Right away I knew what I wanted to write about. I honestly don't even know how it came to me, but I knew that my story had to revolve around life at the home front during the Vietnam war in the 60s. I also knew where I wanted my story to go, and that in the end the relationship between the main characters would be stressed.
In a nutshell, I ultimately decided to write a story about a girl and her brother. But it took a few steps to get to my last draft, and definitely a lot of changing. The first draft consisted of a girl who has a rough relationship with her brother, and the brother comes home after a long time, and they have this car ride, and yada yada yada. My favorite part about writing fiction is all of the freedom of description, and unfortunately I got a little carried away with my first draft. The plot was complicated and needed way too much background and explaining that just wasn't going to work for a short story. There was no way I could have written 1200 words worth, when setting up the main plot took over half of that. And that was my biggest downfall.
So I scrapped that, and started the second draft. This time I made sure that the relationship between the brother and sister was explicitly clear, and ultimately once again spent too many words getting ready for the main conflict of the story. My biggest problem when it comes to writing, as has been evident in previous assignments, is the divergent thinking. I have so many ideas and so many places to take them that I find it difficult to focus on one main idea.
So I scrapped that too and started all over again. This time I turned the relationship around between the two characters, and starting basically where my previous drafts had barely ended. I made the pressure come mostly from character v. self and character v. environment. Of course no final draft is actually final, but I was glad that I was finally able to take bits of pieces from my old drafts and make them into something much more complete.
In short, (haha, get it?) short stories aren't as easy to write as one may think. They're always fun, and it feels good to take a break from more serious forms of writing, but should I ever write another, it will definitely be important to come up with a solid, concise, and straightforward plot, as well as character personalities and sources of pressure!
Just to be fun and cliché:
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