Really long. But not in word count.
I wrote it two years ago and thought it was good, and so did the members of my critique group. I sent it in to Writers of the Future, and it placed as a quarter finalist. I was disappointed. Writers aren't supposed to take rejection personally, but gosh darn it, I thought is was a damn good story.
So it sat for two years, never sent out again. I re-read it occasionally, and still thought it was good, no faults that I could see.
Then a week or so ago I came across Bill Johnson's website.
I had read some of the essays before, and liked them, so I bookmarked
it. However, on this reading, I came across his ideas on a story's premise. A premise is one sentence that tells what your story is about: the theme, the big idea, the big picture.
It's composed of the dramatic idea, the movement, and the fulfillment.
I understood the dramatic idea. Boy meets girl, boy comes of age, love
conquers all. I understood movement. The movement is how the story
dramatizes the idea.
And the fulfillment is how the story's promise is manifested, which I didn't quite understand.
I tried to come up with premises for stories I had written. It was a
great exercise. The thing I noticed was that some of my stories didn't
have fulfillment. They had a dramatic idea, they moved somewhere, but they didn't always fulfill any expectations.
When I tried to write a premise for my long story, I realized what was wrong with it. It didn't have fulfillment. The story wasn't done.
So I figured out a way to finish the story, opened up the file, and now I working on completing it. Two years after I started it. I'm almost done, just another couple of hundred words and I should be done. And the best part of all is that I like it even more.
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