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Exercise #180: Craft
Posted 10/6/06
Step three of our five-month journey! For those who missed the first two installments, we’re going to go from idea to submitting for publication with the same piece of work. Over these three months (Craft exercises are the first Friday), we will 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. Exercise #175 was the next step, creating a first rough draft.
Guidelines for these Craft exercises:
* Use the same piece throughout. We may 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!)
We’re at Picky-Picky. I’m disappointed that some of you have chosen to disregard the guidelines for these exercises, both in posting and in critiquing. When writing for a particular market, you will be required to meet their specifications. If they will only accept 500 to 1,000 words, your piece cannot be at 1,011 because you couldn’t find 11 more words to cut. While most of The Desk Drawer’s exercises aren’t written in stone (silicon and silver, aren’t we?), I expect you to take these five Craft exercises seriously, and treat the guidelines for them as if you were following a publisher’s guidelines. I applaud those of you who are following the rules; I know it’s been hard!
Have you been working on your story and implementing the feedback you’ve received? Good! If not, it’s not too late. Rewrite your draft. Edit it for spelling, grammar, and consistency. Utilize any remarks from your critiques which you think are applicable.
For this exercise, post no more than 500 words (no cheating) of your story. If possible, use a section which was included in your first draft submission from Exercise #175. For critiquers, pretend you're an editor from the chosen market. Would you choose this for the anthology you're putting together? Do a line-by-line critique if possible, giving your “editor” thoughts after each line. (Yes, this is hard to do.)
Since we’re going for a particular market and markets have guidelines, I again ask that you NOT critique any SUB which has more than 500 words.
Word limit: 500
Please use the subject line
SUB: Exercise #180/yourname
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