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pineislandI don't usually annotate short stories but I read this one - "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island" - weeks ago and I can't stop thinking about it.
I love found fiction. (My one piece of published short fiction is told in a series of archived LJ posts and comments.) I've tried to write variations on annotated bibliographies and recommended reading lists - like, I don't know, this School Library Journal professional summer reading list but for a world where children keep disappearing through magic doors. Despite the title, only the last poem in Annotated Bibliography of a Haunting has a bibliography. (The citations are real, tho, which is something I'm proud of.)
My problem, I think, is that the stories I've written (other than "~if the sky can crack~") don't tell a story. They build a world but there's no plot. "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island" uses the form very well - the excerpts are written very realistically re: tone and style - and tells a story and is a commentary on colonialism.
I think I've gotten the form down… but I don't have a story or something to say.
I love found fiction. (My one piece of published short fiction is told in a series of archived LJ posts and comments.) I've tried to write variations on annotated bibliographies and recommended reading lists - like, I don't know, this School Library Journal professional summer reading list but for a world where children keep disappearing through magic doors. Despite the title, only the last poem in Annotated Bibliography of a Haunting has a bibliography. (The citations are real, tho, which is something I'm proud of.)
My problem, I think, is that the stories I've written (other than "~if the sky can crack~") don't tell a story. They build a world but there's no plot. "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island" uses the form very well - the excerpts are written very realistically re: tone and style - and tells a story and is a commentary on colonialism.
I think I've gotten the form down… but I don't have a story or something to say.
