Your first draft

Your first draft is a thing of beauty, however rough it might seem to some.

“Editing is all important. Most writers spend as much, or more, time editing and redrafting as they do writing first drafts. But you can’t edit without first of all getting that first draft down” Once you have a first draft, you have something to improve on. This is where you can rethink what you’ve done. Change whatever you like. Say things differently, or clarify where necessary. You can improve your writing.” © The Open University”

Reviewing and redrafting

“Rereading, reviewing and rewriting your work are crucial and often ongoing activities.

Once you reread the story you wrote at the end of Week 2, prompted by something heard on the radio, and check what you’ve written. Try reading it aloud, as that can help you to become aware of things in the writing, such as its rhythm, elements that you don’t notice when you are reading it silently.

Can you see ways in which you could bring the character (or characters) more to life? Rewrite the story incorporating your new ideas.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do the characters come across vividly?
• Is any of your word usage surprising? Does it help the reader to ‘see’ the characters?
• Now that you look at it again do you think any of the descriptions are predictable and dull?
• Are any of the words and phrases you have used too familiar?”

© The Open University”

Reading work in progress

“Remember that you can get your ideas for future stories from all sorts of sources.”Remember that you can get your ideas for future stories from all sorts of sources.

For example:

• the radio, as you’ve done with your recent story
• a newspaper article or headline
• a fragment of speech overheard
• a childhood memory
• a smell
• an image
• story prompts from the prompt cloud pdf below”

Commenting on progress

“Discuss these questions with your fellow writers, with regard to your radio story:”Discuss these questions with your fellow writers, with regard to your radio story:

• Did you think what you wrote was a story?
• What made it a story?
• Did it have a structure?
• How did you go about portraying characters?

We will talk more about what makes up a story, but for now think of it as a narrative with a beginning, middle and end.

© The Open University”

Submission with editing

Focusing on the character creation

Why this story?

I heard about the deadly plane crash close to Nepal, and thought to write a short story about it.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/15/asia/nepal-yeti-airlines-crash-intl-hnk/index.html

Story is written in UK English not American English.

Is this a story?

This is a story… How does one know it is? I have a character, he’s made a decision based on information given in the story, and he gets to act on that information. The reading audience gets to see the events unfold, from start to conclusion.

How do you portray the character?

Stuart has an inherent fear of flying regularly steeling his nerves to board planes which he hates for his job, to earn the Benjamins so to speak. But the news received of the latest crash in Nepal, is enough to make him turn around and leave, deciding against his work flight to Nepal. He has more important things to consider. In thinking this I realised that Stuart is an absolute family man, he puts his family first. It ends with him deciding to look for another job, having realised that the current situation isn’t working for him.

On a character’s thoughts in a story

On showing thoughts in a story, I’ve decided on Italics for this story based on input from this site; https://style.mla.org/styling-internal-thoughts/. The italics didn’t work in class so I’m using “quotation marks” here.

The Family Man – changing the story name…

Stuart was on! So on like donkey kong! He’d had three shots of vodka from the bar, liquid fire to steel his nerves, and now sat wiping his forehead dry with a wad of napkins.

It might be a work-flight, but it was a flight nevertheless. As he prepared to board, black laptop case in one hand and cellphone scrolling away in the other, the news on his phone alerted him to the devastating plane crash.

No thank you. He turned the full one hundred and eighty degrees , apologised to the surprised and upset grey haired senior manager standing alongside and started moving towards the airport’s nearest exit. He would consider a flight again when it was not heading to Nepal. He had a son to worry about, his beautiful caramel coloured baby boy. Why chance it.

His car was parked at the airport’s medium term parking, but right now his pores held tell tale signs of the potato spirit. Settling into the Uber to take him to the local office, he realised with obscene clarity, I need a new gig.