  Short Stories
This week: Picking Up Pieces Edited by: Legerdemain  
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Picking Up Pieces
We all suffer tragedy and losses. Some are expected and some are sudden. Some impact you deeply and some merely create an inconvenience in our day. Whether it's lost keys, a flat tire, or losing someone you love - you feel an impact. We could be late for an appointment or end up stuck on the side of the road. How we handle it can be as simple as calling a tow truck, or changing the tire. But when something large and devastating happens, we stumble along and do the best we can do.
Looking back at the hard moments in our lives can give us a lot of perspective on who we are. It's reflecting on those moments that can show us what we're made of and how we handle ourselves. Hindsight can help us shape our future and take steps to create the environment we want to exist in. Tragedy and emotion are integral parts of human nature. So take note of how your characters respond to conflict and danger.
Remember their actions and emotions affect the rest of the story. Tell their story honestly, in the way you want them to move forward in the arc. Ask yourself if their emotions and actions are moving the story forward and giving credibility to your characters. If not, ask yourself if they need to be in the story to achieve the results you want. Sometimes, they're just cardboard cutouts of exterior characters to lend credibility or humor to the story. Decide what purpose that character serves, if any, and make sure they do their job.
As always, Write On!
This month's question: Has personal tragedy affected your writing? Send in your answer below!  Editors love feedback!
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Excerpt: Virginia Clark choked back tears as she hovered over her wife's deathbed. Morning sunbeams streamed through the window but did little to cheer the hospice room. The bedside monitor bleeped in time with Maria's heartbeat, diminished vital statistics flowing across the screen like an ominous prophecy. Fifty was too young to die, but cancer wasn't discerning. Within the next few hours, Virginia's soul mate would die.
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#2163460 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: “What is it?” Paulie asked as the glint of sunlight shined off a bizarre, iron-cast pocketwatch. The exterior was embroidered of skulls, netted within a strewn lacework of webbing as if prisoners in a cage designed by an all-devouring spider.
“What you think it is, Sherlock?” chided Paulie’s best friend, Davey, bearing a smirk.
| |  | Mona and the Moon (13+)
Can Joe's tussle with a wormhole help save the world, or even just his little piece of it?
#2163151 by Deano  |
Excerpt: Joe stood alone inside the huge arena at one end of the grassy field. He paced and fidgeted, as he waited. He wasn't coaching his high school football team in a game against their cross-town rivals. Not this time. The stakes this day were so much higher, he could hardly believe it. How did I end up here? Joe wondered, as he steeled himself for an unprecedented journey to an uncertain endpoint.
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#2153274 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Why was I so worried, there's no way he could have found out, I thought, reassuring myself as I went into the house. Still I couldn't help the feeling of uneasiness, maybe I should have answered the phone.
Excerpt: I’d never been to a Ghost Club meeting before. In fact, I’d never even heard of one. But they are out there, and last night I went to my very first one.
It was held in the basement of a man named Philip. There were seven of us there, and we all sat at a long wooden table in a large room with only one door: the one we walked in. A thick black candle sitting in the middle of the table provided the only light, its dancing yellow flame casting shadows on the walls behind us. In one wall was a big stone fireplace filled with kindling and a couple of logs, but it wasn’t lit. I don’t know why, because it felt like it was only forty degrees in there. And there was a strange smell, something like leather and onions.
Excerpt: My name is Death, as in the opposite of life, and ironically, my very existence is being threatened. For centuries, I've brought a necessary balance to the world. The creatures on earth would live their lives, build their kingdoms, fulfill their goals, and in the end it was my job to snuff out their lights. It was an incredibly morbid job, and reflecting on it I believe I took its simplicity for granted, because now the human race has been reduced to a mere group of survivors, and the earth has become almost uninhabitable. Meaning, once these last few humans die, my purpose is void and I perish with them.
Excerpt: She hadn’t spoken a word in days. Not an utterance had passed her lips—not even to remark on the odor that was spreading a palpable maleficence throughout the entire house. Each breath he took speared his lungs with a gust of sour air.
“You expect me to do it all,” The man spat vitriol as he prepared coffee.
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#2127322 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Abigail pulled into the driveway and felt a presence she hadn't felt in a long time, eyes watching her. She had chosen an isolated life after medically leaving a decade long police career. Her last missing persons case was the end of her career and a life she left behind. But today, the feeling returned. Eyes watching her.
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This month's question: Has personal tragedy affected your writing? Send in your answer below! Editors love feedback!
Last month's question: Where do you find story inspirations?
a1tam0nt responds: I get story ideas from what other people have written, and sometimes I get my story inspiration from headlines around the world. I once wrote a short comedy story about Portland, Oregon legalising customers putting their own gas in their tank based on a few over-the-top responses to the move. And it was a good story, I must say.
Genipher  sends: I get a lot of ideas from my dreams.
A month or so back, I saw a news headline that inspired a story: Woman dies from bee acupuncture!
Sometimes it's a comment that one of my kids makes, that sends my imagination whirling.
Quick-Quill  admits: Like you I read the news. One day I came across a weird murder. I've started plotting out the story but it lacks something. A man's wife leaves him and runs away with a lover. He is a bootlegger and kills the woman who is his competitor. He buries her in his wife's dress. When she's found months later, unidentifiable, there is a suicide note in it written by the man's wife. The man claims the woman is his wife and has a burial for her. He remarries and a number of years later his real wife shows up and having seen a news article she's dead.
I had fun with this one!! I came up with a great story in plotting, but I can tell the above better than writing the crime novel.
Thanks to everyone who sent a response! I love getting feedback and it's a great reward to know you're reading. 
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Short Stories: July 25, 2018 Issue [#9023]
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