No One By The Numbers

“No One Will Believe You,” appearing in the March 2024 issue of Mystery Magazine, marks my second published story, seven months after I debuted with “Teddy's Favorite Thing” at Ellery Queen. As with Teddy, I'm offering an assessment of my story "by the numbers" -- all the whats and whys and how longs of the story's creation. Spoilers for the story follow below!

In “No One Will Believe You,” a down-on-his luck and dead broke gig worker gets mugged by the most famous man in the world. When the victim recognizes the criminal, and says he won't get away with it, the criminal remarks that "no one will believe you."

The spark for this idea came from an urban legend about Bill Murray stealing french fries off a stranger's plate, and saying no one will believe it if the victim told his story. The Murray anecdote dates to 2015 or so, and I remember pitching my take on the idea to a comic book editor at a New Years party in (I think) 2018. But all I had was an inciting incident, with no plot to back it up, and it wasn't really suited for comics.

When I started writing short stories in 2022, I realized I'd found a home for my idea as a short story.

Work began in December of 2022 and it was a struggle from the start. My records aren't precise from that time -- I recorded sessions, rather than hours -- but I estimate total time to complete the story was more than thirty hours. Maybe much more. I don't want to think about it.

Partly this was down to circumstance. A family crisis required I relocate for the first several months of 2023, and those were hard and distracting times. Work was inconsistent, my output inefficient. If I hadn't sold “Teddy” to Ellery Queen in February of that year I might have given up.

“No One” was simply difficult to write -- paradoxically so, because the premise was so solid. It's proof that ideas are the easy part.

I have far too many journal entries on this story to reproduce them all, but here are some highlights. (Low lights?)

12/17 (work begins)

12/21 It's a wrestling match.

12/24 Crap session during the day, but came back late on Christmas Eve and just started polishing the first four pages, mostly making Ayden more overtly sympathetic. A good night, the first real good session I've felt on this one.

12/26 Slow, a paragraph at a time. Returned to it later and made some progress; this is a pattern that has yieled results recently. Don't give up. Think time is writing time, too.

12/27 More of the same, but progress is progress, and the first half is getting better all the time. I've at least got notes for the middle act (which may well be just a paragraph) and some signposts at how I'll get to the ending, which I think was given to me by Bicycle Thieves.

There's my first overt reference to an ending, which vexed me throughout the project. By Bicycle Thieves I was referring to how the hero is broken at the end and marches off to an uncertain (and likely miserable) existence. (Perfect for that film, but a fruitless idea for my story, as it turned out).

12/28 I think I can compress the middle act into about a page.

12/29 Good longish run and for the first time I think this is coming together as a story. It helped to get through the setup, get Emily on-stage, and start feeling my way through the middle act. Sitting at around 2500 words though I expect many will get cut; I want to bring this in below 4K.

1/1 Got to it late, hated it, light edits. It happens. I think I need to just get the words down, bridge my way to the end, and then get out the disc sanders.

1/2 Grinding out a paragraph a day and if that's what it takes, that's what it takes.

1/3 Likewise.

When I work on something, I do it every day, even if I haven’t shared every entry here. Sessions might be as short as fifteen minutes, but fifteen minutes is a lifetime when you can't write.

1/4 Breakthrough day, I've got Ayden seated with Pace on the set. Just had to find my way though the maze, same as Ayden. It helps to take it from the top. Came back to it later and got them into the trailer, now Ayden has the gun and I need an ending!

1/5 Not feeling great today and managed only limited work, but I think it was important -- wrestled the story more firmly back to Ayden's view, he had become a supporting character in the middle and back-halves of the story. This is feeling more like a novel process than a short story -- there is a theme to tease out here, I'm not there yet. But I'll get there.

1/7 Applying the diamond drills, front-to-back, still unsure about my ending but clarifying theme and deepending Ayden's character arc. It's leading me there.

1/8 Slow, steady.

1/9 Had an idea for the ending that sounded right when I was traveling up to Vancouver, but now I'm not so sure. I think I made it work, but I need to set this aside for awhile. Calling the first draft done at a hair over 5K words.

"Vancouver" was for a business trip. Notable that I've completed what I think was a first draft, but I still didn't have an ending.

Without an ending you've got nothing.

1/21 Back at it after working on Teddy for a week. Polished the ending a bit and teased out a theme -- I think I need to hit on Ayden's uncertainty about who he is so he has a place to land when he solves that riddle about himself at the end. I don't want to get much above 5K words but there's a lot of cruft in the story between the robbery and when Ayden sits down to dinner with Pace. So at least I have some direction about what to do next.

That was a profitable diversion. In my week away from “No One” I wrote “Teddy’s Favorite Thing,” which became my first sale.

Next came that abovementioned upending of my life and the move I had to make. My work days were overshadowed by long, sleepless nights and terror around events in my family.

1/26 Up early for a remote work meeting that never happened -- stole 45 minutes on the couch and I think I have this by the tail. Came back to it at night and got in some good hours, finally revising all the way to the end. I've trimmed down to 4700 words. One more draft. And the ending still needs a knock.

1/27 The damn thing is done, and down to 4300 words. Will let it sit one more day. And I didn't discover until the end that the story was really named [redacted].

I'm redacting my title because I still think it's a great title ... just not for this story. For this story it was a catastrophe, locking me into pursuit of a theme that didn't fit, complicated the story, and fatally delayed my point-of-attack.

1/28 Read it out loud to myself, changed a couple words. Done. Unless I change my ending. Need to test it with readers.

1/29 Tried to sharpen the ending. Sent it to Rita.

Rita is my wife and first reader.

1/30 Still wrestling with the ending. Found myself hating it even after Rita liked it. Just walk away.

1/31 Almost there. Again I did not go far wrong by cutting things. Managed a later session for copy edits but the ending is still grasping at smoke.

2/12 Bloated it up to 5000 words with a conversation deconstructing capitalism! Sheesh. Let it sit for a day then start sanding it down again.

2/13 Feeling pretty lost with this ending right now. Feel like I'm laying down pavement and then ripping it up before it's dry. I do believe I am getting closer to what it should be but this feels a very, very indirect way of getting there.

2/14 Slash, slash, slash. I may need to park this one. Or I might be right at the end of it.

2/15 Torment!

2/16 It's the damnedest thing but I think it's close.

2/17 Almost?

I'm really using my head to drive nails, here. Bad enough that I began work without an ending; now I'm trying to write an ending that is both satisfying in its own right and also provides a soft landing for a theme that didn't work. There was no way to solve this. Something had to go.

2/18 Finally I've found my way back to AN ending. Gonna sleep on it to see if this is THE ending, though. But at least the last page of the story isn't a torn-up mess. It may not be any good, but it's complete.

2/19 Might be done -- not with a bang, but a whimper. I think I have to start something else and let this sit.

2/21 Can't leave it alone, but don't know what I'm doing. Trapped.

2/24 Haven't logged in a couple days but I've been at it, in and around some terribly difficult days.

2/27 I just have to wrap this in police tape and set it aside. It's exhausting me and these days I wake up exhausted.

I finally gave up, pivoting to work on a second novel. (My first novel was in submission at this time ... it has since come back and is now in a major revision, but that's for a different column).

When I came back to “No One” I was home on a break, and in a slightly better mental place.

3/17 Thought I had an angle on that ending, but nah.

3/21 Re-titled to “No One Will Believe You,” worked new ending.

Knowing titles is critical for me. If I don't know the title, I usually don't know what a story is about. In this case, the re-title went back to the anecdote that sparked the story -- the dismissiveness of the famous crook saying no one would believe the victim if he told his tale. It was my title all along but I got lost in the weeds. Once I embraced the title I was on my way to the proper ending, though there was still some agony to come.

3/22 Cranky today, didn’t want to do a damn thing. Noodled. Hate everything so shut it down.

3/23 Hammered, revised, refitting that ending. I think I’m there. Sent to Rita.

3/25 Cut 500 words from the start of the story to get to the point-of-attack quicker. Now it opens on the robbery. Thinking about it. My focus on the ending might have masked a problem with the beginning … I’ve felt for some time the story doesn’t really start until the robbery, so why not start there? Jack suggests a new theme, so this will need another day …

This was the key insight that helped me find my way to the end of the project. I'd changed my title but I was still trying to land my old theme. My son read the story and said he thought the story was about obsession -- which wasn't my theme, but clearly it was supposed to be!

It was a big cut and I winced, keeping my original text in a parallel file. Within a couple days I was comfortable with the change.

3/26 Lots of crafting and re-fitting, punching up the conflict with Emily, layering in theme of obsession, trying to illuminate Ayden’s insight and transformation at the end. Further away but in the right orbit. And back up to nearly 4K words.

3/28 Definitely going with this shorter version.

I submitted the story the next day. It came back in a timely fashion with a personal rejection that felt like a near-miss. I next put it in a wobbly outlet that never responded -- I let them take me off the market for nearly six months, but I was distracted and it turned out to be a good thing, because when I withdrew the story I gave myself permission to do one more pass, now that I had fresh eyes for the project.

11/30 Calling it done but will let it sit for a night. Added 300 words, mostly characterization for Ayden and Emily.

It's the rare positive revision that comes from adding words, but I'd cut too close to the bone in my protagonist's romantic relationship. Even after this addition, the story was still around my arbitrary 5K-words target.

And I must have gotten it right ... I submitted to Mystery Magazine on 12/1, got acceptance on 1/23/24, and as of 3/1/24 the story is in print. And I do say GOD DAMN I am glad this story is done and in the world!

What did I learn from the protracted process of this story's birth?

1. Patience and steady effort, as always. You have to show up every day and do the work.

2. BUT when you are bleeding, from the same wounds, day after day ... maybe work on something else for awhile instead of piercing your scabs.

3. It's OK to have blank spots on your map when you start off on a story -- I think you need to reserve opportunities to surprise yourself -- but your ending shouldn't be one of those blank spots. Have a destination before you leave. You can change your destination along the way, but if you're aiming for nowhere that's where you'll end up.

4. If possible, know your title, and keep a loose hand on the reigns when discovering your theme.

There you have it! 2500 words about the making of a 5000-word story. But now “No One Will Believe You” is well and truly complete. Thanks for reading, and enjoy.