  Short Stories
This week: Complete Your Short Story Edited by: Aennaytte: Free & Wild in GoT  
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Complete Your Short Story
Are you writing short stories or chapters?
Unfinished stories are drafts or chapters, not short stories.
Let me begin by saying that I fully understand that not every story will have a happy ending, or even a distinct ending. Life goes on, so you don't have to kill everybody just because the story you wanted to tell is over.
However, a short story should have a beginning, middle, and ending. A short story should have enough characters to create a solid plot, but not be filled with too many side characters that don't advance the plot at hand. In short: A short story needs to be able to stand on its own merit.
After reading a short story, the reader should feel a sense of satisfaction. A sense of having spent their time in a worthwhile pursuit. Not every story needs to be deep and life-altering, but a story that feels unfinished is not a short story.
In the best case scenario, the reader will come back to your portfolio and look around if they can find more stories about the characters you introduced in your story. Worst case scenario, the reader won't want to read another one of your short stories. This is something to consider.
If you mean to write a novel and use short stories as spin-offs, then make sure to treat your spin-off in a way that a reader can "meet" your plot-line and characters for the first time and also feel fulfilled if they never ever pick up the novel that goes with it.
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For my last Short Story newsletter "Short Stories Mean Freedom!" , I got the following replies:
Quick-Quill  wrote: I'm in total agreement with you. When I need a break I go to the contests and start looking for prompts to jump start my juices. Lately I've missed some good ones and have to wait for new ones to start.
There are so many great contests and prompts that I miss. And when I'm all good and ready to write ... well that's the week when not a single prompt speaks to me.  Such is life.
vada  wrote: I enjoyed your newsletter. Since I'm one of the slow writers, especially with revisions, it's nice to know I'm not the only one I will often take time from a novel and write a short or two just to give me a break. vada
Oh, you are definitely not alone at writing slowly. Allow yourself some creative freedom with short stories and then force yourself to dedicate some time to your novel as often as possible.
Osirantinous  wrote: Ha! On the 24th of January I'll have been writing my Watching Clouds novel for 20 years. TWENTY. I joined WDC back in 2013 to make myself do something serious with it (the first draft is kind of written, as well as several different kinds of endings and the whole thing's probably now three books!). But mostly since then I've been writing short stories. Love them, and I'm writing in genres I'd never have considered. But... it means that my novel hasn't gotten as far forward as I'd have liked in the almost three years I've been here . I write side-shorts for some of my other novels; think I'll have to start doing it with this one just to invigorate it (and me). Nice tip, thanks!
I've been writing my novel (which now more like five novels) since 2007. Not as long as you, but definitely not really working toward completion at the pace that I want to either.
chopstixd wrote: Short stories are fun, novels are best sellers. Let's not kid ourselves. Novels hold the prospect of recompense. They are the brass ring to grab at. Yep, they are a lot of work and, by shear probability, will never receive any more recognition than an agent's form letter rejection, but they are writer's best hope for fame, fortune and really wild things.
Since novels will most likely break their author's hearts, writing short stories remains a better activity for learning the craft. Learn story telling, Point of View, word economy and well all of it.
At WDC getting someone to read your novel proves near impossible. In the real world, the same goes for short stories. Really, outside of WDC how often do we read short stories?
For the most part, I agree with you. And then there are Kafka, Poe, Flemming, Doyle ... many authors got famous with short stories. |
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Short Stories: April 13, 2016 Issue [#7578]
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