Christmas fic too long
21 December 2018 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeCompleted -- rather late in the day -- the main draft of my Writers Anonymous Christmas challenge Crimson Peak story. Unfortunately it has definitely come out far too long, at a total of eighteen pages; I actually did a word count for the first 2000 words and that came to about six and a half pages, so I've got five to six thousand words here for a story with a 4000-word limit. I could probably cut a few hundred to the story's overall benefit, and might cut a thousand with excessive violence. But reducing it to two-thirds of the original draft is a pretty tall order; if it can be done at all it's going to require omitting entire story elements, which is rather more easily done *before* you've written them than after they've been fully developed:-(
The alternative would be submitting it as a two-chapter story, with the first two-thirds as Ch1 and the inquest and aftermath as Ch2, and only the first chapter being eligible for entry. There's a certain appeal to that, since only Lucille's two flashback scenes actually contain any Christmas references. (I did intend to have Thomas buried on Christmas Eve and to have Edith wish Lucille a sarcastic Happy Christmas as she takes her leave, but I was trying to keep the word-count down on the final section and it didn't fit neatly in.) However, the competition rules do state that a multi-chapter entry must consist of a single nominated chapter that can stand on its own, and such an opening chapter wouldn't stand alone very well.
The other disadvantage is of course that I would probably get at least *some* reviews by submitting the story to the contest -- which is more than I shall get otherwise! -- and if I split it then they will end up all being on the first two-thirds only, with no feedback on the ending at all. Not that I think it's a particularly good ending, but it would be a bit frustrating.
If I initially submit a shortened and/or split version I should have the option of uploading a longer edit after the judges had done their read-through, but of course any genuine fandom readers probably wouldn't bother coming back to reread the 'proper' version (even if I put REVISED AND LONGER in the summary!) The odds are that no-one would ever see it...
The story doesn't have a hope of winning anyway, for the basic reason that it has largely been shoe-horned into the terms of the challenge, like Annoyance, and one of the two judging criteria is how well the story uses the stipulated theme; in my case, tangentially at best! But I don't think it's all that good even on its own terms; the 'structure', such as it is, consists of Lucille remembering more and more until she finally admits what she has done, then forgetting everything, but it doesn't really have a climax at the moment of revelation... or anywhere, really.
"Annoyance" may not have met the requirements of the competition very well, but it was pretty good by its own lights, thanks to the unexpected brainwave of having Erik consider murdering Christine. The highlights of this story are the glimpses into Lucille's past, I think, and they're only really appealing to someone who knows the fandom and is interested in seeing it expanded upon -- and they're *not* part of the 'main' action.
Very tentative title: "Monsters"
The alternative would be submitting it as a two-chapter story, with the first two-thirds as Ch1 and the inquest and aftermath as Ch2, and only the first chapter being eligible for entry. There's a certain appeal to that, since only Lucille's two flashback scenes actually contain any Christmas references. (I did intend to have Thomas buried on Christmas Eve and to have Edith wish Lucille a sarcastic Happy Christmas as she takes her leave, but I was trying to keep the word-count down on the final section and it didn't fit neatly in.) However, the competition rules do state that a multi-chapter entry must consist of a single nominated chapter that can stand on its own, and such an opening chapter wouldn't stand alone very well.
The other disadvantage is of course that I would probably get at least *some* reviews by submitting the story to the contest -- which is more than I shall get otherwise! -- and if I split it then they will end up all being on the first two-thirds only, with no feedback on the ending at all. Not that I think it's a particularly good ending, but it would be a bit frustrating.
If I initially submit a shortened and/or split version I should have the option of uploading a longer edit after the judges had done their read-through, but of course any genuine fandom readers probably wouldn't bother coming back to reread the 'proper' version (even if I put REVISED AND LONGER in the summary!) The odds are that no-one would ever see it...
The story doesn't have a hope of winning anyway, for the basic reason that it has largely been shoe-horned into the terms of the challenge, like Annoyance, and one of the two judging criteria is how well the story uses the stipulated theme; in my case, tangentially at best! But I don't think it's all that good even on its own terms; the 'structure', such as it is, consists of Lucille remembering more and more until she finally admits what she has done, then forgetting everything, but it doesn't really have a climax at the moment of revelation... or anywhere, really.
"Annoyance" may not have met the requirements of the competition very well, but it was pretty good by its own lights, thanks to the unexpected brainwave of having Erik consider murdering Christine. The highlights of this story are the glimpses into Lucille's past, I think, and they're only really appealing to someone who knows the fandom and is interested in seeing it expanded upon -- and they're *not* part of the 'main' action.
Very tentative title: "Monsters"
