  Short Stories
This week: Twas The Night Before Kids Went To Sleep 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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Stories For Children
Books fascinate most children. Kids have less cynicism to suspend to believe in a character, or a place. To write a good children's story you have to keep things simple. On the same point, don't preach or talk down to them. Successful children's stories have a problem to solve or challenges to overcome. And there should only be one problem. Don't complicate things with extra characters or in-depth description.
Characters can be anything from vegetables, animals, to a big red chair. Sometimes it's fun to surprise your readers with an unexpected personality. A fuzzy duck could be grouchy or a porcupine sweet and lovable. Remember Bambi's friend Flower? Be very careful with anthropomorphized animal characters; make them original and believable.
Structure should be as plain as possible, write in chronological order and don't use flashbacks. Narrate in first or third person and do not switch point of view. Dialog is important, it is better have dialog than tell your reader what is going on. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Larger words are okay to use if the context is clear. It's a good way for tots to expand their vocabulary. If you right for middle grade readers, you can expand your plot and add more complicated words.
If you want to publish your story, keep your word count low. And don't try to Seuss-rhyme your story, most publishers don't want to see bad form for the sake of rhyme. Publishers also don't like to see murder in young adult books.
So if you're looking to try writing something new, look into children's stories. Write on!
This month's question: Send in some suggestions to help new authors to children's stories. What's your advice?
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Tickle your brain and win a pile of gift points every day!
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Excerpt: Scratching and pathetic mewlings from the glass terrace door nagged at her and pierced the gloom she’d wrapped around herself. She forced her eyes open and drug her head up off her chest. It took several moments before her eyesight cleared and she focused on the glass.
Two pairs of youthful colored eyes, one amber and one a deep blue green, peered in through the snow frosted glass. A small, mittened hand had rubbed a clear spot. Pert noses pressed against the icy pane. Tap! Tap! Tap!
“Is anyone there?” The girl’s voice sounded sweet and musical, and somehow familiar, to the old woman’s ears.
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Excerpt: Never again will I go to that hotel on the West Coast... it was obviously terrible, otherwise I wouldn't have made such a proclamation. It didn't even have a sign, it just seem to pop up from nowhere.
Excerpt: Haroon locked the bathroom door, silenced the electronic muezzin blasting the call to prayer from his phone and hoped Asiyah hadn’t heard. He didn’t have the energy for the discussion that would follow if she had. Besides, he’d just installed Price Tag.
The terms and conditions blurred into digital hieroglyphics rocketing past the phone’s screen as he scrolled through to select ‘Accept’. Black lines spiralled across the grey background and transformed it into a camera shutter which dilated to reveal the bathroom.
Haroon nodded, pointing the phone at the sink. “Nice animation.” Took a photo. “Let’s check this thing out.”
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Excerpt: My name's Hannah and I live in a nice house with respectable parents who work five days a week and come to parent's evenings.
Then there's Jack, my little brother. He's nine. The age where he should know better. I'm fifteen and I knew better from as early as I can remember. You know better than to lie, bully, or steal at nine, I’m sure. I'm not saying he's all bad. You should have seen his face light up when he got the Playstation Four or whatever it was last Christmas. He was as charming and delightful as you could want a boy to be. He said I could play on it whenever I wanted.
Excerpt: That Christmas morning as I was getting ready to open my one big gift, I was so excited! But Daddy stood up and left the house. I did not know why. Mommy was in the kitchen. So I had to ask, "Can I open it now?" Mommy called back, "Yes, go ahead and open it". This is not how we did things on Christmas morning! We all sat around with big smiles as we watched each other open gifts. Why was Mommy and Daddy not there to watch me open my big gift?
Excerpt: James Rees was an adventurous sort of man, although he looked like any other respectable Englishman. He had the well taken care of brown gentleman's hair, tall and lean, with a wonderful smile that could woo the ladies. James came from a respectable family, and his mother and father weren't quite the happy parents when they were told about his latest adventurous idea.
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This month's question: Send in some suggestions to help new authors to children's stories. What's your advice?
Last month's question: When do you find foreshadowing to be helpful in your writing?
Scowel  replied: I wish I knew what I was doing. It would make things seem a lot easier. Hummm, I try to always return the reader to the place I found em at the beginning of the story. Anthropomorphism works out ok, for characters and you can use em backwards too. I went to "Art" school, we had some classes on theory and composition. They told us that an important aspect to any good work of art, requires two things: variety and repetition. So that's what I try to do. Foreshadowing, well, maybe it looks that way but I didn't really know about it when I was writin' this stuff. I could probably tell you something better if I knew what I was doing.
Magicmama answered: I usually work in foreshadowing in a later edit. That makes it easier to know for sure what I am foreshadowing, and I can plan out where hints will be best hidden. Foreshadowing is one of my favorite techniques to play with.
vada sent: Excellent Newsletter, Legerdemain. I had not heard the term jump-cut--learn something new everyday I am not conscious of using foreshadowing a lot. When I do it's at the end of a scene, but I have a feeling it sneaks in more than I'm aware of. Will need to pay more attention. Thanks for the push
relanka tells: I recently returned to the world of writing, so I'm still working on putting such devices to use. Mostly, I use foreshadowing in my fantasy stories and novels (that's my main focus when I write), and I use it mostly to imply that an attack or something ominous is about to happen, most likely in the following scene/chapter.
Quick-Quill  admits: Yes I like to foreshadow. It helps to keep the reader involved in the story. They now have a vested interest to see how it will end. Thank you for highlighting my story.
Doug Rainbow comments: George sits on his front porch with his fly swatter. Houseflies buzz to his table, land, and George swats them. A tiny space race visits earth. They want to make contact. The commander, in his buzzing little spaceship, flies in to George's table. Swat! The set-up, George sitting on the porch killing flies, is foreshadowing that gives the piece its texture.
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Short Stories: December 17, 2014 Issue [#6725]
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