This week I whipped out a quick short story called “The Glow that Reaches the Heart.” If you missed it, you can still read it here. It’s about a hairdresser with magical tools and how she makes people happy—eventually trying them on herself.
But somewhere between the salon scene and the dinner date, the story began quietly rearranging itself into something I didn’t plan: a modern Cinderella. I didn’t notice it at first. I was busy getting Rachel and her boyfriend to the restaurant, giving her a glow-up that left everyone staring, and letting him stew in the kind of jealousy that could easily lead to an impulsive proposal. And suddenly I realized: oh no… this is drifting toward “magical makeover makes a princess, prince charming gets possessive, cue ring.”
None of that matched the story I meant to tell. The whole piece was supposed to explore the perception of beauty — the gap between how we imagine happiness and how it actually feels once we “arrive.” A jealous boyfriend and a dramatic proposal would’ve swallowed that message whole.
The real problem was that I was outside of Rachel’s head. It happens more easily than you’d think. When I’m looking at a character instead of being inside their interior world, the story gets analytical and stiff. That’s when tropes creep in — the familiar shapes our brains reach for when we’re not paying attention. Short stories especially don’t like that; they want to be lived, not dissected.
So I went back to the scene with the photos on her mirror: five-year-old Rachel, newly-employed Rachel, dream-Rachel staring back in the glass. I thought about my own life — the degree, the career, the car, the house — all the checkmarks I once believed would unlock permanent happiness. And how the real surprise was discovering that “arriving” didn’t feel the way I expected.
Rachel gets that revelation much sooner than I ever did. She doesn’t need to lose anything to understand what’s real. Once I wrote from that truth instead of hovering above it, the story straightened itself out.
I also flirted briefly with the idea of giving her a surprise ending. Something shocking. Something in the spirit of Midas, where everything he touched — including his family — turned to gold and misery. A breakup would’ve been predictable. A knifed waiter in a fit of passion would’ve been… well, memorable. But none of it felt right.
A twist only works when it grows from who the characters are. If it grows from the writer’s desire to impress the reader, it’s a stunt. My original premise said Rachel realizes her mistake. Not that she’s punished for it, not that she loses everything, but that she sees clearly what actually matters. Once I honored that, all the melodramatic possibilities simply fell away.
And then there was the chapbook question. I wondered for a moment whether this little story should become something bigger — stitched, printed, dressed up like the others on my shelf. But it doesn’t have that particular spark chapbooks need. Not yet, anyway. It’s a good story, one I’d happily include in a future collection, but it isn’t trying to be more than it is. Some stories are fireflies, not lanterns: bright, self-contained, finished.
What surprised me most is how quietly a story can wander off into familiar patterns if I’m not anchored in my character’s heart. Tropes are deceptively easy. Honest endings are harder. And figuring out the natural size of a story — when to let it stay small — feels like its own kind of wisdom.
Rachel wasn’t learning that beauty is only skin-deep. She was learning that beauty is whatever aligns with your own happiness, not whatever looks dazzling from the outside. And in its own small way, the story taught me the same thing: stay inside the character, and the ending will tell you where it wants to go.
If you’d like to wander a little farther, Realmscapes on Substack is where the weekly stories gather, and Studio Second Street is where the little curiosities and story treasures are waiting for you.
