It came to me in a dream
Daily Writing Practice #12: 12 November 2023 & Short Form Fiction
I nearly wrote something from my Dragonball Z fanfiction today; I’ve been reading the original Dragonball manga over the last couple of days and while my fic doesn’t really have anything to do with that era of the franchise, I am getting an idea of certain elements of the worldbuilding.
What I did write today was this. I took a pretty literal interpretation of this image to construct it. Like yesterday, though, I didn’t really find my feet until part way in. Then it became a bit of a metaphor. I don’t like how not subtle it is, but on editing, I will try to smooth that out a bit. But that won’t be for a while. Part of my style is to revisit work after about a few months. Just so I have time to forget it.
Editing is something I struggle with. I have a hard time revisiting my own work as it is, and if I’m sitting down to revise something (like I did with my short form this week) I end up not changing a lot. I’ll change some wording at the start to make it work better with the ending, rephrase some clunky drafting and correct grammar and spelling, but I don’t (usually) touch the plot or the dialogue - unless it’s overtly bad. But that’s my other problem - am I right when I think something is good or bad? Do readers agree with me when I say “this is terrible?”
Questions for later, I guess. Right now I want to talk about A Man and his Fish, which I wrote earlier in the year, but which is an older story that I tried to write back in the mid 00s.
I had a dream, you see, and in this dream there was a man who spent his life in an armchair reading the newspaper and he had a pet goldfish who lived in the fridge. This would have been around the same time as American Dad was premiering, so there may be a subconscious connection, but I only realised that later as I didn’t get into that show until well after.
In my original story, the man and his fish were joined by two young men (who I will introduce to you sometime in the future) who need a place to live. Lo and behold the man (who is Burt in my story) has rooms to spare. Thus, shenanigans.
I’ve altered the story somewhat since my dream, but the general concept hasn’t changed. If you read my piece here you will see a failed attempt at advancing Burts character. I have a concept of what I want to happend to him and while it isnt dissimilar to that piece, it needs to be different. I think I spoke about that in the corresponding Substack. To be honest, that is where my head has been lately. Trying to jank out another way of getting Burt to where he needs to be before he meets the other characters. Ill get there, I suppose.
Anyway, poor time management means I need to go.
Todays daily piece took 1h20 and consists of 1781 words.
A Man and his Fish was originally written on the 7th of February 2023 and consisted of 1187 words, it has been edited and revised to a count of 1237 and is part of a larger sequence called The Project.