Writing my short story was engaging and
enjoyable. I found certain devices we learned in the memoir unit
such as how dialogue can work effectively, and where to use present
and past tenses were extremely helpful in this unit as well. The most
challenging aspect of writing the short story was deciding how much
detail to include. It was hard to draw the line between what was
essential in filling in the holes of the story, from what was just
minor detail. In the end I cut a lot of what I had written out, and I
found it to be a lot better after doing so. Still, I think a bit more
could have been edited out. I enjoyed writing the story a lot, and I
liked the idea for it, although in some parts I found it difficult to
fully put my vision on paper, especially the parts of dialogue
between the protagonist and burglar. Most of the short stories I like
are written in first person perspective. In first person narration,
the characters recount the events in their own voice (often with an
ambiguous opinion behind it), allowing the reader to question the
story's credibility and to develop knowledge of the character that
is more intuitive. I find the writing in short stories told in first
person narration is very meticulous and difficult because the author
is trying to convey the opinion of the narrator in every sentence
without contradicting themselves. Finally, when a short story is
written in first person you get a very vivid idea of the epiphany the
character experiences, I like being able to see the character's
approach and often times relate to it and sharing the epiphany.
Overall I thought my story had a good basic idea to it. However, it
lacked some explanation and the writing was a little shaky in parts.
I'm still getting used to switching between the past and present
tenses in order to apply suspense to certain parts of the story, and
I'm not entirely certain I did an accurate job of this. Naming my
work also seems to be a recurring struggle for me, next time I will
have to put more thought into it. What I did like about my story was
the symbol of the house, and the intro which was a flashback to the
climax. Ultimately, writing the short story was difficult, but very
fun. I will definitely try it again.
