I removed a lot of the filler writing to make more room for Argyle’s lore. In the grand scheme of things, some sentences were irrelevant, and it didn’t hurt the story to have them removed. In fact, I think it made it a little better doing that alone. I didn’t have to really move anything around to keep the flow with the removed parts not being there anymore. The writing feels a lot more fluid now and easy to digest while still retaining the tension and wonder you get when you first read it without getting to a point where you’re too bored of reading it. I decided that the best way to learn about Argyle was by adding to the elementary school flashback. It might make the flashback a little long and sometimes they can really take you away from the reading but I think it was the best option for my particular story. I added more about her parent’s divorce and the overall vibe of their marriage, along with what set up the importance of the day I wrote about. It’s her first summer without living full-time with her father and I think that extension of the backstory was necessary to create the drama and significance of why it’s a significant day to her. I added another scene at the end to be the final scene, as the original ending scene was a bit abrupt and didn’t wrap things up as nicely as I wanted it to. I wanted to give Argyle time to process everything that had happened to her and the emotional distress she was put through. I also believe it improved the actual reading experience in the sense that it gives both Argyle and her parents more dimension and meaning in the story. It could simply be the story of a girl who forgot to put the lid on her colony of semi-dangerous ants and the shock of an infestation. Instead, I hope it’s a lot more than that. Writing in personal bits of Argyle’s life such as her identity and family situation gives so much more to the story I think is what makes it a piece of short literary fiction. It was a little difficult at first and daunting to reimagine it as a more in-depth piece, but putting the rest of the puzzle pieces together made it start to make more sense the more tidbits I removed and fleshing out of the characters as real people with wants and needs.
