I read recently (i’m afraid i can’t think where, right at the moment) that each character should have two goals — a story one, and a personal one. The story one may be related to a quest, love interest, escaping the villain, or whatever; the personal one would be about personal growth, learning, change of attitude or something like that. This is what i’m getting at, really.

I just don’t think you can get where you want to go writing freeform. A break to do some planning and to draw yourself even a rough map is going to get you where you want to go.

I’m in the midst of a bizarre (that’s a new genre btw!) romp — don’t know whether to call it fantasy, or magic realism or surrealism — the characters are Strange (capital S) but the story so far is almost 100% action. This surprises me as i don’t read much lightweight action and have never planned an action page-turner, being more interested in ethical dilemmas and deep, disturbing psychology.

I do have the story arc in my head and an ending in mind, though i’m working without a detailed plan. I’m a bit more than 40,000 words in and i really don’t want it to be ALL froth and fun. A subtext / metaphysical plot fits in, but it came to me after i was pretty committed to the story, not as part of the initial idea surge. And now i’m not sure how to weave it in.

I know that with the first draft i’m just getting the clay together that i can beat into shape later, during revisions. I know i can add in the foreshadowing after i’ve got to the end once and know what i am foreshadowing! But i’m only half-clear in my head about this subplot and worried about it looking stuck on with paperclips, even after remoulding the thing and smoothing the joins. Iykwim.

So half of me is thinking this story evidently wants to be the pacy action thing with bizarreness. But if i left it at that, i know it would be one of those stories that don’t require their fantasy setting — and i’m horribly aware that at the moment, without the setting there’s not much to set it apart from all the other escape-danger-and-win-treasure adventures.

Help if you can!

I’ve missed the chance of a copy of Federations, but may come back soon with a question anyway.

Thank you so much! These are all good suggestions, and some of them are things I’ve tried before but in sort of a desperate flailing way rather than a calculated, intentional way. (Even the die rolling, which I might try in conjunction with an outline…) I particularly think discarding the first idea that comes to mind is going to help, since my favorite thing in stories is when the author outthinks me by a few steps, and it seems this is one of the best ways to recreate that feeling for readers of –my– stories.

Also, it’s interesting to note that I do some of these things for novels and never thought about doing them for short stories. Now I feel a little guilty, as if I was playing favorites with the novels while my Cinderella short stories were expected to do all the dirty work without any pretty dresses. Yes, with terrible metaphors like that, you can see why I want to be a writer. ;)