how to write a short story, part two

content/trigger warning: references to sex, death, murder, birth, urine, grief, trauma

again. There's always more to say.

Length

I don't have much time: a thousand words, maybe, maybe a few thousand, maybe even only a few hundred. Monologues are boring.

Character

Get into two headspaces: two characters (two people, a person and an animal, a person and a feeling or a memory or a concept, two concepts, two animals, whatever). Give us one's perspective explicitly, and the other's implicitly. Both characters must be at least equally interesting, especially to you. You don't ever have to mention one of them; you can even edit them out of the story completely. But know that they're there.

I am never alone.

Plot

I am the most interesting person in the world, but I have the least interesting things to say about myself. I have had the most interesting experiences in the world, but I have the least interesting things to say about them. Write what you know, but get outside it. I see myself from outside myself only when I write. If I saw myself from outside myself at any other time, I'd die, instantly.

Something has happened to me. Not grief, not sorrow, not rage, not pain, not trauma; not a break up or an engagement or an illness or a gift or a promotion or a move. I live. A heist is not a plot. Neither is a funeral, nor a birth. Nor a murder. Nor sex. Nor love. I am constrained by the same things as everyone else: life, time, the world's turn.

Think about what's just beyond you. Perceive something that isn't there. Remember a memory that isn't yours. Eat a meal and pretend it's something else. Sleep and dream a dream you haven't dreamt. Piss in a room you'll never be in. Care for someone you'll never know. That's your plot. Maybe you're pissing in a coffin or caring for someone giving birth; maybe you're eating a meal during a heist or remembering a murder. Maybe there's sex right beside you; maybe even love. But these things are incidental.

I only know how to be alive, and that's far more than enough.

Themes

You have something to say. But all you have is an untuned piano, or a modest drum. Trust the instrument. There's a rhythm. There's vibration. Maybe lyrics, but mostly just the same words repeated as chorus. That's all you need.

All I ever want is to feel, and that is what I trust the most.

Editing

Just stop writing. It doesn't matter. Now forget you wrote what you wrote. Destroy it if you have to. Then pretend the person you love most wrote it. Adjust until you're ready to give it back to them. Then pretend the person you hate most wrote it. Adjust until you're ready to give it back to them. Then give it to everyone you know and care about, and trust what they say, but know that it's up to you whether and how much you care.

I keep moving in order to live; I don't know any other way to survive. All swarms eventually become islands, which always eventually become swarms again.

Publishing

Print it out and leave it somewhere you'll never go again. Or post it on a website no one will ever have the link to. Leave it there as long as you can; ignore it as long as you can; then go and look at it, whenever you want to (seconds later, minutes later, days, weeks, doesn't matter). Is it exactly what you wanted? Is it perfect? Adjust if needed. Start again.

I am always ready to start again. I will always be ready to start again. I start again, and again, and