Writing an 800 word short-story was a challenging but enjoyable exercise.
Coming up with an idea that I felt was interesting took some time, but by focusing on keeping the story compressed and self-contained, I think I was able to create a piece of work that at least attempts to reflect some of Brander’s ideas.
Throughout the entire writing process I had a list of things to keep in mind on a piece of paper sitting next to me. I constructed this list based on the Brander reading’s discussion of Short-Stories and I think this really helped me stay on track. When I started to bring too much information into the story, the list helped me tone things back down.
I felt that my initial ideas were too broad, so I worked on making them more self-contained and unified. Then once I had a rough draft written up I looked through each section and experimented with removing certain information to see what I could get away with leaving out. Brander’s discussion of leaving out as much as possible was something I held onto.
I found it very helpful to write about a single situation in time. I feel like this allowed me to explore the situation in a bit of depth without creating an overly detailed and messy story.