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Comments and observations...
Sep. 17th, 2014 04:14 pmThe approach I've been using when addressing LJ Idol prompts consists of first attempting to find something suitable from my own personal experience (the idea being that eventually, I'll have compiled enough personal episodes to create the core—if not most of the content—of a memoir).
If I can't find anything from my own past, I generally drift in the direction of seeking stories in which the prompt featured prominently, so that I can try creating a variation on a theme. In the case of this past week's prompt ("the music made me do it"), the best I could do from the personal perspective was recall some pieces of music that made me want to go out into the world and slay dragons, but that seemed a rather thin thread upon which to hang a tale, so I turned to the world at large.
Google was not terribly helpful in the search, as the principal hit I got using the prompt was for a book that considers music in light of "authentic Islamic sources" and cites contemporary research in medical and behavioral science on the effects music has on humans.
Memory was only able to dredge up the story of the Pied Piper, which served as the starting point for my entry. (Would that I have thought of the mythological Sirens, but LJ friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
emo_snal did such a bang-up job with his entry, it's probably just as well that I didn't!)
For the first time ever, I actually did a rough outline of the story before writing it. The procedure went smoothly enough, but it was clear to me, as I was doing it, that the story was going to be quite a bit longer than I think most Idolers have patience for, and to make matters worse, I could not come up with any satisfactory ending.
The reason for that was because everything from the point where Naquin is shown in the post office lobby did not appear in my outline, because there, the bootlegger did appear in the counter surveillance tape and did mail something, which suddenly made the problem a whole lot bigger and the story a whole lot longer.
In the outline, when Naquin goes through channels to enlist the aid of the postal service to track the package, suddenly the Post Office Investigation Branch, the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and other participants show up to play. Logically, the missing disk would suddenly and literally become a "federal case" (with various players having unstated and possibly questionable motives) and while that may be fine for a full-out book—but not one I'd be eager to write—it would not work for a short-short story (which is pretty much the format of an LJ Idol entry).
Cheers...
If I can't find anything from my own past, I generally drift in the direction of seeking stories in which the prompt featured prominently, so that I can try creating a variation on a theme. In the case of this past week's prompt ("the music made me do it"), the best I could do from the personal perspective was recall some pieces of music that made me want to go out into the world and slay dragons, but that seemed a rather thin thread upon which to hang a tale, so I turned to the world at large.
Google was not terribly helpful in the search, as the principal hit I got using the prompt was for a book that considers music in light of "authentic Islamic sources" and cites contemporary research in medical and behavioral science on the effects music has on humans.
Memory was only able to dredge up the story of the Pied Piper, which served as the starting point for my entry. (Would that I have thought of the mythological Sirens, but LJ friend
emo_snal did such a bang-up job with his entry, it's probably just as well that I didn't!)For the first time ever, I actually did a rough outline of the story before writing it. The procedure went smoothly enough, but it was clear to me, as I was doing it, that the story was going to be quite a bit longer than I think most Idolers have patience for, and to make matters worse, I could not come up with any satisfactory ending.
The reason for that was because everything from the point where Naquin is shown in the post office lobby did not appear in my outline, because there, the bootlegger did appear in the counter surveillance tape and did mail something, which suddenly made the problem a whole lot bigger and the story a whole lot longer.
In the outline, when Naquin goes through channels to enlist the aid of the postal service to track the package, suddenly the Post Office Investigation Branch, the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and other participants show up to play. Logically, the missing disk would suddenly and literally become a "federal case" (with various players having unstated and possibly questionable motives) and while that may be fine for a full-out book—but not one I'd be eager to write—it would not work for a short-short story (which is pretty much the format of an LJ Idol entry).
Cheers...
