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vcmwI've been having a lot of fun lately working on 50 word retellings of fairy tales. After doing 8 or 10, I'm graduating up to 75.
I decided after staring at the bloated, 11,000 word draft of my last completed/revised short story that I was never going to learn how to cut down from too many words, and I would be better served trying to learn to write my way up - what can I do with 50 words, then 75, then ... etc. In only, what, a year? I might have made it up to a proper short story length of 2,000 or so.
So far the best one, I think, was The Twelve Brothers.
I want to believe my mother dreamed it all. There were never twelve coffins lined up for my banished brothers, no seven years of silence, no accusations, and no gallows. But my mother wouldn't dream the hate I feel for brothers and husband, now that the curse is broken.
I tried to go straight from 50 to 100, but it was honestly too hard. 100 words seemed like so many, there were a dizzying number of options about what to do with all those words.
I decided after staring at the bloated, 11,000 word draft of my last completed/revised short story that I was never going to learn how to cut down from too many words, and I would be better served trying to learn to write my way up - what can I do with 50 words, then 75, then ... etc. In only, what, a year? I might have made it up to a proper short story length of 2,000 or so.
So far the best one, I think, was The Twelve Brothers.
I want to believe my mother dreamed it all. There were never twelve coffins lined up for my banished brothers, no seven years of silence, no accusations, and no gallows. But my mother wouldn't dream the hate I feel for brothers and husband, now that the curse is broken.
I tried to go straight from 50 to 100, but it was honestly too hard. 100 words seemed like so many, there were a dizzying number of options about what to do with all those words.
