#writing short stories

[cursedbanalities]

Is it better to write 500 short stories or one novel? ‘Cause I’m trying my damndest to have stories hit novel length but I always lose interest or wrap them up before it hits even 25,000 words :/

…at least I can say I’m ✨trying.✨

[stardustcasti]

When I say 'I like the trope when the main character's name is unknown' please don't ask me to give examples, I meant I like to WRITE it.

[where-is-the-angst]

hi everyone!

so i’m submitting a short story for a writing competition and i need feedback.

the requirements are that it be <1,500 words, but mine is 2,000 words- so i need to cut it down a bit and need some general feedback!!

let me know if anyone would like to read it and help me out 🫶🏻

TW for the story of u do choose to read it: suicide, terminal illness

(tagging some of my moots bc it’s urgent- no pressure tho 🫶🏻 ) @telugu-girl-13 @bookworm-fangirl1 @bookwormgirl123 @thishumanformislimiting

[cinderfeather]

Short Story Writing Tips for Fanfic Authors

While Edgar Allen Poe has many pretentious things to say on the merits of the Short Story (‘a work of art should be able to achieve its effect in one sitting’), I want to talk about them from a fanfiction perspective.

As fic writers, we are doing this hobby for fun, and frequently find ourselves hopping between shiny new idea, to shiny new idea, to shiny new idea…

...which is totally fine. However: to reduce this, I want to impress this upon you:

Keep your fic short enough to write within the span of dopamine it generates.

So while it’s still easy to generate long plots, I usually like to keep my stories small and focused wherever possible, so I can feel proud about ✨finishing✨ it and then have more energy to work on the next idea. In addition, if I have an idea tha t I think is cool, but not something I can fathom spending an entire year writing a novel-length-fic about, I can still write the idea if I think carefully about how I can work it into a short story.

Often writers way things like: 'I have 30k words to write just to get to the fun bit 😭😭😭'

Just write the fun bit.

It might be one thing for me to say that, but learning a bit of craft about short stories can make this easier.

So: one of the hardest things in a story is the ending, and short stories (especially origific) can be very challenging to create a satisfying ending with so little to work with.

In short story craft, there is a lot of talk about things like Hemingway’s ‘Iceberg Theory’:

Hemingway said that only the tip of the iceberg showed in fiction—your reader will see only what is above the water—but the knowledge that you have about your character that never makes it into the story acts as the bulk of the iceberg. And that is what gives your story weight and gravitas. — Jenna Blum in The Author at Work, 2013 (Wikipedia Link)

Fanfic is great for this! You already have a ton of character and plot fleshed out, so you can already have your iceberg while putting very little effort in. Short stories are already much easier as fic because they already have the 'iceberg of canon' beneath them, so make the most of it!

The next trick is ✨Authors Notes✨!

You can just say the background info plainly to the reader, without having to worry about crafting it nicely for the reader.

However, if you feel that the background info might be served best by putting it into the story, then let me introduce you to the next trick: Telling!

Think about summary the you have in your AN, and expand it into slightly longer ‘pretty’ prose:

Months went by. Trees bloomed, and forsook their leaves. One day, Mina stepped outside again.

That covers a year of a character being stuck in their grief, without having to mire reader in being stuck like that too.

We’ve all had ‘Show, don’t tell’ beaten into us with a hammer. But if it’s not important or interesting for you or your story, then just Tell it, and move on to the next exciting thing! What you want to do is research ways to use prose to convey the passing of time, write summaries and transition sequences, and work out ways to cut down and remove ‘all that writing you have to do to get to the fun scene’.

So, let’s say you had an idea for an achingly beautiful Suparbat story that worked like a Shakespearean tragedy inspired by Othello. You start brainstorming and writing fragments of all these scenes where they meet, fall in love, then have all these gradual misunderstandings caused by Lex trying to meddle and break them apart.

They pile up super high, and then there is this devastating, heart-pounding finale where they fight, along with the tragic ending and denouement.

You take your notes and start trying to plan out what scenes you will need, and your face goes pale as you estimate the story will probably be about 80k words.

You can’t commit to that, and you sense another shiny idea might be lurking on the horizon soon (and besides, you have other fics to finish). You consider abandoning it, resigned to the beauty of the story haunting you forever.

Hold up.

The tragic fight scene. That’s the one that excites you the most. Start writing that.

Bam, bam bam.

Why are they fighting? The audience is now curious and hooked, sitting breathless on the edge of their seat.

Line of dialogue! Ultra specific accusation!

Now the reader is intellectually hooked. What event is this specific detail referring to?

Flashback to one of the scenes where they met and were tenderly in love, linked by the line of dialogue before.

Now the reader is emotionally hooked. What happened to make them hate each other so?

The fight scene continues! Dramatic moments of action interspersed with flashbacks of those snippets you wrote—

Now the reader has been enthralled by all this awesome action, and has a good grasp of emotional arc and events that brought them to this point, with the juxtaposition of the moments of love and hate creating a tremendous experience.

The fatal wound, juxtaposed by the fatal misunderstanding that set Batman on this path… Those painful words exchanged in the present, that have been stuck in your head for weeks: Why? I loved you! Lex (aka Iago) comes out, doing a slow clap, and revealing how he plotted and schemed to sow this discord between Batman and Superman, to make Batman kill Superman for him. The achingly haunting moment of looking into each others eyes and Superman forgiving and trying to absolve Batman of his guilt before he dies. Bruce swiftly disabling Lex’s failsafe (to stop him from taking revenge, but its useless because he’s Batman) and holding a batarang to Lex’s throat.

Now you’ve used 80% of your notes, and you have a decent first draft already!

So now, what will Batman do? Break his moral code about killing again (he already did with Superman) and kill Lex? Try to set Lex on a path of rehabilitation?

So then you get stuck. But Cinder, this doesn’t work for me! All I can think of is to end it the same way as Othello! Which I can’t bear to write.

Hold up.

Go back over your story and start tightening it up. The idea that Bruce is willing to kill someone is quite important. Go back and add flashbacks (or add context to the existing flashbacks) about Bruce developing, sticking to or explaining his no-kill rule.

Then you write an epilogue, where a reformed Lex starts making all kinds of structural changes in the world, alongside all the people who stepped up after being inspired by Superman’s life and determination to let everyone have a chance at forgiveness. After this, you realise that the last line Superman needs to say is to beg Bruce not to continue his murder-rampage and kill Lex.

Then you go back over your story again, fleshing out Lex’s character and some of the hints and lines of dialogue he drops to round out his arc as well. The story feels nice, but still a little off. The ending of Othello haunts you. Do you need to kill Batman after all?

You try writing the scene with the climax ending on: ‘Now, the only way: the Bat will die upon the light.’

Then, as you edit the last bit of the epilogue, you add at the end that Bruce is still alive, observing it all, having hung up his cape as Batman, (because how else could their love end after this but with ‘Batman’ dying with him?). With the transformation that happened for both Lex and Bruce when he honoured Clark’s last wish, this meant that world also grew into a place where Batman wasn’t needed anymore.

So there you have a beautiful short story about not just love and romance, but grief and betrayal and death and killing and absolution and forgiveness and a love that grows beyond a romantic entanglement into a love that changes the world— 🥰🥰🥰

And under 3000 words.

Now other people will be haunted by your story for the rest of their lives, instead of you.

You will have to edit harder if you try to write as concisely as this, but overall I think you’ll get more stories finished if you experiment with focusing on writing the exciting bits, then sprinkling just enough scene fragments to make it work.

I often write out an idea for a few thousand words, till I get stuck, then go back over it and start thinking about how I can reorder and tweak it to bring what I already have to a satisfying ending.

It requires fumbling and sitting and thinking and figuring it out as I’m revising (as you saw in the example) but if you keep focused on making things shorter you’ll be surprised at just how short you can make it.

And how many things you can finish!

[theauthorpaula]

(via The Benefits of Writing Flash Fiction)

[rjalker]

Network Effect, aka the thing formerly known as Book 5 (which is book 6 chronologically now, for some ungodly reason), would be a million time better if it had 80% of it cut out.

[ID: The meme of a giant book next to a small book. The giant book is labeled, "the Network Effect we were given". The smaller book is, "the Network Effect we deserved". End ID.]

[ID: The "sometimes, things that are expensive are worse", meme, of a person with long hair looking back over her shoulder in a dimly lit room, now edited to say, "Sometimes, stories only work...if they're short.". End ID.]

I hope this is a lesson to aspiring writers that if you want to write a full-length novel...you need to actually have world-building and proper, deep characterization. Otherwise you'll end up with...

[runs to check the page count, realizes it's still in the bottom of the bin and not on the bookshelf yet]

Like, probably 300 pages or something, and most of it's meaningless filler. If you don't have round characters, and don't have any world-building, and therefore no real depth to your setting outside of the plot, then if you have to fill out 300 pages, you're gonna end up wasting a whole lot of time not doing anything but desperately trying to increase the word count no matter how aggravatingly pointless the scene.

The Murderbot Diaries series does not have enough characterization or world building to fill out a novel. So much time is wasted in Network Effect with the character's doing nothing but talking about what the problem is, and not in an interesting way to read.

Sometimes there's just not enough substance to a story for it to be anything except a short story or a short novel at most. If you want to have a book a hundred thousand words long, then you better have something worthwhile to spend them on.

Network Effect, and even the newest System Collapse, which isn't as long, do not have anything worthwhile to fill in all the gaps formed by stretching the story out into a full-length novel rather than a novela.

There's a big difference between 30,000 words, and a hundred thousand words. And if you want your story to be the latter, you better actually have something to write about. It can't just all be useless filler that neither furthers the plot nor develops any of the characters.

And it's literally not a bad thing for stories to be short. Different stories work best with different formats. Full-length novels are not the be-all end all of written stories. What is bad, though, is trying to force stories that do not work in longer forms into those longer forms anyways.

[doodle-life]

Hey, it’s been quite a while since I posted on here.

Anyways, here’s a small doodle of a budgie (I just had mine on my mind).

And I kind of wanted to try the sort of trend where you say “if this post gets so and so notes I’ll do that and that”, so here goes my list:

At 20 notes I‘ll finish off a few diary entries (I have neglected that duty. I‘m over a year behind 😅)

At 50 notes I‘ll read through a small book I have on my reading list (currently around 40 books on there)

At 100 notes I’ll write the next chapter on a collab short story I’m writing with my girlfriend

At 500 notes I’ll go for a jogging session (considering to do that regularly because of weight reasons)

At 1000 notes I’ll try and finish all the summaries of every topic I have ever learned in nursing school for preparations for my final exams (I’ll be done in April. How time flies…)

Well, let’s see how this goes😊

[author-mandi-bean]

On Writing a Short Story with Anton Chekhov

Raymond Carver said that Anton Chekhov was the "greatest short story writer who ever lived." Why? What can writers learn from Chekhov? I try to answer that question in this week's post -- check it out!

Anton Chekhov Two summers back, I read Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose and despite the overall tone of the writing, I found it useful in my writing — and reading — life. The book reinforced the importance of editing and came with a reading list, which I’ve been slowly but surely making my way through. To that end, I finally finished a collection of short stories by Anton Chekhov. Prose…

[urlocalwitch555]

i decided to finish writing a short story i've abandoned a while ago. i might post it on here when i'm done

"DAWN" — short story ๋࣭ ⭑⚝

⭑┊ genre : fantasy

★┊ setting : late winter, lunares (land of the moon)

✧┊ themes : revenge, new beginnings, religious trauma, healing, sun & moon

✦┊ current word count : 450

✶┊ goal word count : 3,000

🌅 short synopsis

The witch Mertis lives near the coastal town of Lunares. She lives in the belief of the evil of the world and the evil of gods, rotting in hatred. That is until a lost merchant from Solis, with dreams and hopes bright as the sun itself, turns up at her cottage.

[thesunshinenotebook]

Ghosts Have Souls

Darkness. I couldn't bring myself to move.

"You alive?" That was Jesse.

"No, I'm a ghost."

"Ghosts have souls; you do not."

"I will haunt you."

Silence.

"What's going on?"

"Just–everything is so uncertain, and–"

"House rule eight: no hyperbole. Not everything."

"Name one thing that isn't falling to shreds."

"Those curtains seem solid. And… we're solid. You've got me, right?"

"That was cheesy," I deadpanned. 

"Fine, I won't comfort you."

"Jerk."

"Idiot." 

I couldn't help smiling.

"Now help me get the cake off of the ceiling."

"Wha–" 

[10cities10years]

8 Rules of Writing

[This week, I led a session at the Madrid Writer’s Critique Group on important writing rules. My focus wasn’t on broad edicts like “write every day” or “write what you know,” but rather on the more technical rules of writing that elevate one’s work and give it the air of professionalism. This post summarizes that session.] Artists are rulebreakers. They want to pave the path, not follow it.…

[cursedbanalities]

Welcome, to MAXINE’S WONDERFUL WALL OF WRITINGS:

Welcome to my blog!! I’m SO glad to have you here visiting, be sure to stay… FOREVER! 👻 I’ll occasionally post some poetry or prose, or even posts about characters and worlds I’ve created! (When I get around to writing them) I’m always open to feedback, I want nothing more than to be a better writer! ✨Just be respectful please :)✨

Index:

The Misty Road Onward: An ongoing story (uploaded here!) based on my D&D campaign of "Curse of Strahd." Four vagabonds from very different walks of life find each other travelling the same road. Fate had its hand in their affairs, however, when all of them find themselves transported to the ever-gloomy realm of Barovia, where the Vampire Lord Strahd von Zarovich reigns supreme! Will the party escape the realm, or will they just be another meal of the Dreadlord himself?

Zechariah 14:12-13 : A novella about a bloodborne infection sweeping through the nation. This gruesome story follows a group of people working at "Eugene's Pizza" and how they deal with the incoming horde of the infected.

There Was a Hole Here…: a short story about a landlord’s inability to fill a hole in a wall, and the tenant who has to live with it.

Walking Stick: A poem about a lovely walking stick I came across, and the sadness I felt leaving it behind.

Trophy: A horror story about a man who goes hunting in the woods, hoping for his trophy buck.

[joncronshawauthor]

📖 Edits, Prequels, and Zombie Tales | Author Diary - November 1, 2024 🎅🧟

📝 Editing “Forged in Blood”: I’m deep into the editing process for “Forged in Blood,” the second book in the Guild of Assassins series. It’s always a detailed task to refine the narrative, enhance character development, and ensure the plot twists keep readers on the edge of their seats. This stage is crucial for bringing the polished version of the story to life. 📚 Revisiting…

[bitsy-rouge-is-buggin]

Trying to get my writing groove back. I can do some shorts but only if it's a couple I fw: currently into Cam and Rebecca from Under the Bridge. And I'm always into Stef and Lena from The Fosters.

Five sentence prompts!

Leave me a prompt and a ship and I will write a five-sentence ficlet off it. 

Shoutout to @fat-fem-and-asian for getting this list together, and to @scealaiscoite for providing most of these awesome prompts. 

“It wasn’t my choice to make.”

“I’m just getting comfortable.”

“Stop being a fucking prick.” 

“is this okay?”

“my mother adores you.”

“Does he make you feel like this?“ 

“Tell me again.”

“Stop distracting me.” 

“I’ll take care of it" 

“you don’t have to pretend to be alright. ”

"Get the fuck out of my life." 

“i feel like shit.” “you look like it, too.”

“is that a challenge?”

“go with the black one”

"you know what you’re doing”

“we shouldn’t be doing this. not here.”

“i was so worried." 

“did you miss me?”

“you seemed a little off on the phone." 

“all the clothes you own, and you still insist on wearing mine.” 

"of course i liked you.”

“i thought we were past this.”

“how bad is it?”

“don’t tell them, but i like your ideas the most.”

“look at me." 

"we should take a break." 

"you need some real food.”

"go back to sleep." 

"its your fault, you know i hate horror movies!" 

“god, close the curtains- i think i’m being blinded.”

"what makes you think i need a partner to be happy?”

“do you ever regret it?”

“can i ask you something?”

 "don’t ask me that.“

 "i wish i had an answer for you…" 

"You need me.”

//getting turned on by the other’s jealousy//

// when one is watching a movie and the other silently sits down to tune in//

//discovering common interests//

//eye contact across a crowded room//

//looking at their lips as they talk// 

//talking late into the night//

//counting their freckles//

//vacation prompt - — becoming more outwardly affectionate with one another, no one knows them here//

//defending them, even when they’re not there to witness it//

[angelsdevils]

Freelancing

Just me unapologetically promiting my freelancing work

and my commissions

Proofreading and Editing Freelance Work

Writing Short Stories Freelance Work

Commissions are Open