Short Stories
Tips for short story writing: Up to a challenge? Pull out your keyboard and give it a shot
All right, today’s the big day. I’m offering you some information to work with and inviting you to write a short story. When you’re done, put it on your blog or web site and link to it with a comment here. Or if you don’t want to post a short story and link to it, […]
Tips for writing short stories — Hooks: What are they and how do you use them?
I know it sounds obvious: The “hook” is the opening sentence or paragraph of your story and it is supposed to draw your reader’s interest, get them reading and, hopefully, keep them reading.
Novel openings, or “hooks,” might be a paragraph or two long and involve setting a scene and/or setting up the background to the […]
Tips for writing short stories — Focus on a single character
Jill is 21 years old, just over 5′ 3″ tall, 130 pounds, short blond hair, blue eyes, lopsided smile which she compensates for by leaning her head slightly to the right when she smiles. It’s a pretty smile, made even more charming by a very slight but noticeable gap in her two front teeth. She […]
Tips for writing short stories: Focus on a single action or event
As part of the “short” in short stories, it’s important to focus your story on a single action or event in a character’s life. That doesn’t mean you won’t need background (”backfill”) for your story — it simply means making your entire story focus on one action or event and using the background material sparingly […]
Tips for writing short stories: ‘Short’ is the key word
By definition, short stories are, well, short. Most magazine writing guidelines or anthology editors I’m acquainted with would consider a short story to be no longer than 1,500-5,000 words (that would be perhaps 5-20 manuscript pages). I have seen what I would consider to be “novellas” running to maybe 40,000-50,000 words referred to as “short […]
