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

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

I must say, The Turn of the Card had me mesmerized. The whole meta line - is this a real game of solitaire or did she decide the story and then determine which cards would come up in the stacks - distracted me the first time I read it. The second and third times, I was able to get away from that, mostly because of the hot romance between the Queen of Diamonds and the Jack of Clubs.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I refuse to ever say whether it came out of a real game or not, but I do play a lot of solitaire. I will admit, though, that I really wanted to make it a romance between the Queen of Diamonds and the Queen of Clubs, but I just couldn't find any solitaire variants that would allow that to work.

Clearly card-game culture is prejudiced against lesbian relationships.