  Short Stories
This week: Back to the Basics Edited by: ~WhoMe???~  
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I have the honor and privilege to be a guest editor for this edition of the Short Stories Newsletter. Going back several issues, I see that many of the editors have created some wonderful issues full of information and ideas to help with writing your short stories. I chose, for this edition, to go back to a basic, so that those just starting out, or new to this area of writing, may find a new tool to help them in their short story writing. |
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Amazon's Price: $ 4.99
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Freytag's Pyramid is a tool used to map the plot of a short story, play or novel. Also known as the pyramid plot, this useful tool helps the writer visualize the key elements of their writing.
Exposition: The background or setting information, necessary to establish the characters and events leading up to the story. This sometimes contains brief hints of the upcoming conflict.
Inciting Incident: This is the action or event that launches the conflict or journey the protagonist must face.
Rising Action: An increase in the tension or uncertainty, developing out of the conflict the protagonist faces. This often contains complications to the main conflict by offering secondary conflicts related to the main one, and or various obstacles that obscure the path of the protagonist, further complicating his journey.
Climax: The climax, or crisis of the story, is the turning point, for better or worse, for the protagonist. This tends to be the most dramatic part of the story.
Falling Action: The climax or conflict has finished and you are heading to the conclusion of the story. The resolution is about to be realized here. The events, leading to the resolution.
Resolution:This could be the solving of a murder, the death of the villain, the solving of a puzzle, as long as something is resolved and the end of the story is near. This is the key elements being put together to solve the problem or event.
Denouement: The events that come between the falling climax and the actual end of the story. The unraveling of complexities of the plot. More and more, there are surprise endings, which leave this part of the plot nonexistent, due to more complexities.
I have only written a few short stories, and never a novel, as of yet. I have only done so for contests, and didn't place too well. On one occasion, after writing my story, I went back through and broke my story down as the illustration above dictates. In so doing, I learned that I was writing all wrong, or at least for this story. I didn't have things in an order that was conducive to the story I wanted to tell. I was able to go back, with the help of this pyramid, and create a much better story. I hope this will help some of you as well. |
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|  | Witch Trials (13+)
A short story about the Salem Witch Trials, written for a contest. Please R&R!!
#876320 by spidey  |
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What basic elemental tools or referencing do you use to help create a great short story. Do you refer to Strunks, or another referencing guide for help?
Since I haven't written any previous articles, here are a few submissions from past issues, that didn't make any of the issues thus far. The subjects vary due to them being sporadically pulled from the this time machine visit:
Merry_Mikey 
Thanks for this week's Newsletter; I enjoyed it. I submitted an entry for the "What If? Historical Fiction" contest in April '09 "Alea iacta est" by Merry_Mikey . I'd never written historical fiction, so I had to do quite a bit of research, in order to keep the story as real as possible, while still presenting a story that wasn't provably historically correct. I found it to be an interesting challenge.
Elisa: Snowman Stik 
Hey, there! Some people probably already know of an occasion when a short story contest pushed me out of my element. While I'm known to drop 3K-5K words without breaking a sweat, keeping it under 2000 is nearly impossible. Still, a timed/word count contest got me to write a rough draft of a story in five hours (which is an improvement over the five years I've been spending on a story in the neighborhood of 10K words). I'm surprised I was as coherent as I was in less than 1500 words.
Doug Rainbow 
Some reasons for entering a contest but not expecting to win: (1) The review/feedback is good; (2) The competition is fun (sort of like running a track meet against a state champion); (3) You might be pleasantly surprised.
pruenella
I don't know, I never really like or am satisfied with what I've written, so then I edit it to death until the entire storey is different. |
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Amazon's Price: $ 4.99
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Short Stories: November 02, 2011 Issue [#4698]
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