And I think this most recent draft has just about clinched it. Cinched it? What's the expression there?
I realized last night that I hadn't made it clear that while she has these stories in her head, she can't really communicate them.
I dropped the emphasis on the deafness and tried to make her say things that make perfect sense if you know what she's thinking, but sound daft if you don't have her internal context.
And I made Susan seem more "yes, yes, whatever you say, Gramma dear" I think.
@Kit what if you try expanding it a little, into a sentence more? Then you could get into the torturous channels of her memory or whatever. Although if it's flash fiction you might not have the luxury of extra words
I want it to express, subtly but forcefully, that her vibrant self existed in the distant past, and that while her recent memory doesn't record the details, she nonetheless feels the excruciatingly slow passage of time.
@KitFox, no, I don't have a blog. I noticed the notice about writing exercises on the Tuesdays, and thought it looked interesting. Your quandary is a good one to chew on, for starters! Re your sentence, I'm liking the sound of "ancient history" now that I'm understanding a little more what you're after.
I want it to express, subtly but forcefully, that her vibrant self existed in the distant past, and that while her recent memory doesn't record the details, she nonetheless feels the excruciatingly slow passage of time.
@JAM No, but I want to stay away from "history." It is too impersonal, as though it could have happened to anyone or everyone.
@KitFox, but it sounds to me like what you're getting at is something impersonal, i.e. it's a long time ago, distant. I think "ancient history" might fit the bill but I'll keep chewing.
> She picked up the newspaper to read the date. It seemed like her memories all happened an impossibly long time ago. Still here, she thought to herself.
What does picking up the newspaper have to do with her memories? What memories? Why would someone's thoughts go from the specific (a newspaper dateline) to the general like that?
@KitFox I can't let go of "ancient history" but how's this: She picked up the newspaper to check the date. Her youth was a distant memory. Ancient history. But it was her memory. Still here, she thought to herself.
@KitFox I changed "read" to "check" given the dialogue about needing the newspaper to know the date.
@DForck42 better. However I find it a shame that the most interesting part of the story, or perhaps the one most people can empathize with, is the Romeo/Juliet aspect, which gets reduced to essentially one line at the end.
@DForck42 thanks for the entertaining read. I agree with most of the other comments - if I were you I'd either reduce the number of things that happens in order to give more emphasis to the crisis/Romeo-Juliet aspect, or else just toss out the word limit and make the whole thing longer.
@DForck42 I wonder if the story might not be more captivating if you turned it around and put the conclusion at the beginning, then explained how they got there, to play up the tragedy of it all.
@KitFox I wrote 22,000 words in about two weeks once. So if I pushed myself I could do 50,000.... but I'd need a bigger idea... so far my ideas are either too big or too small for 50k words.
To actually do NaNoWriMo, you are not allowed to write any of the novel beforehand, but you can do these sorts of preparations, I believe.
@MattЭллен What do you think? Should we? I think Writers would like the tie-in, if we could draw in some people who are actually thinking about doing it.
I'm not sure. It would be less fleshed out than a synopsis. It would be just an idea, because we'd then identify the main characters and write character sketches of them.
Then the synopsis would layout the story in a more detailed fashion.
The Overlook Hotel
The Overlook Hotel