What is TECW?

As part of the Technology-Enhanced Creative Writing module, my fellow classmates and I are temporarily throwing away our teacher identities and becoming fully-fledged writers! It’s terribly exciting and terrifying at the same time. Exciting to be doing something new, fun and creative. Terrifying because I am suddenly not quite sure if I have anything of fictional value to say, or write down, nor have others read.

My CW method

Terrifying or not, in a moment of madness, and with full support from my trusty friends Cambridge English Dictionary and Thesaurus.com, and following a self-imposed theme of contrasting light and dark, I managed to pull enough adjectives together to write something which, to the naked eye, looked like a short story.

Feedback on my Short Story – Provocations of Light

At the beginning of the week, my tutor and classmates gave me some feedback on the story. It seems that the title was a crowd-pleaser, drawing the readers attention, and the story itself was described as sci-fi, mysterious, scary and a future dystopia. I’m very happy with all of those observations, as I was with their appreciation of how I tried to show, and not tell, revealing things gradually, purposefully intriguing and confusing, at the same time.

Questions Arising

– Who is the ‘gloomy figure’? Who are the protagonists?

– What’s the back story? (Something bad has happened, why is she there?)

– Have they survived something?

– Whose story is this?

– Who bound the creature? Why is it bound?

– What’s behind the door?

– Where are they?

My Reflections

Despite feeling I had penned a story of brilliance, the questions above prove that my classmates were left more bewildered than amazed! So I have a lot of work to do if want this story to be enjoyed, without a million questions popping into the head of the reader. In my next draft I need to decide if the story is about the woman, of it is about the creature. Readers like a character they can identify with, preferably going on a journey of self-discovery and change. It’s important to define the journey of the character. If I am able to assign one narrator to the story, I think that will help add clarity to an otherwise confusing situation. Perhaps it would be better to see everything through the eyes of the woman.

I also need to provide some concrete details, something for the reader to hold on to, in order to explain where the protagonist is and what is she doing there. For example, perhaps, previously she has gone through something bad in the past and wants to show courage. In terms of the setting, some macro-details are missing. Perhaps they are on a planet, abandoned, waiting for someone. Regarding the creature I need to explain if the creature is asleep or drugged and why it is bound.

The truth is, the reason why I am not able to immediately answer these questions is because that piece of work was a whole. As in, I just wrote it, and that was the beginning and the end of the story. It was not that I had a bigger story in mind, and I simply penned a small part of it for my classmates. That was it, in it’s entirity. So now I have to dig deep again to get my creative juices flowing and flesh this story out without leaving the reader with too many questions forming in their minds.

Have you read my first draft? Please feel free to take a look and give your feedback!