This week: So Much Conflict Edited by: Legerdemain  
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So Much Conflict
We're all pretty familiar with the types of conflict our protagonist meets in our stories. Some of them are character vs character or society, character vs self, character vs technology, character vs nature or supernatural, and character vs self.
Some of the challenges we find when writing our stories is defining what the conflict our hero meets on their journey. It doesn't have to be a single challenge, it can be an antagonist and the environmental challenges they have their conflict in.
While writing your story, try to help your reader understand what the challenge is. You can lose a reader in murky descriptions and emotional fog. Think about the antagonists you love and the emotions they invoked in you. Even if the conflict is nature, personify or identify what it is and how your protagonist will meet the challenge and overcome it.
So, when editing your story, look at your main conflict and make sure your reader clearly understands it in your short story.
As always, Write On!
This month's question: What type of conflict do you favor in your short stories? Send in your answer below!  Editors love feedback!
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| | | Yellow (13+)
Harry is given a new partner. HM, Whatever Contest, July.
#2277241 by Beholden   |
Excerpt: “I don’t want any shenanigans this time.”
Chandler crossed his arms and glowered up at Harry standing before his desk.
“You have got to realise that this is serious business we’re engaged in here, that much more hangs in the balance than you understand.”
Excerpt: Gripping the sandpaper, Mel's hand moved in concert with the majestic rhythm of the waves scouring the shore.
Carrying his surfboard, Joelly stopped in front of my boat-in-pieces. "How's the project?"
Excerpt: Wearing a cloak of silver-white mist several meters deep and thick enough to drink, Vetle marched at a clipped pace away from his home, his son, his life. Avoiding unpleasant necessities. His feet knew the way; they’d trudged the road between Emil’s humble farm and his own vast estate countless times. Woden’s eye, what would his half-brothers think? Shame had many mouths with tongues of flame.
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This item number is not valid.
#988474 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Each night I wonder just how to let you know that I am here. Tonight the newspaper and magazines I carry pummel from my grasp as I pull the door closed. I misjudged the bundle's center of gravity when I shifted it to one arm and I stare in bewilderment as the papers splay across your floor. Somewhere toward the back of your home I hear you exit through a door I have never seen.
Excerpt: A whisper of dark morning air nudged Rufus awake. Stretching each squat little leg, he stood squarely on the rooftop where he'd been roosting, cleared his throat, and with much concentration, crowed, "Kaw-cuh-doodle-dooo! Kaw-cuh-doodle-dooooo!"
As the first faint light of dawn broke over the little farm at the far edge of Fableland, the little rooster held his head up high, spread his wings wide, and announced to the barnyard, "Ta Da."
Excerpt: It had been the longest year of my life. A year filled with more anguish than blessing, more grief than happiness. A year when losing myself in thoughts of my homecoming became more lamentation than celebration. It had been a year of heartbreak.
And then with a suddenness that prevented me from notifying anyone back home, my orders to leave Vietnam came three days early. An eternity under the circumstances.
After a stupefying endlessness, and with the fabric of my life frayed, I was finally going home.
But instead of peace and comfort—mile by mile, heartbeat by heartbeat—a growing anxiety blotted out what I had imagined this day would be.
Excerpt: "Hey Zee," Connie called out when she walked into the shop. It was sweltering outside, again, and her little thrift store marked the halfway point between Zina's tiny apartment and the vegan diner where she waited tables.
"Oh, Con, feels great in here." She pulled her blouse out of her skirt and held it away from her sweaty skin, then headed over to the row of previously-owned fans. They weren't the most attractive things, but they were plugged in and Zina switched each one on and stood as their focus.
Character Prompt for August 2022:
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This month's question: What type of conflict do you favor in your short stories? Send in your answer below! Editors love feedback!
Last month's question: What are some of the best descriptions you've written?
dogpack:saving 4 premium: DWG  : The puce of the matter can frustrate the mad hatter but only, if the words scatter.
/pyo͞os/
adjective
adjective: puce
of a dark red or purple-brown color.
"his face was puce with rage and frustration"
noun
noun: puce
a dark red or purple-brown color.
N.A Miller  : THE CASTLE OF DREAMS story has excellent description.. plus it uses three tomes of real elvish for the elf characters.
Beholden : Description is sorta what I do, in spite of the fact we're told we shouldn't do it, presumably because modern readers don't read it. To which I respond that I'll take those readers that do read descriptions. You can have the ones that don't.
Oh, and it's not for me to indicate which description was the best I ever wrote. That's your job.
Scifiwizard Retired  : I tend to lack in describing something in a story. No matter how many times I read over what I had typed, it seems I can make the description better. Because of that, my descriptions seem to ramble on and become longer than they should.
Happy to write : Not sure it depends on the day and what I describing ,possibly Heaven?
ikaka : puce is purple
elephantsealer : Describing how to get away from "multiple arms that tried to drown me"..
keyisfake : My best on is when a tense scene is needed or when a disaster happens.
rupali: Puce is extreme frustration or insult.
So, the colour of the puce is either opium or Ivory grey.
Khola Mousethyme : sci-fi fantasy stories I have worked on. I just recently described a creature with claws, a spiked tail, and long sharp jaws as it attacked and twisted the head off of one of my characters.
brom21 : Personally, such terms are quite obscure. Only a designer could have full knowledge and understanding of such vague specifications, which is an oxymoron actually. lol. The only color relation I know of is pistachio, a shade of green. Then there are more familiar comparisons like crimson or scarlet red, typically used to describe blood. Thanks for the NL!
JCosmos  : from my Writer's cramp submission
"First Interspecies Marriage"
Then one day while walking the dog in the early morning hours down Vine Street to get his cup of fresh Peets coffee from the original Peets on Walnut and Vine Street, around the corner he met a mysterious woman. They looked at each and as his Korean-born first wife had told him once when they had first met, there was a Korean expression, “ Sparks flew from hearts to hearts (Ishimchongshim 이심 충심”.
She came up to him and smiled and asked for directions to his club, in a strange accent that was hard to place. She also had a “pan-ethnic look” which could be almost any ethnic group in the world, vaguely mixed racial features, long dark hair, and wore seriously unfashionable clothes from decades ago.
Thanks to everyone for your feedback! |
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Short Stories: August 17, 2022 Issue [#11517]
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