A number of years ago, one of my writer friends mentioned a story concept that she wanted to share with me.  She wondered what would come of a Lovecraft-inspired horror story in which the protagonist was a high school girl who had just recently moved to a new town.  I immediately latched onto the idea.  We spent a few hours bouncing ideas back and forth, and at the end of our brainstorm session I asked whether she would like to collaborate with me on the project.  She said yes.

I started writing material for the story, occasionally ignoring school work that I really should have been doing at the time.  I soon had a great deal of (questionably valuable) material to share with her, but she’d fallen into a work-hole and been unable to claw her way out.  She ceded the project to me, though we continued to share our thoughts on it.

Fast forward a few years: after finishing my thesis, graduating, and getting back into the swing of writing for a while, I dust off my old drafts of this nascent YA horror novel and get some other people to take a look.  The drafts are, to put it figuratively, mostly made of poo.  I’m now aware of the fact that I have little idea of how to write a teenaged female narrator, which makes looking at my past struggles all the more painful.  But there are some pieces that seem like they still hold some value.  The concept and the basic story beats still seem basically solid, and the story clearly has an excellent ramp up to the climax.  Now the time has come to strip the piece down to its bare bones and tinker with it for a while.  Oh, and write a variety of new attempts at a teenaged female narrator, while reading as many pieces with teenaged female narrators as I can (preferably from the right genres).

In case you’re wondering where this is going, yes, I’ve got some material to share with you today.

Continue reading →