A Question for the Contest Entrants.

I'd be interested to know how authors approached the 500 word story contest.

Did you write with the limit in mind, or did you simply write down your story idea then prune it back?

I did the latter. When I wrote the story at first I had 831 words, then I set about hacking it down. It was an interesting challenge, cutting off a word here and a word there, taking out or re-writing whole sentences, and at one point, deleting an entire paragraph.

The one sentence I was determined to keep was, "Then I forgot I'd forgotten," which I rather liked, but everything else was fair game.

So, authors, let's hear how you managed it.

Like you Linda I wrote then pruned. I must admit I enjoyed writing to 500 word limit. I would like to see snippets given a 500 word limit too rather than 300 as at present.

I wrote and pruned...and pruned some more. First draft was typically 600-750 words, then I decided what to trim, typically descriptions of clothes, or how the characters felt at a particular moment. At 500 words you have to be plot, plot, plot.

Since so many of the stories are based on the twist of the last line, typically I wrote building to that. With SMART I wrote a story about a girl being smart, and her mother being smarter, building toward that climax. With NUMBERS I envisioned it from the start as a math genius freed from the tyrany of numbers by spanking. This is different than my typical stories, which tend to grow more organically (or, in some cases, like an out of control batch of weeds.)

I was fully conscious of the limit from the time I started, and wrote accordingly. I wrote some, pruned some before finishing, wrote the rest of the story, did some serious pruning to get under 500 words, decided there were some parts I had to put back in, and so pruned some more so I could do that. I had decided in the beginning that there were some details the reader simply was going to have to figure out. One of my commenters mentioned that there was some 'mystery' which was how I intended. There were places, though, that I decided I had to forego economy of words (which was why I had to cut back elsewhere).

Clearly one had to write a short story, so that's always at the back of one's mind. But I was still over the top first time round. It is quite a good discipline to reduce the unnecessary verbiage which is something we could usefully apply to competitions without a word limit. Judges please note!

I wrote the story I wanted then cut out all verbiage that was non-essential (and some which was, IMHO). I think the story suffered as a result. Sometimes it felt like I was cutting off my arm. I'm not terribly fond of a 500 word limit. The fact is that my story ideas were not clever enough to develop in 500 words. In fact I may just go back and re-edit these stories so I'll have the story I did want the first time. The guy who was the real master of the clever quick hit story was someone named Mr Spraycan who used to publish on usenet in the Jurrassic era. Does anyone remember him?

As Lincoln says, there's always at the back of your mind the fact of the word limit, but if you let that dictate the story too early then it stilts the story. Therefore I try to just write the whole story reasonably consisely, and then prune, prune and re-write.

The mini-saga format is excellent training for this, as it only permits 50 words. At first this seems a ridiculously small number of words, but it does teach you to make each of the little rascals pull their own weight

I chose ideas I thought I could convey in a few words and then wrote, checking the word count periodically to warn me if I was way out of line. At the end I needed to prune, but only by 10% or so. That was very difficult, though. I'm used to pruning to fit a word limit as some grant applications and the like are so limited, so I first found ways of saying the same thing with fewer words and then, reluctantly, cut things till I was within limit - by my computer's word count. When they appeared, though, 498 and 500 words had both just gone over, perhaps through something like "YIAAAAAAAAOOW!" being counted as more than one word!

I had that problem too, depending on which word counter I used. I tried three different ones and got three different answers, then whichever one Febs used gave yet another different count. Perhaps some of them count a dash or an ellipsis as a separate word?

I submitted two entries, and the first one (October Moonlight) was extremely difficult to scale back. I felt like I needed every word to contribute to the mood and setting, since it was a dream sequence. I would write some of the story, then check word count, then scale back then continue writing, check and prune again. By the time I had finished, I was still at over 600 words, and it about KILLED me to have to cut and cut my descriptions, for I felt it kept altering the intensity of the original story I had set out to portray.

The second entry was a poem (Kink before Christmas), and I will honestly admit that it pretty much wrote itself from start to finish. I paid no attention at all to the word count--just set out to tell the story and when all was said and done, it was almost exactly at 500 words. Thank goodness, because having to cut back words in a poem affects the rhythm and meter of the lines, so I would have had to eliminate a complete stanza to bring it within the limits. Fortunately, it all fell into place!

Overall, it was an enjoyable challenge, as I had never written something in so few words before. It really makes you consider word choice and decide what is truly essential in developing a meaningful plotline.