05 September 2012

Wednesday in Progress: Short Stories Are Gold

Holy moly. An entire month of being offline (PC decided to go wacky and then it was the Nightmare Best Buy commercial) and I'm going to try and figure out this "regularly blogging" thing. Bear with me.

me writing my masterpieces, duh
So, we're going to try a new format for this blog. Wednesdays I'm going to share the wisdom of all those fabulous writers I follow on Twitter and Facebook and compile lists of helpfulness - if only for myself, but I think it will be generally useful to anyone out there reading. (I don't hear crickets over my streaming radio...)

Currently, I'm up to my eyeballs in a lot of changes/upgrades. I'm hoping to move to my own webspace in a few months, I'm working on a massive story (that I'm hoping to write in a series of 5 books), and I have a handful of stories/story ideas that are being shuffled around and tweaked whenever I have a moment. That and there have been a few life-changes that have affected us, too. It's exciting, scary, hectic - you name it. Good times.

Here we go:

I like Ryan Casey's Short Stories: Four Reasons Why You Should Write Them. Especially with the ebook popularity and a number of new products hitting the market just in time for the holidays, short stories are a fantastic medium for ebook formats. Take ten or fifteen minutes and you can have your literary fill with a nice, compact tale - in between waiting in a queue at the grocery, waiting for your next appointment, or even your lunch break (provided you don't spill your food on your eReader).

Kris Noel has great for advice on the Three Act Structure - basics every writer should follow, regardless if you're writing a novel or a short story, or a movie script! It's a great little poke in the brain if you're having trouble with the pacing of your story.

Lastly, a fun little video: Vonnegut Advice: Short Stories I personally really enjoyed Slaughterhouse Five, but I didn't get past that one book of his - and he's written tons of short stories! I think I'm going to have to devote one of my weekends to reading a few. Plenty of great, simple advice - but I like (and I need to remind myself constantly) of #4 Every sentence must do one of two things - reveal character or advance action. I also like #6 Be a sadist. Sweet.

My hope is in between all of my longer fiction, I will be able to share a few bite-size morsels that you can enjoy. There are dozens of starts floating about in this brain o'mine...

Your turn! I'd like to hear from you. What advice do you have to share about writing short stories? Do you write them at all? Have you tried? What was the last short story you've read?

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