short story – Page 3

My intention was to prove that with a basic idea for a story, it would be straightforward to start with a simple poem and develop things from there.

I started with a notion of a brave young fighter pilot in World War II, at about the time of the Battle of Britain.

Stage 1. I wrote three x four line verses.

Stage 2. I padded the first three verses out with three more, and that was the poetry completed.

Stage 3. I considered the ingredients of a short story, combined with my idea for a plot.

Stage 4. I wrote the story in one straight session, and found that it altered slightly from the original idea. I went with the flow, as I knew I should.

Stage 5. Only on completion of the story, and with it fresh in my mind, I rapidly listed about 20 possible titles. I relaxed with a coffee and reduced my list to three top contenders.

The title had to be relevant, and at the same time capture the imagination. It had to convince prospective readers that there was a good story to follow.

I left the story for a couple of days, and then did my first proper edit. I left it another two days and did another edit. I’ve no doubt I’ll try to improve on what I have now, but for anybody who’d like to see the finished article:

‘A Time for Courage’

Thank you for indulging me and making this journey with me.

In Part 1 on this topic, I wrote about using a basic three verse poem to expand on a story idea.

In Part 2, I took it to the next level with three more verses to beef up the information about the story.

In Part 3, I listed the ingredients I would consider when writing a short story.

I have now written a short story from scratch, based on that simple poem displayed in Part 1 and Part 2. Until I completed the story, I used the same working title as used with the poem. A working title allows the writer to get on with the writing. Too much time can be spent procrastinating about the right title.

Like everything else you’ll read in my blog, I have my own theory with regard to titles. I believe it’s much better to work on the title after the story is written. The story may change slightly from the original idea (which mine did), but the title must still do its job – and attract interest. As soon as the first draft of my story was done I found I’d gone over my self-imposed 1500 word limit by 150 words, so I trimmed it to 1500 words.

I saved the story and then spent about 15 minutes writing out every title idea that came to mind. The whole story was fresh in my mind so I ended up with about 20 titles. Titles are easy, but the appropriate title is the one that works. Here are my top three:

– Death and Glory

– Diary of a Warrior

– A Time for Courage

In my final post on this topic I’ll produce the short story, which by then will only have been edited in a couple of rapid sessions, so it may yet change. I do feel it will still round off the task I set myself with this mini-series of posts.

Remember, there’s no reason why you couldn’t use this system to write a novel. My novel ‘Beyond The Law’ started out as an experimental poem, which stretched into a series of 26 poems.

As always, thank you for your indulgence.