Meredith Mansfield, Author

My last post was about my frustration with a particular story.  The beginning had just come to me and I liked it, but then I couldn’t figure out where it was going.  Mostly, I knew where I didn’t want the story to go.  Too many of the first ideas that came to me were cliche and I knew it.

Well, as sometimes happens, just writing about it here jump started my brain into coming up with a few more ideas.  I also, as I said I would do in the last blog, printed out what I had (about 1,000 words and a bunch of questions) and showed it to a friend, asking for input.  Sometimes, you just need to bounce ideas around a little to let them get some momentum.

My friend tells me that the start is good, intriguing.  That’s nice.  She also came back with her own ideas.  Now, this friend is creative (in a different medium), but she’s not necessarily the best person to brainstorm with.  She tends to get invested in her ideas and try to persuade you to do things her way.  But she can still be a big help, you just have to go about it a little differently.

In this case, some of her ideas went in exactly the direction I’d already decided I didn’t want to go, so I just nodded and kept going.  Some were a little too . . . fairy tale, although there still might be the germ of a plot point there.   It just has to be twisted around so it’s not the same.  Some were good.  Some combined in potentially interesting ways with the new ideas I’d been coming up with.  And some were thought provoking. 

I’ve since rejected some of my ideas.  For example, I’d thought of setting this in Chimeria (see Worlds), but I’ve decided I really don’t want to try writing another short story in a world I know too much about right now.  But I’m also rejecting her idea of a setting and creating something different just for this story.

The plot and the story are starting to come together in my head.  This one could be a lot of fun.