The Writing Process 3: Weather Conditions

Ficathon, first draft (Rich-text file)
Ficathon, second draft (Rich-text file)

The first two works mirror each other because the second one is merely a simple rewrite. Sometimes, when I feel that a story just isn't going as well as I like, I just save the file, put it aside, and reach for a brand new document.

With short stories, I usually don't get too attached to the characters. That, in addition to the fact that I was probably going to kill off most of them anyway, didn't get me thinking seriously about the names. I just plucked some stuff from an online book of Japanese names, and I tweaked from there.

I was basing this off L5R traditions, though, so all the samurai had to be of the Shiba family, and all the shugenja (magic-users) had to be of the Isawa and Asako families. (L5R players, do note - they're the only noble families who would probably pull off something as foolhardy as trapping and transporting an oni.)

Kazuo's name was constant throughout the process, but his female companion went through a bit of development. At first she was a fellow samurai named Shina, the name quickly discarded once I realized that "Shiba Shina" sounded pretty stupid. She then became Natsumi (also discarded because it kept reminding me of the "You're Under Arrest" anime), and finally Seiki.

Right away the italics appeared to play a distinct role in the story. In these drafts, I needed them to represent the oni's whispers to Kazuo and his companions. In a sense, all of them are tired, haggard and sleepless because they have to be constantly on their guard from the voices in their heads.

For the first draft, the voice-in-the-head angle was pretty vague - it's easy to read it and assume that maybe Kazuo's just the sort who talks to himself. In a sense, I was planning an ending where Kazuo wakes up from the bandit attack and realizes - to his horror - that the voice that's been whispering to him is gone.

When the first draft didn't gel, however, I assumed that it was because the pace was slow and boring. In order to pick it up a bit, I made the voice a lot more obvious in its intentions, altering the atmosphere but keeping the possibility of the ending I originally planned. In the second draft, the reader should most likely pick up on the fact that something's amiss early on.

The trouble was that the second draft ran into the same problem as the first - I didn't feel that it held my interest well enough to get me moving past the first few paragraphs. Having a clear setting is nice and all, but the key to establishing good setting is that you shouldn't bore people by doing so.

Knowing that, I walked into the third draft with an express purpose in mind - to make the general setting and story significantly more interesting.