Today, I decided to share a brief history of one of my short stories, Silver Duck. The whole story is in Aka (That story collection already on my Smashwords account), but here's a small sample for those interested:
Rem noticed my shot of vodka, "Hey, what are you drinking
anyway?"
I smiled, "Silver Duck, the absolute
best alcoholic beverage of all time. Any
flavor will do for me, but the regular is what I’ll handle for now."
"Cool," Rem smiled back, "I
generally prefer scotch, but vodka's good too,” He called over to the bartender
and asked for a Silver Duck as well. It didn’t take long for said bartender to
make another shot of God’s tears, and the drink was quickly handed to the suave
dude sitting next to me.
He then
turned back to me and gave me what I think was supposed to be a flirtatious
smile but really just a wide grin with a cockeye, “Your dress looks nice,
Sallie.”
"Thanks," I replied, “it’s made
from the worst demons from hell, which is why it’s so black like their souls. I
guess they made your jacket out of it too.”
Which was true. Rem was wearing a jacket
that was so dark, it was probably made from that “blacker black” some
scientists made.
He glared at
my eyes for a second and quietly nodded his head before taking a sip of his
drink, “Thanks…” He said.
This piece actually started out as a fanfiction about 4 years ago. Yeah, this was a fanfiction.
It was a fanfiction for the video game Kingdom Hearts (Still a great series!) called "One Night in Apartment 307" or something. Unfortunately, I have no idea where the notebook I wrote that fanfiction in is, but from what I remember, it was about the character Xion moving back with her brother and his fiancee (Guess who?) and having to attend a party for these twins (Yes, Roxas and Ventus were twins in this story. Deal with it.), with Xion falling for one of the twins. It was bland, it was stereotypical... it was a pretty average fanfiction. I never completed it, though (I only got about halfway through before I gave up).
I didn't touch it again until a year later, when I was applying for this creative writing program. I needed one more story to add to my resume, and I was looking through my old work for ideas, I then came across my old fanfiction and thought it was a good idea to rework it into a slightly more mature story. Of course, the names were changed first (Xion to Xena, Roxas to Rem, Kairi to Kathy, etc.), and then some of the story points. I added the Silver Duck to the mix, and it became a confusing story about a down-on-her-luck girl and the brother of her coworker getting too drunk to probably even be alive with one of the weirdest and most unrelated ending I've ever written.
I didn't get accepted into the program. However, my writing was pretty poo back then so I don't really blame them.
I once again didn't touch the story until a few months ago, when I read it and thought it could be vastly improved. So, next thing you know, I renamed Xena to Sallie and actually gave the girl a personality; the drinking became more reasonable; some of the worthless details were removed; the ending became less confusing.
It became a whole lot easier and more fun to read.
(At least in my opinion).
So yeah... I really just wanted to discuss the interesting history of one of my stories today. From fanfiction to shitty story to a better short story I can actually sell.
Bye for now! :)
Weirdly enough, "One Night in Apartment 307" is probably not the worst fanfiction I've written... but that cavern of stories I've disowned will be shared another day.
