A Writer's Notebook, One-Thousand-Eight-Hundred-And-Forty-Four

I think that I am still, very often, writing stories that are more about premise than anything else, and I would like to move away from that.  The fact that I am aware of it is probably a sign that it is starting to shift.  The issue is, often I find myself getting to a certain point and not being certain where to take the narrative.  I had a story tonight where I knew what was going to happen in general, but only up to a certain point, and I wasn't sure where to take the story from that point.  Often, that point in the story is really the moment in the story when that premise is fully realized or revealed, and once that premise runs out, I am not certain where things are going any longer.  In some cases, that is still an okay place to end the story, especially when it is a flash piece.  The implication that there is more to the story, that this is only just a small glimpse in on a larger narrative, can be very effective when done well, and that feels like an approach that works particularly well when the narrative is very short.

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