I submitted a story for critique to the Online Writing Workshop recently. It was one of those rare ones that shows up in your head almost fully formed and ready to be put down on paper. I was pretty proud of it.
Turns out, it had more problems than porcupines in heat. Everything that you notice other people doing wrong was wrong in this story. Info dumping in the beginning, slow pacing, stereotyped characters, you name it and it was poorly done. So the members of OWW politely and correctly pointed out all the problems. “No problem” I thought. I took it down, reworked it and posted it back up again.
It was worse. What little that had been good about it before was gone and all the bad stuff was still there. ACK! I quickly took it down thinking, “Okay, I can fix this.” It’s still sitting on my drive, untouched. I have no idea how to fix all the broken things. It’s amazing how you can see all the things wrong with someone else’s writing and be completely blind to the same things in your own writing.
“Fine,” I thought, “I’ll post a different story.” So I pulled out another story and read through it. I could have sworn it was good back when I first wrote it, but now I noticed a small problem – it has no plot! I read through some of my other stories. No plot. Apparently, I’m the king of character studies. No one is doing anything in any of my stories.
“Right,” I thought again, “then I’ll just write a story with a real plot.” No problem. Plots are easy, right? No! Plots are hard! I’ve been reading some stuff on causal event chains – X happens which leads to Y which leads to Z – and how to make plots that way. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. I’ve been sitting here for days, trying to string together a series of events that make sense and actually concludes in something resembling an ending. It reeks of outlining, something I’ve never been good at. That may have to change.
Finally, tonight, it has come together a little. I have a story that makes sense, in my head at least, and I’ve written (albeit badly – first draft) the first scene. Now to get to the ending. It may suck, but my characters will be happy, this time they get to do stuff.