  Short Stories
This week: Edited by: Legerdemain  
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The purpose of this newsletter is to help the Writing.com short story author hone their craft and improve their skills. Along with that I would like to inform, advocate, and create new, fresh ideas for the short story author. Write to me if you have an idea you would like presented.
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Taking your Story over the Top
In my opinion, great stories always have something unexpected or special to them. Whether it is a romantic write, a mystery or horror, a writer has to stretch beyond the boring and normal and find something that will touch their reader. When writing your story, how do you decide what will make it special? What will grab your reader's attention and hold on to it?
Writing a Good Hook: A hook is a line or a paragraph that outlines an entire story. It creates curiosity and makes your reader ask questions. Curiosity creates suspense and pushes your reader to envelop more of your story. A narrative hook instantly places the reader into the story emotionally.
A Unique Character: Nothing is better than an unusual voice in your story. The uniqueness of your character will stick in your reader's mind. The shouting of a man afflicted with Tourettes, the bipolar woman, the blind prison inmate, each character can add spice and interest to your story.
Conflict with Style: I've enjoyed stories with contemporary conflict. Examples of road rage, cell phone rudeness, airline issues, and marriages ruined by internet romance all fall into this category. I like seeing how a character deals with these modern day problems.
Protagonists; Readers love a protagonist they can relate to. They want to get emotionally involved with a protagonist, relate to his/her conflict and cheer him/her on to solving that conflict. I don't feel a protagonist necessarily has to be likable, but a reader should be able to see the reasons why the character does what he does and understand the consequences.
Antagonists: Ah, don't you love a great antagonist? I think of an antagonist as someone sublime. Something about them has to have a quirk, a defect or a glitch. Something abnormal has to create conflict. Great antagonists have dark secrets to uncover, or a reason why they've been driven to do bad things.
Dialog: Put extra effort into your dialog. I find it is one of the things that can make or break a story for me as a reader. If the plot and conflict are interesting but the dialog is flat, I totally lose interest in the story. Dialog isn't about everyday conversation. It is there to move the story along and give your characters interaction.
Conflict Resolution and "The End": I love to read happy endings or at least endings where the very bad man ends up dead.  I like a story to end with all the loose ends wrapped up and knowing what will happen to the characters after they leave the story. Don't leave your readers hanging!
And now I've come to the end of my newsletter. I hope a couple of these items will help you create more interesting and compelling stories.
Write on!
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#1059800 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: My wife and the kids have always been there for me. I can’t understand what’s happened. I keep asking, why they haven’t come, but no one will answer me. All day long strangers surround me and at night they lock my bedroom door. I don’t like this place. I want to go home
Excerpt: Suddenly, I was seized by a blinding red light; an ever-expanding crimson circle, like a dying sun, exploded within my head. I was falling. A cold, sharp pain struck my temple. The dying sun, as if focused by a magnifying lens, contracted into a pinpoint of brilliant white light, burning with intense heat. I caught the faint smell of cherry blossoms just before my world burst into flames, then - darkness.
| | | Invalid Item
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#1241121 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: I need to get out. I can’t think with all this noise, he thought to himself. There wasn’t actually any noise in the house with his brother Rob gone for the day but he needed something to clear his head. Kyle hadn’t done hardly any writing that day. He was struggling to make it as a famous author… especially when he was neither famous nor an author- at least not yet.
Excerpt: A word of advice for all of you with a mother. If she ever uses the words "home" and "permanent" in the same sentence, run far away. For the sake of your diginity, hide and never come out. I didn't. This is what happened, down to the very last curl.
| | | Invalid Item
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#1241382 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: A glowing white ball sprung alight over a relatively intact altar. She’s coming! Finally after all these years, she’s coming. With her help, no longer will I molder, forgotten in decaying splendor. Soon I will walk the Earth again.
But nothing should be left to chance. Somehow I must appeal to her, give her something to lure her to me . . .
| | | Invalid Item
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#842061 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: I love ballet. I love to watch it. I love the music of it. I love the romance and fantasy of it. I love the little chiffon skirt that twirls when I move and the little leather slippers and the athletic grace of the movements.
| | | Invalid Item
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#1064864 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: This is the story of Gertrude, the cow. Gertrude was a Holstein cow just like any other Holstein cow, I suppose, except no one is exactly like someone else. Every boy is different from every other boy, every girl different from every other girl, and yes, Gertrude was different from every other cow.
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A boy carries a dark secret.
#1223957 by Zim  |
Excerpt: Brian balanced the rock precariously in the palm of his hand. He knelt slowly, careful not to attract attention. "A little closer. That's right." he whispered, anticipation made it hard to stay still. "Come on." he coaxed.
| | | The Bench (ASR)
Who is this quiet old woman who comes once a year to sit all day, alone, on the bench?
#1241151 by SoraJen |
Excerpt: Golden sunlight streamed down from the fiery sky above to paint the landscape with colours too vivid and shadows too deep. That sunlight shone brilliantly on her hair, turning it from the deep burnished blonde to an incandescent white. She sat alone on the left side of the peeling wooden bench that was so old the bolts had all rusted, leaving wan streaks of hideous orange. Her hands folded lightly in her lap she closed her eyes and let the sun beat on her face, looking at the warm pinkness of her eyelids.
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#1233711 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: He slowly rose from the swamp until the water barely reached underneath his eyelids. It rippled when he carefully walked on the algae floor to the edge of white sand. The jungle was thick and dark. The air choked his lungs. Nonetheless, he was trained for this kind of weather. Sweat poured down his thick brown hair, and his colored uniform of green and black stuck like glue to his tough body. His name wasn't Joseph, anymore. He lost that name ages ago. It was Delta.
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This month's question: How do you keep your stories fresh, exciting and compelling?
Last month's question: How do you use images in conjunction with your writing?
Replies:
Lou-Here By His Grace  : I love the suggestions about looking at pictures before/while writing about a subject. Often times I will have gone somewhere and not write about it for months/years. pictures help to prod my memory and pen in the right direction.
daydreamer13: I found this newsletter and quirky, fun and educational to read. I can't wait to practice writing about interesting images! Thanks very much and Happy Writing 
June Afternoon : Your newsletter came at a perfect time!! I've been tryin to write a story set in the mountains... and since i've actually been there I know how amazing and awesome the views can be...but often get stuck trying to describe them on paper without resorting to cliches like 'blanket of snow' and 'mountains looming above' and etc...lol! I guess the real challenge of painting a picture with words is to capture how u feel when u see something than just describing it bit by bit...thats wat gets the message across..at least thats what I've decided!! lol
loved the newsletter...
Strange Wulf : I don't really use images with my writing. I usually just get vivid images in my head and use them to form stories and characters, then try to describe them on the page.
I'd love to draw comics for some of these characters, but until I develop the art skills for it, I'm stuck with words. I suppose I could find an artist for my work, but no luck yet.
Guess I'll just keep writing until I get what I need. What else is there to do?
tattooer of walruses : Before I write much of anything in short stories, I see where my characters are in my mind clearly. I do not always descibe it down to an inch, because that limits the reader's imagination room, but I really try to know where they are and what they look like before I can write about them at all. Image is one of the three most important aspects to writing (in my opinion): image, storyline (dur), and character consistancy.
Thanks for a good newsletter!
Jay Bingham : If I have a picture of the thing I'm writing about, I like to use it. Partly for variety. Partly because "a picture is worth a thousand words." Partly because I'd rather look at a picture than read a thousand-word description. But, I’m supposed to be a writer, so if I use a picture, I make sure the writing doesn’t depend on the picture. I may not even refer to it, especially if it’s a story. In technical writing, it’s usually better to refer to the picture. But in a story, it’s there more as a decoration.
charm1: There always seems to be a buzz word of the day floating in and out of every conversation. Imagery seems to be the word du jois.
I've always been a lover of the written word because most often it can transport the mind and soul, whereas, conversations have the tendancy to cause a misunderstanding, or the brain misses important nuances that the written word provides the time for the reader to digest.
Sometimes the writer uses more words than is necessary to describe beauty or situations. Personally, I feel that it has to be just the style of the writer that fills the need of each individual. That is why we all have different taste. And, isn't a wonderful world because we do.
Great newsletter!!
Thanks to everyone who replied! I love getting feedback to the newsletters. 
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Short Stories: April 04, 2007 Issue [#1635]
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