Recently, I’ve actually been doing some writing. Wonders will never cease! At the weekend I read through what I’ve written so far in my “Little Miss Movie Star” story. I’d reached a point where I didn’t know if I needed, or indeed wanted, to include a particular scene, which is why I stalled.
I could have written the scene and then deleted it in the edit, but they may have left me with a hole in the story. Instead, I found a way to get across the important information that would have been in the scene and at the same time include a smooth(ish) transition to the next important part of the story. I’m quite pleased with what I’ve been able to do there. Now I need to get on with it and drive the story forward. I know where it’s going, and I know how to get there, I just need some keyboard time, that’s all.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I’ve been dissatisfied with the title to this story ever since it was conceived. I think I’ve found a solution that not only sounds cool (IMHO) but could also influence me to make minor changes to one of the characters.
I’m toying with the idea of calling the story “The Method” which is a reference to “Method Acting”. Most people I’ve spoken to regard method acting as when an actor ‘becomes’ the character they are playing, or where actors go and try out what it’s like to live as the character. According to Wikipedia, the definition of method acting is slightly different to this, but I think I’ll play on people’s perceptions or, more importantly, the perceptions of the characters within my story.
What I want to do is to make the ‘other woman’ in the story, Kim, act as the voice of the reader in expressing concerns over Chloe’s motivations, in particular, the belief that Chloe may be researching a part she is going to play because she is a ‘method actor’.
I don’t need Kim to ram these opinions down the reader’s throat, but if she expresses them at two or three occasions throughout the story, it should be enough to plant a seed of doubt in the reader’s mind over Chloe. Obviously, I can’t tell you if Kim is right or not—it would spoil the story.
I’ve also picked up a story I put through The Fishtank in October last year. It’s been sitting on my hard drive since I amended it based on fishtank comments because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to develop it into a much longer story or not. Then Chloe came along and everything else sort of got forgotten about.
I’ve been through the story and made a few significant changes to the characters and, importantly, to the ending and added a new scene. I now feel the whole thing is much more satisfying. I just need to go through it a couple more times, once to give it a thoroughly good edit and once more to deal with the formatting. Then I can get it subbed and see what Ruthie’s make of it.
