  Short Stories
This week: What's Your Hook? Edited by: Leger~  
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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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Getting Started
Admit it, when you start reading a story, if the first few paragraphs don't interest you, you start thinking about tossing that book, deleting that story or erasing part of your document. I use a Kindle app and follow Bookbub on Facebook for free books. Before electronic reading, I might give a novel a few chapters before abandoning ship, but now, delete comes quickly and mean.
When I'm reading stories on Writing.com, especially short stories, my attention span is really quite short. If I can't tune in, in the first few chapters, even the first few paragraphs, I've pretty much lost the desire to read the story and I move on. So, as writers, how do we keep our readers from clicking the back button and wandering off before meeting our really great characters? How do we keep them in the boat until the adventure begins?
You know what I'm going to say; start at the beginning. Hook your reader into wanting to find out more about your character or wanting to see more of your scene. Don't make a sweeping view of the dining room, the food, the draperies, focus on what is happening. Tell your readers the man sitting next to your main character has a gun pressed to her belly. You can fill in the rest later, with quick glimpses of the room, small bites of the food, and a breeze blowing the drapes.
When editing your work, think about what your reader is going to see when first opening your item. You know the story, you know the scene, but what are they going to see? Make it a good one. Write on!
This month's question: How do you like to begin your stories?
Send in your reply below! Editors love feedback!
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Excerpt: “There is something wrong here, I can feel it.” I noted mentally, to myself. I was just withdrawing my mental projection from the mountain top where I had briefly interacted with my mother. I accelerated my re-entry into the real world and staggered for a moment on the crystal floor of the Projection room, at the highest point of the Observatory. I whooshed down to the ground, an empty sickness in my stomach.
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Excerpt: The creature’s eyes had changed color.
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Excerpt: This afternoon I found something mysterious at the edge of the woods. Can’t tell my mother about it. Or Auntie Simone . . . not even Grandma Frannie. If I could see my father, I might tell him . . . but he’s gone, off to fight for the king. Can’t tell him anything. I wish I could.
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Excerpt: “You're so difficult today; you keep changing,” he said. He flipped the hair tip of the brush, skirting the thick middle, and smearing it along the edge of the Prussian paint on his palette.
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Excerpt: Lightning cracked the dawn in two, and the thunder trumpeted her arrival. The sea boiled as the she-demon fully surfaced.
Excerpt: winter is coming...
The faint words echoed off the icy columns. Its subtle yet forceful whisper reverberated around the rime-encrusted iron throne. The words lingered on the ice-lined walls and slid forlornly into the silence of the ancient throne room. The orb he sought rested on the throne, its pale blue form vibrant and ethereal.
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This month's question: How do you like to begin your stories?
Last month's question: Do you write too much or too little into your scenes? What methods do you use to focus your writing during edit?
allenalien  reveals:
I write too much into my scenes on first pass, purposely. I'm looking to give the reader a cinematographic vision of my scene. Then I go back and prune, starting with adverbs, then adjectives, then whole phrases, sentences and paragraphs. When I can read it and honestly say nothing has been lost, I'm close. Then I see what can be moved into dialog, in a realistic way. Not "look at the freshly-painted red fence around the lush green field. And there's a guy hiding there by corner of the old stone building in the back ." No one says that.
More like:
I scaled the fence, swore, and squatted to rub my hands on the thick green grass.
Bill spoke.
"I kind of like that bright red against those boring Dolce and Gabbanas. Nice effect."
I growled at him.
"Man, those were brand new five hundred dollar jeans."
A movement caught my eye.
"Hey, did you see something, up against that building?"
"That old stone one?"
I pointed.
"Yeah. Near that corner."
Anyway, not War and Peace and not Elmore Leonard, but that's my MO in simplistic form.
ahlewis32 admits: I'm a write too little girl. I write the story in detail but leave out the sensory details and descriptions of the area. It's something I've been working on a lot lately. My methods mostly include rereading the work after it's been sitting for a few months, visualizing the scenes and taking notes on what I need to do to improve the scene. Then I dive into the work a scene at a time and attempt to fix the problems. Needless to say, I'm always working!
brom21  comments: You effectively illustrated your point. I will use the background element in my stories. I’ve never really focused on the background before. Sometimes I have characters that are a little shallow and I think a touch of background would fill the gaps in to a good degree. Perhaps a little bit of personal history or past feelings would help, specifically speaking. Thanks or the newsletter.
Elfin Dragon-finally published replies: Sometimes I think I write too much into a scene, sometimes too little, mostly I've been told too much and I need to scale it down. I think it's because of the poetry half of me coming out and I want to describe the scene and the feeling so I go into prose. But I'm learning that sometimes less is actually more. It really depends upon the mood of the particular scene, the characters in it, and where you plan to go from there.
Cubby  tells: I certainly can connect with the background focus in photos! I'm almost always looking beyond the main attraction in older pictures, trying to find little clues that spark a forgotten memory. I love it! But what I don't love, is if I've taken a picture and never realized till it was too late, that there are dirty dishes in the background, or a pile of papers I haven't sorted through. It's amazing you wrote about this because it's been on my mind a lot lately! And I, too, have (I can't even tell you how many) LOTS of unprinted treasured pictures on my computer. Loved your newsletter this week! That said, now to answer your question: I write too little into my scenes because I'm usually so focused on my characters and dialogue; scenery is not my strong point. I've never been big on detailed descriptions, and maybe that's why I enjoy writing for children and YA. I like action, I like things to roll along at a good pace. Perhaps I have a short attention span, lol! I should probably pay more attention to backgrounds though, like the photographs I find so interesting!
Turkey DrumStik  confesses: I used to write quite a bit into my scenes but have been working to cut back. I generally look at the verbs I use during the revision process, as I find them to be the most economical way to not just cut down on the word count but also to convey a number of setting or character traits. Prepositions receive a similar treatment. The strange this is this habit developed not from direct feedback about my diction but a self-imposed drive to get my word counts under control. The only problem is, the word count reduction made my muses go, "Look! More room to add plot complications!" I then curse my brain's processes for years!
On a side note, I am quite amused by the focus of pictures/photographs in this newsletter. It almost makes me want to write a new piece about pictures (even though I already have two). I say almost because I have a huge pile of photo work to sift through myself. 
Elle - on hiatus  says: I'm definitely one of those people who put too little into their scenery. It's mentioned often in reviews, and is something I need to consciously work on. I love the idea of comparing it to photography though - you need a focal point, but you also need to consider the background. Brilliant, why didn't I think of that? 
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Short Stories: July 02, 2014 Issue [#6404]
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