  Short Stories
This week: Room for Improvement Edited by: Jay's debut novel is out now!  
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This Short Stories Newsletter is dedicated to readers and writers of short fiction and to those who want to know more about the art of telling big stories in small spaces.
This month:
Room for Improvement
What have you done this past year as a writer? Where do you see yourself this coming year? |
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As writers, there's an emphasis on forward progress that's hard to deny, especially if we're pursuing publication with our efforts. It can be hard, though, to really know when we're making actual improvements upon our previous works.
There are plenty of writers on here whose primary goal is simply to be read, and I guess that's the simplest metric to evaluate successes-- by tracking page views and so on, it may be possible to at least have an idea as to how many people have opened the page on which a story resides.
Beyond that, though, it can be a little grey, without a whole lot of ways to specifically chart your progress as an author. I think it's worth taking the time to assess one's volume of work -- past and current -- so I figured I would encourage you to approach this during this hallowed month of the "Resolution."
Investigate what you've written already-- especially within the past year or so. Are there many differences in quality between your older and newer stories? What similarities do you see? Do you feel like your newer stories are better than your older stories? Are you able to express what differences your older stories have from your newer stories?
While this seems like sort of a simplistic exercise, it can be really surprising to review your past work and see what's changed in you now.
A suggestion, to correlate with that: even though they're older stories, if you see a mistake or something that you'd like to edit, I'd say make that edit. (Provided it doesn't drag you off your current, ever forward moving path.) My suggestion is to make a list of your finished stories from the past year, and write one thing you liked or were surprised by in your own work for each one. (Sometimes it's nice just to see that list-- I'm working on one for my blog and I was really stunned to see what I actually finished this year, because if you'd asked me point blank, I'd have said "a story or two," but the answer is actually a dozen, not counting my novel or my newsletters!  )
Another self-check for self-improvement for writing is to enforce your daily writing time. While many of us are hobbyists or do this as a side activity to our already-busy lives, dedicating a little time to writing every single day pays dividends. Even just 350 words 5 days a week pans out to 91,000 words-- that's a year of entries to the official Writing.Com contests and then some. If you write daily, you will begin to see improvement daily. It's almost as good as hitting the gym, but for words.
That said-- don't forget to recharge. Creative batteries need fresh fuel. Surf for new art to admire and worlds to lose yourself in, find films that make you want to tell all the stories that happen between the frames on the screen, find places on this planet that make you feel something.
(And then write about them.)
Until Next Month,
Take care and Write on!
~jay |
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From last month's issue: "That "Show, Don't Tell" Thing Again"
Lots of suggested stories this month, but not a lot of them that really met with my needs for this newsletter (and a few that I've already featured...  ) -- and lots of notes just to say "Thanks for a great NL!" and to all of you, I just have to say, "Thank *you,* for your kind words!
Satuawany writes:
Awesome article! Clear and concise---a perfect article for linking in reviews as a reference. I'm going to tuck away a link to this for just that purpose.
 This coming from you means a lot to me!
Quick-Quill  writes:
Funny you should have this NL. I just reviewed a person's work and had to explain the difference between telling and showing. I said it the difference in me telling you what is going on and it happening to you.
John hit the man and knocked him down. or
'Smack', John felt his fist connect with the man's cheek. His legs braced for the backlash but his opponent dropped to the floor. Telling vs Showing.
well... I hate to say it, but this is actually the kind of thing "show, don't tell" actually isn't referring to-- you're still 'telling' with the "felt his fist connect" bits-- it's still declaration, and not demonstration. "John knocked the man down" isn't a bad use of 'telling,' either, depending on the context-- sometimes quick actions need to be interspersed through a story (though they should not be the meat of it, you are right in that!)
You might tighten that in by talking about it from your narrator's perspective more tightly:
"Thought you were going to put up more of a fight," John said. His assailant, motionless on the floor, just groaned. John rubbed his swelling knuckles. That man's skull must've been carved from stone.
Zeke writes:
I think that sometimes you have to tell the reader in plain language without covering it in show.
I think perhaps this is reductive phrasing which again addresses the wrong problem which most authors perceive "show, don't tell" to address. What I'm talking about here is not about description at all, and so whether the language is "plain" ore not plain, is not really a factor at all. If we take it with the meaning ascribed in this statement, I think we lose sight of the goal of a short story. In fact, to my way of thinking about story, I think that demonstrating rather than declaring should be plainer language than simply dryly relating actions within the story while dressing it up with surplus adverbs and adjectives, but that's me.
Fyn  writes:
Exactly. You nailed it! And it is what I have been doing IN my newsletters since I started writing them! Excellent newsy! ~fyn
Thanks, Fyn! (And thanks to everyone else who sent kind words about this particular NL! There were a LOT of them, and since there were a lot of good questions in response I thought I would focus on those this issue!  )
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Short Stories: January 08, 2014 Issue [#6092]
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