This week: Whatcha Cookin'? 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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Whatcha Cookin'?
A short story is like a recipe, you have to follow a general set of rules to make it work. Some recipes allow you to put your own twist on them, but others need exact measurements to work. Like souffles, if you don't follow those rules, you just get a big eggy pancake. Even beef ribs have to be treated with care or they end up big chew-sticks for the dog.
Part of the short story recipe is characters. Good characters can drive a plot in the right direction. A main character has to be 3-D, show the plot problem, and the desire to overcome the problem. The characters are the base part of the recipe, once you create them, don't tinker too much. The next part is setting. The setting is like the pan you cook in. Your setting should be interesting - surround the story, keeping it moving in the right direction. Then there is plot. Plot has to have internal or external conflict and a climax. That's the part of solving a recipe, if the cake doesn't rise, solve the problem. The point of view is like an oven, it has to be steady and reliable. No jumping from head to head, going from the bakery to the barbecue. Stay with a point of view, whether omniscient p.o.v, first person narrator, or a detached observer narration.
Last is theme. A theme is an overall idea or moral that evolves though the conflict experienced by the main character. Using imagery can help, death / birth, light / dark, or space, time and seasons. Try not to mix your theme. It will taste like tapas appetizers, teriyaki chicken and tiramisu for dessert. Now that I've made you hungry, put on your toque blanche and get cookin'!
This month's question: Do you follow a formula for your short stories?
Send in your answer below!  Editors love feedback!
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#2174523 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Crane Eberhart swung up the fire escape. The sound of his hunters faded past in the darkness below. The cold rungs of the ladder flaked rust as he climbed up the wall. The old Wong Foo Chinese Restaurant was well made but nothing lasts forever. “Pack of dogs.” He murmured under his breath.
Excerpt: Kreesh admired her pig-nosed reflection in the pool, wondering if the strange boy she met found her exotic or monstrous. "I did too. Right on the nose. Then, he lowered his weapon, and looked in my eyes instead."
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.
Excerpt: Mistral roared and whistled past the cabin, banged the shutters against the window frames, shook the door. But Sorcha held one billet of firewood in her trembling hands and stared at the one billet remaining in the box beside the dying fire. The hearth was the only warm spot in the three-room home in the woods, so cold these past two nights she wanted to crawl into the brick fireplace her grandfather had built, curl up with the small glow and red embers.
Excerpt: The man’s eyes were closed. Slowly he sensed the wet, cold hard stone he was laying on. He felt a pain on his right temple. As he came to, he opened his eyes and saw a dimly lit prison with no other prisoners in his cell. He scanned his attire. His disguise did not work.
A lanky tall man with a short beard in a shiny chain mail approached the cell bars. “Terinth is your name correct?”
Terinth sat up painfully and nodded slowly to the guard.
Excerpt: Bianca loved three o'clock. That's when her nap was over and her favorite show "Everyday Animals!" came on. Her mom would usually watch with her. Sometimes her cat, Mister Mittens, would wander through and look at the TV, too. Today, all three of them were learning about porcupines.
"...and they eat leaves and twigs and bark, things like that. How about that, kids?"
"Can we get a porkypine, Mommy? There's lots of twigs and stuff outside for it to eat."
"It would be too dangerous, sweetie. Don't forget what the man said about the sharp quills, and it's porcupine, not porkypine. Besides, we already have Mister Mittens; don't you like him anymore?"
"Yeah, I just wish he was a porkypine."
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Excerpt: The - Sturm und Drang - was a literary movement born in Germany during the last decades of the 18th Century. Wolgang Goethe, Jacob Reinhold Lenz and Friedrich Maximilian Klinger are counted among its most famous members
"Sarah? Hey Sarah? A little help please, please, you've got to help me!"
Sarah pulled the brake of the time machine, and felt her mind being catapulted from the sorrowful land of young Werther to the college class where dozens of undergraduates were biting their nails.
Excerpt: “Come on, Phil, nobody’s home. It’ll be easy pickings, lots of bushes in the back yard and an alley.”
“Whatever, Ralph. Can’t we get somethin’ to eat before we do it? I’m really hungry.”
“I just bought you a burger, fries and a shake an hour ago.”
“I know, but I’m Really hungry.”
Excerpt: The loud roar – a furious war-call filled the area and forced to shudder, apparently, even the sky. Hundreds and hundreds of warriors were running towards each other, dressed in sparkling chain armors and inexhaustible fighting passion was sparkling in their eyes. There was neither doubt, nor fear – only a thirst of battle and a war fury – to kill the enemy before you fall on the battlefield yourself. But those who have fallen in a fair fight are winners already, they are destined to enter the sparkling halls of Valhalla and the almighty Odin himself will lead them into new battles forevermore. Let him guide them into this struggle for their enemies to fall before the power of the mighty Odin! |
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This month's question: Do you follow a formula for your short stories?
Send in your answer below! Editors love feedback!
Last month's question: Can details be too graphic in your short story?
GaelicQueen  replied: When I was a child, the black & white movie "Thirteen Ghosts" filled me with terror. Fast forward many decades scary movies of today are over the top with gore. Filmmakers seem to be trying to outdo each other with more and more gore and less story development. There needs to be more character development in making the story scary. (2118517 and 2115941)
Quick-Quill  sends: Really? you ask that in this day and age? I suggest a note to the reader, Content contains graphic descriptions. I'm listening to True Crime All The Time podcasts. There is nothing too graphic. They tell it like it is. Now they warn you not to be eating if you're going to be listening to a particular episode. I'm doing some research on Albert Fish. Horror is nothing to reality. If you want to read horror, take reality and begin to describe it without using pictures or a movie. How would you describe a man who kidnapped children and carved up their bodies, roasted their buttocks and ate them? This was what Thomas Harris did when he made Hannibal Lector. That character isn't real. There has never been a psychiatrist with a fetish for killing and eating flesh. The profile doesn't compute. But in fiction, you can make up any character and if you're a good writer like Thomas Harris, you can suspend reality because only those in the field will know the truth. Everyone else will be caught up in the story.
Ann Anson  responds: I am sure the details can be too much graphic. Most of the people I know are the ones who imagine the scenes as they read along. This includes me as well. I also imagine everything I read. I don't read any horror stories but I read crime fiction. But from my experience what I felt is that how the words affect us is directly connected with how well our life is going. I am saying this on the basis of what happened to me. I read a book during the most happiest days of my life. There was some gruesome murders described in it. It didn't made me stop reading or something. I just thought how can one human do something like to other. That's it and I was able to continue with the book and then the other. Then after few years I had some tough time. I thought since reading is something that make me happy and I love crime fiction. So I took a book from library. There were some horrific murders but not gruesome compared to other books I have read. But since I was emotionally very down that book gave me night mares.
Jim Hall - GoT Forest Child  submits: I believe that there can be too much gore, but I tend to lean towards heightened suspense over blatant blood and gore. Less is definitely be more.
A story that goes from one gory scene to another will lessen the impact of such a scene on the reader. I favor intense suspense with a possible powerful gory scene.
Seshat answers: This is great question. I personally like writing very descriptive for the most part but the mischievous writer in me likes to leave the reader hanging sometimes! So I'm a fan of both. I actually learned a new word in all your adjectives examples today. I am a horror movie fan spanning black and white Frankenstein { My favorite} all the way to the new horror like Crimson Peak I prefer the psychological scare every time. Horror is a safe scare for me and I love that small thrill of..how scared will I be?
Thanks to everyone who sent a response. I very much appreciate your thoughts and time taken to send an answer.
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Short Stories: November 14, 2018 Issue [#9226]
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