The Coral Keeper: a new short story on extinction

Woo hoo, I’ve just handed in ‘The Coral Keeper’, a short story, to my editors at Comma Press.  It’ll be in an anthology on extinction and also it’s the last story I’ve written for my own forthcoming anthology of dark little chillers. The anthology is provisionally called ‘Dark Nature’ and will hopefully be out next spring. ‘The Coral Keeper’ was such an interesting story to write. I was given a brief description of work on corals and climate change and a scientific advisor, Dr Charlotte Clay, who is based at the University of Leeds. Charlotte studies changes to coral reefs using data from past coral reef extinctions. We talked about her research and she sent me some papers to read. Then I had to come up with a short story. Looking through my notebook, the process I used was:

🪸Brainstorm as many ideas as I could think of. One of them was set on Darwin’s expedition…(my actual story is set a few years into the future…)

🪸Rough idea of characters. I wanted to write from the point of view of an older person; in the end I settled for mid/late sixties, a woman in retirement.

🪸Plot – broken into three acts, with an inciting incident, mid-turn twist, a worst point, a climax and a resolution. 

🪸Conflict – what are the sources of conflict my character faces, from societal (how society treats older black women) to personal (her so-called best friend)

🪸What is the moral dilemma she faces?

🪸What are the themes? Extinction is an obvious one, but also how despair can change to hope; how the act of saving a species can change that which is saved.

🪸A deeper dive into my main character – WHO she is, what does she WANT and NEED, the FORCES ranged against her and what will CHANGE. More about her as a person – what does she like, what she wears, her memories, her family background Most of this won’t end up in the story, but it shapes the person she is. 

🪸Location. One of the things I love best about writing is the setting. Of course there needs to be a mention of the Caribbean where the coral originally grows, but most of the story is set in Bristol and Cornwall, the places I love best in the UK. 

🪸Time. When is the story set and over what time period (August at the time of the sturgeon moon). 

🪸What research do I need to do and where will I find the information? 

And then I started writing. Followed by various editing stages before my little story is ready to leave my hands. The final story ended up being 2,000 words. And took me 6 weeks to write!

If you’d like to find out more about my writing process, or how you can brainstorm, plot and edit, please head over to Wild Writing with Sanjida where I have a library of articles on the craft of writing. And do say hi!