short story meme

[swan_tower]

You know what? I think my short-story-producing brain needs a kick in the rump. So I'm going to meme for the first time in a while, with something I picked up by way of yhlee and mrissa.

Give me the title of a story I've never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got submitted to magazines, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I'd been able to salvage, or something else that I want readers to know.

(Incorporated Mris' edit -- the original phrasing had to do with "posting" stories, because it seems to have started among fanficcers. Also, as per Mris, I make no promises that these won't turn into real stories. In fact, I'm kind of hoping they will.)

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Finally catching up on these last few . . .

You want to know a dirty secret? Originally I thought there would be an intriguey schemey political answer to the conflict, and I wrote 90% of the way through the story expecting that, but I just couldn't come up with anything that worked. And so I was sitting there thinking in frustration, "rocks fall, everyone dies" -- and then it occurred to me, well, why not just have somebody get clubbed over the head?

Which is also when I figured out the title.