  Action/Adventure
This week: Sept 21 '15 Short Stories 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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Your Uncle, What He Said
This is another installation of, where do I get my ideas? People ask all the time. And to be honest, I don't tell them the truth. I don't tell them that the last time they had a family picnic with all their relatives over, I was sitting and observing them. Hey, I'm not crazy enough to drag along a notebook and take notes, for crying out loud, but I just...watch.
There's so many things to see when people-watching; how relationships work or don't work, how people look and act, and how they speak. They don't know I'm looking at the way their skin folds on their neck like damp newspaper, or how their white hair is glistening and translucent. They don't know I'm listening to the slang of their conversation, mentally taking notes on where to research the words "on fleek". They don't see my eyes following the hands of a mother caressing an infant's velvet-soft skin.
So when they left their grill too close to the garage, and their uncle sat watching it like a sentinel, not doing anything but watching like I was, to see what happened...it was pretty darn funny when all the uncle said was, "dude, your garage is on fire" and then laughed when people started shouting and dragging the hose around. By the way...only a little paint melted, quite the overreaction if you ask me.
So my newsletter advice to you is, lie. Fib a little and say you get your ideas from newspaper stories, or blogs, or even the neighbor. Just don't say you got the idea from them.
This month's question: Do you get story ideas from relatives? Send in your answer below!  Editors love feedback!
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#958748 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: I saw the big one first.
Its shimmering body moping through the trees.
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#2058427 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Once upon a chilly Friday the 13th, sometime around 7:30 in the morning, I fell from a patio cover I was building, breaking a bone in my left foot. By 11:45, my foot was in a cast—blue, mid-calf, open-toed. I was issued a pair of crutches and sent on my merry way. As I made my way to my truck, I phoned my wife, Roni, to let her know how my Friday the 13th was going.
Excerpt: Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a black and white cat, and my name is Othello. I originally lived with a family named Goldberg a ways outside of a city called Krakow, in Poland. My life was a normal cat life, lived mostly indoors. I had a big house, with many stairs and places to explore. There was always plenty of love, laughter and food.
That all changed in September of 1939.
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#2049964 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: A small pink music box sat on grandma's dresser for many years. When I was little I would open it up and watch the ballerina dance round and round. I often danced to the music, when it stopped grandma let me wind it up again. She told me she had been given the music box from her grandma when she was little.
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"The Harbor. The Harbor. The Harbor. The Elbe. The lights in the darkness. The peace."
#2056540 by Brae  |
Excerpt: And as we walked, as was my vice, I would stop and stoop to peer at the small bits of the glimmering world that sought to catch away the attention of my eye.
I lofted a bit of burnished glass into the air. The entire atmosphere of that moment caressed it and bore it to the ground with a profound gracefulness. “Are there words in German that you find just fit better?”
Excerpt: He awoke before sunrise. The thought was almost exciting, to see what he had previously only experienced in a drunken state when he was still awake from the night before, and although he wasn’t a morning person, he didn’t complain when the cute assistant from the film crew woke him. The make-up team applied concealer liberally around his eyes and the small generator supplied enough electricity to run the kettle and the hairdryer, so when it was time for the shoot he looked every bit the heartthrob people wanted to see.
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Excerpt: “What do you think you're doing?”
I almost slipped off my narrow perch at the sound of her voice. “Hannah! I thought you were Nike!”
She shrugged, climbing down to join me. “Nah. You’d never hear him coming.” Her eyes shifted around the area. If she was nervous, then that gave me a very good reason to be nervous too. She sighed heavily. “I should have known you’d follow me. Let’s get down from here before he actually comes.” Her words weren’t rushed at all. But I knew her far too well.
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#2053142 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: He watched her intently from across the room as if he were set on fire.
There were people in between he and her at the party, but he didn't really notice them. She played with him, drifted in and out of body clusters, peering out from behind them, then moving on. He saw blurry figures, far away. Glimpsed her smile, or a flash of her legs as she avoided him; she knew it drove him crazy.
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This month's question: Do you get story ideas from relatives?
Last month's question: Where do you surf for giggles and ideas?
dragonwoman  responded: I usually use facebook, friends and family emails (I have some pretty funny people in both categories.) other times, I listen for those things in my life. A mall is a good place for that I find. Believe it or not, election campaigns or debates and just the news in general. After all, sometimes if you don't laugh you'll cry or rage to no purpose.
Elfin Dragon-finally published sent: As I catch up on my newsletters...I find my giggles and ideas with "Simon's Cat" on YouTube and with the classic television of MeTV. Episodes of "Welcome Back Kotter", "Carol Burnett", "Hogan's Heroes" and many others. Of course you can never go wrong with a well done commercial either. I've seen a few which have had me rolling on the floor.
Leger: I love Simon's Cat!
Nixie  tells: I deleted my Facebook page, so I'm back in the dark ages. I can't be bothered with Twitter. I know, it's not very savvy these days.
Images inspire me. A simple image search on Google sometimes works. I also look at poster images from various websites, and I like DeviantArt, too.
ladeecaid admits: That is a great idea, Leger. Thanks for sharing. It makes me want to get on Twitter right now.
Quick-Quill  confesses: I do surf for ideas. I use twitter for promoting my novel and hopefully getting a following. It mostly other writers right now...but maybe later.
Zeke reveals: When I was actively writing, most of my short story ideas came from my dreams.
Dragon is hiding  writes: I'm too lazy to keep up with most of the social media accounts I have, so I only use Facebook. Most of the time, I'll skim through Facebook once or twice a day and see what's new or interesting. Buzzfeed is also great for laughs.
Smee  informs: Reddit is another source of similar giggles and silliness as facebook or twitter. There's also the /r/writingprompts subreddit which can be a remarkable source of ideas and prompts along with some talented writers.
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Action/Adventure: September 16, 2015 Issue [#7232]
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