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What a Marathon!
Dec. 14th, 2007 10:21 amI finally completed 'Daivadana' at 1.30am Wednesday morning.
A story I originally envisioned as taking no more than 5,000 words to tell (as that was the limit for the anthology I was targetting) finished up at 13,420 words!
That is just the first draft with no editing, and I'm sure there might be entire scenes that I can just rip out once I get my teeth into it. But the best case scenario is probably losing 2000-3000 words at most, and that's if I'm especially brutal. I'll wait and see what the Critmonsters think, but I don't think it can be cut that much without severely altering the story and the message I ended up telling.
Hopefully, regardless of any required cuts, it works as a story. I'm really happy with this one as it is the first story I've told that has a definite point and message beyond the gross needs of the characters. It is pretty dark, and gets quite gruesome towards the end, but I also think that the main 'Horror' of the story definitely continues on after the end. It is the 'implications' of the plot resolution that excited me most when I was writing it - knowing that, no matter how bad it got, that the real horror would only start happening after the final word. I hope I've been able to accomplish that.
I suppose I'll see as the verdict starts coming in from my two crit groups and various readers over the next month or so. Fingers crossed I haven't wasted a month and a half - and piles and piles of research - on a dud.
A story I originally envisioned as taking no more than 5,000 words to tell (as that was the limit for the anthology I was targetting) finished up at 13,420 words!
That is just the first draft with no editing, and I'm sure there might be entire scenes that I can just rip out once I get my teeth into it. But the best case scenario is probably losing 2000-3000 words at most, and that's if I'm especially brutal. I'll wait and see what the Critmonsters think, but I don't think it can be cut that much without severely altering the story and the message I ended up telling.
Hopefully, regardless of any required cuts, it works as a story. I'm really happy with this one as it is the first story I've told that has a definite point and message beyond the gross needs of the characters. It is pretty dark, and gets quite gruesome towards the end, but I also think that the main 'Horror' of the story definitely continues on after the end. It is the 'implications' of the plot resolution that excited me most when I was writing it - knowing that, no matter how bad it got, that the real horror would only start happening after the final word. I hope I've been able to accomplish that.
I suppose I'll see as the verdict starts coming in from my two crit groups and various readers over the next month or so. Fingers crossed I haven't wasted a month and a half - and piles and piles of research - on a dud.
