right, from start to this piece, then next stage.
i tend to walk around with a micro dictation machine in my pocket or near me, even sleep with it next to my mobile phone, i consider it that important. when an idea for a story, characters and scenario, just pops into my head, it could be any time of day or night. in fact, one night at 0220hrs i couldn't get to sleep, my mind was in overdrive. turning the machine on i got down four short stories worth of data, fell asleep promptly and woke up knowing i did it, but couldn't remember the stories. they are on record. on cassette tape!
when i came up with the ideas for this story, i got the ideas down and next day played back the tape and set to work.
by creating a short story of this length i meant to fit the characters and storyline in, plus the timing and fluidity. unfortunately with this size of piece i can't put much data in, lose fluidity as the pace can change drastically between the incidents when placed out in realtime order.
my next task is to take the piece and expand it, each incident that happens is now packed out with more info, info about characters, whats around them, the here and now (for them) and maybe even some fillers inbetween incidents to give the stories universe some background.
this will make a larger sized short story, size unknown. but will contain enough to be able to cut as and where necessary to fit a formal word count, also if the stories pace is too quirky.
(i do this because i find writing a very long piece is difficult, i don't write novels, don't know how yet. the experience to schedule chapters over a novels wordcount just isn't in my head! but this sort of writing in stages will hopefully give me some experience when i reach that level)
all my military scifi is set in the same universe. i don't mean by this that i use the same names, worlds, language, etc. but that i try to be economical with the facts to ensure that i am not having to radically change my subconscious to allow for differently inhabited universes and making mistakes. and also i regard the lack of information given to the reader to sometimes be as important as the information given.
whilst it is difficult to imagine how language, responses, equipment and even space travel could change as much as the gap between the 1950's and the 2000's, i want to ensure my work doesn't become tarnished with age. also i am not wanting to compare with a film, but if individual readers have different ideas in their heads about how the air feels, the type of landscape/interior design that they see the worlds i am imagining, then i hope my writings integrate with the readers own experiences to become a more enjoyable read. this does infer either a good imagination of a lot of life experience on behalf of the reader, but i find it a better premise than describing the environments detail by tedious detail. (unless those details are important to the story or i feel they will place the reader in a certain mood for whats to come)
another reason i want all my stories in the same rough universe is so that eventually all my stories can be integrated into a collection and be themed. moving on from there, i want to make these stories individual enough, like specific missions/incidents that i could in the future take and turn into a entire novel. fighting against this is the fact that a reader could move onto one of my novels from the collection and not appreciate it anymore, as he knows the ending already. well, the author can decide here whether to keep the ending the same or change it to surprise the reader.
or i could just not release that collection and use it as my springboard to the novels! but everyone knows that i need that springboard in the first place to get recognised enough to get to the novel stage as not many decent long term writers in the field get away with just writing novels! the publications, ezines, websites all need tasters to feed the fans so they open their wallets when they see the authors name on the bookshelf attached to a novel!
i will work on this story over the next week or so and come back with the next stage.
edit : well, i may have got so far into expanding the sotry, and doing nicely at it. i think it's now three times the size and i've only expanded half a pages worth! but i had this really good idea for another story and got four pages into that one already, although it's a bad draft, i feel the thoughts of the main character aren't rolling along smoothly enough. this is all resulting from owning a microcassette dictation machine. as and when my mind goes into imagination mode it needs getting down or i simply forget later on.