Reflections (Continued)
Reflection #2 — Short Story (B#2)
When I was writing this piece, I already had a short story pre-made, but since I wanted to continue to work on it, I thought that I could write that part for the assignment. I think it was also really fun to write about the moment in my story I did because I could put so much detail or explain it well. I typically can't explain too well, but after revising and editing, I think the piece turned out really good.
The story story kind of covers the point of view of Kaiden (the main character obviously) and his recovery and thoughts after waking up from a coma. This story actually was well out of my experiences or so I think anyway. I can't remember exactly when I began to write it, but I know I had waken up from a dream, and all I could do was kind of lay there. I actually couldn't think of moving for a second. I knew my legs and arms were there, but I couldn't bring myself to move them for a couple minutes. On top of that, I already was having a bad week and kind of felt down from all that. From there the story sparked. Instead of starting the story with a female character I tried to make the story as far away from my own life as possible. I wanted to try and challenge myself to write about something that I would have to come up with how it would feel to be in that postion or mindset.
On my first revision I had kind of summarized whole lot of events, which for me is kind of hard to not do since I really have to be in the moment to not rush through things. The last part of the first revision wasn't so rushed through however, and that ended up being my second revision after writing some more pages to make up for the lost pages. The scene I had written about is between the main character, Kaiden, and Jaylyn (whose name you find out then too). I figured the conversation could be a kind of a 'marker' almost for the story as this is the first time Kaiden hears the woman's name and first time their conversation wasn't as normal as other previous times (not described in the pre-story part however).
When I wrote this scene I really had to get into the moment and try not to rush through it. I think by seeing the pre-written part you can definitely see how I began to focus in on my story a lot more in the scene I wrote about. Things kind of stop being summarized and I think that really helped. This way the reader can kind of get an idea of the characters and an image in their head of what is going on or what the setting might look like etc.
I think I would definitely say that anyone who wants to try and write about something, but has no ideas, they should definitely start with coming up with a character far from what they are. That way they can kind of think up a past story for that character as they go along (as I actually kind of do when I write my own stories actually).