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Working on A New Short Story--Why it Takes So Long and the Value of Research

4/22/2013

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I started work on a new short story in my Young Adult Fiction Class at Oxford Online when given a prompt to write about dinosaurs. I'm working on dinosaur stories for various age groups.

Many times people get frustrated with me because it takes so long for me to write a short story. My current short story has been written in pieces in the class:
a) a hook for the beginning that established my main character
b) the arrival of the villain of the story
c) a chance meeting with the love interest
d) contact with my dinosaur bone

I wanted to write about a student who was being encouraged to go into the Armed Forces. I have a historical view from movies and novels and from my relatives about what the US Army was like. I wanted to get a more modern view of actual practices. Youtube is really good for finding movies of Armed Forces marching, training exercises, airplanes in flight and the like, that I have also watched. 

Once I get through my research materials, I often get cool ideas about how to bring the protagonist into conflict in unusual ways (i.e. the average person on the street would not have run into the situation). It also provides me with a technical terms and knowledge that are applicable in the situation.

Each situation is often written as a stand alone piece where I set up the mood, the situation arises, and the protagonist now has new knowledge and feelings.

This story will be new for me because I'll be working in two heads and doing more narration then normal for my writing.

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