Monday, January 21, 2013

Shortlisted on The Writer's Village

My entry to The Writer's Village made it to the top 7 out of hundreds.

This is a great example of taking an older contest entry that you believe in and tweaking it to get a better result. 

I first entered a version of this story at On The Premises. The theme was "home" and I wanted to explore the idea of a broken home.  After receiving the feedback from them  - I made some edits.
  1. I gave my narrator a name
  2. I toned down her antics to focus just on the family aspect
  3. I sought to leave the reader with few unanswered questions
Plus I did a couple tweaks on my own. 

In my first attempt, I experimented with minimal dialogue.  On a second look, I prefer dialogue.  I think it gives the other characters more depth, other than just the narrator's point of view.

For example:
He said I was beautiful.
vs.
"You look beautiful." He said.

I also reworked the ending a bit.

See the final result here. http://www.writers-village.org/12-4-worrell.php

Who knows if this is the last iteration of Confessions?  I don't plan on reworking it anytime soon, but you never know....

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