conversation and he won't ever answer.

But the story kernel sits between them and won't pop. There's no conflict. Just two people meeting, looking back over an event that happened a long time ago.

So. Leave it to sit like that for months. a year. Periodically, you look back at these two people, to make sure you still know them, to see if they're interested in any of the other story kernels you've collected meantime (Unlike popcorn, story kernels can be popped many ways. A popular one is putting two seemingly unrelated oens side by side and seeing what happens.) But they never even look aside. Not for an attempt to sneak them into the setting from one novel series. Not from a similar attempt with another country across the world. Nor this other idea from nowhere that has no characters attached. This story kernel isn't lonely for more of its own kind. Something's missing. Something without which the scene doesn't happen.

Then one day, you're reading along on something entirely unrelated. An lj entry mostly on point of view, on omniscient, and how third person limited is really third person limited omniscient (which is a heck of a thing to wrap your head around, since it's contradictory where the original isn't, but it's no worse than the trinity in Christianity, which most people swallow without blinking). Anyhow, you're reading, and pass over this bit without so much as blinking...

Future tense! Future perfect tense, which I once wrote a story in, on a dare. (It begins "It will have been raining in Harvard Square for half an hour when you give up hope.") Those, again? Stunt writing. Use them for a reason.

That? Oh, nothing much. The rest of the article was too interesting to note silly remarks like that.

Then, foolish innocent, you're reading along through the comments, some astute, some bemused, some merely happy, and pass by one so minor (all of two lines),
like so and think idly that you agree with the comment, you'd never do anything that crazy. I mean the worst point of view and tense you played with was first person present...right?

*******BANG!*********

The kernel pops. You're suddenly staring at a bottle green, rushing, echoing twirl of a story. All of it. This whole thing. (As here) Although if you have your tenses right, it's only future, not future perfect.

So you sing the ballad through on your way to class, since you'd miss it if you started writing this second, but it keeps the idea in mind. while pausing in the washroom, you figure out how the first couple of paragraphs (or what you think will be the first couple of paragraphs) go. Then you go to class and write notes on soemthing else riveting, to let it gestate just a little.

And then, on the bus home from Univeristy, you start writing (Beginning with that paragraph you already decided on) until the pen almost runs out and it's your stop anyhow. Just far enough to know that the first start you thought of was in fact in slightly the wrong place -- but that's okay, you ahven't even got a full draft -- and to know, if not the closing sentence, the concept in the closing paragraph.

And that is how you end up with a short story.

I almost ended up with second-person future ("You will..."), but the problems of how the reader would cast him/herself if given the chance break the whole story the way future tense makes sense of it. But if you think tense isn't that important, the change in tense sudden;y gave me theme, and a whole reason the story is being told in the first place.


____________________________

And in other news, Colin's run off for the weekend without me. There's an SCA event out of town I couldn't and wouldn't take time off school for, but he could. I hope he's going to get to shoot much archery. Me, I got a story and some reviews to write.

(no subject)

Progress notes for September 15, 2006:

And it shall come to Pass


New Words: Just over 2000 words.
Reason for stopping: Once again, finished a draft..
Tea: cherry juice, then water.
Music: Emmylou Harris, Red Dirt Girl
Mean things: Prophecy's a bitch.

Now to let that stew a handful of weeks to decide if it's worth anything.

Inevitable Asides: I get to go pretty dress shopping with brannie_bird tomorrow. Well, likely she'll be doing the pretty dress part, and I'll be watching. So far I haven't seen bridesmaid things I feel strongly inclined to try.

(no subject)

Progress notes for September 15, 2006:

And it shall come to Pass


New Words: Just over 2000 words.
Reason for stopping: Once again, finished a draft..
Tea: cherry juice, then water.
Music: Emmylou Harris, Red Dirt Girl
Mean things: Prophecy's a bitch.

Now to let that stew a handful of weeks to decide if it's worth anything.

Inevitable Asides: I get to go pretty dress shopping with brannie_bird tomorrow. Well, likely she'll be doing the pretty dress part, and I'll be watching. So far I haven't seen bridesmaid things I feel strongly inclined to try.