Reading Books Can Help You Write Books – and Fix Story Problems

 

Photo credit: Unknown creator on Pixabay

 

When I was a kid, I wanted to be one thing when I grew up: An astronaut. And I planned to get there by first going into the Air Force. With this plan in place, I threw myself into learning everything I could about space and jets. My parents probably thought it was cute that I was reading books about jets. But then I became deaf at age 13 and there went my plans to join the Air Force and become an astronaut. Bummer.

 

But I never lost my love for either of those things. But nowadays, my fascination has more to do with space and not jets.

 

I couldn’t travel into space in real life, but as a writer, I could write about these subjects. Not only this, I could write stories of characters traveling through space. I’ve written a children’s book with just such a character, and I plan to submit it in the near future.

 

Meanwhile, I’m writing short stories and poems about outer space, objects in space, and space travel. I even have a poem about something related to a phenomenon discovered in space in my poetry book, Watch This Space (and, no, the “Space” in the book’s title is not a reference to outer space, though when I think about it now, I find it ironic that I wrote a poem about something occurring in space that was discovered JUST from observing space!).

 

One short story I have written, however, left me doubtful about it for a while there. I knew it needed work, but I couldn’t figure out what kind of work it needed, exactly.

 

I got the idea to write this story after reading the science fiction novel Obsidian by Bryan W. Alaspa. A character in that story, an astronaut, thinks about a myth he read that might have something to do with an episode his crew member was going through. I was so fascinated by this myth, that I asked myself one of the most common questions that writers ask to get ideas: “What if?”

 

I decided to explore the possibility of this myth being true in a story! It’s a science fiction story, but I wasn’t happy with the first draft. It just fell short. I wrote it as a parody story in response to a submission call. But when I reread their guidelines and saw the prerequisite “NO ALIENS!” I rewrote the story as a regular sci-fi story and figured it was at least passable. Still, I wasn’t happy with it, so I just put it away for a while, figuring I would go back to it later.

 

I have tinkered with that story ever since as ideas came to me, but nothing really came out of it.

 

Then I was added to an anthology that had a theme which I could fit into this story.

 

And, thankfully, the guidelines didn’t state that they didn’t want stories with aliens. That meant I could submit this story!

 

But I needed to fix it first.

 

The first thing I did was revise the story so that it fit with the anthology’s theme.

 

But even after doing this, I STILL needed to figure out a better ending for the story! The original ending was just too “meh.” And it didn’t really offer any ideas on what happened to my characters.

 

I let the story sit again, deciding to relegate this problem to that “workshop” in my mind.

 

Then I started reading the novel The Martian by Andy Weir. I was sorting through ebooks available to read on my Libby app one day and, remembering how much we loved the movie, I decided to start reading the novel.

 

And reading that novel has helped me figure out how to fix the ending of my story!

 

Like Mark in The Martian, my character is stranded on a planet. He has no way to get back to the shuttle hovering in orbit, and radio communication was destroyed by the hostile aliens he and his crew member were ambushed by. Also like Mark, my character is an engineer. So reading about Mark’s train of thought and actions to figure out how to stay alive on Mars until he is rescued gave me an idea: My character, who is also an engineer, needs to be doing the same thing! Not surrendering to the aliens holding him captive, but figuring out a way to escape and notifying his crew member on the shuttle that he needs to be rescued!

 

With this knowledge, I was able to once again approach revisions of my short story with a fresh perspective. The revisions are going well so far. I’m still reading The Martian, and it continues to inform and inspire me about the thought processes my character should have as an astronaut who is also an engineer. The novel is amazing, and I am glad it has helped me to figure out just what kind of ending my short story needs.