Two Short Stories for the Upcoming Anthology Are Written
As of this morning, I completed the second short story in the first Barbarians of the Storm anthology.
I still need to do the first round of proofreading and editing, but I should actually have that done today.
This second story was a reworking of a novel idea I had several years back. I had the thing completely outlined and I feel like that made this a much harder story to craft than the much longer first one I did, which was all from scratch.
In fact, this story, which is currently at 28 pages, took just as long to write as the first story, which is at 84 pages.
There are other old ideas and plot outlines that I have that I want to rework but I think going forward, I’m going to take those concepts and just start over with them in mind and see where it takes me.
That being said, this second story isn’t just a simple rehash of the one I already outlined. I followed the same general beats and plot but after getting it through the first act, I threw the outline out and let the story drive itself, knowing what the end point needed to be.
Also, I had an idea for telling the tale of how two characters from the book series met. The story I ended up reworking was perfect for what I wanted to achieve. So, ultimately, the two things were combined and I’m pretty happy with the end result.
I’m going to start work on the third tale next week. I’ll start plotting it out over the weekend and will hopefully be ready to attack the first chapter on Monday morning.
Although, after this story, I feel like my brain needs a bit of a rest.