  Short Stories
This week: That Guy Edited by: Shannon  
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Welcome to the Short Stories Newsletter. I am Shannon and I'm your editor this week.
“Sometimes I write about the forest, sometimes I write about the trees, and occasionally I’ll write about the lumberjack. Actually, the lumberjack is more the editing part, figuring what needs to be cut.”
~ Jarod Kintz, Seriously delirious, but not at all serious
Read on for your chance to win a Word Economy merit badge! |
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We've all met "that guy"--the one who knows everything, has done everything, can top your story with one of his own, and loves to talk about his favorite subject: himself. You can hardly get a word in edgewise, and before you know it you're glancing at the clock, rolling your eyes in exasperation, and plotting your escape.
Stories can be like that, too. Have you ever had to force yourself to finish a book? Flipped to the last page, calculated how many of the blasted things are left, and wished to God it was already over? I have. It's a decidedly unpleasant undertaking, and one I hope my readers never experience.
"So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads." ~ Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss hit the nail on the head; long-winded prose fills readers with dread. Sorry, I couldn't resist.
In The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby writes, "Anyone and everyone taking a writing class knows that the secret of good writing is to cut it back, pare it down, winnow, chop, hack, prune, and trim, remove every superfluous word, compress, compress, compress." Yes, yes, YES! If you can take an entire paragraph, character, page, or chapter out and it makes no detrimental difference to the story, get rid of it. Do the readers really need to know the sun glinting off the blue of her eyes reminded Tom of the summer he spent at his grandparents' cabin on Lake Hazel when he was 13? Probably not, unless something that happened at Lake Hazel is relevant to the story you're telling now. If not ... well, you know what to do.
Don't be that guy. Don't allow your prose to meander all over the place until you're readers scream in pure exhaustion and frustration, "Sweet baby Jesus, does this have a point already?" Because, let's be honest, wordy, irrelevant prose is more for the author's benefit than the reader's. It's a self-inflicted pat on the back. Hey, I'm just as guilty as the next guy. We've all done it because we just can't bear to "murder our darlings," as Arthur Quiller-Couch stated in his 1914 lecture "On Style" He said, "If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it--whole-heartedly--and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings."
I'm not saying to "dumb down" your work, but let's keep it relevant, shall we? And how do you effectively review such work? Well, you don't say, "Look, I'm not dazzled by your mastery of a thesaurus, I don't care about how smart you are, and I'm not impressed by your glitter-covered vocabulary. I just want a good, tight, readable story. I want to read about things that are pertinent to the plot, not all this extraneous stuff," but you can say, "Have you considered cutting the Lake Hazel scene? Tom's flashback to the lake's surface shimmering in the afternoon sun is beautifully written, but I'm not sure it furthers the story." Sometimes we don't say something because we don't want to hurt someone's feelings, but are we really helping that person by not saying something? Writers must develop a thick skin, and real writers want to improve their craft. They may not take your recommendation, but at least you've thrown it out there, and it is possible to critique someone's work in a constructive, nonthreatening way. We should want to help each other develop, not demolish. Helpful, not hurtful.
The best way to avoid being on the receiving end of such a critique (because we're all in love with our darlings) is to ruthlessly hone and chisel your work until it's as sharp and tight as it can be. If you do it your readers won't have to.
"I've found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living s*it out of it." ~ Don Roff
Now here's your chance to win a Word Economy merit badge. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story of no more than 2000 words (any genre is okay as long as the rating is 18+ or below) and to make every word count. Your story must be:
Contest Rules:
 Newly-written for this contest.
Rated 18+ or below.
No more than 2,000 words. Word count must be provided at the bottom of the item.
Received by me no later than 11:59 p.m. WDC time on February 18, 2015. Email me the item ID number in bitem format and write "Contest Entry" in the email's subject line. For help using the bitem format, please refer to "Newbie Hyperlinking 101 - Bitem Format" [E].
Edited only until the deadline.
Any entry not following these rules will be disqualified.
Only one entry per person, please.
 A minimum of five entries is required before a winner will be chosen to receive the merit badge. If fewer than five entries are received, each author who participated will instead be given 1,000 gift points for their time and effort. If five or more entries are received, a winning story will be chosen, the author awarded a Word Economy merit badge, and the story featured in the February 25, 2015 issue of the Short Stories Newsletter.
 I like surprises, so if a winning entry is chosen, I just might surprise the author with a little something extra.
Good luck, and thank you for reading.
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I hope you enjoy this week's featured selections. Please do the authors the courtesy of reviewing the ones you read. Thank you, and have a great week!
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The following is in response to "What's Your Platform?" :
brom21  writes, "I wrote a chapter to a book I hope to finish and it got lots of objections and three star ratings from reviewers. The thing is that I wrote from my imagination and I really enjoyed composing it. On the other hand, the works of mine that I find tedious and dull people like. There was a reviewer who loved it though and he gave it four-an-a-half stars. What am I supposed to do in this overall situation?" Ooh, that's a tough one. Your question reminds me of something Stephen King once said, and I'm paraphrasing here: If the majority of my proofreaders identify a particular section of my writing as weak or in need of a major rewrite, it's wise for me to rewrite it. If only one person says it's lacking in this or that and I like it the way it is, I consider it a tie, and as the author I win by default. I've always considered that pretty sounds advice and it's the criteria I use when deciding whether or not to do a major revision. I hope that helps! 
The following is in response to "Collaborative Writing" :
Elfin Dragon-finally published writes, "Collaborative writing can be a difficult process. It does help if the person you're writing with thinks a lot like you. My ex and I used to write stories together and they turned out pretty darn good. How we did it was I had my character and he had his then we'd think up a situation to put them in. Once we had the situation the story seemed to just flow naturally. We'd bounce the ideas around and within a few minutes (it seemed) we had a working story. It also helped that I was usually a little more serious and he a bit more humerous. The combination made great stories." Very interesting! I'm curious whether or not you disagreed or argued about the direction you wanted the story to go. Was the process smooth, or were there bumps in the road? 
The following items were not submitted by their authors, but by sdodger, a fan of the writing:
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Short Stories: January 28, 2015 Issue [#6791]
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