Story Challenge #3

Sci-fi short, Freesuit is winging its way to INTERZONE.

Freesuit is a perfect example of what many writers suffer from: lack of confidence.

The reason is that I first wrote Freesuit about two years ago. I posted it on a writers' forum and got a whole load of replies, most pointing out that much of the story is exposition and therefore very, very wrong.

I tried rewriting a couple of times, but it wasn't working for me the way they were suggesting it should. So in the end, having been convinced it was rubbish, it got left behind.

But, had I sent it out, who knows, it might have been accepted, made a sale. Or it might have caught an editor's eye to say, 'Okay, but with a few changes,' or even, 'Not quite rightr for us, but we'd like to read more.' There are lots of possibilities other than a simple, cold rejection.

But keeping it buried amounts to one, single certainty: nothing.

Anyway, I found the original version of this story a few weeks ago and thought it still had something I liked, even though, as a general rule, telling, rather than showing can kill a story stone dead.

I rewrote the story from scratch, and guess what? I kept a whole load of that exposition. Why? Because it worked. Because sometimes, a first person narrative can deliver a background to the main event in a relaxed, chatty style. The reader's connection is with the emotions of the narrator, as he recalls events, not the emotions of the characters in the scene. Simple as that.

The important thing is that it's out there, in the post, making its way to an editor's desk. And yes, it might get rejected, but it might - just might - get a different response. A positive response. Maybe acceptance, maybe a request for more, or maybe just a new visitor to my blog. But each of these are things that can never, ever be achieved if the thing is kept locked away on a netbook's harddrive.

CM