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Exercise #175: Craft
Posted 9/1/06
Step two of our five-month journey! For those who missed the first installment, we’re going to go from idea to submitting for publication with the same piece of work. Over these four months (Craft exercises are the first Friday), we will draft a story, revise our story, polish our story, and finally, send it off for possible publication. Feel free to participate in whichever of these (none, some, all) you want. Exercise #171 was the beginning, picking our market and coming up with our story idea.
Guidelines for these Craft exercises:
* Use the same piece throughout. We will only be asking for a 500 word section when you post for critique, but your finished piece will not be limited to 500 words.
* Follow the instructions carefully. When we say “without proofreading” we mean it, and the word limit will vary.
* Expect to send your finished piece to your chosen market in December or January.
The map for our journey (the five Ps):
* August is Plotting (see below for details)
* September is Primary Draft
* October is Picky-Picky
* November is Polish (those of you expecting to participate in this year’s NaNoWriMo may move this one and the next one into the following month)
* December is Publish (hopefully!)
Ready?
We’re at Primary Draft. Have you been working on your story? If you have, you’re in luck because you’ll already have today’s work done. If not, no fears; you have until we get to the third installment to send in your Exercise #175.
For this exercise, post no more than 500 words of your first-draft story. Also for this exercise (and this exercise only!), you’re not required to proof-read or check the spelling. Send it in raw! For critiquers, please ignore spelling, formatting, and grammar. Concentrate on whether the story segment sings to you. Does it have promise? Does the plot work? Are the characters believable? Do you wish it was cleaned up so you could really read it? :-)
Since we’re going for a particular market and markets have guidelines, I also ask that you NOT critique any SUB which has more than 500 words. As writers, we need to be able to follow a publisher’s rules.
Word limit: 500
Please use the subject line
SUB: Exercise #175/yourname
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