 Short Stories: December 14, 2016 Issue [#8031] |
  Short Stories
This week: Writer-Arachnophobia 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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EEK! It's a SPIDER!
Okay..it doesn't have eight legs. It might have six or twenty, there isn't a set definition for this organism. This is about brainstorming ideas. Sometimes it is impossible to work on whatever project you might be writing. You might be stuck on a character flaw, wrote yourself off a cliff or in my case, broke the character's nose in a cafeteria and feel a little lost. I know where I want the story to go, I'm just feeling distracted by all those sandwiches in cellophane.
This is about brainstorming. Perhaps you want to start fresh or there might be a contest you want to enter, but ideas aren't gelling in your head. Try pulling out a few sheets of paper and surfing images. Put in a few key words, like the genre of the contest, or if your character is a redhead, type that in. Then start flipping through the images on Google and see what happens. Once you find something that feels intriguing (or scary if your filter is off)) stop and look at the image. Then write a main idea in the middle of your paper, draw a circle around it and then imagine "what happens next". For each idea, draw an arm off the main circle and write that idea in a new circle on that arm. If the idea blossoms, keep drawing arms and circles until your mind stops. Your drawing should end up looking like a spider with real big joints, and if they're like mine, kind of lop-sided and lumpy.
Nevermind. Keep thinking, keep brainstorming. Go through your images until you have a few sheets of paper filled out. Then, I like to wait a few days...or uhm, months and come back to those spiders. Hopefully you remember where you stashed them. Look behind the pile of recipes, that's where I found mine. If the idea is for a contest, you might want to get to it the next day. Then look at each spider and rate them for suitability to the contest. If it's just for a new story idea, go with what still interests you. Can you add more arms? Can you expand the ideas in the circles? Highlight the best ideas and start your story. I generally don't keep the inspiration image because I don't want to get locked on it, I want it to be merely the basis for my ideas. I find the best characters will stick and I know them pretty well.
Now it's time to start writing. If you're an outline person, start that and work your story into your plot points. If you're a wing-it kind of fellow, start typing and let the story unfold. In the end, I hope a wonderful story ends up in your portfolio. Write on!
This month's question: Give us your brainstorming tips!
Send in your reply below 
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Excerpt: “Listen up, maggots!” Sgt. Noel barked, as he stormed into the barracks of Elf Team Six. “We are a go for 'Protocol Kringle'! I repeat, we have a green light! This is not a drill!”
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#2095256 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: I cast my eyes around the crowd. It was the typical mix you might find at The Majestic on a Saturday night. Four gay guys, a couple straight, two emo-girls and a tattoo woman with awesome sleeves. The rest were like me, poor girls dressed in our own haute couture.
“I love what you have on,” Abbie said. “You make it yourself?”
Excerpt: His penjub - the bulbous sphere of flesh which comprised the rounded bottom of every Condmarian body, and housed the electro-magnetic organelles developed over the eons to facilitate the Condmarian's evolution in locomotion from walking to hovering - glowed softly with gentle pulses of incandescent light. This glow shown through the ornate robe he wore and back-lit the impressive design of finely latticed filigree which decorated the hem of his garment.
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Excerpt: I hurried through my nightly chores. Table cleared and garbage out, I settled on the couch to watch my favorite TV-show: "Duke the Wonder-dog."
| | | Lucy (E)
An arrogant cat gives her owner a hard time
#2105406 by Espero  |
Excerpt: I brought her home and made her a soft little bed to lie in. Any other kitten would have been mewing for their mother or cuddled up sleeping, not Lucy. Every time I woke up during the night to check on her she was still sitting bolt upright staring at me. Frankly it was unnerving. I have no idea whether she got any sleep that first evening or not. Thereafter, I never knew where she spent the night; she would disappear, only to show up in the morning. So much for bonding.
Excerpt: Noah wrinkled his nose at the musky scent that shrouded the antique shop. His husband, Deval, hunkered nearby inspecting a peach-colored bowl with an ornate, filigreed edge. Depression glass, no doubt. Deval's dark eyes twinkled with delight, and Noah let his features relax into a smile. He could put up with just about anything for Deval, even this junkyard of a store which was so cluttered there was scarcely room to turn around.
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#2105321 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Clarence rifled through the dressing table drawers. Nothing.
His breathing was labored, and sweat cut beige rivulets through the white makeup on his forehead.
Panic pounded on the door.
“We know you’re in there!”
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#2101788 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: "Its that bloody doctor. How can he know what's wrong with me, if he doesn't look at me but stares at the computer screen."
"Did you tell him about your heartburn?"
"Not in so many words, but I've must have seen him about seven times for the same thing."
"Don't tell me you wore that stupid hat, I expect he couldn't stop laughing at you."
"No he didn't even notice my hat, that's my point he didn't even look at me. So how is he going to tell what's wrong with me?
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#2105126 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Back again, this time for Christmas. This time, as opposed to the visit to the other family holiday, Thanksgiving where he had hidden in the bookshelves in the dining room. Teddy had always been taught that kings were all arrogant, selfish individuals who lorded their status over their subjects, subjecting them to years of worthless servitude. But perhaps this king was different. And yet from everything he’d seen and heard in the past, it didn’t seem so. After all, these humans spent more time honoring some baby whom they had forgotten had grown into a man, later becoming a king.
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This month's question: Give us your brainstorming tips!
Send in your reply below
Last month's question: Do your friends and family end up as characters in your writing?
Elfin Dragon-finally published replied: There is no doubt that my friends and family end up as some sort of character in my stories and novels - even in my poetry. I think as writers we can't help but use those around us as influences for what we write. For instance my ex is one of the major characters in a novel I'm working on. Big hulking barbarian that he is. 
J. A. Buxton responded: Not only friends and family but their pets often are portrayed in my stories. In fact, even some of the WdC members found themselves mentioned in my various novels. One man here, Brian, had a sex change to become Paula Hutchinson in my original novel "Home of the Red Fox." Nobody was safe from me.
Ben Garrick  answered: Although the main character in my writing is ME, at least in attitude---and very many deeds---mot other characters are constructed from bits and pieces of others I've known and observed. Sitting in a sidewalk-type setting and letting my mind wander is a good way to get bits-'n'-pieces. I feel as if I've done a good job if there's no necessity for suspension of disbelief on the part of my reader. (And by the way, I've never killed anyone in real life.)
Jeannie Cheering for Martel  sent: Yes, they do, especially my more eccentric aunts. I also use my relatives first names for my characters, even though they are not at all like my character in the story. It's just easier to remember that way.
Thank you for picking one of my stories for your "Editor's Picks." 
Vaughan Jones - ONE Scribe submitted: Friends and family do at times form characters for me, but not in themselves; rather in terms of their personality traits.
Zeke admits: In one of my longer short stories I wrote the life story of my great aunt Gertrude who came from a poor family and became an millionaire banker. It's called Gertrude's Miracle.
Pumpkin says:
Yes, not only people close to me, but people I've hardly known or knew way back when. I've even latched onto characters in TV commercials. Obviously, the fiction is created, but the voice, or the physical movements, or personality stick. I don't think anybody else would recognize them, but they play out in my head that way.
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