The final piece
This is it: the culmination of a year of work! We’ve looked at your stories and essays inside out and upside down; we’ve changed their shape, size, and even point of view. Whether you participated every month or you decided to pick and choose the assignments that appealed to you, you’ve likely picked up something new or fine-tuned a skill you already had. It’s time to take everything we’ve learned over the year and apply it to one final revision of your piece.Ready?
December’s assignment is: take what you’ve learned throughout the year and write the final, best version of your story (Maximum wordcount: 1,000)
The whys and hows:
It’s time. Your story is ready. Let’s make a final draft. (Or, you know, that 4th version of the draft named Story_NO_REALLY_FINAL.docx)
You can approach this assignment in a couple of different ways: you can pull out your original piece and make revisions, you can completely rewrite it from beginning to end, or you can use one of your revisions as a starting point. Whichever way you go, it will be helpful to have all your different versions at your fingertips. Go through each one and think about the bits you’re particularly pleased with. Maybe it’s a sentence, maybe it’s a line of dialogue. Or maybe it’s the overall setting or timeline. At this stage, don’t worry if some of them conflict with (or duplicate) each other—you’ll smooth that out as you’re writing the final draft.
Next, get something on paper. Maybe you’re a version-reviser or maybe you want to copy/paste those lines into a document like an outline, or maybe you like to inhale all your ideas, take a long shower (what? it’s a great place to be alone), and then start with a blank page. Whichever one you do, you’re going to have to balance “things you loved” with “things that must be in the story.”
Finally, revise it! Make sure that it makes sense. If at no other point this year did you have a beta reader, get one now. You’re too familiar with your story to recognize whether all the must-haves are in and the extraneous bits are out.
A few tips and tricks we learned on the way:
We’ve covered everything from adjectives to alternative universes, and each lesson taught us something. (And if you need a refresher, they’re all linked at the bottom of this post.) Here are a few things to keep in mind while revising your final story or essay.
- Check your modifiers. Even if you’re not concerned about wordcount, eliminating unnecessary adjectives and adverbs—or replacing them with more active verbs or descriptions—will help keep your story vibrant.
- Sometimes less is more. Make sure each sentence and each paragraph is necessary to tell your story. Keep your eye out for tangents.
- Read your dialogue out loud—or have a friend do it. You’ll be able to hear where it feels unnatural, even if it looks good on the page.
- Your language can be lush or it can be sparse, but in either case, make sure it’s deliberate. Maybe writing your story as a poem gave you a darling you can nurture instead of murder.
- Your setting will affect your characters and your plot. Did you choose the right one for your story?
Need a second pair of eyes to see what you might have missed? Don’t be afraid to ask for help in the Coffeehouse!
Good luck!
To publish or not to publish
You’ve worked hard on this piece, and you’re sure it’s the best it can ever be. You’re finally ready to send it out into the world. Or are you? Before you go looking for places to submit your work, make sure you get another set (or two, or three) of eyes on it. An author can only go so far with their own revisions; at some point, you’ll need feedback from other readers, whether that means beta readers or a professional editor. Here are a few links to help you out:
- Guide to receiving constructive criticism
- Finding and working with an editor
- Finding a home for your work
We hope that you look back on this year of writing with pride and satisfaction. Compare your first version with your last and see how far you came. (In our case, our thousand-word flash story has morphed into an almost complete novel!) And if you had a good experience, let us know in the Coffeehouse!
Loading InLinkz ...Hindsight!
In case you missed it, here's a look back (see what we did there?) at the exercises in our 2020 workshop.
January: Write a story or essay in 1,000 words
February: Write the same piece in 100 words
March: Retain just 25 adjectives and adverbs from your original 1,000 word story
April: Write your story or essay using only dialogue
May: Write your story or essay from a different point of view
June: Write your story or essay in 2,000 words
July: Write your story or essay out of chronological order
August: Record your story or essay and transcribe it
September: Write your story or essay using a different voice
October: Write a poem using your story or essay as inspiration
November: Write a version of your story set in an alternate universe.
December: Write the final version of your story or essay in 1000 words.
About the author:
Christine Hanolsy is a (primarily) science fiction and fantasy writer who simply cannot resist a love story. She joined the YeahWrite team in 2014 as the microstory editor and stepped into the role of Editor-In-Chief in 2020. Christine was a 2015 BlogHer Voices of the Year award recipient and Community Keynote speaker for her YeahWrite essay, “Rights and Privileges.” Her short fiction has been published in a number of anthologies and periodicals and her creative nonfiction at Dead Housekeeping and in the Timberline Review. Outside of YeahWrite, Christine’s past roles have included Russian language scholar, composer, interpreter, and general cat herder. Find her online at christinehanolsy.com.
About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
