Stay awhile, and listen.
That’s a line from a character in one of my most-played (I have no idea if it’s my favorite but WOW did I play it a lot) (that’s a pun, shoutout to the five people who got it) video games. Besides being a scratchy little soundbite from ages and ages ago, it’s not a bad idea. It is, in fact, what drives sequels, reboots, and the bazillion words of fan fiction that won a Hugo award last year.
When you write a story or essay, and you like it, and you like the writing process, that’s in part driven by wanting to spend time in that place, with those people. To listen to what they have to say.
Our 2020 Technique Toolbox is going to be about staying with one story for a while, until we can really hear the best way to tell it. This is in no way driven by the fact that despite having written 450,000 words of first-draft novel I can’t stop writing side stories and alternate universes exploring what would happen if the characters had met in a different order, or if someone had [spoilers] sooner, or not at all. Nope.
Kidding, it is. But instead of what I’m doing with (to?) those characters, we’re going to spend the whole year with one story or essay of your choice.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense yet, so let me lay it out a little more clearly.
2020 Hindsight
We’ve all written a story, submitted it, and thought What if I’d told it in first person? or I wish I’d written that longer. Or shorter?
This year you get the chance to try all of those things, with a single story. This month we’re going to write that story. Or essay, although you may find some parts of this year’s workshop easier with a story. The rest of the year we’re going to spend looking back at that story and telling it in different ways. Each month we’ll have a special grid linked to the month’s post and assignment, and we encourage you to link that incarnation of your story up so that everyone can follow each other’s progress.
The fun part is, the editors get to play along. So we’re writing a story too this month (and every month), and we’ll get it on the grid early so you can see what we’re looking for.
We encourage you to find beta-readers, edit, play, edit each other’s stories, and generally have fun this year. Don’t worry too much about each month’s work being a masterpiece. In December we’ll look back at what we learned about our work and the different ways to tell the story we’re trying to tell, and write what we think is the best version of the story. Look, I’m just gonna say story from here on in. Personal essays are stories.
Ready to play along?
January’s assignment is: write a story or personal essay in 1,000 words or fewer.
That’s right, 1,000. Not the 750 of our normal grids. We want to make sure you’ve got enough space before we start taking it away.
Over the next 10 months (12, minus January and December) we’ll have you retell this story 10 times. We might change the word limit on you. We might force you to change tense, or point of view. If you don’t have time to write one month, or that adjustment isn’t speaking to you? Skip it, or come back to it later. If you don’t have time to write this month, just jump in whenever you can, and adjust that story. In fact, you can treat “write this story in 1,000 words or fewer” as an adjustment.
Get it? Got it. Let’s go!
Loading InLinkz ...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.
