What’s the point?

 I’m continuing my trawl through my short stories this week, and now I’m getting down to the dregs of the files.  I’ve rejected several old stories, relegating them to a file in my storage system.

Re-working my stories has forced me to think carefully about why I think a story is publishable and why I think a story is an also-ran.  And I think the difference boils down to knowing what the point of the story is.  I have several stories that are just pleasant adventures round interesting planets, but I don’t know why those characters are there, or what’s at stake.  Several of those stories lack a vital ingredient: conflict.  Nobody seems to need anything, and there’s no conflict between the characters.   These are the stories which have got junked.

The point of the story links with the story’s theme.  I have several stories about the evils of overpopulation and over-development of the natural world.  In them, someone is determined to settle a new world with humans, despite the presence of whoever else already lives on the planet.

The point of those stories is to sound a warning about overbreeding, but often that theme is what drives the story from the sidelines,  The conflict is often between someone who wants to settle the planet at all costs, and other characters who are determined to stop that character. But stating a theme in plain terms can lead to accusations of preaching, so I need to add layers to the story.  And one layer I often use is to make the antagonist have a good reason for agreeing to trash this new world.

That reason is usually personal.  In one story it’s a project director who needs the bonus dangled in front of him to get his sister vital medical treatment she can’t afford.  In another story I have a character being hounded for maintenance by his leech of an ex-wife.  It’s easy to see how he would take a bribe from a mining company to show them places where they could come in and illegally mine the planet.

Another short story is about an AI used to care for dying humans which develops emotions.  The point of the story is that we’ve outsourced the difficult work to AIs without considering the effect of constantly caring for the dying on them.  We’ve given them empathy, but don’t expect them to be affected by it.  The conflict comes from the AI’s owner demanding that it be terminated, and another character who thinks it has the right to life.  The theme is whether the AI should have legal rights, and it drives the story.

I think this analysis will help me in future.  It will prompt me to ask what the point of the story is at the first draft stage, and to ensure it drives the narrative.