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!

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.

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!

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 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.

Random Progress Post: Writing Outside of Your Genre

Subtitle: Where Liz rants about writing detective fiction and how she's worried she's doing it wrong.  Well there's more than one subtitle to this but that's what I'm going with for the moment.  On the WriYe website, there's a challenge called genre stretch.  It's very much like what you're thinking, where you get a genre that is possibly outside of your comfort zone and you write in it.  It's related to breaking out of your box, but it's more of a month to month challenge vs a yearly challenge.  It can be anywhere from a short story to novel length.  I'm working on making mine into just being a short story, even though it's being slow going.

This month's genre stretch is crime fiction.  Crime fiction can be anything from a detective story to legal drama.  Some authors of crime fiction are James Patterson, John Grisham, Mo Hayder, and Agatha Christie to name a few.  If you've ever watched an episode of Law and Order, that's straight up and down crime fiction with the police and lawyers working together.  Another aspect of crime fiction is the movie Usual Suspects where the point of view comes from the criminal who was at the scene of a crime / worked with the suspects of the crime.  I won't say more, other than you should go watch it and bow down to Kevin Spacey's performance.  For older crime fiction movies, Alfred Hitchcock did a lot such as Vertigo, Rear Window, and Dial M for Murder to name some.  He's got a lot.  For myself, I love crime thriller, considering I've devoured three of James Patterson's Women's Murder Club this month (that post is coming this week around Thursday/Friday), and that I will watch Law and Order repeats (has to have Jerry Orbach and Sam Waterston in it).

So that's the background of crime fiction.  You cannot throw a stone in our society and not find some type of crime fiction.  Now, you'd think that with all of this in society and how much I love crime fiction, that it would be ever so easy to write it.  Haha, no.  I'm learning that quickly that there is no short cut to writing crime fiction.  Also, no matter how much I've watched, I'm second guessing myself on what I'm writing.  Well, the words itself.  The plot overall is wonderful, if reminding me of L&O, but I'll take what I can get.  Basically, a veterinarian was killed in her clinic and they have to figure out who did the murder.  And, of course, there's the red herring suspects and then the real murderer.  See?  Feels L&O-ery but I'll take what I can get.  I do plan to have it done by the end of the month - four days, four sections, ta-da - and have it up sometime mid-February or start of March so people can read it.

Blogging Circle: Who Likes Short-Shorts? (August)

Yes, I'm a bit behind.  Apologies for that and... I dunno.  I thought I had done this but I guess I hadn't.  So we're doing it now, quick and dirty style, because there's another post about it.  That post is over here and you can feel free to read it.  It talks more about tightening prose than what I'm going into here.  This is more focused on the stories themselves rather than the effort that goes into them.  Let's get to the questions.

• Do you write them?

From time to time, I do.  When it's fanfiction, I write a lot of them.  But, as I said last year, I'm a novel writer.  50K+?  I'm in.  It's kind of hard to do below that, even though I can, because I want to dig into everything and take everyone on a big journey.  So, yes, I write them.

Sidenote: I've been writing more of them this year because we did two competitions on WriYe.  I say competitions, but it's more like friendly stuff with good amount of feedback.  We did Last WriYe Standing (it's like Survivor, but with prose!) and Contrasts.  Of the two, I'm liking Contrasts more but I think that's because the feedback is better.  Or it's less competition and more writing for fun.  Maybe, after I clean up some of them, I'll post a few here and there.  We'll see.  :)

• Do you hate them?

Hate is such a strong word.  Strong dislike, but I'll write them.

• Do you think they're lovely but there's no market for them?

There's such a big market for them.  My library has a section that's devoted to just short stories.  Also, I keep on seeing new ones and people are buying them, so there is.  For people who say there's no market, I just think they're not digging hard enough.  You can find a market for anything if you Google enough.

• For those who wish to be published, many people tell you that short story publications get your foot in the door.  And while that is true, I'm not sure how many people really focus on the short stories.  So tell me your own views on them.  Have any been published?  Are you looking to publish some?

I've been published in Milestone (that's Volume 1; I'm also in Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, and Volume 6).  I'm not sure if I'm looking to publish more but that's now.  In the future?  Yeah, I'll probably look more into it if I can't get the novels published.

Bonus: What is your favorite magazine / anthology of short stories?

I really don't have one.  I'd love some comments on magazines / books to look into.  Neil Gaiman wrote Smoke and Mirrors but it's all his own work and not an anthology.  He also wrote Fragile Things.  Both are good to read, if you're looking into a different take on short stories, and he's one of my favorite authors.

Alright, that's it for August's blogging circle.  Tune in tomorrow, when I'll post September's.  Going to try to get on a schedule for posting, joining the amazing Ana with her weekly posts.  

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.  :)