Genesis of a Story: April 6, 2012 April 6, 2012
Posted by gznork26 in Writing.Tags: age discrimination, false accusations, Fiction, gender discrimination, sex discrimination, short story, writing, YWCA India
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As an experiment in exposing my writing process to view, I’ve been posting my notes and prose here as I work on a sequel to my previous new short story, “Unspoken“, which was instigated by the posts of an OpenSalon blogger from India. One thing that I find myself doing differently as a result of posting my progress is that instead of purging and editing the notes in my text file as I go to reflect the developing story, I’ve left them intact and just added to them at each stage.
The section of the story I’m posting today is my prose interpretation of part of what I had sketched out as where the next short bit of the story would go. I’ll back up a little to provide you with a little context, but if you’re just joining me, you might want to read the earlier posts in this sequence. (more…)
Genesis of a Story: April 3, 2010 April 3, 2012
Posted by gznork26 in Writing.Tags: age discrimination, caste system, editing, gender discrimination, India, plot development, sex discrimination, single women, writing
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I’ve been using this space to show the process I go though when developing a new short story. If you came here first, you might want to backtrack a bit to catch up.
So far, I’ve sketched out the opening situation of a follow-up to my recent story “Unspoken”, and written a portion of the story. My usual practice when I’m working on a story is that each time I return to it, I read it from the top to see if I trip over anything, and to make minor changes. Since I made a few adjustments, here’s what I have now, starting from the midst of the section I posted last, and including the conclusion of the interruption that starts things off. Rahila is being interviewed for a job at a sidewalk cafe, after being introduced by Samir. She’s just been asked about her last job. In their country, a single woman must have a male vouch for her and sign contracts to be accepted in most places. (more…)
Genesis of a Story: Mar 24, 2012 March 24, 2012
Posted by gznork26 in Writing.Tags: age discrimination, discrimination, gender discrimination, sex discrimination, single women, writing, YWCA India
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As an experiment, I’ve been posting my notes as I work towards writing my next short story. (There are over 100 of them posted here.) It’s a follow-up to “Unspoken“, the last new story I wrote and uploaded. In that story, a call-center worker named Rahila is fired due to social discrimination when her employer learns that she is single. She soon loses her apartment, but when she goes to a single women’s shelter, she encounters much the same treatment, only this time her age is used as an excuse as well.
That wasn’t the first story I’ve written about discrimination. I had used a science fiction setting in “The A Word” to explore a different order of discrimination, and then followed it up at a reader’s request, in “Edifice of Lies“. “Unspoken” was inspired by a blogger’s personal experiences, and I’m writing this story to explore an idea that she suggested, that a network of men might arise to vouch for single women so that would not get stymied by their culture’s continuing discrimination against them.
In this story, Rahila has made contact with a member of that network, and is having a job interview in a cafe when they are interrupted. Here’s the next part of my notes, which I think will be the last before I start actually writing the story… (more…)
Genesis of a story: Mar 21, 2012 March 21, 2012
Posted by gznork26 in Writing.Tags: age discrimination, discrimination, Fiction, gender discrimination, plot development, sex discrimination, staging, writing
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Continuing with this experiment, I’m posting notes about the development of a new story while I’m working on it.
Staging: At what point do we dip into the action? We want to give the reader some context at the start, so the attack could happen while a member of the network is in the midst of smoothing the way for the woman he’s helping. (What was she doing? Arranging living quarters?) Our antagonist break into the discussion, shows doctored pictures of the woman depicting her as a slut, and of the man purporting that he’s lured other women into this trap and then raped them (or something).
That where I left off last time. I’ve thought some more about how the action could play out. Here are my latest thoughts… (more…)
Genesis of a Story: Mar 18, 2012 March 18, 2012
Posted by gznork26 in Writing.Tags: age discrimination, discrimination, India, sex discrimination YWCA India, single women, writing
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I’ve decided to try something different, today. Instead of waiting until my next story is finished before posting it, I’d like to show you how it happens by exposing the creative process as I go through it. The last new story that I posted, “Unspoken“, was inspired by events described by Rolling, one of my readers in her own blog. In my story, Rahila encounters discrimination on the job for being single and over forty, which costs first her job, and then her apartment. And then she encounters it again at a shelter for homeless women. Since that’s the back-story, you might want to go read it first before reading the rest of this post.
In a subsequent post, Rolling mused about the possibility that a network of men might step forward to vouch for such women so that they would not be subject to such treatment. It was an intriguing idea, so I made a note to myself about it, and left the idea to stew. A few days ago, I returned to my notes, and started to flesh out the idea, in preparation to turn “Unspoken” into the start of yet another series. (I’ve done that before. I’ve listed them in the category pages that are listed on my About the Stories page.) Here, then are my notes so far… (more…)
