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. :)
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