How to Write a Short Story: Dottie's Parapet
A few notes on my writing process, from idea to publication
Idea
Every day on my way to work, I pass an encampment of sorts, consisting of a couple of occupied campers, a third camper with many side panels missing, and a mini-van with no doors.
Let me explain the lens that I saw this encampment through for the first 12 months or so that I was driving by: starting with the first time we got a mortgage 14 years ago, I’ve been a bit obsessed with mortgage freedom. I used to have a blog about it, in fact. I love looking through books with pictures of the homes of creative, non-conformist owner builders. I believe that the mortgage is a terrible system that shackles many adults throughout their whole lives (and renting is a financial disaster, too). There are alternatives, but there are so many obstacles to some of those alternatives that it is maddening. We ourselves spent 6 weeks in a tent one summer so that we could rent out our house to pay the mortgage. It was a great adventure. I loved it and thought more people should do it. I’m not sure that everyone approved.
So for many months, I saw these camper dwellers with admiration. People doing what they had to do. Bold, hardy folks.
Then one day, for no obvious reason except, perhaps, cold weather and the campsite looking maybe a little rougher than it had before, another lens clicked in place: these people were “homeless.” They were unfortunate and perhaps in need.
What kind of person am I if I don’t do anything for them? A person who sees need and ignores it.
What kind of person am I if I do try to do anything for them? A person who thinks their perhaps perfectly adequate alternative housing arrangement is not ok, an eyesore. A busybody who thinks I know better than them. A stranger who should mind my own business. A person who makes it a shame to be poor.
It’s these rapidly changing lenses, this instability of perspective, that lead me to write short stories like “Dottie's Parapet” and, indeed, my whole novel. I’m trying to understand how to deal with these conundrums. I usually come up with many thoughts and few answers, but that’s better than not thinking it through at all, I guess. But “Dottie” does come to one conclusion: that you can help and be helped better when you actually know people. Offering help can be either highly personal (from a position of love and trust) or totally impersonal (from an institutional program.) It’s very hard to do any other way.
Much of my writing is also a wander through my own class dysphoria (I made this up, and then I thought, “Surely someone else has thought of that” and, indeed, they have.) When I write a story like “Dottie’s Parapet”, I am trying on the shoes of each character, looking for ones that fit, fighting my own biases from first one side and then another, trying to convince or remind myself that I don’t need to know which economic class I belong to, I don’t want to measure an individual’s worth in society. I just need to be human to other humans. I wanted this story to show that Dani and Tyler’s pride gets ruffled and so does Dottie’s; that Dottie is generous, and so are Tyler and Dani. I want to bring out that common ground.
That’s the high-minded stuff that I grabbed from the either. But here are the nuts and bolts that I used to turn it into something tangible:
Time
How long does it take to write a 2700 word story? Well, in the first place, I could edit it forever and ever, so it’s hard to arrive at a time for a “finished” piece. I tried to keep track of how long it took (because I’m a geek about data like that), but it is so hard to measure. Some mornings I start writing at 4:45 and write for an hour; some days I snatch fifteen minutes before work and 20 minutes at lunch. The reality is that most of the “writing” takes place while I’m driving somewhere, and then when I land, I open the laptop and try to get it all down as quickly as I can. So the best I can do is say it took a week or so and many hours.
It would be nice to know for the sake of valuation. It would be nice to be able to say “I worked this many hours and this would be fair pay and so I need this many readers paying this fair price each.” I like to have a goal. But art doesn’t really work that way, for many reasons, one of which is that I want everyone to be able to read my writing regardless of disposable income and another of which is angst as to whether it has any value.
In my experience, the truth is that you only get paid properly for writing when you do regrettable things tailored to markets/SEO. Maybe I’ve just become cynical; I’ve gotten paid decently for stringing words together, but never for making art with words. This whole internal debate itself is tied to the class dysphoria theme, a tug-of-war between a high-minded “art for art’s sake” (a luxury I’m not sure I can afford) and an embarrassingly crass “why should I work so hard and never get paid?”, a plebian position for certain. Of course, the starving artist is a trope for a reason.
Names
I struggle to come up with names, but because I’m writing about a specific place (Maine) and a semi-specific time (contemporary, but this becomes less true the longer it takes to finish the novel), there are some cool tools that I can use. The Social Security Administration has searchable records of the top 100 baby names by state and year. This helps me find something that sounds right for the age of the character (although some, like Dottie, I just came up with on my own.)
Of course, the more right a name sounds, the more likely I am to know someone with that name, which I try to avoid. On the other hand, if I know many people with a name, I may still use it. My husband’s name is Daniel and one of the main characters in the book is Danny, who is NOT my husband or any other Daniel that I know. But Daniel has been in the top ten names approximately everywhere for approximately 100 years or more. I don’t feel bad about using it (though, to tell the truth, I threw a lot of names in as placeholders when I started the novel and then got attached to them. A cautionary tale.)
Surnames are another whole issue. It’s a bit pet peeve of mine when people are careless with surnames, which often have ethnic implications. There are a million decisions to be made about a surname. In the Maine I’m writing about, there are many Franco-American surnames, and there are cultural considerations like a Catholic background and cuisine that still go with that, especially with the older generation. I’m sure there are many more subtle connotations that I don’t know. I can never plumb the depths of that in a short story, and probably not even in the novel. But I don’t want to be careless about it. My own surname is Scottish, and it’s kind of a big deal to my family, which in turn has brought us in contact with other people to whom Scottish heritage is a big deal. But that doesn’t mean that everyone with a Scottish background knows or cares. So like I said–a lot of decisions.
A good resource that I found for surnames this time was Ancestry.com, where you can find the derivation and also some information about primary jobs held by people with the name. It’s fascinating and distracting, but also helpful.
In the end, I gave up on Dani and Tyler’s surnames and polled my Facebook friends, who came up with great suggestions!
Title
The story has an awkward title. I know that. Though I consider myself rather poor at titling, I don’t blame the awkwardness of this one on that. I hope that the little bit of discomfort will prod people to give it a little more thought.
My working title was “Dottie’s Roof”, but I never intended to stay with that. I thought that I might find a good title from a quote or proverb, and I found a lot that I liked the meaning of, but none that quite shortened nicely to a title. (Note: If you search “roof quotes”, you’re going to find out how much it costs to replace one!)
Here are some of the best/most relevant quotes that I found, with their sources:
Common knowledge (mine):
Roof over our heads, Raising the roof, Under one roof
"People live in each other's shelter"-Irish Proverb
"There's heaven above, and night by night/I look right through its gorgeous roof."- Robert Browning
"Don't compare the size of your roof with the size of the sky."-Amit Kalantri
"Right or wrong, it's our house up to the roof."-Spanish Proverb (?)
After all this research, it occurred to me that I’d inadvertently (subconsciously?) done a nice little thing with starting the story at the roof/Dani and Tyler’s joyful enthusiasm and ended with the floor/Dottie’s humiliation. I tried “Plummet” or “Tumble” but when I typed it into my Substack title bar, it just seemed so unmemorable and, perhaps, an attempt to be chic and cool by an author who isn’t.
So I searched for synonyms for “roof.” I choose “parapet” primarily because it implies defensiveness, which is the position that Dottie, Mike, and Isla take towards the roof, and also because Isla says Dottie is “their queen.” Isla says this from the depth of her feeling, but this author likes how it subtly challenges notions of class and nobility, and also perhaps hints at Isla’s class aspirations–not to be royal, of course, but to be more than the stereotype of what she comes from while also not betraying the people she comes from.
Context
Writing short stories tied to the book seemed like a pleasant, easy task. I already have several stories that are essentially in its world. But I quickly discovered that it is rather complex. Dottie and Mike are side characters and, so far, Dani and Tyler are not in the book at all (although I rather like Dani and she may replace a character that never quite clicked.) Isla, however, is the main character, which forces me to decide generally when in connection to the book this story occurs. The point in her personal development will determine how she responds to Dani and Tyler. I decided that it is before or early on in the book.
How much of a commitment is writing a short story? Can I later change details in the book? Of course; I think it’s more that I don’t want to and it would annoy me as a reader. But I also think of story as a living thing; my favorite stories are folk tales, which change in the telling yet retain their essence. So while I’m rather demanding of myself as far as writing it the way I really want it to be, I have to acknowledge some wiggle room.
Conclusion
Another time, I’ll tell you about the struggle to get my work seen. I know that Facebook and Instagram are pretty firmly convinced that no one wants to see what I’m putting out there and are only showing it to five people–that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but at the same time, I can see the stats. FB and IG are probably right; they know what the people like. And that’s what I’m asking for if I take the position of “I’m going to write what I want to write, commercial viability be damned.” Still, it’s incredibly frustrating because I know there is that handful of people out there who would enjoy it if only I could connect with them. But c’est la vie. I’ll keep plugging away, and I’m so grateful for the encouragement that I have gotten from friends and family. If they are reading and enjoying it, that is enough.
I’d love to hear some comments from others about their own creative process!
Thanks for reading!
NOTE: This is one kind of content that I intend to offer exclusively to paid subscribers in the future. We’ll see how it goes!