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Reading time: About 7 minutes
Hello, my friends. đ This piece was a tough one. I suppose firsts always are, right?
I initially wrote this story for the 2022 Clarion Write-a-thon Flash Fiction Workshop. Six weeks, six short stories, no longer than 1500 words.
It was my second week in, and I was riding a high off of finishing my first rough draft in 15 years! Now I needed to prove to myself that the first story wasnât a fluke. So no pressureâŠ.
During the Write-a-thon, I was starting new stories with a brainstorming session. I kept going until I had enough ideas to attempt an outline of a story.
I spend a lot of time during these sessions asking and re-asking myself: what is my take on this? What do I think about this thing? Sometimes I inadvertently piece together ideas the way that musicians put certain chords together: they âfeel rightâ because they are familiar and weâve heard them in this order a thousand times. So to keep from going down overly-traveled roads, I ask myself again: what do I have to say about it?
When I get stuck, I turn to research so I can spark new connections. I was pretty certain at this point that I wanted to write about witches and I wanted to write a response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade. Here are the articles I read to spark some ideas:
I still needed something to tie the witches and the politics togetherâŠ.and one afternoon after a nap, I woke up and literally said out loud: Sorrow is Oobleck! And that was the piece I needed. I had a short think about how I wanted to structure my story, and then it was outline time.
{The most hilarious thing about my outlines is that I find them a completely necessary part of my process. Then I start writing the first draft and after two paragraphs Iâve left the outline and never look back.}
The first draft was 650 words over the 1500 word limit. It also was written the day before it was due to my amazing critique group (we were all in the workshop together). So when I sat down to my computer that Friday morning it was due, I needed a miracle.
In desperation, my brain handed me an eight-scene story contraption with a million time jumps and lots of summarizing to squeeze everything in. Let me tell you, my friends, I felt brilliant. STORY DONE.
And so it was, until two weeks ago. I knew I had to have this story ready for you by Oct 1st. So I gathered together the critiques that my writing group had given me (Emelans, you are amazing!), and decided the ending was rough. It needed some work. I rewrote what was the final scene, added a new final scene (for a total of 9 scenes in an 1800 word story), and still felt something was off, but it was overallâŠ..better?
{I researched to write that new final scene, and stumbled across some interesting things. Did you know that there is a International Bill of Human Rights? Did you know that the US hasnât ratified a huge chunk of it?
I also researched what single thing we could legislatively change that would have the biggest effect on averting tragedies like mass shootings, police violence, eroding rights, homelessness, etc. These articles helped me tease out that perhaps a viable thing to try to kickstart change would be separating power and limiting it:
Yes, capitalism is broken. To recover, liberals must eat humble pie
The Omidyar Networkâs Call To Reimagine Capitalism In America. I donât know who these cats really are, but the ideas seem reasonable. }
So I put my new revision in front of my writing group. They had amazing feedback (because they rock, srsly) that made me realize that in some places they were left to imagine parts of the story for themselves. Not good. And they had questions that started picking at the fabric of the storyâs reality. Really, really not good. That was something that had plagued me since the beginning of this story: itâs so political, and now that the US is all so super polarized, I know everyoneâs going to come to this story with Very Defined Opinions about what is and isnât possible around change. And since this version was set in Now, in September 2022, getting readers to suspend their disbelief around something like gun control enough to give this story half a chance feltâŠ.Herculean.
I went back to the story. I knew the ending was the problem. I just had to fix the ending.
And then, like a fever dream, my brain decided to recall an interview with Joss Whedon I read a million years ago. (I know, Joss is cancelled for being a weird asshole, but he does know how to write.) In the interview, which holy moly still exists because the Internet is forever, Joss explains how he was brought in as a script doctor to help punch up the third act of the original X-Men movie. And he tried to explain that the problem with the third act was the first two acts.
Which essentially means: by the time you land at the end of a story, a bunch of choices have already been made on the journey that inevitably brought you to where you are. If you want to end up somewhere else, go back and make different choices. Fix the first and second acts.
Well, shit.
At a complete loss, I got out my Erin Condren notebook, washi tape, my colored pens and markers. Because when I have no idea what to do next, thinking on paper in scrapbook format is my go-to. {Would you like to see pictures of these pages sometime? Do let me know in the comments.} And that process helped me realize a a huge thing that I had been ignoring every time the shadow of the thought tried to insinuate itself into my story musings.
Magic = power.
These witches have POWER. Clearly, lots of it. The first version of this story was the convincing of Louisa by some uppity white ladies to cast this spell, and then the casting of the spell, and then Louisa and Karen (Uppity White Lady #1) coming together to the watch the spell go off for the first time. They debate about what to do next, agree to disagree and do their own thing, the end. And as early as draft one I thought: how is there a possibility that anyone after the spell goes off for the first time will think anything other than: BURN THE WITCHES!!
Well thatâs fine, Problem-Solving Brain chimed in, they are witches doing magic. They just magic everyone into thinking the spell is an act of God.
Well if you are going to do that, Story Brain considered, if the witches have that much power, why donât they just make all guns stop working?
Oh crap. Why DONâT they just make all the guns stop working?
And now you can see the inspiration for the complete overhaul and rewrite of the final version that you have (presumably) read. And luckily Louisa is smarter than me, because she totally figured out the answer to my question! đ
Two last notes:
1. Louisaâs comments about how itâs impossible to argue things better pretty much all came from this awesome YouTube essay by Innuendo Studios: The Alt-Right Playbook: The Cost of Doing Business, which came out while I was revising.
2. Let me know if you found this valuable in the comments, and let me know if thereâs anything specific youâd like to know about my process that I can add!
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Elnora
I would be interested to see you planning book and your planning method.
This is SO useful! Learning to go back and revise the beginning of a story to fit the end was a huge lesson for me to learn and I appreciate you emphasising that this is a common part of writing.
Also, Ian Danskin's video collection is amazing! He truly is doing the work.
And I'd love to see your process pages for rewrites.