Hey gang -
I just finshed working on a short story and the writing of it involved some decisions that I think are an interesting illumination into the writing process.
I'm going to try to write this so reading my story won't be necessary... but if you do want to read it and don't want anything spoiled in advance, you can find the story on my blog. I have linked each part at the start of each section. This section deals with part 1 of the story, so the link to part one is below.
Click here for part one.
It began with a little one page writing exercise I did a few months ago. I was freewriting and for whatever reason, wrote a little piece going behind the scenes of a fashion show. I let it sit for a while and then came back to it, thought it would be easy to whip out and post on my blog, so I took it from my writing journal and retyped it into Word.
Decision 1: looking at the piece, I felt it needed a main character to view the action behind the scenes. I felt the designer himself would be the strongest choice. Problem was, I had no idea who the character would be, just the idea of what he did for a living.
So I stopped looking at the Word document in front of me and got onto the internet to do some quick surfing for information.
I googeled "Strangest Fashion Shows in History" and after poking around, came upon the designer "Hussein Chalayan".
Hussein was a fashion prodigy who won Designer of the year fresh out of Art school. As a designer, he is as liable to take inspiration from architecture or critical theory, as from fashion history. He is quite bold yet simple in his designs and is willing to take risks. He once held a show where the clothing was designed as furniture! The models came on stage, climbed into the furniture and walked off the stage wearing the chairs and tables as dresses and skirts.
As crazy as this sounds, the reviews of the show were astounding and he won Designer of the Year as a result.
He then went on to do a show where the clothing came from him drawing sketches while blindfolded!
I then surfed for some critical theory writing on fashion. Since Hussein was influenced by Derrida, I looked for something from him on fashion, but that was a bust. I googled Barthes and found something from him on fashion. I cut and pasted that into the story and after looking at it for awhile, began to rewrite, rearrange and make Barthes words into my own. I mixed it in with the writing I already had and by the time I was done, all that was left of Barthes were a few key concepts (Super-code) and not much else.
I brought in some of the historical incidents about Hussein (the detail of him winning an award for having a show with the critics blindfolded came from the collection he made while blindfolded -- and the character's name of Saddam Charlatan is based upon Hussein Chalayan).
By the end of all this work, Midnight had become 7 AM... my piece was getting much too long to put onto my blog and I wasn't even done.
Decision 2: It semeed the wisest course was to post it in parts. This meant I had to artificially insert a climax at the end of the first part. This took another half an hour to do.
I then went to bed and got about 3 hours sleep before going to work, still unsure how I would end the piece that night...
To be Continued...
I just finshed working on a short story and the writing of it involved some decisions that I think are an interesting illumination into the writing process.
I'm going to try to write this so reading my story won't be necessary... but if you do want to read it and don't want anything spoiled in advance, you can find the story on my blog. I have linked each part at the start of each section. This section deals with part 1 of the story, so the link to part one is below.
Click here for part one.
It began with a little one page writing exercise I did a few months ago. I was freewriting and for whatever reason, wrote a little piece going behind the scenes of a fashion show. I let it sit for a while and then came back to it, thought it would be easy to whip out and post on my blog, so I took it from my writing journal and retyped it into Word.
Decision 1: looking at the piece, I felt it needed a main character to view the action behind the scenes. I felt the designer himself would be the strongest choice. Problem was, I had no idea who the character would be, just the idea of what he did for a living.
So I stopped looking at the Word document in front of me and got onto the internet to do some quick surfing for information.
I googeled "Strangest Fashion Shows in History" and after poking around, came upon the designer "Hussein Chalayan".
Hussein was a fashion prodigy who won Designer of the year fresh out of Art school. As a designer, he is as liable to take inspiration from architecture or critical theory, as from fashion history. He is quite bold yet simple in his designs and is willing to take risks. He once held a show where the clothing was designed as furniture! The models came on stage, climbed into the furniture and walked off the stage wearing the chairs and tables as dresses and skirts.
As crazy as this sounds, the reviews of the show were astounding and he won Designer of the Year as a result.
He then went on to do a show where the clothing came from him drawing sketches while blindfolded!
I then surfed for some critical theory writing on fashion. Since Hussein was influenced by Derrida, I looked for something from him on fashion, but that was a bust. I googled Barthes and found something from him on fashion. I cut and pasted that into the story and after looking at it for awhile, began to rewrite, rearrange and make Barthes words into my own. I mixed it in with the writing I already had and by the time I was done, all that was left of Barthes were a few key concepts (Super-code) and not much else.
I brought in some of the historical incidents about Hussein (the detail of him winning an award for having a show with the critics blindfolded came from the collection he made while blindfolded -- and the character's name of Saddam Charlatan is based upon Hussein Chalayan).
By the end of all this work, Midnight had become 7 AM... my piece was getting much too long to put onto my blog and I wasn't even done.
Decision 2: It semeed the wisest course was to post it in parts. This meant I had to artificially insert a climax at the end of the first part. This took another half an hour to do.
I then went to bed and got about 3 hours sleep before going to work, still unsure how I would end the piece that night...
To be Continued...
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