So I started working on my fifth story, then I realized I had nothing.

My idea for stories five through eight was to follow the exploits of one character at a time through a war and interrelate all four … somehow. So I started thinking of interesting scenes and ways to correlate and show both sides of the battle, such as a character that betrays his own side because he thinks the opposition’s god is superior, but is then killed for treason against his own people, because, after all, he could turn around and do it again.

I thought about a person on a warship (tentatively called the Omega) that gets destroyed and he has to swim for shore and fight for his life. Perhaps a native is bleeding to death and hands over their baby to a soldier, begging them to take care of it. Perhaps one of the characters sacrifices themselves to give civilians from the other side a chance to escape. Read the rest of this entry »

The third story was another one that I got about halfway through, but it was far more ‘rough draft-y’ than my previous two attempts. I think it was partly just me being exhausted (read: lazy) at times, and partly because days off tend to keep me away from home, meeting those unspoken quotas for visiting friends and family (read: more excuses :P).

And then came the fourth story. I guess I haven’t even talked to you about it, yet. It was a story about young children playing in a playground in a small town. And it seemed very slice-of-life, except, well, have you ever seen a movie based on a true story that ends with updates?

Such as:

‘Over the next 26 years, John went on to become one of the most influential writers of the century, publishing thirty more critically acclaimed novels.’

or…

‘Mary went on to found PAFFF, an organization devoted to destroying the world’s supply of fast food fries. She now lives in Birmingham, Alabama in a double-wide affectionately dubbed the ‘Birmingham Palace’, with her exceptionally healthy husband and two children.’

;)

I figured nobody would expect this kind of follow-up to a short story. Maybe it’s been done before, but I’ve never seen it. You get to know a bit about each of the children during the course of the story, then I drop the bomb of showing you what happened to them over the next thirty years.

Since the theme is still ‘death and cheating death’, one of them ends up dying at a young age which profoundly affects the others for the rest of their lives. Each of the children influences the others in some way, and there’s subtle clues to who inspired who.

And that’s it. I ended up finishing the rough draft for this one.

Last week, my aunt asked me to tell her about some of the stories I’ve been writing, and I actually started to cry! Especially when I was talking about this one, and the story about the girl who didn’t quite make it to the light.

To be honest, most of my stories bring out a lot of emotion in me, and I hope they someday are able to unearth that level of emotion in readers, too.