My biggest issue right now with One Battle of Countless Many is uh, how to end it. Not exactly how it ends, but more how to handle the ending part of the story, and where to stop the narrative train, so to speak. For one thing, it's a bit heavier than my normal writing fare and I'm very worried about making it, well, all the things that heavy and sad implies without either overdoing it, or underselling the horror and tragedy of being left alone in space to die with no supplies, no escape, no power, no air, and no hope.
Again, without overdoing it.
Although I feel it's important to show that; the big flashy sci-fi military setting with space ships and space marines and stuff, well. This is what happens after a battle. Two sides meet, and people die. Often, lots of people die. The defeated ship explodes brilliantly, is boarded and captured, or just left to die a slower death as the victor jumps away. That's what war does. You win, or you die. Or you could do both. Or lose and live. But you know, that kind of stuff. Trying to convey that in a short story.
Without laying it on so thick as to have people kneel on the deck and pray to God for salvation as sad piano music plays in the background. For one thing, I can't have a piano playing in the written word the same way I could score a TV show or movie. Which is a damn shame, a soundtrack would be awesome for books. And with ebooks? There's no necessary reason you couldn't embed sound files in the pages and data or whatever...
Anyhow. I guess at the root of it is, I often admire various forms of layers, subtlety, and complexity. It doesn't always have to be high-falutin, in your face, artsy-fartsy complexity. I simply mean that writing accomplishes multiple things, or says multiple things. Particularly, I admire and want to emulate the idea of dialogue saying more than one thing, while only saying a single thing. The idea that sometimes, silence says more than words. That people can say things without saying them. You know, those kinds of concepts. But how to translate that into a story without just going 'it happened, deal with it, the end'?
That's the thing keeping me from finishing this little 6,000 word space battle story thing and putting it all up. That, and my own lack of 'work ethic' or anything.