Vylar Kaftan wrote an interesting post about stories that are three sentences off. I was going to leave her a nice comment, but the server she’s hosted on ate one comment, and didn’t seem to work when I tried to post another. So instead I’m writing this post, and maybe the pingback will work. (After meeting her husband Shannon and recognizing him as a fellow Linux geek with a tiny laptop that was teh k00l, I suspect that her site is hosted on a server in their garage. Shannon: get some more CPU and/or bandwidth on that baby.)

Do you ever write a story, and have it ALMOST working–but it’s three sentences off?

Approximately three sentences, of course. Might be a few more or less. Might be sentences you need to add, delete, change, or some combination of the above. But those tiny changes make all the difference.

Yes. This happens to me all the time. However, I am lazier, or perhaps more impatient than Vy. If I get to that point and I can’t see what the fix is, I’m sorely tempted to say “What the hell”, slap it in an envelope, and send it on its way. This is a terrible idea. What I really should do is set it aside for a few days and come back to it later. That usually gives me the perspective to see what’s wrong, or (more likely) gives me the perspective to see dozens of other things that are wrong.

Although I successfully evaded that problem with my two most recent subs, as both Lights and Confession of Adrianna Belle had problems in their endings that I did eventually fix. I think I’m perfectly happy with each of them at present.