The Paradox of choice, the Freedom of Limitation and the flaws in both.

Last week I posted my most recent entry into the NYC Midnight short story contest. You can read it here.

The judges provided me with detailed feedback, which I will include below. But first, I want to touch on the quality of this competition’s format that makes it so useful…and then I’ll tear all that down by pointing out where its limitations lie.

The Freedom that Limitation Delivers

I’ve referenced this particular competition a lot on this page, namely because the NYC Midnight’s unique “limited”¹ format works well for my writing style.

By requiring you to include a prescribed word, action and genre somewhere within the story, it forces you to apply creativity within a narrowed scope. A narrowed scope is good for me. The 48 hour time limit isn’t bad for firing up the focus pistons either.

This wasn’t always self evident mind you:

Before I first tried my hand at this competition back in 2019, I considered myself a person who preferred a blank canvas when it comes to creative pursuits. Just ask anyone who’s been in a room with me and a guitar. I’ll sit there for hours playing directionless licks, waiting for an interesting note or riff to catch my ear. Sometimes stumbling across a section I might turn into a structured song, but more often than not, awakening from that daze with four throbbing fingertips and not much else.

But the moment I began brainstorming ideas within the strict boundaries of the NYC Midnight writing competition, I immediately recognized the gates opening up creatively.

It’s one of those paradoxes like Jocko Willink’s slogan “Discipline Equals Freedom,” which appears completely incorrect right up until the moment you put it into practice— at which point, it makes total sense.

You see these clashing approaches in sports all the time: The player who is throwing around every technique they can think of vs the competitor who has a very small tool kit, yet knows how to use them in a sophisticated system of ways.

Though the first example visually looks more varied, when you strip back all the flashiness, which one is the more creative? Or more to the point, which one is more effective?

These questions might sound like they belong in a bar stool debate rather than a serious discussion on craft, but as a creator, I think it’s crucially important to understand where you stand on this because it has an outsized influence on how you approach your work.

As a writer: are you here to bombard your readers with stories of a kind they’ve never seen before,² or are you here to deliver a familiar type of story from an angle no one’s ever thought of?

If it’s the latter, then you’ve got no choice but let go off some aspect of that blank canvas, but you don’t have to forfeit your creativity.

The limits of limitation

When I begin work on a new short story, I occasionally catch a rhythm out of nowhere. Something in the voice, the characters, or the general vibe of the plotline, drives the narrative along with seemingly no input from the logical part of my brain. This doesn’t occur every time, but when it does, it’s a joy because it’s almost like I’m reading the story rather than writing it and get to observe it as a reader would for the first time.

The Ghost of Manuel Grady was one such instance of this. From out of nowhere I picked up this crime noir aesthetic which took on a life of it’s own. As the scene of the Catz Club opened up, I started to enjoy meeting these shady characters and building the world they all existed within.

Though this story was born off the back of the following prompts: “Triplet”, “Silent treatment,” and “Suspense,” by the time I was three quarters into it, it had evolved into something completely beyond those parameters.

If I was clever, I would have shelved this story to be finished later and started a new entry that adhered more to the competition guidelines.

Unfortunately, I didn’t do that. I was too caught up in the wave of where this narrative was taking me, and kept going with it. Rather than commit to that wave fully however, and take the plot in the natural direction it was headed, I felt the need to shoe-horn a twist that fit with the criteria of the competition.

And that’s when I noticed for the first time that this “limited” format—for lack of a better word— has a ceiling insofar as its ability to serve me is concerned.

While the comment section of The Ghost Of Manuel Grady included a few compliments on this story’s ending, I’m not happy with it. I didn’t take it to the place the momentum of the plot was pulling me towards, out of a need to appease judging criteria.

In hindsight I settled for a middle ground that served neither the story nor the competition guidelines fully.

Are these grounds to disavow the limited approach entirely?

No.

Certainly not as an umbrella rule. But for me personally?

Maybe.

At least for now.

See, I may have chalked up the above fumble to to an isolated lapse in judgement, if this was the first time such a conflict had struck to me while preparing an entry for a short story competition. But it wasn’t.

A few months ago I submitted this story to the Wicked Writing contest here on Substack.

In a similar fashion to the above case, I reached a point in the writing where I found my story veering off from the competition’s criteria. However rather than try to find some middle ground, I simply carried on in the direction that best suited the story. Good for the story, not good for the competition.

In that case I earned a highly commended, but no placing. Yet, I’m much prouder of that story than I am of The Ghost of Manuel Grady.

Now, I appreciate this might sound like I’m making excuses for a failure in getting through to the next round of a competition, but I’m sincere in the belief that this conflict between serving the story and serving the competition is a sign that my eye for the shape of a narrative is developing in the right direction.

A year and a half ago, I didn’t have this instinct. Shoehorning a “point” or “opinion” into my stories was the only way I knew how to write.

I’m convinced that developing this “eye”—which comes from a combination of writing a lot and reading a shitload— is the key to coming up with the best work I’m capable of. Not letting criteria sway me, not paying attention to trends. Simply honing my ability to identify what a story needs, parse out good writing from bad, and eventually it will break through.³

Which brings us full circle.

While the limited format can be fantastic for honing in a writer’s focus, I think it’s important to recognize when that limitation becomes restricting.

And I’ll reiterate— what I’m outlining here isn’t an umbrella denouncement of limitation altogether:
I suspect this observation is specific to the place my personal writing style has progressed to at this point in time, and may only be temporarily true. But at least for now, I feel I’ve reached the edge of where that format can take me. It was serving me before, but now it doesn’t seem to be.

And now for the Feedback

Usually I provide a bit of commentary on how close to the mark I feel a judge’s criticisms of my work are, but the biggest lesson I’ve taken from this round of the competition is already outlined above.

This isn’t to say I haven’t taken the below feedback on board—but I find this type of feedback often falls into the category of “feedback for feedback’s sake” and isn’t always helpful.

And besides, this article is already too long.

NYC Midnight feedback

''The Ghost of Manuel Grady'' by Hamish Kavanagh -    

WHAT THE JUDGES LIKED ABOUT YOUR STORY -

Judge One:   An interesting start to the story; attention grabbing! The story is well planned out and flows nicely between plot points. The characters are interesting and each one stands on his own. I like how Terrance picked up on the clue in Bernie's piano playing that tipped him off to the third triplet. It explains a lot about his character's personality.  

Judge Two:   I loved the characters and the tone and the atmosphere in this story. The settings and the feelings you conjure up are very clear and effective and the narration of the prose really helps establish a connection with the protagonist. 

Judge Three:  You paint a memorable portrait of the semi-legendary jazz duo of the Grady "twins" as a prelude to the mystery of how Manuel can appear to die onstage one evening—literally—and perform again the next. Your narrator Terrance reminisces about the brothers with the colorful, noir-ish voice of a character from a 30s gangster movie, which fosters an insider's intimacy with the characters. 

  WHAT THE JUDGES FEEL NEEDS WORK -

Judge One: Suggest you raise the stakes higher to build more suspense leading up to the climax. A red herring was dropped into the plot when "the half rotting handrail" was mentioned. Since it's already been set up, why not use this prop. For example, when Terry turns and sees Bernie pointing a gun at him, consider having Bernie advance up the stairs as they dialogue. Maybe Bernie backs Terry up against the rotting handrail which Terry is more worried about collapsing than the gun at his head. Then continue with Bernie's dialogue, "You see Terrance, Manny's name...." and follow with the remaining exchange between them. The last line could be Bernie lowering the gun. Would he laugh about it?  

Judge Two: I wanted to know earlier in the story, preferably from the first line, what the protagonist wants. It’s a story about the Grady twins, and they want and do lots of things, but it’s being told through the eyes of another character, the narrator/protagonist. It would really help establish an emotional connection for the reader, I think, if we have a sense of what the narrator is going after right away - and what will happen to him if he doesn’t get it. 

Judge Three: I expected that Bernie had done the ol' switcheroo to replace the real Manuel with their identical triplet sibling Saul. However, I was a bit confused by the fact that Terrance tells us he knew something was amiss not because of the performance of the impostor "Manny," who evidently did a "perfect" imitation of his late brother, but rather the telltale piano playing of the real Bernie. Why was Bernie's playing off? Was it grief over his brother's death or fear that his substitution of Manuel would be discovered? Or, perhaps, did he have to play more slowly so the unrehearsed Saul could keep up? You might want to offer some kind of explanation, because otherwise it seems as though you were trying to hint that Bernie was the impostor instead, which makes no sense. I also wondered how Bernie managed to hide the fact that Manuel had died from the public, many of whom seemed to believe Manny had dropped dead right in front of them. Wasn't Manuel taken to a hospital or pronounced dead at the scene after his collapse onstage? Or did Bernie have some doctor friend fake a death certificate to make it seem that Saul had died instead? Again, I think it would aid readers' suspension of disbelief if you offered some plausible explanation of how they accomplished the clandestine swap.

For what it’s worth, I feel like Judge One offered the closest reading in this instance and their advice was most on the mark. I’ll revisit the story and see if I can work any of their suggestions into a revised draft.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far. Today was a long one.

1. Inverted commas because I’ve found the effect of this limitation to be the opposite of constricting.

2. I’m not dismissing this approach. If you can pull it off, this is just as valid as the latter.

3. I know this sounds simple, but I’m amazed how many times I need to be walloped by certain concepts before they sink in.