Blogging Circle: Short Stories aka Tightening Prose

So, full disclosure here.  I am a novel writer.  I love writing 50,000 words and beyond, taking people on an epic journey, and all that jazz.  However, for one month out of the year, the amazing August, I become a short story writer.  For August, in the WriYe world, is the time of Augno and the AugNoWriMo Anthology.

I explained what I was writing in the last post and how it was breaking barriers and all.  This isn't another post talking about the story itself.  This post is more talking about the word maximums in short stories and how they're so darn short.  For example, the Anthology word maximum is usually 10,000 words with this year being a special 15,000 words because it's the fifth annivesary.  For someone who usually writes a lot more than that, it seems insane to try and pack an entire story into that little of space.

Fear not!  It can be done.  It can also be done the same way that one works on a novel.  You plan and outline.  It's ten thousand words, so if you wanted to do chapters, do a K a chapter.  Or 2K a chapter.  Yeah, it's tight, but it's doable.  But the easiest way that you're going to get it all out is if you go with an outline.  I recommend not to pants it because you might have story explosion.  So - plot it out - character sketch, outline, world build - the entire thing.  That is the first step to greatness.

The second step is realizing that you might have a story that is not appropriate for a short story.  Short stories are supposed to do beginning, middle, and end in a very quick arc.  If you think about it like running, short stories are the dashes while novels are the marathons.  While plotting, if you feel yourself going on and on with the summary or the outline, you might have a novella or a novel on your hands.  Best thing to do is to put it aside for September or NaNoWriMo and come up with a new idea.  That is not to say to not try to make the awesome idea into a short story, but there's a good chance you'd frustrate yourself.  It is best to never go down the road of frustration.  It leads to a lot of things we don't have time to deal with right now.

As for the third step, it's really just making sure you run a tight edit ship.  If you're over the maximum, go back and take out dialogue tags.  Make sure that you don't have something silly like "nodding a yes".  Get rid of things that don't fit, like the odd subplot that you just pushed in because it seemed like a good idea at the time.  This is your last step in the short story process, so really go at it.


I will say, to end this post, that if you use these three tricks in your novel writing, it'll be amazing as well.  So that's it for the topic of the month - the short story and how to tackle it.  We'll see you next month for the blogging circle of insanity.  :)

Blogging Circle: Breaking Out of Your Box

So, on WriYe, there's this amazing challenge known as "Breaking Out of Your Box".  Basically, and to someone quote the amazing Keri, we all have our one genre that we like to write in.  However, we really shouldn't make it our one genre, so the challenge makes us brave the unknown and take a genre that you might know nothing about to write in.  It is really fun and this is the first year I am actually going to finish it and publish the short story in Milestone.  

Milestone, for those who do not know, is the short story collection that is written by the participants of AugNoWriMo.  The link for Milestone goes to the first volume, which I wrote Matthew's Side of the Story.  It's back story for one of the million of ideas that are in my head.  :)

However, back to the subject at hand.  This was originally July's topic because a lot of us write zombies during the month.  Now, zombies is outside of the box for me, because that's more horror and I wrote supernatural stuffs.  But it is fun to try and that's how the Blogging Circle topic is on the Breaking Out of Your Box challenge.  Understand?  Good.  Even if you don't, follow along for the questions.  

Did you manage to break the box?
Yes, I actually am breaking the box.  My genre for this challenge is a space opera.  To quote wikipedia, "space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that often emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space, usually involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities".  The best known space opera, at least to me, is the movie Star Wars.  One of the lesser known but insanely awesome ones is Firefly - which, if you have not seen, stop reading and go do so.  You will not be disappointed, especially if you're a fan of Joss Whedon.

Anyways, that's the genre I'm working in.  I've got romance (captain and her second are having a long term relationship), I've got adventure, and, most importantly, it is set in space.  They go to different planets and are currently running from the government due to a slight misunderstanding (murder and kidnapping).  I love it. I've got over 7K of it written and it might easily be 15K by the end.  It is just one of the most fun things I've ever written and I might have to do something more with the characters when I'm done with it.

Did it help you in anyway?
I think it did.  It showed me that I don't have to always write fantasy or supernaturals.  I can write something that is interesting to me and I'm not really having a lot of problems with it.  That might be because I started the story insanely early (August 1st) to allow for slow writing time.  However, part of knowing that it is going to get done and go into a publication that I love is driving me to enjoy it as I'm writing.  If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't be writing it and still be tearing my hair out for an idea of what to do.

What did you learn?
That I can be awesome, even in a genre that is completely outside of my norms.  Then again, I already knew that.  ;)  I just needed confirmation - thanks Keri!  


So, that's it for now.  Stay tuned - I've got another blog circle post to do (August) and that'll be up before the end of the month.