Living in the Moment

by Laura Hardgrave

I don’t care what anyone says—writing awesome, short speculative fiction stories is hard. Writing short fiction is a challenge in itself, but when you add in that lonesome planet out in the middle of nowhere, that new tech that needs thorough descriptions, or that cool fantasy race that popped into your dreams one night that’s when the real fun begins. Every word in a short story must be carefully crafted and have a purpose. If there’s no purpose for a line of dialog or that interesting description, both are best left on the chopping block. That’s tough when you’re describing things no one’s ever read about.

That’s also one of the reasons why science fiction and fantasy short stories are so fun to write (and read!). That challenge kind of calls to us and chants an eerie tune, daring us to fully flesh out new worlds, characters, plots, conflicts, emotions, and deeper, resonating meanings that shine in as little words as possible. We have to be extremely delicate when choosing what we say and how we say it. It’s all in the details. When readers are able to read a paragraph and get a true sense of where the main character is, what he/she is feeling, and where the risks of the story lie, that’s more than just great storytelling—that’s magic.

I think that’s why I tend to write my short fiction in what I call moments. We all have our own methods, of course, but I like to guide my short fiction using character snapshots that are made of emotions. One scene may be driven by my main character’s intense curiosity. I’ll allow that character to have a moment with his/her sense of curiosity, then I’ll take the emotion one step further and move the plot forward while keeping my character’s frame of mind as the driving force. If a word, description, or line of dialog doesn’t make sense for that emotional snapshot, it will generally get omitted or saved for another moment.

Once the plot’s moved forward enough to force a change in the emotional snapshot, I’ll shift gears and form a new moment in my mind. These moments usually surface as full-scale images that will also provide the details of what imagery and scenery I describe. Since speculative fiction short story descriptions need to especially be tight, I find this method also helps keep my tendency to go overboard with descriptions down (what can I say—I like the shinies).

I may want to describe how gorgeous that duo-moon sunrise looks, but my main character? Oh, no. She’s far too busy running from a herd of police droids. She may notice the way a single ray of sun reflects off her shuttle in the distance, but that’s about it. And that’ll be the line of description that gets mentioned. If I’m ever in doubt of what to say, I stare into the eyes of my character’s emotional moment and instantly find my answer. It works well. When my characters cooperate, that is. Some characters are prone to harebrained ideas more than others. Gotta keep an eye on those!

Laura Hardgrave is an MMORPG video game journalist by day and a LGBT speculative fiction author by night. She kind of frantically dives back and forth between writing short stories and novel-length fiction. She’s currently working on a series of fantasy novels with a huge host of characters and a bit of inter-dimensional travel.

Learn more about Laura on her blog or follow her on Twitter.