When a short story is no longer a short story

by benmweilertNo Comments
Over the years, I've usually planned out my writing pretty well. I always felt that each element of the plot had a purpose and a place that added to the cohesive whole of the story. Consequently, I've really struggled with the concept of "killing your darlings." For those of you who haven't heard about this writing tactic, it essentially boils down to being able to let go of certain aspects of your story, especially when they don't add anything to the plot. Part of the reason I've been unable to remove some of these sections from my writing is because I find they're usually quite intertwined with the rest of the story and to remove them would require massive restructuring of the whole plot. To kill your darlings, you must be able to recognize them for what they are. In writing my short story for the next Midnight Writers' Anthology, I suddenly found the story I wanted to tell was much longer...
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Which Hunter

by benmweilertNo Comments
Being concise is one of the standards of superior writing. Unfortunately, when you're writing the first draft of your novel in a month, your mind might insert a lot of "filler" words. I've had this problem for years, but recently have come across a simple solution to help my manuscripts "cut the fluff" during the editing phase. For some background, one of my beta readers for The Third Degree noticed the word "that" popping up more often than it should. My solution at the time was to replace most of the "that" with "which." I had always heard the advice "don't use that," so instead of eliminating the word from my writing, I merely shifted it to a different word. Now that I've received notes back on The Constellation Tournament it appears I've been found out. A completely different beta reader was distracted by the enormous amount of times I used "which." Recognizing the problem, I set about trying to find a...
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