When do you give up?

EternallyStressed said:

Hello All,

I wrote a story quite a while ago which simply flowed onto the paper (well computer) in pretty much a finished form. I fettled it and cajoled it into what I consider a good story before showing it to a few people.
Well the comments ranged from "a great start to a novel but needs a lot more work" to "short and emotional. Perfect".
At 2150 words it is on the shorter side and I had hoped to get it up to 4000 words but whatever I do it just seems to take away from the impact of the story. It feels like fluff.
I decided to leave it for a while to come back to, but every time I have failed to improve upon the story.
So to the question. When do you give up on a story and admit that it is what it is?

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If that's as far as you can go, then shelve it and go on to something else. Since I haven't read the story I have nothing to go on, but from my own experience if I wrote something (I write only full-length novels) and I couldn't improve it, then I'd shelve it and start something else.

Einstein's theory of insanity is at play here, but really, you're the only one who can judge when to send your story on to a publisher and say "that's the best I've got" or when to lengthen it or when to shelve it. JMO...

I'm inclined to agree here. You might need to walk away from this problem and start thinking about something else. I write a lot of short stories (ALOT) mainly for myself and my own fun.

There are concepts that I started to write about several years ago which at that time couldn't go any further. But after setting them aside and moving on with other projects those shelved concepts see new light. What didn't work for one story worked well with another. Or the shelved concept can be blended in as a whole seamlessly with a new concept.

But as I'm AWs official idiot ... feel free to ignore

Yep Iz officialz Edeot.(check with MAC and some of the others on this she and they will verify) .

If it's finished, it's finished, at whatever length. Don't force-feed it more words. You can always write another story that's longer!!

EternallyStressed said:

Hello All,

I wrote a story quite a while ago which simply flowed onto the paper (well computer) in pretty much a finished form. I fettled it and cajoled it into what I consider a good story before showing it to a few people.
Well the comments ranged from "a great start to a novel but needs a lot more work" to "short and emotional. Perfect".
At 2150 words it is on the shorter side and I had hoped to get it up to 4000 words but whatever I do it just seems to take away from the impact of the story. It feels like fluff.
I decided to leave it for a while to come back to, but every time I have failed to improve upon the story.
So to the question. When do you give up on a story and admit that it is what it is?

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I don't see anything to give up on in your case. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with a 2,150 word story, and no reason to make it long, unless you want to submit it to a particular magazine that wants longer stories. 2,000 word stories sell very well.

As for the comments, screw them. How many hundred stories that those people sold in the same genre?

If you like the story the way it is, then start submitting it. Listen to beta readers, and chances are you'll be asking the same questions twenty years from now. If you shelve it, you;re nutty as a fruit cake. Submit it, and see what editors have to say. A lot of editors. There is no other way to know how good or how bad a short story is.

When I feel like I'm moving sideways instead of forwards. But I don't consider it "giving up." Just "finishing."

If it's done, it's done. Flash fiction is perfectly acceptable.

If you still have doubts, consider getting up to 50 posts and sharing it in share you work. Perhaps someone will say something that resonates and gives you direction for improving it. Perhaps you'll discover it's done.

"Give up" isn't an option for me.

"Indefinitely shelved" can happen, but there's no reason for me to presume I'll never, ever go back to the story someday.

I'll give up on a story once I lose motivation to improve it and move on to another project that does motivate me. Simple enough answer.

Of those 2,000 words you were going to add, how many of them do you need? If the answer is anything but, 'All of them,' then the story's finished and you should high-five yourself.

spikeman4444 said:

I'll give up on a story once I lose motivation to improve it and move on to another project that does motivate me. Simple enough answer.

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How has that worked out for you where sales are concerned?

I'm inclined to think from the existing beta comments that it's finished.

"Short and emotional, perfect" says to me that it teased the right reaction out of the right readers. (Not everyone is your reader.)

"Needs more" kinda implies, in light of the above, that some readers don't entirely "get it". They may not be your readers.

Rely less on betas. Trust your own judgement. If a story feels done to you send it off and begin on another. To me, a story is done when it's solid. Doesn't have to be perfect. Also when it has a chance of being pub'd. Otherwise what's the point? That's just my own perspective of course. Lots of different aims writers can have.

Does it matter if some people don't like it, as long as some people do? If you're aiming at a 100% approval rating from the feedback, that's never going to happen. Which doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the story. Some people just won't like it, whatever you do to it. It doesn't resonate with them for whatever reason. But that's okay, that's the case for all stories.

By all means get some more opinions on it and see if that does inspire any changes - because of course you're right that someone else can see something you can't which will show you the path forward. But if at this point you don't have any feeling of there being something fundamentally wrong with the story, you like it, you can't see what changes you can make at this point to improve it, then call it finished and do what you're going to do with it, submission, self-publishing, whatever.

Jamesaritchie said:

How has that worked out for you where sales are concerned?

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Well that all depends on what your definition of sales is. If you are meaning sales in terms of book sales, then not well. If, however you mean something else entirely for no reason at all, then whose to say? Indeed...

If it's not good enough for me, I never give up, except in one scenario. If I stop caring about the characters, then the story's over. I'll end it in the middle of nowhere and that'll be that. No one will ever read it. I probably won't even ever read it. I just assume that if I don't care about the characters, I can't make anyone else care about them, either.

I would like to second the advice to send it out. That's not 'giving up.' What do you have to lose? Email submissions don't even cost anything.