Going Forward

Hi everyone.  I hope you enjoyed our look into short stories for the month of August.  Going forward, we've got NaNoWriMo in just two months (eeeek!) so we're going to see a bit of changes in the blog over those two months.

Every Monday, I'm going to talk about a bit of NaNoWriMo prep.  September is going to be mostly world building and we'll get into characters and outlining around October.  The rest of the week will be an exercise or prompt to help with building the novel that you'll write in November.  You'll still get the Friday Five / Friday Inspiration and there might be a few more off topic posts if I feel inspired but that's our frame work going forward.

Come November, I'm not sure what is going to happen.  The blog might go into hiatus for the month or there might be rants about how the writing process is going.  We'll see when it gets here.

Either way, I hope you enjoyed the past month and will stick around going forward.  Until tomorrow, keep on writing.

Tuesday Prompt

From 7savers - a wallpaper website

When's the last time a rainbow came into your life?  How did it effect you?  Have you ever driven through a rainbow?  Hopefully the image and the questions will help you start or finish a story you're working on.

Editing Your Short Story

We're coming to the end of our short story month here on the blog, which means that we're going to touch on what happens when you're done writing.  Yes, it's time to talk about editing, which some writers like and some writers dread.  I like and dread it, so here's my top three tips for editing.

1. If you can, put it away for a few days before reading it again.  It gives you time to have some fresh eyes and a bit of a break.  Sometimes breaks are good things and you come back to see all the problems in your story.  Identifying those problems help you to edit them which makes your story even better.

2. When editing, read your story out loud and change where you say something different than is on the page.  It's going to be a bit silly but, really, you're going to catch where you have a grammar or plot mistake easier this way.  Also, you can hear your dialogue and go "wait, I didn't mean that" and be able to go back and change it.

3. If you have willing friends and time, ask someone to read it over for you.  Just remember that their edits come from a place of wanting to help - after all, they're your friends - and the edits will make your writing better.  Also, they might have noticed something you missed.

What tips do you guys have that I might have missed?  Do you feel these will help you or hurt you in editing your story?  Feel free to leave comments below and, until next time, keep on writing.  Or editing!

Inspiration Friday!

From Mother Earth News' article from 2007 on Reduced School Bus Pollution

Happy Friday everyone!  In my neck of the woods, it's back to school time with the buses out in force.  Do you remember your first day of school?  Or maybe the one time you were looking forward to a memorable school day?  Use it to fuel some writing!  Feel free to leave it down below in the comments and have a great weekend!

Short Story vs Novella

You're probably thinking there's not going to be much to this post.  I've already talked about the upper limits of a short story - 30,000 words - and you're thinking that a novella should be longer than that.  You'd be right.  A novella is usually between 30,000 and 60,000 words but, for my tastes, I would say that the novella cut off should be around 40,000.  That's due to doing NaNoWriMo for many years where your word count for winning is 50,000 for a novel and, for romance novels, the bare minimum is 40,000 words.  So, for me, your short story should be anywhere under 30,000 but your novella should be under 40,000 or 50,000.

Now, these are not hard and fast rules.  If you want hard and fast rules, Wikipedia says that a novella is anything from 17,500 words to 40,000 words.  What I've said above is more my own tastes and knowing a bit of what publishers typically want to see in your word counts for a novel.  For you and what you're defining your work as, you're going to want to check with who you're publishing with and see their guidelines.  They're usually going to have the hard and fast rule in black and white so you know you won't get automatically be tossed into the reject file by word count alone.

If you'd like more information on novel lengths, I recommend LitRejection's blog post on word counts.  At the bottom, it gives what they recommend for novellas, short stories, and flash fiction along with some words of wisdom.

That's going to do it for this time and, until tomorrow, keep on writing!

Writing Your Short Story

A very individual thing and one where you're really going to have to go with what is best for you.  I can do a short story in one sitting, especially if it's a drabble, and a cup of coffee at my side.  I can also stretch it over several days, if not months, and not because of writer's block.  It's just how I write sometimes, especially if it's a longer work, and that's life.

Now, there really isn't any good advice here aside to keep your butt in the chair and write.  If you're having problems, do a brain dump, where you write everything in your head about what's going wrong and see if it helps.  Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.  One of the things that does work for me is doing timed sprints.  I set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes and then try to write as much as I can.  Even if you write 100 words, it's better than not writing anything at all.

Another thing I like to do is take the word crawls from NaNoWriMo and work through it to get some words in.  One of my favorites is the Shots Shots Shots crawl which would work very well for a short story.  It's one of the quicker crawls but there are longer ones for when you want more of a challenge or have more time.

How do you write your short story?  Do you do it all in one go or do you stretch it out to make sure you're writing as best you can for the story?  Feel free to leave answers in the comments below and, until next time, keep on writing.

How to Plot Your Short Story

We've talked about the different type of short stories, different challenges, and ways that habits and short stories interact.  Today we're going to touch on the idea of plotting the short story.  I'll go through how I plot and why it works for me.  You can feel free to try them out or see if one of the methods I use for a longer short story might work for you as flash fiction.

1. Drabble: This is pretty straight forward for me.  I look for a prompt, feel it out by finding a definition or a picture, and try to figure out which characters I have would work best for the prompt.  This is where one of the big books of prompts would help me and it has in the past.  The only problems I run into is that sometimes I think a character and prompt fit but then they don't.  When that happens, I will brain dump why it might not be working, which is a form of outlining sometimes, and one of two things will happen.  I'll either go back to the drawing board and find a new character or the block will be broken to write the drabble.

2. Flash fiction: This is where plotting gets a bit more involved.  Sometimes I'll use the same idea as the drabble.  I'll find a prompt, select a character, and write.  Sometimes it's a bit more tricky, like when I do a challenge and people have to read it, but that seems to be few and far between.  When I do a challenge, I'll sit with the prompt and sketch out what I would like to write.  Do I want to do fantasy or do I want to do a genre that is a bit outside of my comfort area?  Do I want to use a character I know and love or would that be a point against me?  It involved a bit of a brain dump at times, so I know what I'm doing but also so I can write a stronger story.  I find that I do a lot less editing when I've brain dumped ahead of time or sketched out a basic framework of my story.  That framework might be more of when to introduce or not introduce a plot point or character but that's about it.

3. Short Story: This is where it gets fun.  What I like to do with a short story is create an outline of scenes as a pathway from start to finish.  Sometimes I end up with a story that I realize would be better as a novella or novel than a short story.  Sometimes I realize that I have a plot hole and I need to fill it in by creating a side character or adding a bit more to my main character.  Either way, I try to make sure that it is a cohesive story.  Now, this is the only time that I don't do a brain dump because I create an outline.  Also, I usually have a story idea that came to me instead of using a prompt.  This is not to say that I won't use a prompt from time to time to write a short story but it's less likely when I write the longer short story.  I usually already have a story in mind, I outline it, and realize that the short story format will work for it or it won't.

So, that is how I plot my short stories.  Do you feel these would work for you or do you have another way that you plot out a short story?  Feel to share it below in the comments or hit me up on either Facebook or Twitter.  Have a good Monday and keep on writing!

The Friday Five: Olympics, Inspiration, and a Dash of Insanity

Aloha Friday!  FriYAY!  Whatever you want to call it, thank everything it's the end of another week and we can go onto the next one.  I know I'd like to forget this past week (hell, the entire month can be fired for all I care and 2016 is drunk so it needs to go home) but let's see if we can't find something good here.

1. Considering that some of us (I know I do) need coffee to survive, here's what coffee actually does to your body (Huffington Post).  With the coffee and insomnia link, I do need to stop drinking coffee around 4 or 5 pm.  However, drinking any sort of black tea doesn't cause insomnia, so I dunno what's happening there.

2. Onion Ring distribution system and sweaters covered in cat hair: 7 great things about being a writer! - because, really, sometimes we all need a pick me up about being a writer.  And yes, that's from Jan Markley's blog and I might need to go pick up one or more of her books.

3. The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore ended last night, possibly due to Comedy Central thinking that it could fill the Colbert Show's big shoes (it did in it's own ways), but not in the ways that mattered to the network behind it.  Here's Washington Post's Michael Cavna on what I learned about comic writing from Larry Wilmore.  There's a lot of good advice in there, including to make sure that you are keeping it 100 (real) and trying not to make too many pop culture references.

4. The Olympics closing ceremony is Sunday and, while it's been fun, I think I'm ready for it to be over.  According to TV by the numbers, ratings are down for the first week of the games and... honestly, I'm not surprised.  NBC needs to stop focusing on the fluff pieces, get better commentators (I'm looking at you, gymnastics), and air all of it no matter where the US team falls in the standings.  It doesn't help that there was a lot of negative stories about how Rio wasn't ready to host the games due to Zika and the village not being ready, so I don't think a lot of people wanted to watch.  Add in the fact that the crowds are being rude - I consider booing a silver medalist while receiving his medal to get a gold medal in rudeness and they're throwing opponents off their game - that people just stop watching.  I know that I haven't been watching the Olympics live as I'm either streaming or watching via DVR with fast forwarding and I'm not the only one.

5. Okay, not really a dash of insanity, but here's the Daily Show's What the Actual Fact - Donald Trump's Anti-Terrorism Policies.

Okay, that's it for this Friday Five!  Have a good weekend, everyone.

Inspiration Thursday

Found at Jan Markley's blog: Three dead moths in my mailbox

I know I'd like to be on a beach right now or anywhere else that wasn't real life.  It's been a series of ups and downs lately.  I don't really have anything else to say for today, other than to go read the link to a blog post talking about making up words.  It's really interesting and I'm starting to read a lot of her other stuff on her blog too.  

Anyways, happy Thursday and, if you can, keep on writing!

Short Stories Into Movies

One of the best things, at least in my opinion, is when your story becomes a movie.  We're used to novels becoming movies and how they're faithful to the story, but what about story stories and movies?  Well, it happens and sometimes the changes are for the better.

For me, one of the better known short stories that keeps on being made into a movie is "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving.  Now that has been stretched to include characters that weren't in the original story or love interests.  This isn't to say that I don't enjoy the adaptations, just showing how much difference there is.  Another good one is Minority Report which adds on two acts to the story and changes up the characters completely.  John Anderton is a balding out of shape man in the short story and... well, he becomes Tom Cruise action movie hero.  Not the short balding guy from Tropic Thunder.

My favorite adaptation though, is "The Sentinel".  You're probably going "...what movie is that?".  It's 2001: A Space Odyssey that takes all these little things from the short story into the movie and it was the starting point to the novel by the same name.  The reason why this is my favorite is that it shows the full potential of the short story.  It goes from this little idea into one of the greatest movies of all time and a novel that is amazing.

So, readers, what are some of your favorite short stories into movies?  Feel free to leave it in the comments below and, until next time, keep on writing.

Flash Fiction

Flash fiction is a short story that is 53 to a thousand words.  That's it.  I have fun with this from time to time and write stories centered around one character or one situation.  It's usually with a prompt, as it's a bit easier that way instead of doing it off the top of your head, and my hat is off to those writers who can do it off the top of their head.

Now, you're probably going "okay, flash fiction, nice and easy, what's the catch?".  The catch is you need to be on the ball.  You need to know exactly what you're doing, exactly what characters you're using, and how you're going to use them.  All the other rules of a story apply but you've only got a thousand words.  1001?  Nope, sorry, go away.

For a bit of recommended reading, always go to Walt Whitman.  Uncle Walt is going to have the best for flash fiction and he’s a personal favorite of mine.  Ernest Hemingway is good too and he was one of the first people who wrote a six word story with “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn”.  You don’t need the emotional background to know what’s happening there.  There’s also H.P. Lovecraft, Phillip K Dick, and a lot of others.

What do you think of flash fiction, dear readers?  Do you like the idea of the challenge or do you think it’s something silly?  Leave a comment below and, until next time, keep on writing.

Short Stories and Characters

When I first talked about short stories, I brought up that one of the problems is characters.  I meant it as a way that there are times, in short stories, where there are too many characters and you need to cut them out.  The characters that you need to cut out, especially when you're hitting the ceiling of the word count, are the ones in the background.  The ones that don't do something but you introduce them anyways because it seems like a good idea.  Those are the ones who get cut.  They wouldn't if you were writing a novel, unless an editor thought it was a good idea, but you need the words in a short story, so they go.

This post isn't talking about that though.  This post is more to remind you that, no matter what you're writing, you need to have well rounded characters.  Even though you don't have as many words as you do in a novel, your characters still have to connect to your readers.  They have to connect to the other characters in your story and feel like normal people.  That is the baseline for all stories, no matter the length - well, maybe not drabbles as those are so short, but that's what your characters should be like.

There are character templates out there, through simple Google searches, and I recommend that you try a few.  You might take some things out while making your characters, but this needs to be apart of whatever you do in the writing process.  Characters matter, as they're usually the vehicle for your story, and you should not skimp on them just because you're writing a short story.

That's it for the day, really.  It was just a PSA on not forgetting to make sure your characters shine.  Until next time, keep on writing and don't forget your characters!

Friday Motivation

Have a great and productive weekend!

Writing Prompt: A Drabble

Title: Minutes
Prompt: Introduction from 100 Themes Challenge Writing Prompts

My palms are sweaty, going over the different ways to introduce myself to a person that I never met before, as minutes ticked away. My parents and his were trying to arrange a marriage for both of us and this first meeting was critical for if it would go forward at all. He would know my name and would he care about anything else? Would he care that I love H.P. Lovecraft and wanted to study literature? Would he care about my favorite color or food? The doorbell rang and all the questions would be answered in a few minutes.

Habits and the Short Story

We know the old advice and it's advice that I've probably keep on going back to.  If you want to be a writer, you need to write, everyday.  Your butt should be in the chair and you should be writing.  So, that's a habit.  Everyday, carve out time, and you make it a habit in your life to write x amount of words everyday.

Now, let's say you don't have a novel to write on.  Or your novel is in editing mode but you want to keep on writing.  The best idea is to go to a short story or drabble or flash fiction (we'll get into that next week) and write either a small thought you had into a story or find a prompt.  This will continue to make writing everyday into a habit you can continue.

Websites for Short Story Prompts
Writer's Digest Prompts
Let's Write a Short Story - Ideas
365 Creative Writing Prompts - this is great to start in January and continue year round.
Random First Line Generator
Seventh Sanctum - Writing - I use this website a lot for help with characters and names.  It's a wonderful website and resource.
Awesome Writing Prompts on tumblr

Drabble Drabble

First off, you're probably going "what the hell is a drabble and why does it sound like something I'd clean off the floor?".  I completely understand as I thought that when I first heard about the idea of this.  However, stay with me for a moment and I'll explain.

A drabble is a short story that is 100 words in length.  It has roots in science fiction, where they're popular, and they're also popular in fanfiction.  They're structured more around a theme or a prompt than a character if you're writing original fiction and around a character thrown into the prompt in fanfiction.  Here's an example of one of my drabbles of a original character with the prompt of pillow:

Feathers were flying everywhere as laughter filled the room from the slowly ending pillow fight.  It was something that all three of them needed.  Kendra from the drama of her family, Cleo from the drama of Marcus and Matthew, and Adora from the drama of Gabriel not being able to choose – all of the drama made them just want to hit things.  They were able to get their frustrations out in a safe way that made them all giggle in the end.  The giggling slowly ended as they slowly drifted into a sleep that would better prepare them for tomorrow.

It's a scene, basically, but it has a beginning and an end.  You have three characters but you don't really touch on any of them to give a link to the reader.  However, what the scene does, or at least I hope it does, is bring a bit of a smile to the reader's face.  Or maybe a laugh.  Or maybe rolling the eyes and moving on.  But that is a drabble and you can find a lot of different prompts, for both fanfiction and original fiction, via a simple Google search.

My opinions on this is that it is one of the harder short stories to write, especially when you can't really explain your characters, but it is over as fast as you start.  As always, it is best to edit - the example above started out 50 words over - and you can get that one little sweet scene.  So, readers, what do you think of drabbles?  Do you think it's something you would try out or do you think it's one of those funny little challenges of writing?  Tell me what you think in the comments below and, until next time, keep on writing.

The Challenges of the Short Story

Hi all and happy (coffee) Monday.  Last week, I touched on the challenges of short stories and I thought I would expand on them.  Let's dive into what those challenges are and how to help tackle them.

1. Word Length.  A short story needs to be 30,000 words or less.  It could be less than that, depending on who you're publishing with or what you're planning to do, but that's your box.  You have 30,000 words to tell a story from start to finish.  It is doable because you're going to be following a simple story structure in either the three acts or the bell curve (start, rise to midsection, let out the tension, spike in an near ending twist, finish) or something else that works for you.  How to tackle this is to know where your plot is going and really pick the scenes that will work best for the story.  If you're telling a short story fantasy, then I would cut out travel scenes.  If you're doing a romance, have the meet-cute early / begin the story and have everything go quickly from there.  For mystery, they find the body and the clues come quickly.  Another thing is to read short stories in the genre that you want to write in and see if you can get clues from there.

2. Characters.  As I've said before, I'm a character driven writer.  My plot revolves around the characters instead of the other way around.  My problem with characters is that they never seem to flesh out the way that I want to but I also have too many.  The best way to tackle this is two fold.  One, don't have a cast of millions.  Pick out characters that you're really going to need and weed out the rest to make sure that you're going to maximize your story.  Two, make the characters you have count.  Make sure they're driving the plot and not on the sidelines.  If you have a character that is on the sidelines and you need to cut words, that character goes.  So really pay attention to what characters you're using and how you're using them when writing a short story.

3. Not giving enough details / summarizing / telling more than showing.  Yes, I gave a complete thing about not having enough words, but there's also the trap of falling into using too little words.  As with any good story, you need to show what is happening, engaging the reader, instead of telling the reader what is happening.  You also need to explain what's happening around the characters, like the room they're in, but don't summarize it in a way of "character X walks into a blue room".  Give the reader a bit more and explain how the room is blue.  Is it the wall coloring?  Is it the fact that every thing in the room is a blue color?  Those little details make a story and give it depth, so don't forget them.

4. Not being a complete story.  I fall into this trap a lot when I'm writing short stories.  I like keeping a door open to write more but you can't.  You have to end the story with a definite end and not leave room open for more.  The character wins the battle and is rewarded and that's it.  There's no foreshadowing of battles yet to come or struggles - you just have the ending.  This is something that can be helped with editing and practicing your writing.  It'll come but it's also best to make sure that you have the happily ever after / complete ending.

So, those are the challenges for short stories, especially for me, and also for others.  What are the challenges that you have with writing short stories?  Feel free to share in the comments below or on Facebook or Twitter.  Until next time, keep on writing.

Friday Five: Olympics!

Who's excited?!

1. Full Schedule of all Olympic events and how to watch them.  I'm looking forward to fencing - it's my outside of the mainstream event that I love (curling in winter Olympics) - and the more mainstream like swimming and gymnastics.  I'll be watching as much as I can, to be honest.

2. For all the talk about the Zika virus and the Olympics, it turns out there's not that big of a risk anymore.  To be fair, Rio's going into winter, so of course it's down.  Bugs usually go away in winter after all.

3. Here's the feeling old part of the Friday Five - it's been 20 years since the Magnificent Seven.  For everyone who doesn't know, they were the first team to win gold for the US in gymnastics.  That team was Amanda Borden, Amy Chow, Dominique Dawes, Shannon Miller, Dominique Moceanu, Jaycie Phelps, and Kerri Strug.  Of all seven, if you remember them, you probably remember Kerri Strug's vault the most.  Here's a refresher if you don't: 

4. Here's some heroes in waiting that could win a first time medal for their countries.  My money is on Salome Nyirarukundo from Rwanda for the 10,000m race that'll run on August 12th.  I'll be watching or streaming.

5. Also, it's not just August that has the Olympic games.  Paraolympics start up September 7th to 18th - opening wheelchair rugby has Australia vs Great Britain.

Bonus: This is why you should always double check if you'll be roaming or not, even if you're gold medal Olympic gymnast Kohei Uchimura.  At least his phone company was nice enough to cut it down to $30 instead of what it was.  

Writing Prompt

Happy Thursday!  Here's a picture to help spark your writing.

from Writing Forward

The Different Kinds of Short Stories

As you might have figured out from the blogging circle topic for the month, we're focusing on short stories.  Now, you might think you know what a short story is.  It's shorter than a novella or a novel, it's usually in a collection with other short stories, it's nothing that's stand alone, and so on.  However, short stories is a big blanket term that a lot of different types of stories fall under.  We'll be going over the big ones in the coming weeks - the drabble, the flash fiction and so on - but let's talk about the somewhat lesser known short stories.  Most of these you'll be like "oh, yeah, that's a short story" but let's talk about them anyways.

First up, the fable.  The first that comes to mind, for most people, would be the Aesop's fables.  Another well known fable is George Orwell's Animal Farm, even though it's a novel, it is a well known and famous example of a fable.  Per the definition of fable, you have animals, plants, mythical creatures, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are given human characteristics that teaches a moral lesson.  The most common one that is given is the ability to speak and connect to the reader via dialogue to other characters in the story.  Now, while you can have a novel fable, I still think they come across best in short story format.  Also, when you have it in short story format, it has more of a punch and you don't know you're reading one at the same time.  If you want to read some fables, of course there's the two I mentioned, but here's some more:

• Dr Seuss
• Hans Christian Anderson
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• Fables, a comic written by Arnold Lobel

So, now let's talk about the parable, which is different from the fable in not having animals or other objects tell the story.  A parable is an analogy and you can find a lot of them in the New Testament.  The Prodigal Son is the first one that pops into mind when I'm thinking about parables but another one is the Good Samaritan.  I wish I could talk more about them but I don't know them as well as I know fables.  Parables weren't pushed into my life because my family isn't all that religious and that seems to be where most of them are.  Now, that's not true, but you don't have a Dr Seuss for parables.  You don't have something that's been made popular by Disney.  Now, could that change?  Sure but you don't have someone pushing for it to be done.  Okay, here's some more reading if you want to dive into the world of parables:

• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• A ton of books explaining the parables in the Gospel of Jesus that are easy to find on Amazon

The last we're going to talk about is the vignette.  For those who don't know what this is, it's not really a short story on it's own.  It's a scene within a novel that is more about showing meaning through imagery than the plot.  You might be wondering why I'm touching on them while talking about short stories.  It's the same reason I would be talking about play within a play if I was talking about different types of plays.  It's something you can use, within your own writing, especially if you're using your setting as a plot point.  A scary house can have a vignette to set the stage for what is to come in a horror story.  A ship can have a vignette to explain how precarious the open seas or space is.  You can use it and you should use it.  The two big examples is the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros where it's a collection of them and the webseries High Maintenance where there's the focus on one character and the world around them.

So those are the three different type of short stories that usually get shuffled under the rug.  I hope that in telling you about them, you can go see what they're about and if they work for you to tell a story you think the world should read.  What are some of the short story types you think aren't showcased enough?  Feel free to leave it below in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter and, until next time, keep on writing.

WriYe Blogging Circle: August

Hi all and welcome back for another edition of the WriYe blogging circle.  This month, we're dealing with short stories and I'm going to be highlighting it this month with the various different ones that are out there.  I don't know if I'm going to do this every month going forward with focusing on one theme but I thought it would be fun to give it a try.  Also, I'm not a natural short story writer, so this is going to help me as much as it's going to be fun.

So, with that out of the way, let's get to the questions.

What do you like about writing short stories?
This is going to be silly but I like that they're short.  A novel is a huge effort that takes anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 words to complete.  A short story can be anywhere from 53 (flash fiction) to 30,000 words.  After that, you run into novella territory, which is another kettle of fish, so it's nice that it's short.  That's not to say that they're easy to write.  There's just as much work that goes into forming a short story as a novella or a novel but writing time is cut in half for me.  It takes a lot less time for me to go from first draft to final draft on a short story than a novella or a novel.  So, yes, I like that they're short and it takes me less time from start to finish.

What don't you like about writing short stories?
It's the same answer as above and ties into what I started the post with.  I'm not a natural short story writer.  I like to go on and on and on but then I need to edit it down.  I've had a short story assignment for a class that had a hard line of you will lose points if you go over 25,000 words even if it's brilliant.  I had to edit out about 10,000 words and that's hard.  It is hard to stay within the boundaries, especially if you're coming to the genre as a novel or a novella writer.  It can be done.  You can edit out your words or choose what you're doing for different scenes but I find it to be difficult.

How do you think short stories differ from novels?
Aside from word count, there's times when I wish a short story was longer to show a background character that could have really shined.  I don't think you have the space to go into side characters that could have a bigger spotlight and you need to stick to your plot or main character.  Now, that's not to say that there aren't some short stories out that does everything a novel does in a shorter space but they're few and far between.

Bonus: What is your favorite short story anthology?
One of my favorites, even though it has poems in it, is Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors.  He also has Fragile Things but I like Smoke and Mirrors more.

So, that's the blogging circle post for the month.  Stay tuned this month for more on short stories and, until next time, keep on writing.

My August Writing Plans

Alright, some simple goals for the month.

1. Finish my July project - Nope, fell short a bit (okay, a lot) but I can finish it this month.
2. Start my August project / decide if I'm saving it for the unofficial 3 Day Novel challenge in September on WriYe.
3. Start putting in the edits for MoD and get it done.

We'll see how far I get by the end of the month!