 Short Stories: December 10, 2025 Issue [#13494] |
This week: Orbiting 2026 Edited by: Jayngle Bells  
More Newsletters By This Editor 
 
1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions
| Hi, I'm Jayne! I'll be your editor today. |
I’ll keep this brief, partly because this newsletter is accidentally late, and partly because the kind of year we’re heading into rewards precision over rambling. If you’re hoping that means my newsletters will turn into short blurbs—I’m afraid I have bad news 
For me, 2025 was great for writing. I have five whole stories left you could go look at. I know, I know, that’s it? Yes. Yes it is.
And I love every single one of them. Three—yes, three of the five—are epistolary. Of those three, one is my absolute favorite story I’ve written in years. Yes, I love it even slightly more than my beloved grizzled detective in a gritty world of unicorns. Okay, maybe not more. I love it differently.
Anyway: the reason I have those three epistolary stories at all is because I decided to focus. I picked a structure—and because I’m me, I picked one I didn’t actually like—and forced myself to learn the basics and practice. Not every story made it here (the first few were unfit for human consumption), but with repetition, the narratives improved fast. I’m still not an expert in the form, and I still don’t love it, but I did a solid job with it.
What I learned from focusing came down to three things:
 Repetition really is the key, even if it’s not always fun
Stories don’t need a lot of length to be great
They also don’t need spectacle or clever twists
What stories do need is to collapse the distance between reader and narrative. We say that all the time in different ways, but I was executing it wrong. I was focusing on the clever and the spectacular—both of which absolutely have their place, don’t come for me—without giving enough thought to the quiet mechanics that actually hook a reader.
That’s my focus for 2026:
The Narrative Gravity and hidden story physics that make short stories irresistible.
I want to better understand momentum, compression, tension, silence, revelation, consequence, character weight, and narrative pull. Not academically, of course. I mean practically. Clear, usable explanations and ideas that help us write stories that can’t be put down.
Guess what? You’re coming along for the ride.
If Poetry 2026 ▼ is about escaping sameness, Short Story 2026 is about bending story mechanics to the benefit of our audience.
Okay—to our benefit. It’s totally to our benefit as writers.
See you in 2026.
As always, happy writing! |
Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
To stop receiving this newsletter, click here for your newsletter subscription list. Simply uncheck the box next to any newsletter(s) you wish to cancel and then click to "Submit Changes". You can edit your subscriptions at any time.
|
This printed copy is for your personal use only. Reproduction
of this work in any other form is not allowed and does violate its copyright. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
