Learning from My Mistakes

So, I got back my second and third critiques for my story, and yeah, they complained that there wasn't much of a story. Fortunately there were parts that the other readers liked. One of them said that humor was hard to pull of in Science Fiction, and that I was no Douglas Adams. (Which I find relieving. I don't want to be Douglas Adams :D) But anyway, even though the results of my first critique are somewhat discouraging, I already have ideas for the next version of the story. One of my readers rightly pointed out that they couldn't really sympathize with the main character--I thought that I might tell the story from someone else's point of view. I also know that I need to re-think the ideas in the story so that they come out stronger. Adding some ideas would probably help as well.

I was telling my sister that I was just as bad as George Lucas when it came to stories (see my initial post) but then she told me, "Well, no, because you sent out your story for critique." True. Very true. George Lucas, bless him, has gotten so big in the industry that probably none of the people who were close to him dared to say anything. It's also a bad sign when the prerequisite for most of the actors was that they be Star-Wars fans. Fandom has a history of overlooking bad writing--otherwise, how would anyone be able to stand fan fiction? (I'm not saying that all fan fiction is bad. I'm just saying that what I've read is bad.)

So thank goodness for people willing to critique writing. Sure, it kind of stings, but it's necessary. For one thing, I take the difficulty of combining humor and science fiction as a challenge, not a taboo.

Storytelling Run Rampant

Last time I talked about the difference between good strong stories and weak ones, and used very well known examples. Well, often in life, one's critical abilities will outstrip one's power to perform. I found that out yesterday, after I completed a story and sent it in for critique. One of the people who offered to read started talking about botany sci-fi. But I knew I hadn't written that sort of story, I started going over everything in my head, and I realized that my ideas about the story were all over the place, that there was no resolution of the problems that I'd introduced at the beginning except for superficially, and what I'd done to start the story wasn't tied in enough with the overall plot. Furthermore, instead of creating a completely new version of the story, I'd just tacked on a new beginning and tried to run the rest of it pretty much as-is. I seriously need to work on tightening the whole thing up.

But, on the bright side, I now have a clue as to what I need to do in order to make the story better. Outline. Yeah, I've been told to do that all along, but I didn't understand completely before what exactly I need to do in order to make the outlines really live. The very first outline that I wrote just told stuff that happened. No conflict. Or there was one conflict, but it kind of petered out. The next outline I tried to write was just way too detailed. By the time I got done, i felt like I had already written the story--no room left for surprises. And plus the conflict still seemed to peter out. But I found the solution in a wonderful book that has already paid for itself, even though I haven't read the whole ting. It's called the Writer's Idea Workshop, but Jack Hoffman. The idea pressed upon me, is that the conflict needs to have complications. Other things need to happen in order to move the story forward--you can't just have one conflict, one problem happening, or the life just goes out of the story.

That excited me so much that last night I used the method on a story generated from another exercise in the book--a memory one (That was my starting point. The end story is nothing like what I experienced in real life. Which is a blessing, because I really don't want to get into that. Respect for friends' privacy is a good thing.) The completed outline is great, I can't wait to get started (what am I doing writing here?) The first outline I've ever done that has me excited to get writing after I've done it.