BEGINNERS
Has it got legs ?
How do you know if your work-in-progress is hitting the mark? Adrian Magson provides some pointers.
Adrian Magson
I’ve often been asked how to tell if a story is ‘right’ – that is, right enough to catch the eye of an agent or editor. Well, the truth is, you can’t know until you’ve finished writing it. Nor, therefore, can an editor or agent.
Many books are written with all the promise in the world of being brilliant… only to run out of steam along the way. (And I should know – I’ve written some of them.)
With a short story of, say, 1,000 words, it’s easier to tell if it works because, well, it’s short, innit? You can see quickly if it flows, has a balance of characters (not too many), tension, humour, setting and dialogue. (Sadly, if it’s a turkey, that will also show. Welcome to the writing life.)
I’m not dismissing short fiction as easy. I know from years of writing and selling hundreds of short stories that creating a lucid, interesting and captivating short can be full of headaches, deletions and screwed-up sheets of A4 being slam-dunked into the wastebasket. (When it comes to that last action, I’m the Meadowlark Lemon of paper-binners.)