Writing Reflections: Xerxes

Happy Saturday once again! This week, I noticed that a new batch of challenges was released here on Vocal. In particular, one that caught my eye was the Steal From Yourself Challenge. For those of you who haven’t seen this challenge yet, here’s the prompt:

Return to something you wrote years ago and use one idea, image, character, or line from it to create something entirely new.

It's time to dig through your old writing and steal something.

Find a story you abandoned, a poem you haven't read in years, a half-finished draft, or something your younger self was very proud of. Somewhere in there is a line, character, image, idea, or tiny detail worth taking.

For this challenge, take that one thing and give it another life. Drop an old character into a completely different story. Turn a forgotten line into a poem. Take the best idea from your worst draft and finally do something with it.

Don't rewrite the old piece. Rob it. Then use what you stole to make something entirely new.

--Vocal, "Steal From Yourself Challenge"

For someone like me who likes to reread my old pieces and analyze them, this seems like the perfect challenge. So, which piece am I going to steal from? My thoughts are drifting towards my fantasy short story “Xerxes”, which I wrote four years ago for the Vocal Christopher Paolini’s Fantasy Fiction Challenge. In particular, I am focused on this line:

Now, his bones were as likely to shake as the land.

--Stephanie Hoogstad, "Xerxes"

I’m still working on what this new story will be, so I won’t give away any further spoilers. However, I thought that it would be a good idea for me to analyze the original story, “Xerxes”, in order for me to see where I went wrong and what I did right so that I might be able to succeed in this challenge.

First, let me refresh your minds as to the original challenge. The big draw with Christopher Paolini’s Fantasy Fiction Challenge was that the challenge was judged by Christopher Paolini and the top prizes included half-hour Zoom interviews with the author himself. The challenge prompt itself was actually quite simple and broad:

A grown dragon finds a lost — or abandoned — toddler in the forest. Write a fiction story about what happens next.

--Vocal, "Christopher Paolini's Fantasy Fiction Challenge"

Now, I can’t fit all of “Xerxes” here, so I will just put a brief summary (although you’ll have to read the story for the full plot) and the link to the original story below.

“Xerxes” is about an undead dragon named Xerxes who finds a toddler in an Everflame in a forest in the Lower Pantheon, but this is no ordinary toddler—he’s a toddler Nephilim, the child of an angel and another immortal being like a giant, elf, or fae. Knowing that this child could tip the Great War in favor of the Lower Pantheon, Xerxes takes the child to his master, The Necromancer. The Necromancer orders Xerxes to take the child and another prisoner, an elf, to his own master in exchange for the one thing that Xerxes has wanted for over a thousand years: permanent rest. Xerxes agrees to do it. However, with his growing affection for the child, his banter with the elf, and his haunting past from the battlefield, Xerxes struggles to get them to their destination, especially when they are attacked by a band of elves and fae. Will he follow his orders or his conscience?

Upon rereading this story, I was actually surprised by how well it was done. Besides a couple typos that I had missed (cringe), the writing was well-crafted. The world had been thoroughly built, the details were in depth, and I found myself getting lost in it, as I often do when I find a story that I like to read. I could actually see this becoming a full-length novel if I invested more time and effort into it—something that seems to happen quite often with my short stories. I remember putting a lot of imagination and effort into this story, and it shows in the final product.

Unfortunately, I probably tried to do too much in such a short story. The ending was very rushed. I tried to accomplish something much bigger than I had the space for in a short story. It was supposed to be a theological/philosophical/moral tale with its own mythology, and I tried to cram far too much world-building into it. The plot and pacing suffered because of that. That’s a problem that I have when I try to write fantasy and other speculative fiction short stories: I love the world-building, and I try to fit everything that’s in my head into the story, but I don’t leave enough room for the story itself.

Does that mean that I wrote a bad story? No. I could probably take this short story and expand it into a novella or novel that would work out quite well. It was just a story that was too big for the short story format. It’s just something that I need to learn, when a story is made to be a short story, when it’s made to be a novella, and when it just needs to be a novel (or a series). It’s something that all writers need to learn at some point, and it’s as much a matter of patience—patience with their writing, patience with taking time to write the entire story instead of a CliffsNotes version—as much as it is a matter of knowing their work. Writing takes time.

What about you? Have you tried to cram too much of a story into a short story format? Or tried to make a novel out of what should have been a short story? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

As always, if there’s an old piece of mine that you think I should analyze, leave that in the comments as well!