Character Motives and Language Difference

10/24/2016

I was re-reading "Wolf Trek" last night and reviewing the ending. I made a bunch of changes, who knows when, but alas, the ending is too much of a cliff hanger.

Essentially, this piece wants to be a novel, so I wonder if I can shorten it somewhere and modify the ending. Right now, it's 37 pages long or so, and that is not a short story. That's creeping into a novella.

Anyway, I started focusing on my literary interpretation skills, which essentially are conducive to a great story. One aspect of literary interpretation has you analyze the characters.

What are the motives? Values?
What are their characteristics?
How do they interact with each other?

The character motives are clear, but some of the young characters sound the same, so I am going to take microscopic look at the dialogue.

I am also going to plan out "Wolf Trek", even if I tend to word vomit, once I decide if I want to finish it as a longer novel. (There is another project ahead of this one, once I finish this anthology. A sci-fi novel I have rewritten and near finished twice before.)

This morning, I was reflecting on how different my children are, and the rivalry that emerges every now and then. My son Antonio is the perfect age for this short story, but I didn't model the characters after him. My little girl is advancing by leaps and bounds. Below is a back shot of her locks, which she won't let me put in a pig tail. The point is that all children are different, and the story should capture those nuances.

Well, here's to writing struggles and adventure. Here's nurturing those abandoned novels.

Dr. Jesú Estrada,
Chicago, IL

I grew up on the outskirts of Yuma, AZ, close to the Cocopah reservation. Because I was ever-bored, I became an avid reader of Spanish comic books and anything in English. Then I moved onto Steinbeck and Stephen King and now read international authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Atwood, and Marouf. I also read a lot of coming of age fiction.

I have been writing stories in both Spanish and English since I was six years old. My fiction and poetry focus on working class issues, primarily about laborers in the Southwest. I also write non-serious fiction, like zombie fiction (I was into it before it got popular with the Walking Dead series, which I love) and dabble in magical realism with a fusion of cuentos and folklore.

I have a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Washington State University, a Masters Degree in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors of Arts from Northern Arizona University. I have also taught creative writing, and will do so, spring 2017. Currently, I live in Chicago and teach full-time at Harold Washington College to an amazing student population.

More about me. I am happily married, been so for over eight years, and have a fabulous seven-year-old who makes my life phenomenal: He too is starting to write short stories. I recently had a second baby, Simona, which put a temporary set-back on the publication of my first book, but made my life infinitely more wonderful. My husband is also incredibly supportive, and I have enlisted him to market whatever I do that is worth marketing.

That damned itch just won't let me be, so I'm back to my original love of words.