Tuesday 19 May 2015

Short stories and other writing projects...

Recently I've been working on some short stories, a form I used to write in a number of years ago, but from which I got distracted by other creative endeavours. In addition to using the short story format to further improve my writing and try out some things, I'm also pursuing it for competitions as well as submissions to publications that specialise in short stories.

Right now I've just started putting together "We Should Eat Ice Cream Too" (sci-fi), and I've also got "The Seventh Rub" (no particular genre and more of a personal tale), and "Dug Deep" (horror). "Dug Deep" is a ghost story situated in a collapsed mine as trapped workers are painstakingly being rescued, while "The Seventh Rub" deals with the issue of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. "We Should Eat Ice Cream Too" - a subtle kind of sci-fi story - deals with themes of immigration, societal cohesion, and family - particularly fathers and sons...

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I just started writing the sci-fi one today, but it's flowing nicely. It was inspired by a particularly vivid dream I had a couple of months ago, and I've been gradually picking away at the idea since then. Sometimes though, when embarking on a new story, there's an element of intimidation - the blank page that lies ahead, or even just double-clicking the icon to start the writing software (something I've spoken of before) - but once you get going a lot of that ill-feeling starts to fall away, and the lure of turning the images in your head into words on the page takes hold.

There's another short story that I have in mind - which would deal with the theme of how children can be very adaptable in extreme situations - but that's just a handful of ideas (and no title) at the moment. It'll either be that as the next writing project, or a new screenplay (also untitled at this point), for which I've been jotting down ideas for a while now.

Indeed, in anticipation of that - a much larger writing project (I'm thinking 90-100 pages) - I've been digging through various articles on the subject of writing that I've saved. There's so many great tips out there - particularly through sites like Script Angel - that you can learn an awful lot of things. I'd gathered at least fifty articles and over the last week or so I've been cranking through them and extracting various tips and tricks, which I then boiled down into a few pages of bullet points under various categories. It kind of reminds me of my school days and revision time, but it's been a great way to work on the craft of writing. I'll be seeking to employ the new things that I've learnt on the next script.

For now though, keep learning and keep writing!

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