Course Corrections

Over the course of the Quirky Muffin so far I've done quite a few stories. 'Night Trials' and 'Triangles' both came to an end, if only a chapter end in the second case, and they went through the spontaneous serialisation format in radically different ways. As said elsewhere, 'Night Trials' dived into a whole that it never quite recovered from, even with some 'destroy the corner we've painted ourselves into' atom bomb writing. 'Triangles' never had a problem, just lulls as time was pumped in to the narrative to allow things to happen at a reasonable rate.

The practice here at the Quirky Muffin seems to have settled down quite nicely. We begin a story quite spontaneously, and then a rough outline forms for the story after writing two or three episodes and deciding what is interesting and what is not. This worked fairly well for 'Night Trials' and very well for 'Triangles', but 'The Disappearance' has rather foundered on the rocks. In essence what has happened with 'The Disappearance' is that the whole thing was build on a gag, a plain chocolate digestive detective, and that that and the opening of the story have now both been rather left behind. The story is trapped being neither one thing nor the other.

Having begun, it seems almost compulsory to finish, but how do you steer something back towards a narrative that was built on a gag? Ultimately you end up doing two things: Finishing the serial as it stands while talking yourself out of tight spots, while also planning for the compiled short story that must follow. Eventually all of these stories, no matter how dull or pedestrian, will be compiled into revised and unserialised versions. Therein shall lie half the fun: In the challenge of converting these exercises in ingenuity into wholes hopefully greater than the sums of their parts.

Stories will continue in the Quirky Muffin, even as the ideas for new ones get used up. Just three days ago I had an idea for something truly abstract which will fill one of the slots once 'The Disappearance', 'The Glove' or 'Oneiromancy' finally come to a chapter break or natural terminus. 'The Glove' is a natural example of a story starting and then the framework coming into place only after a large amount of forceful contemplation, while 'Oneiromancy' just jumped out fully formed one day. Out of them all, the more abstract tales are easily the most fun. 'Oneiromancy', 'Triangles' and the next story 'Wordspace' will all almost write themselves into and out of the corners that are part and parcel of serialised nonsense. I think 'Wordspace' will go down very well indeed.

But what next for 'The Disappearance'? There's a contradiction to settle, a cul-de-sac to back out of gracefully, and the question of what the story is really about to ask. The framework fell away weeks ago, and now the only thing to do is print out the whole thing, deconstruct it, make a diagram and then throw things at it until something sticks. The Plain Chocolate Digestive Detective will reach the end of his story, the time singularity will presumably be averted, and all that smuggling will surely be abated. We don't need a miracle, we just need biscuits.

O.