  Short Stories
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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.
This week's Short Story Editor
Leger~
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New Years is right around the corner. While resolutions are easy to make, keeping them (for me) is a battle. But I'd like to suggest a way to spend a little of your free time in the next coming year. Educate yourself. Even the best writer can learn something new. If you're a newbie on the site, there are a ton of resource articles other authors have written and posted in their portfolios. They're free, read them! Even if you don't absorb every detail, every word, spending time doing research and reading will improve your own writing.
If you haven't published yet, there are great tips waiting for you - on how to edit and send your work out. Querying publishers can be brutal. Why not use the help and advice our WDC community can offer? If you're hopeless with grammar like I am, reading essays on improving grammar serves as a reminder to check for certain errors when I'm editing.
If you're an accomplished writer, it can't hurt to learn more about the publishing industry and promotion. Promoting your work is harder than writing it. Learn how to use social networking and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) keywording to attract more search bots and readers to your website. The more people find your site, more will purchase your writing. This applies to WDC, when creating an item, be sure to choose accurate genres and keywords to help members find your work. Don't use "None" or "Other" if at all possible! Admit it, you were feeling too lazy to choose one and left them on the default. And now you're wondering why you're not getting reviews?
WDC gives you a free area to promote your work "The Shameless "Plug" Page" All you have to do is enter the item number, just the number, and a catchy blurb about why someone else should take a look. And if you're looking for something to review, zip on over to that page and help out a fellow member.
As this is my last newsletter for the year, I'll wish you a happy, healthy and productive New Year! Write on!
This month's question: If you are published, what advice would you give to someone trying to publish their stories?
Send in your reply below and help your community - and your editor! |
Excerpt: Carolyn explained that she used Web sites with odd names, like Adictomatic and TweetDeck, to manage her online image.
By the end of dinner, my head was spinning. She had thrown out more unfamiliar terms than I could keep track of. The good news was that she invited me to a clubhouse party at her apartment complex the following Friday night. My spirits sank when she told me that she and Courtney shared an apartment, but our first date was still turning out to be a pleasant experience. We had coffee and then walked to the parking lot.
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Excerpt: Here I stand a broken shell of a man. In my hands, I hold a pen and a blank page begging to be filled. Being a writer is certainly an affliction. One of many that I face. Ever since returning from fighting my own wars I have spent my time writing out my experiences and my feelings. Poetry is my preferred form of self-expression but the down side to poetry is that few have ever made a sent writing it. I am no different in that regard.
Excerpt: When the battle was over and the soldiers returned home, all Antti wanted to do was find his beloved Suvi. Sure enough, she was waiting for him at the entrance to the village. With open arms she welcomed him, and they twirled and swirled for all eyes to see. The others merely smiled and sighed, remembering what it was like to be young and in love for the first time.
Excerpt: Tom stood in front of the outdoor Christmas tree, shivering in the cold December air. He glanced up at the tree occasionally, but mostly he looked around at the faces of the people who came and went as the night wore on. He was searching for the pretty girl he had dated all through high school—his first love.
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Excerpt: Most of my on-line friends are spacedwellers, like I am, each of us floating around on individual explorerprobes. Some of my friends have large, extended families. Others, like me, have only a mother and father -- and a robot playmate. None of us regret being spacers; we’re proud of it. But it’s hard not to be a little bitter sometimes.
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Excerpt: Balfour moves back to admire his handy work. The scene before him is every inch the perfect Christmas. An embarrassment of glitter and lights adorns every surface. On the table, plates and dishes are piled to impossible heights with rich, steaming food. The air is heavy with the scent of pine, cloves, cinnamon and citrus. Gifts, shapes both recognisable and obscure, crowd beneath the bejewelled branches of a towering colossus of a tree. Outside, snow drifts down in patient flakes, blanketing the world, dulling its edges and turning it crystal-white. It has taken painstaking effort to create this, to fill in all the gaps, to get everything just so.
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Excerpt: Muttering under his breath, Jack Frost jogged to his workshop. He crossed the large, octagonal room to the great mirror that dominated the opposite wall. He waved his hand, flicking through images of forests and great cities. He stopped at an image of the Kielder, flapping his hand carelessly, flexing and weaving his fingers. The leaves of the deciduous trees turned a golden brown. At another gesture, they became a brilliant yellow. Like he was conducting an orchestra, his hands rose and circled in the air. The leaves withered, falling from the branches, almost black, turning to dust as they hit the floor.
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Excerpt: The sin in each person I pass is palpable as I walk towards my destination. It is impossible for me to turn away from it, even if He would allow such sloth. Though it is well past dark, the street lights shimmer, granting me a glance at my reflection as I pass by Layla’s Antiques. My dark hair is buzzed short, barely more than a thick fuzz against my scalp, and dark circles surround my green eyes, reminding me I have not slept in some time.
Excerpt: I remember the old days of Christmas, before the legislature renamed it to Annual Gift Holiday. Christmas cheer and Christmas spirit emanated from children's eyes as they hung their stockings by the fireplace and left milk and cookies for the universally beloved Santa Claus. Jolly Old St. Nick, as he used to be known, laughed in delight as he brought toy trains and dolls and games to the children of the world. Some time ago, however, when I was preparing to graduate from the F.B.I. academy in Quantico, Virginia, the spirit of Christmas began to fade.
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This month's question: If you are published, what advice would you give to someone trying to publish their stories?
Last month's question: This month's question: Do you feel short stories need all the elements that novels have? (Plot, scene, characters, action, and conclusion)?
EldritchBob  responded: In answer to the question, I do believe that short stories need the same elements as a novel. Without a plot, the story cannot happen, without characters of some sort the story cannot progress, without a scene the story has nowhere to be, and without action and conclusion, the story will just sort of float in nowhere, and without a conclusion, you can write a sequal.
atwhatcost replied: Yes and no. They need all the elements, but to different degrees and different purposes. We should see all the facets of plot in both, but characters aren't as detailed in with short stories. Side stories are a must in novels, but hamper short stories. Short stories have minimal scenes, while novels have a multitude. I believe how to write a short story teaches us something of how to write a long story, but the same lessons change more drastically when it is turned around.
A.J. Barretts sent: Short stories definitely need all the components that a novel has that's why they are so hard to write, you have to cram so much into such a little space. Every word counts and there is not rambling to get your point across.... Kinda like this response. A.J.
drifter46 mailed: Well duh! Of course it does. Mind you it may not be as detailed and a good bit is going to be left to the imagination but those are all part of any story. On a personal note when it comes to the conclusion, I may leave it open-ended and let the reader wonder but there is a conclusion regardless.
Locations are probably the toughest to get in a short story simply because too many feel that intricate details are needed to get the feel for a place but it's the image that springs to the readers mind that counts. If I'm dealing with something dark, a cabin in the woods may not be enough to show what I'm looking for. However if it's just a cabin in the woods that someone passes in their travels, well who cares. It's a cabin!
Same is true for everything but they all need to be present.
bertiebrite hoping for peace answered: Of course short stories need the same elements. I don't know how you would write anything, even a poem without a plot.
I guess you could just ramble on unimpeded by those necessities, but then, what would you have? A rather disjointed, empty seeming piece of babble.
Perhaps you don't need so much action; a person can write a great piece about grandma sitting her rocker, but without character and plot? What is left except a bunch of words on a page. Short stories need every element of a novel except, they are summed up quickly and with less words.
NaNoNette  commented: Yes, I think short stories have to have the same basic elements of a novel. I can go for somewhat of an open ending. It's okay if what happens in the future is up in the air, but if I read a short story about a private eye looking for a stolen diadem, that piece had better show up at the end or I will think the writer wasn't finished writing. On the other hand, if the private eye struck up a relationship to the woman to the diadem during the story, it's okay to leave it to my imagination what will happen to them. |
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Short Stories: December 20, 2011 Issue [#4779]
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