Contest Judge Dean Wesley Smith discusses why he rejects stories

@tj_knight Thanks for sharing! This is also a very good example! 😊

And based on the above thread I am now looking much forward to your either delighted or outraged review on that story 😄

@patricia-a In the case of Nick Aames, it was largely subconscious. I'm very much a pantser at heart. I often make a decision and see where it goes with no conscious plan. I started the first Carver and Aames story in the POV of Carver, very much for the same reasons as Watson, and as you noted: It lets Holmes/Aames have secrets from Watson/Carver, and thus from the reader; and it lets the reader empathize with Watson/Carver and learn to like Holmes/Aames.

But after three stories in a non-Aames POV, I found a certain power in this. Nick Aames is not, in one sense, a character: He has no character arc, he doesn't change. He's a force of nature who causes changes in other characters. (In The Last Dance, which includes all these stories, he has a crucial character change at the end; but is it really a change, or just a consequence?) The stories are about how other characters react to Nick, and what that tells us about them.

There's also the fact that I'm obsessive about consistency. Since I started telling the first stories through other POVs, I determined to tell them all that way.

Posted by: @patricia-a

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@tj_knight Thanks for sharing! This is also a very good example! 😊

And based on the above thread I am now looking much forward to your either delighted or outraged review on that story 😄

Sadly, I gave up. Made it 15% of the way. My reason, ultimately, was taste. The schmaltz was strong with that one. And if I heard whiskey-colored eyes one more time I was likely to throw my phone across the room.

I'm listening to On Earth as it is on Television now.

Posted by: @tj_knight

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Posted by: @patricia-a

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@tj_knight Thanks for sharing! This is also a very good example! 😊

And based on the above thread I am now looking much forward to your either delighted or outraged review on that story 😄

Sadly, I gave up. Made it 15% of the way. My reason, ultimately, was taste. The schmaltz was strong with that one. And if I heard whiskey-colored eyes one more time I was likely to throw my phone across the room.

I'm listening to On Earth as it is on Television now.

 

Then I can share my secondhand spoiler! He’s not just mute, he’s imaginary! Sorta. Only she can see him.

Posted by: @martin-l-shoemaker

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Then I can share my secondhand spoiler! He’s not just mute, he’s imaginary! Sorta. Only she can see him.

Oi! Not sure if that makes it more or less interesting. Suppose that's a cool twist, but we spent half of chapter five learning about him from the townsfolk. Like, she interviewed everyone she could find about the bearded, mess of a guy who ignored her in the parking lot after she dropped her groceries.

Some folks call that stalking. Others call it a bestseller (Kidding, kidding).

Posted by: @martin-l-shoemaker

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Editing and Reading Observations… Part Two… – Dean Wesley Smith

Problems:

• Walking to the story. Starting too soon and not getting to a reason to care.

I appreciate your added explanation, because I didn't quite understand what he was trying to get to there.  I wasn't sure whether he meant that you should just get into the action, rather than "walking" there, or if he meant that you should show how they get there, as in show the walking.  

They basically turbo-lifted to the story.

This does not work in fiction.

It felt to me that he didn't specify what was wrong here, just that it was wrong. Maybe I'm just being a little to literal or something, but it felt ambiguous to me.

Oh wait!  He clarified the "walking to the story" rule in part 4:

Going on and on and on without ever getting to a story (walking to a story) makes me read more than I want to, but I never get to the story or the ending.

So it was "just start at the bridge instead of turbo lifting there" kind of advice

AJ (the first contest judge) said, "Start with a character in a setting with a problem." I've heard it said to start with an interesting problem, and I agree, but going with the basic basics, those three are it. I sometimes call it the PPP (Person, Place, Problem) opening. 

If you're missing one in the 450, your odds go down. 

Dave Farland said about the problem, that it need not be the story's core problem, but it needs to be something that triggers the qualifier (I'm super paraphrasing). 

For me, I'd rather start with the bomb timer at one minute than the bomb exploding. 

In a short story, the Hero's Journey idea of starting in the character's real world is shortened to the extreme. A page or two. Thus the small problem. It might be called a hook. Dave said he needed something to create a rooting interest in a character (make them an underdog). That minute of them trying to diffuse the bomb is real world (if you're starting the story there). Or that minute of them running away from the bomb... Whatever it is that makes them them. Show that, then the explosion, then the fallout. Then tackle who planted the bomb (core problem).