Even the submitting doesn’t halt the editing process. While I’ve naturally saved a copy of the piece as submitted for class workshop, I’ve gone ahead and done some rewriting on my own. Hopefully I’ve already picked up on some of the details the class is likely to spot–it’s a good group, eagle-eyed and with a fine sense of story.
Mostly awkward phrasing here, but there’s a need to build character to understand what’s going on. That I’m trying to accomplish with more dialogue and interaction. One thing I do realize with experience of both writing and of living, not everything needs to be explained–one of my biggest writing errors to overcome and slowly getting used to brevity and showing versus telling.
In this story, as in any, there are always reader questions as how something could have happened, many readers needing more information. This is what the writer seeks to supply in minimalist terms. The longer I’ve lived the more I’ve seen that almost anything can happen. Unless physically impossible, the most otherwise unlikely circumstances can and do combine sometimes to create an event. Thus, tragedy barely averted on most occasions one time will pass the point of unrealistic and become the real.
So no, I don’t feel I need to explain a gun and fire. Shit happens.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology