I’ve been writing a short story entitled Temporal Correction. In it’s original form, it was 7k+ words, which is the longest short story I have ever written. And the last scene wasn’t working as I want
I edited and tweaked. It still wasn’t working. The scene is mostly dialog between two people. It felt like an infodump, yet it didn’t contain any as-you-know-Bob dialog. And I spent a lot of time accomplishing a less than interesting ending.
After evaluating it, I concluded the dialog was forced, anything but organic.
I could try to continue working with what I had. Perhaps I could whip it into shape. Or I could scrap the scene, 2.1k words, and start over.
The solution was far closer to the later than the former. I scraped the scene, though I listed the points covered by it. I outlined a new scene, mapping out the dialog before taking a stab at writing a complete scene.
I believe you can’t edit a blank page. I also believe that, at times, the best choice is addition through subtraction. We’ll see if I chose the correct path.
I’m an author living in northern Virginia with a wife and a cat. In the late ’80s, I worked on the International Space Station project. I recently retired from managing a group of software engineers to focus on writing science fiction and speculative fiction. Learn more.