Comments on: The First Sentence is not the First Step

By: Knownhuman

Knownhuman — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:56:45 +0000

Hi Pat, oddly enough. I'm working on a piece about outlining right now. With regards for organizing your short stories ask yourself this question and then answer it as honestly as possible.

What is the thread that connects all of these stories?

When you can answer that, organizing them is a bit easier - you follow the thread. If the connection is just that you wrote them, organization becomes harder. If they're personal enough, your shorts could be the basis for a memoir.

Hope that helps.

By: Pat T.

Pat T. — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:43:11 +0000

I have volumes of short stories based on personal experiences. I have “started over” a dozen times in the last 3 years in pulling it al together with no postive outcome. I simply don't know where to start…it is just a lot of paper with a lot of words. Who knows? It may be meaningful only to me.

By: Knownhuman

Knownhuman — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:03:30 +0000

Once you start on that path, it's actually hard to not to rely on the second, and subsequent drafts.

From what I've learned by reading the blogs of agents, authors, editors, and publishers, an author's "final draft" starts to change the moment it's accepted by an agent. Perfection is thus, a myth.

This first step is just the start. I'm going into more detail about how I work through creation in the next few days.

By: Justin

Justin — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:44:28 +0000

I wish I could find the discipline to work in such a structure. I usually work in messy bursts, never editing, never outlining, just thrusting a piece out and leaving it to fend for itself.