Battlecorps Update and Thoughts about a Rejected Story

Well, there's only a little news on the Battlecorps front. Story #1 has been submitted, Story #2 has been sent to the workshop and I'm waiting for a little more feedback before I work on that one and Story #4 is being worked on a little bit at a time. But to be honest, most of my writing time is being spent on my second non-Battletech Outcast Ops novel, called Red Ice. In part, I want to get that written as soon as possible.

I'm working on Story #4 (Story #3 needs major work --- At least 3,000 have to be cut and scenes rewritten --- so that's being worked on last.) when I take a break from Red Ice. I need to cut @1500 out of Story #4, so I need to be thorough and painstaking. It may take me a couple of weeks to do what I need to do on it.

Anyhow, I was talking to Phil Lee, who, in addition to being a fellow Battlecorps writer and in-demand editor, also acts as Jason Schmitzer's assistant. The discussion came around to a story of mine Jason rejected.

The major problem we discussed was not that the story was a bad one, but the story had a similar theme to another story of mine that had already been recently accepted. I personally don't see the similarity in the stories, but the story was rejected. To make a long story short, he suggested rewriting the story so as to change the theme.

Now, I have to think about this; Can I rewrite this story so as to change the theme? I've done it before; taken a rejected story (A very early submission that predates Jason's time as Battlecorps editor) and rewrote it with a new theme. But I had done this only after I had a dozen stories under my belt. It can be done, but it's major surgery; the other story I rewrote had only three characters that survived from the first story to the second, and they were all renamed and personalities changed somewhat. The basic premise is the same, but more focused and a stupid plot twist at the end was removed.

I'll have to look over the story again and see if anything sparks an idea.

And that story experiment I mentioned in my last post? I'll do it after I finish both the novel and the already-written Battlecorps stories. And to add another level to the experiment, I will use the Battletech CCG cards Story Elements Deck (See http://thebattletechstate.blogspot.com/2014/01/an-experiment-in-coming-up-with-plot.html) We'll see what happens together.

That's all for now...back to writing!

Craig