As Kira Wiener drafted her Fantasy entry, “Words They Claimed”, she noticed that the story had spilled way over the competition word limit. But that didn’t stop the young fantasy author—in fact, it challenged Kira to undertake a rigorous self editing process which ultimately made her story stronger. Guest judge Alexandra Sheppard was most impressed by Kira’s ability to bring her characters, and a solid story arc, to life in only 1,000 words. Today we’re excited to learn more about how Kira took a lengthy draft and turned it into a prize winning piece.
What inspired you to write the story of Changeling and Bird?
The idea started as an aesthetic: words that tell the future scribbled around the city, a girl who writes them, birds weaving patterns in the sky. That gave me Bird, but I didn’t know what Bird was going to do or what she wanted. She seemed content to be herself, so I decided that the journey would belong to another character. I’m kind of obsessed with the changeling myth, and especially how it came to exist and how some people are reclaiming it. I chose to write about a character who sometimes wants to embrace and learn more about what makes her different, and sometimes just wants to fit in, because I feel that struggle and I know other people do too.
Do you see this story becoming a larger work or do you think it will stay in short story form? Which themes would you like to explore if you develop this story?
I haven’t thought much about making this story part of a larger work, but it is a really cool idea that I’d love to come back to someday. I would want to explore why Changeling and Bird each think the way they do, especially Bird and how she became the person she is.
In the footnotes you mentioned that your piece was about 250 words over the word limit. What was your process for cutting it down?
I tend to use long sentences and a lot of repetition, so word limits do not go hand in hand with my natural writing style, but I feel that editing ultimately made my story better. I went through the story and deleted a lot of unnecessary words by rephrasing things. Then I went through again and highlighted every phrase that wasn’t necessary to the plot, color-coded by how much I wanted to keep it. I removed a lot of descriptions and cut down a lot of phrases by saying the same thing with fewer words. This all sounds pretty organized, but at the time I was tired and had at least eight tabs open and was trying to remember the “words you’re never supposed to use in writing” by singing the helping verb song and searching for each one in my document. It was a process.
What are some of your favorite fantasy reads?
My favorite fantasy series is Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. It has it all: morally grey, yet lovable, characters, exciting action, great writing, diversity that doesn’t feel forced, have I mentioned the amazing characters yet? The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater is another of my favorites; Stiefvater’s writing style is beautiful and poetic with the perfect amount of reality in it. The Harry Potter series is a classic of fantasy, I can’t describe why I like it but it belongs on this list. I recently read Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore, which was really cool because I write a lot of magical realism but hadn’t read any before.
