Tag: Plotopolis

Year of Short Stories — Week #6

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 1
  • Submissions This Week – 0
  • Submissions Currently Out – 2
  • Rejections This Year – 2

It’s Quiet. Too Quiet…

I received no responses this week. Based on the average response times for the two places I’ve submitted, I expect to get at least one next week. Of course, as I get more stories into the rotation, this will pick up, and I’ll have fewer “quiet” weeks.

Revisions for Pleasant Hills

This was my big goal for the past few weeks: finish revisions on “The Incident at Pleasant Hills.” It only took about three times as long as I planned, but I’m happy with how the story turned out.

I finished with all of my revision notes, and it’s going to get one last read-through from my wife. Once she’s done and I’ve addressed her final feedback, it’ll be ready to send out.

Another One

One of the many nice things about writing short stories is that each one requires considerably less up-front thought than a novel. Now that I’m done with Pleasant Hills, I can jump right into the next.

I mentioned in previous weeks that I was thinking about “Portrait of the Artist in Wartime,” a story about a performance artist who uses time travel to make his point. I briefly thought about writing the story from the artist’s perspective, but I eventually decided that it would work better if it was told by his former assistant in the form of a magazine interview. Because the article is written with the expectation that the reader will already be familiar with some of the events of the story, I can leave out certain information at first, and create some twists and turns as it is revealed.

I reviewed my notes for this story, and discovered that I had actually written a few tentative pages at some point. I have a pretty clear idea of the ending, so I just need to plan out the rough beats that lead to that ending.

Other Bits and Bobs

Before I get too deep into “Portrait,” I’m going to think about some other projects as well.

I’d like to spend some time thinking about interactive fiction, to see if I can come up with an idea for Plotopolis. However, since interactive fiction is so niche, I don’t want to spend too much time on it. If I submit something and get rejected, there really isn’t anywhere else to send it, so it’s a dead story.

I’m also still occasionally stirring the stew of ideas for themed submissions. I might spend another few hours this week more actively working on that.

Goals for Next Week

  • Think about interactive fiction and themed submissions
  • Submit “Pleasant Hills”
  • Work on “Portrait”

Year of Short Stories —Week #4

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 1
  • Submissions This Week – 1
  • Submissions Currently Out – 2
  • Rejections – 1

The First Rejection of the Year

“Tom, Dick, and Derek” garnered my first rejection of the year. This was a turnaround of only a few days, but it’s not too surprising since it’s a drabble and the magazine was only accepting flash fiction. I’m still not entirely sure of the viability of 100-word stories, but I’ll continue submitting to flash fiction publications and see how it goes.

Revisions for Pleasant Hills

This week, I re-read all the feedback I had received for “The Incident at Pleasant Hills” and condensed it into a page of bullet points of things to address, and several more pages of small line edits and suggestions for wording improvements. Most of these are straightforward fixes. A few are things that the story needs, and I just need to figure out where to put them. But there are a couple problems that I don’t have a solution for yet.

One of the things I need to improve about my writing process is handling revisions. I was hoping to be done or close to done with this story last week, but now that I’m in the middle of it, I’ll be happy if I can get it all done in the next week. I’m quickly realizing that writing short stories is a juggling act between keeping finished stories out on submission, and writing and editing new stories.

Themed Submissions

I mentioned last time that I was thinking about trying some themed submissions.

This week, I trolled the Duotrope listings, looking for themed submissions in speculative fiction genres that pay pro and semi-pro rates. I started with the basic search, and was annoyed to find no good search options to filter down to these. So I searched the listings and read the submissions pages. It was only after I had gone through twenty or thirty publications that I discovered Duotrope’s entirely separate page, the Theme and Deadline Calendar, which is designed for exactly this.

Having gone on my own search before discovering these listings, I know it’s not showing everything that’s out there. For example, Apex Magazine’s monthly flash fiction contest doesn’t show up. This probably comes down to how the listings are categorized.

If you’ve got the time and the inclination to write for these themed submissions, it might be worth doing your own research to track them down. However, the Duotrope listing is pretty good, and won’t suck up a whole afternoon.

With a few options in hand, I spent time brainstorming for the Parsec short story contest’s “AI Mythology” theme. I filled a couple pages with Story Engine ideas, but nothing that particularly excited me. I find Story Engine useful because it creates interesting constraints, but in this case, where the theme is already a significant constraint, I think it might be too much.

I plan to come back to these themed submissions every week or two and try other methods of brainstorming. It’s a good exercise to stay productive when I don’t feel like working on the stories in progress.

Fun Find – Plotopolis

Plotopolis is a new site for interactive fiction. It’s launching this winter, but open for submissions and proposals now. If you’re not familiar with interactive fiction, I wrote a post about it. It can be as simple as Choose Your Own Adventure-style branching narrative, or as complex and gamified as Fallen London, with character attributes and an inventory of items.

Interactive fiction has gained some acceptance as gaming in general has entered the cultural mainstream, but it remains a fairly small niche, so it’s nice to see something like this popping up. Hopefully they find their feet and are able to stick around.

Goals for Next Week

Only one goal this week: revise Pleasant Hills! I want to get this one done and out for submission.