When I started this story I was going in a completely different direction but I felt it wasn’t going to work for this short story. I don’t want to give it away because I plan to use the idea in the future maybe with another short story or something else entirely. The idea of using a found diary to tell the story was one thing I planned on using for this short story and sticking to that, it restricted what type of story I could tell. My stubbornness of changing it only ruined the story completely.
One thing I did was seem to have put too much emphasis on Shangri La itself and not the character. That is what I find the big weakness about the story. I was treating the city as a character itself, but that character wasn’t holding the story up but dragging it down. I used quite a bit of diary entries describing the city itself but it wasn’t working towards any story. Once I realised this and changed directions it worked a little better. Yet it still failed, as I only have the one real character and no real conflict. Bouncing off the rails I tried to save it with another major edit and rewrite. Still I was coming out with a bad story. So I live and learn, hoping the next story will work much better.
Colin Enquist
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