As well as my novel, I have also been working on a new short story idea involving one of the novel’s characters. It’s working title is the snappy “Jake and the Knight Who Wasn’t There”!
Currently I am trying to take a fairly rapid approach to developing the ideas and the narrative. I already have a rough structure and plot for the story and I am now fleshing out the characters who take part and will then get some more detail on the plot progression – there are a number of combats that take place, which I need to detail before I get started, and will probably finish off with a few ideas on the locations before I get started with writing.
My aim is to get this written within the month!
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How’s the short story coming along? I’ve been meaning to this with my own novel for some time, take characters from the novel and write shorter side stories about them between writing my novel drafts. Maybe after I finish the fourth revision, I’ll take a stab at doing that.
Are you going to post the story on your site when you’re done? I’d be interested to read it.
Hi Steven
I worked out some details for one of the main characters last night, and plan to work on these for a few more days yet. Then I’ll go back and look at the detail of what happens and perhaps write a fairly detailed outline – it’s a fairly laborious process but I think it might help me to make it concise and punchy enough to work as a short story – I tend to get a bit over word limit otherwise.
I might post the odd bit online, but I will probably only post the whole thing at a secure critiquing site like critters.org, as I would like to send it off for publication afterwards.
I’ve used Critique Circle in the past for online critiques. How do you like critters.org?
It’s pretty good – you have to do one critique a week to remain in good standing, which is usually fine. When you send your own piece through you tend to get quite a few responses – about 10-12 is quite common, although I made the mistake of sending a piece in August and I didn’t get much back at that time of year. Critters are required to send fairly substantial critiques – have to be over 200 words, so you usually get good feedback. But it is only for SF, F and Horror.
I might need to look into that site. Though, I’m not sure I’d have the time every week to critique one story.