Craft Chat Writing Short Story Thread

[Pamela Jo]

Most people on here concentrate on novels tho we do work on FF, short stories and poetry esp for competitions. So I thought a thread where people can bring competitions or what they use in writing short stories.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Here's two. What's in your toolbox?

 

[Sedayne]

Great idea for a thread!

I'd never written a short story until last year, and now I've done quite a few and had some published. I'm useless at flash, but somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 words is about right for me.

My best resource for writing is reading, and I read a lot of short stories now. I've got anthologies by some of my favourite novelists - they don't all make good short fiction writers, but some of them do. I've got print subs to three lit mags, and I pick up others if I'm in cities with the kind of bookshops that stock them. And there are loads of online short story magazines and Substacks.

The other day I did an exercise where I looked at the openings of fourteen short stories by different writers and decided what I liked or disliked about them. I hadn't read any of the stories previously. I ranked them on things like character, event, language, imagery and interest to read on. Totally subjective of course, but it helped me see what was important to get right in my own openings. A useful exercise which I'd recommend.