One of the challenges of this writing game is getting feedback from others. It is absolutely crucial to the creative process, while at the same time being a thoroughly daunting experience. What if people don’t like it? What if they hate it? Worse still, what if they just aren’t interested in it? That’s how I feel every time I send a piece of writing out into the world for others to read and provide feedback on. I know that without their input, I’ll fall short of what I could achieve, but it doesn’t make it any easier when the feedback comes in. I feel Harold’s pain…
However, this week I got some amazing feedback on a short story I wrote in December. Every quarter (it used to be every month), the Australian Writers’ Centre runs their “Furious Fiction” competition, where you have 55 hours to write a 500-word story, with a $500 prize for the winning story. Each competition has some “interesting” constraints placed on the story – usually requiring certain words to be included, a certain event to take place, etc. I don’t know how many entered this time, but in the past, the AWC have mentioned that they received over 1,200 entries, which come from all over the world.
While I didn’t win the $500 prize, I did appear on the short list of seven shortlisted stories, which were also published in full, with feedback. Considering that I didn’t start typing up the story until 5pm on the Sunday night it was due in, I’m very happy with that result! I had no expectations that this story would be any more successful than any of the others I’ve submitted to Furious Fiction over the last few years, and it was a very pleasant surprise to see my name (and story) on the list of December winners. The comments on what the judges liked about the story were an added bonus:
It’s often hard enough to wrestle one point of view into a story, let alone two. But here, it is handled expertly, each different yet with one shared grievance to create a lovely layered vignette.
Cleverly, the flip flop between both characters hints at much more beneath the surface, but the author chooses to provide only a glimpse into each of their lives. This helps to keep the narrative beat humming along as we merrily head-hop to see what the other is thinking. The contrast in language between their similar, inner descriptions of Christmas and family tensions is a great touch and when the garage door finally comes down on this narrative, you drive away happy with the style and presentation.
Of course, this is “only” a short story, written under artificial conditions, but it does provide a way of testing how your writing is developing. Given how many people enter this competition each time it’s run, odds are that I won’t make the shortlist again, but it was nice to get there once! The story can be found here.
Meanwhile, back on my novel, I’m at the stage of seeking out further feedback from “beta readers”, who examine how well the story is working as a whole, as well as “sensitivity readers”, who have backgrounds in cultures/characters that I don’t, and who can hopefully guide me away from misrepresenting or stereotyping them. This means I’ll be getting even more feedback on my work that is likely to be confronting, or at the very least mean I’ll end up questioning some of my choices, and having to rework sections of the novel.
I’m already dreading the feedback, but I know that every time someone has provided their thoughts in what I’ve written it has made the story stronger, my characters more developed, and my writing clearer. It’s still confronting, though!
I’ve also fallen into the classic new author trap – starting on my second novel before the first one is done – the “bright shiny new toy” syndrome… I think I’ve got a solid idea that I haven’t seen explored before, and story-boarded about half of it, but I really must give novel number one a bit more love!
