One paragraph at a time
I lived in Manhattan for most of my twenties. Writing in my studio, peering through barred windows at my fire escape…it was claustrophobia that prompted me to walk for hours through my adopted neighborhood. It was on one of these treks through the West Village that I came upon the underbelly of an elevated railroad. The steel tracks were a relic of the industrial-era, abandoned long ago. I remember stopping for a moment, wondering what it might be like up there with a view of the Hudson River and the cobblestone streets.
I researched the railroad, and tried to write about this Exquisite Corpse. You can see pictures on http://www.thehighline.org/
I ran into a few problems while drafting my story:
1) How to make this a character driven story when I am fascinated by location, place, and history?
2) How to include factual information in a fictional piece without boring the reader? (I had way too much factual information)
3) How to separate myself from the object, and not bog down the prose with too many details?
4) How to revise, revise, revise, without losing my initial enthusiasm.
I am still thinking about the first 3, and I decided to start with revision–a favorite topic on this blog. The initial creation of a story is exciting, but the more I revise the more control I have over my own work.
First try, below:
“Graham looked up, shielding his eyes. Beneath the massive, metal underbelly of the High Line Railroad, he felt like a small man. The steel tracks, a relic of the industrial-era, had been abandoned long ago. Now the structure hung over the West Village like an oversized tombstone.”
Tomorrow, another revision. Many problems… but the line, “he felt like a small man,” is the one bothering me the most.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
This sounds like an excellent story topic, and as a person who revels in the history of this kind of stuff, I would not be bored by the “factual information.” From just the paragraph that you provided, I agree that the line “he felt like a small man” seems a tad stifling. My inclination would be to let the description of the railroad be big enough to make everyone feel small–that way you don’t have to tell us that Graham felt that way, too. I hope you tell us more about the history of this location and artifact.