Friday, November 19, 2004

Can this story be saved?

I'm working on a story, because DOB promised to give a children's sermon at church next Sunday and he wants to do one about the Pilgrims, naturally. It's got to be interesting for ages 4 to 84 and have a clear but not obnoxious moral. Reading various Pilgrim documents, I found the account of young John Billington (son of Plymouth's first murderer!) getting lost in the forest, the adventures of the men searching for him, and the eventual peace treaty made with the formerly hostile tribe who took him in. It seems like good material to work with.

But I'm running into the same problems I always run into when I write stories. I think the problem is the way I read--all the dialogue, skim the action, skip descriptions altogether. So when I write a story, it tends to have plenty of dialogue, briefly-described action, and no descriptions. Trimming extravagant overwriting has rarely been needed on anything I wrote; the challenge is keeping it from sounding like a police log. Maybe I should just abandon story-writing and stick to drama, where I can write dialogue to my heart's content.

In other news, D1 has moved into 6-9 month outfits, without even giving me the courtesy of looking a little swamped in them for the first few weeks. They fit perfectly (well, as perfectly as anything can fit someone who lies on the floor and wads herself up all day). She better stay in this size until Christmas is over, though, because all her Christmas outfits (due to a garage sale by a conveniently-sized baby) are in this size range.

No comments: