Metacognition: Short Stories

We've been working on short stories for a couple of months now. While we've been discussing different stories and their structure for a while, I could never really apply those concepts into my own writing until recently. My short story writing process really happened in two parts, since I ended up rewriting the story last weekend. The first story consisted of a small spark of an idea that I had when we started writing, and I wrote a few drafts based off of that. But eventually, I got stuck. I realized that my story wasn't following the correct short story structure and I didn't really push my character to actively do anything. The story basically fell flat, and I needed to try something new. And while it's pretty frustrating to realize that the story you've been working on isn't really going anywhere, I decided to take it as an opportunity to start over. I took one concept that appeared in the beginning of my first short story, and used it to create a new one.

Basically, I wrote a whole new short story in one weekend. As stressful and nerve-racking as that was, it really forced my mind to go into deadline mode and start spitting out ideas. Instead of starting to write my story in actual-short-story-form, I took a different approach and just outlined what would be the beginning, the middle and the end. This prevented me from going off on tangents and being unspecific, which is what ended up happening in my first short story. What began as an empty concept (about an unsuccessful college grad) started growing and stemming, and eventually, I had a full short story outline in front of me. It was pretty surprising to see that my mind could work and come up with story ideas, even when I was pretty sure that pure exhaustion would hinder any creativity. Once the ideas started flowing, it was actually fun to decide what I was going to do to my characters.

As the weekend went on, I finished the first draft of my second short story. Already, I could tell that this story was much better than what I had written in the first on. I pushed the characters more, I forced my main character to make decisions and mistakes, and most importantly, I had a clear beginning, middle, and end. But the problem with this draft was, not shockingly, the end. In the first draft, I had my character mention suicide, and ended the story ambiguously, never specifying whether he would follow through with his plan or not. When I finished writing the ending, I felt as though I was finally finished. I let myself feel triumphant for a few minutes. But I learned that using ambiguous suicide as an ending was taking the easy way out–I could, and needed to, push the character into a different situation. There needed to be at least some feeling of resolution, and there needed to be more relief. So I changed the ending. It relieved some parts of the plot, but certainly also let the reader make their own questions and assumptions about other parts.

By the time I finished the second version of the second short story, I honestly felt very happy with it. It felt a hundred times more developed than my first story. I was proud of the ending. Altogether, it was just better than the story I had started off writing. It probably would have been more convenient for me to  realize that my story was stuck earlier in the writing process, but in all honesty, I don't know how well my story would have turned out. It's incredibly interesting to see how the mind works under pressure so close to a deadline.

Change of Mind: Real Love

As a teenage girl, I love to dream about perfect love stories. I love to watch movies like The Notebook and Dear John. I used to think that all love stories had to unfold like these stories did. There had to be intense physical romance, elaborate expressions of love, and the stories always had to end perfectly. I assumed that if none of these things existed in the relationship, then the love wasn't real. It just couldn't be passionate enough. But after watching Once, I've realized that love doesn't have to be over the top or be physical or be perfect. There don't have to be any dramatic circumstances or breakups or scenes shot in the pouring rain; a guy and a girl connecting through music can be just as intimate, and it's certainly more realistic.

In Once, the guy and the girl meet while the guy is playing guitar, and their second meeting is brought on by a broken vacuum cleaner. And as sexy as a girl with a broken vacuum cleaner can be, these aren't circumstances that Nicholas Sparks would write about. The guy and the girl were two completely normal people, both poor, both interested in music, nothing particularly exciting about either of them. But I've realized that this doesn't make the story lame or any less romantic. In fact, in my opinion, it makes it even more romantic, because it's realistic. Even the filming of the movie itself shows the realism of the story. Most of the film looks like it is shot by hand. No fancy tripods or helicopters...it just looks like a person holding a camera, and filming the guy and the girl's story as it unfolds. Also, the fact that the guy and the girl don't even have names further emphasizes the realism. This isn't necessarily "Thomas and Susie's story." It isn't a story that could only happen to them. It's a story about a "Guy" and a "Girl." That guy and that girl could be any one of us, and their story could be any of ours.

Once also helped me realize that there are different kinds of love. There is romantic love, and then there is love between friends. The love in Once was based off of a friendship. They make each other happy, and that's what any kind of love should be able to do. Their relationship was short, and they didn't even end up together, yet their love seems more intimate and real to me than any other film that I've seen. Once has helped me realize that most romantic movies have set the bar unreasonably high for love and relationships. There doesn't have to be a climactic kiss or a perfect ending. A love between friends that ends after a week or two can be just as powerful and just as intimate.