Short Story - Something went right (or wrong somewhere). Thoughts Please

[Perpetual Man]

Since I was forced kicking and screaming back into this writing malarkey again, I set myself a goal. Keep away from novels. Concentrate on short stories for a bit.

I had plenty lying around from years past, gathering dust and unfinished. Some have been binned others I thought had potential. I decided to finish those that needed it; write e few new ones. Then go back through them all, re-write, polish etc as needed.

Then see if I had the guts to do anything with them.

I had a list. Finish the list.

Then on Saturday I had a sudden idea. I liked it. It would tie quite nicely into a character I use every now and then, but have not used in his original form well since the late 90's. This story would fit that creation to the ground.

Just like that I was off but...

I finished working the basic plot out. Reached the end of the introduction - about 1000 words of something that would have been about 6000 - 8000, and suddenly realised that it worked quite nicely as this short 1000 word horror piece - without any need of bringing my character in at all.

Sooo now I'm on the horns of a dilemma, so I carry on and complete the story as I originally intended or leave it as is, a short open ended horror snippet?

 

[MstrTal]

Why not both?

 

[chrispenycate]

Copy/paste what you've got, and start on the planned story. If that doesn't gell, tighten up the end of the short short, and keep it as such. If it is working, you'll probably want to keep the long version, unless you seriously prefer the previous one. In which case, work out an alternate route by which you could have arrived at the split point, and write that version. If that works, but doesn't graft onto your end anywhere, just keep writing it…

Now you've got the best part of an anthology out of one idea…

 

[Perpetual Man]

You know sometimes the most obvious answers are the ones right in front of you and you just don't think of them.

Thanks Chris & MstrTal... I'll start thinking about getting around to it!

 

[Boneman]

Why not both?

Absolutely - the beauty of short stories is that you can do more than one version to see how they look. What's the betting another idea comes along as you're doing version two...

 

[Perpetual Man]

Uh oh.... thanks for that Boneman.... I've got more than enough going on inside my head at the moment...