In a writer’s life there is failure. It’s real. It happens. Take yesterday for example. During the month of April I am participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge where each day of the month (except Sundays) we have a post dedicated to the letters in the alphabet. Yesterday was the Letter – E. Did you see my post from yesterday (which I actually posted today)?
Error-404 was all I could manage. It was a very bad day in my neighborhood. I ran myself into a sh*t storm of stress. If things had gone better I might have actually gotten my Error-404 posted before this morning. Well, I didn’t. So…failure happened.
Today I am up and getting some attention paid to the Letter F. Failure Happens. If you haven’t experienced very much of it in your writing so far then either you are an amazing writer (NICE!!) or you haven’t stuck your neck out far enough. If you fall into the latter category, then you should know what failure feels like. Not so warm and fuzzy.
If it is OK with you I would like to re-name failure. Let’s make it, Challenge, Lesson, or anything besides failure. When that reject letter comes in the mail, or you miss a post you were determined to get done, or you can’t get a single word onto a page, then accept what happened, learn from it, and more on.
Someone once told me to be like a horse when I am faced with a challenge. Horses are amazingly smart creatures. They don’t get hung up on things that didn’t work out. If a horse is munching along, eating their grass, then bumps into an obstacle, they see what’s in they way, fix it, then go around and keep eating grass.
When faced with any obstacle in any aspect of life, be the horse. See what happened, make adjustments, move past the problem, and keep eating grass.
The page you are searching for has no content. The writer called in stressed and unable to perform their job. Please check back tomorrow for the Letter – F.
You have decided to write a short story. Congratulations! Short stories can be great fun to write. They will also make you go bald from pulling your hair out. I’m here today to help you keep a full head of hair while diving into your story.
It is Short
The first thing to keep in mind when writing a short story is pretty obvious, but I will say it anyway. Short stories are…well…short. They can range anywhere from 1,500 words to 30,000. More than that and it falls into the realm of a novella. Personally, I prefer stories that are less than 20,000. I like to read shorts in one sitting, and anything longer seems a little too long for me.
It’s a Mini-Novel
Second thing to keep in mind is that a short story is almost a mini-novel. I want to emphasis the word almost. It is a mis-conception to think that a short story is written just like a novel because there are a lot of things a novel has that a short story doesn’t.
A novel is more likely to have many characters, places, and multiple story lines. A short story usually has only a few characters, they may visit only a few places, and the threads through the story are limited to one or two. Of course, there is an exception to every rule, butin general this is how a short story plays out.
It is like a novel in that it has a beginning, middle and end. There are protagonists, antagonists, an inciting incident, a challenge to overcome, and a solution to the problem. All of these are squeezed into a compact story rather than an epic novel adventure.
Give it a Plot
When writing a short story the plot needs to be tight and concise. In short stories, every scene, paragraph, and sentence needs to be spot on with the plot. If you find yourself meandering between the North and South Poles then you might consider a novel instead.
The Hook
In a short story the hook needs to come early. I would say that if it happens past the first page or two (depending on the story’s length) then you have waited too long. Basically, you want the story to reach out and grab the reader right out from the start. Keep the pace high and tight. You don’t want to lose your reader in long descriptions and arduous scenes. They will get bored and move on.
Drafting Your Story
Everyone has their own way of getting words from their imagination to paper. My version of writing may not fit your’s, but that’s the beauty of writing. You can test different methods and find the one that fits you. My method is a little sloppy, but it works for me. It’s a little like testing to see if spaghetti cooked; I slap it up on the wall to see what sticks.
My mind skips around like a leaf blowing up the street. Sometimes it goes in a straight line, and sometimes it gets caught up in a dust devil. So goes my writing method. I usually don’t have a plan, goal, or idea when I start. I just crank out words that pop into my head and write them. Within about five or ten minutes of pure nonsense a plot forms and the story takes off.
Sometimes I start with finding the main character’s name. I love odd or tongue-twister names. I wrote one story where I found the name Mrs. Quackenbush (this is a real name) and wrote a story around her.
The Hair Pulling
Once you have the bare bones of a draft you can move on to editing, revising, and hair pulling. During this phase you should be trimming the fat. Again, scenes need to be tight and concise. Make every word count.
The most important lesson I learned about writing short stories is to stay calm and don’t fiddle. Frustrations will get you down and kill your creativity. If you get your story pounded out, without editing or second guessing as you write the draft, you will have an easier time in the editing phase.
In the draft you have where the story will start, where it will grow and thrive, then where it will conclude. The editing phase should only be about tweaking what you already have. Don’t fiddle too much. Like the old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Lastly, remember writing is something we enjoy doing. If you get too bogged down then write something far out and goofy. Write about how Ford Parker learned to drive, or Kenny Penny’s school days. There is always the story about Harry Baldz and his furry friend Woody.
Today I am combining two blogging challenges into one post. Not only is the A to Z Blogging Challenge just getting started, but I also have the Insecure Writers Support Group that I do on the first Wednesday of the month. Today is A to Z’s letter ‘C’ and ISWG’s monthly post.
As writers we are hit with challenges every time we sit down to write. For me, the challenge comes with writing a multi-scene short story. I tend to get stuck at nearly every new scene which means my writing will slow to a crawl.
When writing a novel it can take me several months to get from one scene to the next. When I write a short story, the problem is the same if I want more than one thing to happen. Unfortunately, my story could take months to write which leads to losing the momentum to writing it.
Did you read yesterday’s story,Beatrix Button’s Clock? I was quite pleased that it only took a couple of hours to write. There is essentially only one scene so I could get it out quickly. I did attempt to add a couple of scenes and every time I did I was bogged down.
If I could use a wish to get through more scenes I would wish for my mind to open up. I would love to have words pour out of my imagination and land on the page and the scenes to grow effortlessly. (For those of you who are writers, there’s no need to comment about how NO scene flows effortlessly. I get it. I know it. But I can dream, right?)
Challenges to write plague all writers whether it is a short story, a novel, poetry, or a letter to Beatrix Button. To rephrase a popular quote by Joshua J. Marine, “Challenges are what makes writing interesting and overcoming them are what makes the story meaningful”.
Over the open window the lace drapes fluttered in the breeze like lazy waves caressing a sandy shore. Shadows waltzed across the oak floor boards finding their way up the side of a bed cradling a skeletal figure. Beatrix Button slept for days rarely stirred from her slumber while she kept company with her dreams.
On the wall, across from her bed, is a clock given to her as a wedding gift. Bea, as Beatrix was called by her friends, knew from the first moment she unwrapped the clock that it was special. Although her marriage lasted less than a few hours, the clock stayed with her all of her days.
The rich tick-tocks were healing after Frank died. He did everything he could to please Bea and when she needed her wrap from the car he was only too happy to fetch it for her. He made the mistake of only looking right and not left when he jaywalked across the road in front of the church. Their ten day cruise turned into ten hours praying for a miracle that never came.
Frank’s funeral came and went, and the days turned to months and months to years during which Beatrix spent listening to the gentle tick-tock, tick-tock. Although people found pendulum clocks a bother to wind and keep tuned, she found this one soothing. She guessed it might have been made sometime in the 19th century, but never bothered to find out just as she never discovered who gave her the clock.
Life for Bea was a series of joys wrapped in tragedy. She weathered each storm with the clock as her constant companion. It never wavered in keeping her on schedule to arrive at every celebration of life precisely on time. She said goodbye to her family one at a time as they each moved on to the next plan of existence. Until it was just her left to putter in her garden or dust the empty rooms that surrounded her.
Beatrix Button did not stir when her visitor came gliding across the floor as if riding on the shadows themselves. Impossibly tall with less substance than Beatrix herself, the figure leaned over her and whispered something only Beatrix could hear. Her eyes opened a tiny slit recognizing the stranger from her dreams. Like a ghost she raised her hand and touched the edge of the stranger’s cloak.
The visitor paused for a long heartbeat then stood and drifted toward the door. The clock seemed to wait by the door and it was lifted from its place on the wall the clock fell silent. Beatrix Button’s smile slipped from her lips as she sighed her last breath.
If you browse around the internet today you will find a plethora of information about short stories. As a matter of fact, if you do a simple Google search, “About Short Stories”, you will end up with about 2,050,000,000 results. Yikes! Reading all that will keep you busy for several lifetimes.
To help you with your research on the subject of short stories, I have listed a number of resources to help you learn whatever you want to learn about short stories. Of course, this is a VERY short list compared to the above search results, but these are some that have a nice bit of information.
The online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica is a one stop shop for nearly everything. The write up on short stories is quite detailed from a simple definition through a thorough look at the history of them.
The Writing Cooperative is a great resource for writing. I especially enjoyed their article on 5 Reasons Why Short Stories Are Far From Dead. As the title states, this is a piece about how the short story is thriving today.
As the Editor of Writing from the Peak (Pikes Peak Writers blog) I would be remiss not to mention one or two articles from their blog. The first is, “What is a Short Story”. Obviously this is a post about the nuts and bolts of a short story. Another good post is, “Here and Gone in a Flash“. The latter of the two is an introduction to writing flash fiction which is a short story in less than 1,000 words.
READERS–I haven’t forgotten you! Are you looking for some great reads? I can suggest one anthology that I recently finished, “False Faces: Twenty Stories About the Masks We Wear” . This is a new release from the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. But, if you would rather find your own, I hopped over to Goodreads to see what they had for their Best Anthologies. They listed 781 books. I’ll leave it to you to sort through that list.
So there you have it. Remember, there are about 2,049,999,992 more results you can browse through.
During the month of April I will be joining A to Z April Blog Challenge by publishing daily blog posts (except Sunday) through the month of April. Each post will cover everything A to Z about writing short stories, and some posts will be actual short stories. Keep an eye out for those!
What is A to Z?
Are you a blogger and want to join in on the fun? Here’s how it works. Using the A to Z premise, you would start, beginning April first, with a topic themed on something with the letter A, then on April second another topic with the letter B as the theme, and so on until you finish on April thirtieth with the theme based on the letter Z. It doesn’t even have to be a word–it can be a proper noun, the letter used as a symbol, or the letter itself. The theme of the day is the letter scheduled for that day.
Click on the A to Z logo above and join me! I’m excited to be participating again this year.
Over the past few years I have read a lot about the importance of setting goals. Not just personal goals, but for writing as well. One challenge many writers face (including myself) is procrastination. Goal setting helps stave this off which allows us to postpone those things in life that can wait a few hours while we write.
There are two kinds of goals: long term and short term. It is through many sets of short term goals that the long term goals are reached. Take writing for example. I my case, in order to write a book (my ultimate goal) I had to set about achieving some smaller goals first. In order to show you my process let’s go back a few years.
It was about five or six years ago I decided my career needed a change from MLMs to something that, at the very least, wouldn’t cost me any money. My MLM businesses were resounding failures and I wasn’t getting any younger. Back then, my daughter was talking non-stop about writing and studying creative writing in college so I thought that I could too. Well, not study in college, but to find other avenues that would achieve the same thing.
My first small goal was to learn everything I could about writing fiction, specifically fantasy/sci-fi. A friend recommended I attend a writer’s conference (Pikes Peak Writers) to get started. It was also recommended to read what I wanted to write. I already read a lot (I still go through about 80-90 books a year), but now I read as writer. Today, I am still learning to write. I don’t think anyone who writes ever stops learning, but I think I have taken a major chunk out of the beast.
My next smallish goal was to start writing. I knew I could write, after all I did write for a local mountain newspaper and a few articles were accepted online that actually paid real money. Even though they were short, journalistic pieces, I was still a published writer. Someone liked what I wrote, so I should be able to write a book too (my ultimate goal).
Another small goal I set was to write on a regular basis. This one has been a little hit or miss, but I do work at it. Every February I do the 28 Days of Writing Challenge and in April I started the Blogging A to Z Challenge. Both of these challenges fit my relaxed style. I also do a monthly post with the #IWSG. I did try NaNoWriMo once and I was so stressed out it nearly made me sick. I work on my book, at the very least, once per week, write book reviews as I finish a book (I don’t have time to write a review on every book, but some do get written), and poke a stick at around writing short stories. One day I’ll write everyday (another ultimate goal), but for now I am happy where I’m at.
My ultimate writing goal has not changed over the past five or six years: finish writing a novel of at least 80,000 words. I don’t have a specific time frame, but if it is done before I die then that will be a good thing. It is through the accomplishment of many smaller goals, done over and over again, that it will be written. I look forward to writing, THE END.
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Today’s blog post is inspired by:
Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!
July 3 question of the month- What are your ultimate writing goals, and how have they changed over time (if at all)?
What a month April was for the A to Z Blog Challenge. I did write a blog post everyday during the challenge and worked out a few kinks for my book (that was a big bonus for me). You, my followers also got a peek into The Manx and learned about the Isle of Man. I hope you go visit one day; I know I will.
The challenge was also about marketing and spreading the word around about the challenge and about my blog, K.J. Scrim, Writer. Looking at my stats I did get a big bump in readership for the month. I came out with 260+ visitors during the month whereas a normal month is about 35.
The comments were a little lagging, but I enjoyed those who took the time to say something. Thank you.
I understand that the more who people interact with your blog (through comments) the higher your algorithms bump you up in status. With over two hundred participants in the challenge I was expecting more. I did blog hop to at least 5 new blogs a day, but it did get a little too much to try and comment on everyone of them so I understand why that part didn’t work out as well.
All in all, I had a great time doing the A to Z Challenge. It got me writing everyday. It got me thinking about my book and working out those lose ends. The real bonus? It introduced me to a few blogs that I would have never known about before. Will I do it again next year? I plan on it. Until then, enjoy this blog as it will be a little more active than it has been in the past.
I have never had this question posed to me. When do I write the most? I have never paid very much attention to my productivity in the past, but I can say that this year I have written more the first half of 2018 than any other time I can remember.
The first burst came in February for the 28 Days of Writing Challenge. It is hosted by Leap into Writing and your’s truly, me. I started this challenge about three years ago because I liked my sanity…NaNoWriMo is in November. Really? For me, this is one of the worse months of the year. I can easily say that November and December are zero-productive months so NaNo was out.
On the other hand, February is one of the most boring months of the year, and it’s short. Leap into Writing was born during the last Leap Year, along with 29 Days of Writing. (Obviously, every other year is 28 days so I renamed it the next year). This challenge is to write every day of the month. No days off allowed. Write as many words as you can and you’re golden. We also do weekly challenges (Word Wars is my favorite) to get the word counts up, along with writing prompts to get the creative juices flowing.
A second burst came in April with the A to Z Writing Challenge. This just finished up a couple of days ago, and I now have 26 blog posts more than I would have had without it. I enjoyed trying to come up with a blog subject based on a letter of the alphabet, and I hope you enjoyed reading them too.
Last, a big inspiration for this time of year is Pikes Peak Writer’s Conference. PPWC is always an inspiration and a great way to kick off the summer to write. If you are a writer, I encourage you to attend a writing conference near you (or take a vacation and travel to one far away). Here are just a few suggestions:
I’m sure there are many, many more. If there is a conference you love to go to please list them in the comments below.
For now, I am in the most productive stage of my writing career. I am excited! What about you?
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This post Inspired by:
Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!
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