Just got through a second look at a friend’s short story and while I know this particular writer is one of the best, I was less than pleased. For one thing, it was 20k words long. For another, it could have been told in half that or less.
I wondered about it, and about how I would tell him. Then he happened to mention that he wrote it three years ago. Boy, did that answer all my questions and stop me from worrying about his direction.
If he had written this story recently, my constant notes of "show us" and "is this necessary?" just wouldn’t be there. I’m looking forward now to sitting down with him and discussing it because I know that he’ll recognize it immediately, and better yet, now how the rewrite has to go.
I’ve done this with my own work, when I had to dredge up something to print and realized how different my writing has become over the years. In fiction, it’s not just losing the rhyme as was my first big step in learning poetry. It’s a combination of all the elements that we know make up a story, and in a short story, it’s ruthlessly cutting out all those lovely words that just have nothing important to say.
Most of my old works I won’t even bother going back to fix; they’re just not good enough to bother with when there’s so much new to be written. In my case particularly, the story itself isn’t solid enough to rework, and cut and slash methods would only reveal that fact. My friend, however, always has the premise of a great story there and pruning will only improve it.
Amazing though, to me at least, to see the changes a writer goes through just from reading, writing and absorbing.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology