If you'd like to write more short stories but are coming up short on ideas, here's a list I saw over on Tumblr that offers a weekly prompt you can use:
"52 short stories in 52 weeks
1. A story entitled “A New Beginning”.
2. A story about rising to a challenge.
3. A retelling of a fairytale.
4. A story about three siblings.
5. A story set in London.
6. A story about finding something that has been lost.
7. A story about a journey.
8. A story set during a war.
9. A creepy story.
10. A story featuring a countdown.
11. A story set at a full moon.
12. A story about a contest or competition.
13. A story that takes place entirely inside a vehicle.
14. A story from a villain’s perspective.
15. A story set at a concert or festival.
16. A story that begins with a gunshot.
17. A story set in a country you’ve never been to.
18. A story about a historical figure.
19. A story set in a theatre.
20. A story written in 2nd person narrative.
21. A story set on another planet.
22. A story written from the perspective of someone dead/undead
23. A story about a birthday.
24. A story that ends on a cliffhanger.
25. A story set at the summer solstice.
26. A story about nostalgia.
27. A story that features a song or poem.
28. A story that ends at sunrise.
29. A story opening with the words “F*** you!”
30. A story about a magical object.
31. A story set at sea.
32. A story about a curse.
33. A story set 100 years in the future.
34. A story about loneliness.
35. A story that features a real recent newspaper article.
36. A story written from an animal’s perspective.
37. A story about a scientific discovery.
38. A story set on another planet.
39. A story with only one character.
40. A story about a secret.
41. A romance that ends in tragedy.
42. A tragedy that ends in romance.
43. A retelling of a recent Hollywood movie.
44. A story that takes place the year you were born.
45. A story about a near-death experience.
46. A story about anger.
47. A story about a magic spell.
48. A story set in a strange small town.
49. A story about justice being done.
50. A creation myth.
51. A story set at Christmas.
52. A story entitled “The End”."
I usually write short stories to test-drive my world-building, but I've also used them to help build characters, tell a story from a different POV, or explore a particular theme or myth. Give one of these a shot, see what you come up with on the page, and you might surprise yourself.
Source: Writing Therapy
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short story. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Get Back to Writing Week: Short Story
Novels are like theme parks, in that they hold a lot of characters, surprises around every corner, neat rides to go on and other cool things to do. As a reader you can spend days wandering around and basking in the excitement of these places.
As a writer, you can do that, too, but you have to build them first.
This kind of fiction construction takes tons of ideas and tools and plans plus all the time it requires to actually gather the materials, put it together, troubleshoot it, polish it up and get it ready for others to enjoy. It's why we call it world-building; writing novels means you really do build a world and everything in it from scratch.
If you've taken a hiatus from writing, the sheer size of that kind of project can seem especially daunting. So can the very good odds that you'll do all that work and get nothing in return. What if you choose the wrong theme for your novel park? What if the cast members are a bunch of boring wall flowers who just stand around and talk to each other about housekeeping stuff? Those doubts and fears often convince writers to put it off until next week, next month, or next year (when -- for mysterious reasons that I've never understood -- it's supposed to be easier.)
To get back to writing after a long break it's sometimes good to start with a project that isn't as long as a book. One option is to write some flash fiction, or a story told in a very minimal amount of words (some folks say it has to be less than 300, but I've also seen it defined as less than 1000 words.) This sort of writing can be a great form for people who want to work in shorter sessions in order to ease their way back into a daily or weekly writing routine. If you're a fast, focused writer, you can probably knock out at least one or two flash fiction stories per day; if you're slower or want to explore the form you still won't have to deal with a lot of blank pages to fill; four is about tops.
My personal favorite go-to short fiction form is the short story. A short story is like a roller coaster in the great theme park of fiction; they can be fast, fun and full of thrills. I've always written them for practice purposes as well as to get a feel for characters and scenes, and I think they're the best way to test-drive characters and novel ideas before I commit to writing a book about them. Both the StarDoc and the Darkyn series were based on short stories I wrote for fun, so for me this kind of writing practice also regularly leads to bigger and better projects.
The easiest subject for a short story is a day in the life of one of your characters (this gives you 24 hours to follow them around and get to know them, so it's a terrific method for exploring your characterizations.) You can write a short story about the worst or best day in your character's life, the day their world came crashing to a halt, or the day their second chance arrived. Likewise your character can do anything in this 24 hours: witness a crime, discover a secret, or win the lottery.
If nothing like that comes to mind, here's one of my personal tricks for writing practice: grab the nearest nonfiction book you love, turn to any page at random and jot down the first sentence you see on the page. The line you write down will be the opening sentence for the story (and just a note for those who may choose to pursue publishing a practice story written this way; you should remove the opening line before submitting, obtain the author's permission to use the line, or footnote it.)
Here's an example: from page 79 of The Medieval Underworld by Andrew McCall:
As was usual then, with medieval justice, a prison sentence meant one thing to those who were rich or influential and quite another to those who were not.
This is a great opening line for a short story; I'd use it to tell the tale of how two prisoners (one rich, one poor) live out one day of their sentence. I'd find a way to have them meet, of course, and hate each other, and then for some drastic reason become dependent on each other in a moment of crisis. I'd find out who they really are beneath the wealth and the poverty; one could be guilty of the crime for which the other was actually convicted. I might have them be in love with the same woman; I might have them fall in love with each other. That one line is just a door opening to endless possibilities.
To get you back to writing via short stories, in comments to this post give us the first line of a short story you'd like to write (or if you can't think of one, just toss your name in the hat) by midnight EST on Thursday, September 6th, 2012. I'll choose one name at random from everyone who participates and send the winner an unsigned copy of Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury, one of my favorite how-to books by my favorite short story writer, and a signed-by-me copy of Ring of Fire, a short story anthology which includes A Matter of Consultation by Yours Truly writing as S.L. Viehl. This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.
As a writer, you can do that, too, but you have to build them first.
This kind of fiction construction takes tons of ideas and tools and plans plus all the time it requires to actually gather the materials, put it together, troubleshoot it, polish it up and get it ready for others to enjoy. It's why we call it world-building; writing novels means you really do build a world and everything in it from scratch.
If you've taken a hiatus from writing, the sheer size of that kind of project can seem especially daunting. So can the very good odds that you'll do all that work and get nothing in return. What if you choose the wrong theme for your novel park? What if the cast members are a bunch of boring wall flowers who just stand around and talk to each other about housekeeping stuff? Those doubts and fears often convince writers to put it off until next week, next month, or next year (when -- for mysterious reasons that I've never understood -- it's supposed to be easier.)
To get back to writing after a long break it's sometimes good to start with a project that isn't as long as a book. One option is to write some flash fiction, or a story told in a very minimal amount of words (some folks say it has to be less than 300, but I've also seen it defined as less than 1000 words.) This sort of writing can be a great form for people who want to work in shorter sessions in order to ease their way back into a daily or weekly writing routine. If you're a fast, focused writer, you can probably knock out at least one or two flash fiction stories per day; if you're slower or want to explore the form you still won't have to deal with a lot of blank pages to fill; four is about tops.
My personal favorite go-to short fiction form is the short story. A short story is like a roller coaster in the great theme park of fiction; they can be fast, fun and full of thrills. I've always written them for practice purposes as well as to get a feel for characters and scenes, and I think they're the best way to test-drive characters and novel ideas before I commit to writing a book about them. Both the StarDoc and the Darkyn series were based on short stories I wrote for fun, so for me this kind of writing practice also regularly leads to bigger and better projects.
The easiest subject for a short story is a day in the life of one of your characters (this gives you 24 hours to follow them around and get to know them, so it's a terrific method for exploring your characterizations.) You can write a short story about the worst or best day in your character's life, the day their world came crashing to a halt, or the day their second chance arrived. Likewise your character can do anything in this 24 hours: witness a crime, discover a secret, or win the lottery.
If nothing like that comes to mind, here's one of my personal tricks for writing practice: grab the nearest nonfiction book you love, turn to any page at random and jot down the first sentence you see on the page. The line you write down will be the opening sentence for the story (and just a note for those who may choose to pursue publishing a practice story written this way; you should remove the opening line before submitting, obtain the author's permission to use the line, or footnote it.)
Here's an example: from page 79 of The Medieval Underworld by Andrew McCall:
As was usual then, with medieval justice, a prison sentence meant one thing to those who were rich or influential and quite another to those who were not.
This is a great opening line for a short story; I'd use it to tell the tale of how two prisoners (one rich, one poor) live out one day of their sentence. I'd find a way to have them meet, of course, and hate each other, and then for some drastic reason become dependent on each other in a moment of crisis. I'd find out who they really are beneath the wealth and the poverty; one could be guilty of the crime for which the other was actually convicted. I might have them be in love with the same woman; I might have them fall in love with each other. That one line is just a door opening to endless possibilities.To get you back to writing via short stories, in comments to this post give us the first line of a short story you'd like to write (or if you can't think of one, just toss your name in the hat) by midnight EST on Thursday, September 6th, 2012. I'll choose one name at random from everyone who participates and send the winner an unsigned copy of Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury, one of my favorite how-to books by my favorite short story writer, and a signed-by-me copy of Ring of Fire, a short story anthology which includes A Matter of Consultation by Yours Truly writing as S.L. Viehl. This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Short Story Sins
I'm currently reading the June '12 issue of Writers' Forum, a UK trade mag for writers that I found while rifling through the racks at my local BAM. Why it was there I can't say, except that this one BAM carries a nice selection of international mags as well as the usual domestic suspects. The majority of the articles are geared toward working writers, which I liked, and while there were a few of those "Make Millions Self-Pubbing" ads the content was very refreshing -- like The Writer used to be before they went the way of Writer's Digest. There was even an article spread on using notebooks -- the write-in kind -- in different ways to aid with the work. Made me tear up a bit, to be honest.
Writers' Forum also holds a monthly fiction contest with three prizes that sounds interesting. There's a small entry fee involved (discounted 50% for subscribers) but since the magazine awards three prizes (£300, £150, and £100 respectively) each month, it might be worth it to subscribe if you're a short story writer or actively pursuing the UK markets.
In this issue the judge of the mag's monthly writing contest wrote an article on why she chose the entries that won, and in a box provided a checklist of what the mag is looking for as far as winning stories: "Originality ~ Good storytelling ~ Pace, momentum, immediacy ~ Attention-grabbing openings ~ Satisfying endings ~ Action ~ Convincing characters with their own voices ~ viewpoint control."
The judge's checklist made me ponder what I think kills a short story, which led to me putting together my own list ala the seven deadly sins:
Convention Skirt-Flouncing: How do I describe thee? Let me count a few ways: the writer refuses to use quotation marks; surreal elements that have nothing to do with the story pop up randomly, like great big honking pink elephants; there's a chick with green hair who isn't a blonde who just got out of an over-chlorinated pool -- you get the general idea. Yes, to some it's artistic, it's tres chic, whatever; it doesn't work for me. Most of it comes off less like style and more like posturing. If you're more worried about what people think of you than the story, this might be a problem.
Dull Characters: There's hardly any time for me to get to know the story's population, so in some way/shape/form they'd better knock my socks off from page 1. Too often they simply don't. To figure out if your characters are absorbing, give someone half the story and see if they come after you demanding the rest of it right now or they'll hurt you.
Improper Length: Any story over 15K words always feels to me like it's trying to be a novel, it wasn't enough to make into a novel, or it wasn't edited properly (sometimes all three.) On the flip side, unless they're perfectly structured very short stories (usually under 2K) feel unfinished. A litmus test for this is if your reader feels bored halfway through (too long), or pissed after reading the last paragraph (too short.)
Sketches Instead of Stories: About half of the short stories I read disappoint me because they're glorified character/event/setting outlines or narratives instead of real stories. The big tell for this is when you take a hard look at the action -- if you reach the end of the story and realize nothing has actually happened, you may be sketching instead of storytelling.
Tellers: the writer is so proud of the neat things that they've invented that there is no story, there's just the writer nattering on about all the stuff they think is cool. The red flag for this one is how many pages you've filled with narrative. More than 60%? Possibly a teller.
Unsympathetic Buttons: The writer wants my sympathy for an unsympathetic situation. Example: it's so horrible to be rich, privileged, summer in the Hamptons, winter in Aspen and have Daddy write a check to pay for college, yes? Maybe it is, but from my perspective and life experience, no, I don't think so. I don't want to tell anyone they are obligated to write about the downtrodden; I'm willing to believe wealthy people suffer just like the rest of us. There should be more to that suffering, however, than a pitch of woe-is-me-I'm-too-entitled.
What is the Point?: I just finished two pretty terrible anthologies (neither were written by anyone who stops in here, so relax.) Both left me feeling as if I'd squandered two decent reading days and about thirty bucks of my hard-earned $$$ for nothing. They didn't enlighten me, they didn't amuse me, they didn't teach me and they didn't even attempt to entertain me. Mostly they made me feel tired (although one tried to sneer at me, the lip-curls weren't very convincing.) If that was the point, it worked, but it's not going to sell me any more books. Unless my insomnia flares up again.
So what are some of the sins you encounter in the short stories you read? Let us know in comments.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Fiction Becomes Fact (Maybe)
Weird writer moment #9999 #100000: sometimes real life imitates your fiction.
I wrote a short story back in 2002 that, I admit, was definitely one of my stranger ideas. At the time I had returned to world-building K-2 from my SF series with plans to write Bio Rescue, and had thought about aquatic life forms that develop in hostile environments, like jellyfish. The deep sea varieties can grow to incredible sizes (one captured in the Antarctic was reportedly twelve yards long and weighed 90 lbs) and their hydrostatic skeletons enable them to live under conditions that would pancake almost anything else. The idea of something thriving in such frigid temperatures also intrigued me.
From there I tested it out in a short story called Untouchable. The idea for the Titan life forms never made it into the StarDoc series, but I did publish the story for my readers on my old web site as part of the Do or Die anthology.
In honor of this latest scientific discovery, I've posted an updated version of Untouchable by itself overon Scribd. Note 9/3/10: Since Scribd.com instituted an access fee scam to charge people for downloading e-books, including those I have provided for free for the last ten years, I have removed this document and temporarily transferred it to Google Docs here. See my post about this scam here.
I wrote a short story back in 2002 that, I admit, was definitely one of my stranger ideas. At the time I had returned to world-building K-2 from my SF series with plans to write Bio Rescue, and had thought about aquatic life forms that develop in hostile environments, like jellyfish. The deep sea varieties can grow to incredible sizes (one captured in the Antarctic was reportedly twelve yards long and weighed 90 lbs) and their hydrostatic skeletons enable them to live under conditions that would pancake almost anything else. The idea of something thriving in such frigid temperatures also intrigued me.
From there I tested it out in a short story called Untouchable. The idea for the Titan life forms never made it into the StarDoc series, but I did publish the story for my readers on my old web site as part of the Do or Die anthology.
In honor of this latest scientific discovery, I've posted an updated version of Untouchable by itself over
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Coming Soon
In addition to writing series novels, I like to write short story series. The Darkyn started out as a trilogy of short stories, as it happens, that I wrote to test drive the Kyn universe for me and my readers.
A lot of these series stories are scattered through my old web site collections; some have never been read and are sitting in folders in my filing cabinet. Very often a reader will write to me about one story (usually to ask for more) and never realize there are already more out there in different e-books.
To organize things better for the readers, and to add some stories that have never been published, I'm going to edit and repackage each of my short story series and post them tomy account over at Scribd. *Note 9/3/10: Since Scribd.com instituted an access fee scam to charge people for downloading e-books, including those I have provided for free for the last ten years, I have removed my free library from their site, and no longer use or recommend using their service. My free reads may be read online or downloaded for free from Google Docs; go to my freebies and free reads page for the links. See my post about this scam here.
The first will be the one I get the most reader requests on:
Like the switchover of my e-books to Scribd, this is going to take some time, but I think it will end a lot of confusion and give the readers all the stories in one place.
A lot of these series stories are scattered through my old web site collections; some have never been read and are sitting in folders in my filing cabinet. Very often a reader will write to me about one story (usually to ask for more) and never realize there are already more out there in different e-books.
To organize things better for the readers, and to add some stories that have never been published, I'm going to edit and repackage each of my short story series and post them to
The first will be the one I get the most reader requests on:
Like the switchover of my e-books to Scribd, this is going to take some time, but I think it will end a lot of confusion and give the readers all the stories in one place.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Free Range Freebie
A couple of years ago I wrote A Matter of Consultation, an AH piece for Ring of Fire, a Baen anthology (short story, long story.) The antho came out in hardcover; I got a nice check and a contributor's copy, and I never heard any more about it after that.
Today I was commenting over at Tobias's blog about freebies, and went over to the Baen free library to see if I'd downloaded anything from there. Turns out my story is there, free to download in various formats or to read online, along with the entire antho.
Today I was commenting over at Tobias's blog about freebies, and went over to the Baen free library to see if I'd downloaded anything from there. Turns out my story is there, free to download in various formats or to read online, along with the entire antho.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
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