On one rejection of “Sarimanok Feather” I received the following feedback: “I found the world interesting but the story was slow in building tension for my tastes.”
After some thought, I decided the story needed some drastic changes in order to get at the core of the story. I realized that I was introducing a milieu story, when in fact, this story is a character story. So I needed to cut down on the interesting description and focus on what my character really wanted in her life.
I ended up completely cutting the first 800 words of the story (a real darling) and completely reworked the ending. I think the story is more satisfying now, but probably needs some touchups in the new scenes. I’m not sure if that will be a minor or major effort, so I’ll let it sit so I can look at it again with fresh eyes.
- Started January 30
- Finished February 3
- 2,023 words
- 62% the size of v 3.1
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