Hi, Caffeine! I really love your short stories, and as short stories are not something I'm not very good at right now, I thought I'd ask a question that's been on my mind. Do you usually know the "twist"--or the ending--of a short story when you start it? Is it more of an exploration of a concept to see where it goes, or do you begin with a plot in mind? Thanks for being you!!
Thank you! I try to be me as often as possible these days and have been much more relaxed because of it!
As for your question--both! Sometimes I’m so enamored with a world idea that I just want to explore it. I pick an arbitrary character and have them navigate the “world” or “idea” and about halfway through setting everything up I decide on the twist!
Examples of this include Persephone (X), I had no idea vampires were real (X), and Jason and Gilbert (X), and Pet Monsters (X)
But there are other stories that I know the twist when I start! But I tend to apply the twist aspect after the idea if that makes sense.
Like in my recent Rumpelstiltskin (X) story, the prompt said that you don’t know your friend’s name. So I thought that the friend might be Rumpelstiltskin (for obvious reasons) and I went and read the original tale again. The original tale is a bit of a twist so I tried to incorporate that into my modern day version!
so it’s really two different ways to approach a story! The first is to just see where your characters take you, the second is to see how you have to set up the story for The Moment™!
